Category Archives: Deontology and Moral Responsibility
Kenneth Himma, ‘Is the Concept of Obligation Moralized?’
Abstract: Conceptual jurisprudence is concerned to explicate the concept of law and other concepts central to core legal practices, as we understand them. The centrality of obligation-talk to legal practice is obvious, as the very point of litigation is to resolve disputes regarding the obligations of the various parties. In this essay, I argue that […]
Herwig and Simoncini, ‘Risk, Precaution, Responsibility, and Equal Concern’
Abstract: Systemic risks are risks produced through interconnected non-wrongful actions of individuals, in the sense that an individual’s action is a negligible cause of the risk. Due to scale effects of interaction, their consequences can be serious but they are also difficult to predict and assess via a risk assessment. Since we can have good […]
Julian Sempill, ‘The Lions and the Greatest Part: The Rule of Law and the Constitution of Employer Power’
Abstract: On the limited government conception of the Rule of Law, it is axiomatic that the state may only act for the public good according to law, and not arbitrarily, on pain of forfeiting its authority. That axiom is a great legacy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ anti-absolutist revolutions. The same period yielded another […]
Richard Epstein, ‘Smart Consequentialism: Kantian Moral Theory and the (Qualified) Defense of Capitalism’
Abstract: Moral philosophers have often grappled with defining rights and duties without looking to the overall consequences of certain rules. The leading defender of that position is Immanuel Kant, whose moral theory talks about how to universalize given norms without regard to their consequences. In this essay I claim that the Kantian standards are met […]
Kongsholm and Kappel, ‘Is Consent Based on Trust Morally Inferior to Consent Based on Information?’
Abstract: Informed consent is considered by many to be a moral imperative in medical research. However, it is increasingly acknowledged that in many actual instances of consent to participation in medical research, participants do not employ the provided information in their decision to consent, but rather consent based on the trust they hold in the […]
Lynn Baker, ‘Mass Torts and the Pursuit of Ethical Finality’
Abstract: Judges, lawyers, and academics largely agree that comprehensive finality is a central goal of mass tort litigation and settlements. More controversial is whether such finality is normatively preferable, inherently ethically problematic, or can be achieved through non-class aggregate settlements without running afoul of the existing ethics rules. This Article joins this important debate. Part […]
Christopher Thompson, ‘The Moral Agency of Group Agents’
Abstract: Christian List and Philip Pettit have recently developed a model of group agency on which an autonomous group agent can be formed, by deductive inference, from the beliefs and preferences of the individual group members. In this paper I raise doubts as to whether this type of group agent is a moral agent. The […]
Cristina Carmody Tilley, ‘Tort Law Inside Out’
Abstract: For more than a century, scholars have been looking at tort law from the outside in. Theorists committed to external goals like efficient allocation of resources or moral justice have treated tort as a mere vehicle for the achievement of their policy preferences, rather than as a body of law with a discernible internal […]
Posner and Sunstein, ‘Moral Commitments in Cost-Benefit Analysis’
Abstract: The regulatory state has become a cost-benefit state, in the sense that under prevailing executive orders, agencies must catalogue the costs and benefits of regulations before issuing them, and in general, must show that their benefits justify their costs. Agencies have well-established tools for valuing risks to health, safety, and the environment. Sometimes, however, […]
Martin Malin, ‘Extending Mike Zimmer’s Cross-Border Comparative Work: The Role of Property Rights in US and Canadian Labo(u)r Law’
Abstract: This article, part of a symposium in memory of the late Professor Michael Zimmer, examines the different role played by property rights in the United States and Canadian labor law. Although Canadian labor relations statutes are generally modeled on the US National Labor Relations Act, they have evolved in significantly different ways. The article […]