Category Archives: Deontology and Moral Responsibility
‘The Morality of Risking’
John Oberdiek, Imposing Risk: A Normative Framework (2017). In this book, legal scholar and philosopher John Oberdiek offers an elegantly written, meticulously argued, and highly original account of when it is morally permissible to impose mortal risks on others. Tort scholars and theorists have long examined the permissibility of risky conduct, but, as Oberdiek observes, […]
Sinéad Agnew, ‘The Meaning and Significance of Conscience in Private Law’
Abstract This article argues that the idea of conscience can play a useful, albeit limited and highly general, explanatory role in private law, if we have regard to two distinctive contexts in which it is used. First, it tells us something about how equitable obligations arise and reminds us that they directly enforce moral duties. […]
Kim Treiger-Bar-Am, ‘Speech, Balance, and a Telos of Respect: Review of Abraham Drassinower’s What’s Wrong with Copying?’
Abstract In an analysis of both clarity and depth, Abraham Drassimower calls copyright a right in speech, and justifies it on a rights-based norm. I applaud Drassinower’s use of theory of Immanuel Kant to support his analysis. I believe Drassinower can go further with Kant. Kantian theory may be understood to support a view of […]
Justin Capes, ‘Strict Moral Liability’
Introduction “Strict liability in tort law is thought by some to have a moral counterpart. It’s been said that a person is, or can be, morally obligated to make restitution to those he harms or whose property he damages regardless of whether he’s culpable for the injury or the behavior from which it resulted. Others, […]
Marc Cohen, ‘Apology as Self-Repair’
Abstract Bernard Williams (1981) briefly discusses agent regret in his broader account of moral luck. The present paper first outlines one way to develop Williams’s notion with reference to the unintended harm; it then suggests that agent regret can be counteracted by externalizing the action that caused unintended harm, in Harry Frankfurt’s (1988a, b) sense […]
Robert Mullins, ‘Detachment and Deontic Language in Law’
Abstract Some legal philosophers regard the use of deontic language to describe the law as philosophically significant. Joseph Raz argues that it gives rise to ‘the problem of normativity of law’. He develops an account of what he calls ‘detached’ legal statements to resolve the problem. Unfortunately, Raz’s account is difficult to reconcile with the […]
Amar Kumar Moolayil, ‘The Modern Trolley Problem: Ethical and Economically-Sound Liability Schemes for Autonomous Vehicles’
Abstract The paper synthesizes modern scholarship in the fields of Artificial Intelligence law, Ethics, Corporate Liability, and Economics to develop potential liability schemes that the automotive and insurance industries may impose when autonomous vehicles eventually come to dominate the roadways. By addressing the issues of whom the autonomous vehicle’s AI protects and who bears liability […]
Ernest Weinrib, ‘Ownership, Use, and Exclusivity: The Kantian Approach’
Abstract Ownership combines the owner’s right to exclude others from the owned object and the owner’s liberty to use that object. This article addresses the relationship between using and excluding, by presenting Grotius’s and Kant’s classic accounts of ownership. Grotius’s approach treats use and exclusivity as separate notions, with the latter evolving out of the […]
Stephanie Collins, ‘Collective Responsibility Gaps’
Abstract Which kinds of responsibility can we attribute to which kinds of collective, and why? In contrast, which kinds of collective responsibility can we not attribute – which kinds are ‘gappy’? This study provides a framework for answering these questions. It begins by distinguishing between three kinds of collective (diffuse, teleological, and agential) and three […]
‘Contractualism’
“The term ‘contractualism’ can be used in a broad sense – to indicate the view that morality is based on contract or agreement – or in a narrow sense – to refer to a particular view developed in recent years by the Harvard philosopher TM Scanlon, especially in his book What We Owe to Each […]