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Author: Jeremy Waldron Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191024473 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
When people disagree about justice and about individual rights, how should political decisions be made among them? How should they decide about issues like tax policy, welfare provision, criminal procedure, discrimination law, hate speech, pornography, political dissent and the limits of religious toleration? The most familiar answer is that these decisions should be made democratically, by majority voting among the people or their representatives. Often, however, this answer is qualified by adding ' providing that the majority decision does not violate individual rights.' In this book Jeremy Waldron has revisited and thoroughly revised thirteen of his most recent essays. He argues that the familiar answer is correct, but that the qualification about individual rights is incoherent. If rights are the very things we disagree about, then we are quarrelling precisely about what that qualification should amount to. At best, what it means is that disagreements about rights should be resolved by some other procedure, for example, by majority voting, not among the people or their representatives, but among judges in a court. This proposal - although initially attractive - seems much less agreeable when we consider that the judges too disagree about rights, and they disagree about them along exactly the same lines as the citizens. This book offers a comprehensive critique of the idea of the judicial review of legislation. The author argues that a belief in rights is not the same as a commitment to a Bill of Rights. He shows the flaws and difficulties in many common defences of the 'democratic' character of judicial review. And he argues for an alternative approach to the problem of disagreement: when disagreements about rights arise, the respectful way to resolve them is by decision-making among the right-holders on a basis that reflects an equal respect for them as the holders of views about rights. This respect for ordinary right-holders, he argues, has been sadly lacking in the theories of justice, rights, and constitutionalism put forward in recent years by philosophers such as John Rawls and Donald Dworkin. But the book is not only about judicial review. The first tranche of essays is devoted to a theory of legislation, a theory which highlights the size, the scale and the diversity of modern legislative assemblies. Although legislation is often denigrated as a source of law, Waldron seeks to restore its tattered dignity. He deprecates the tendency to disparage legislatures and argues that such disparagement is often a way of bolstering the legitimacy of the courts, as if we had to transform our parliaments into something like the American Congress to justify importing American-style judicial reviews. Law and Disagreement redresses the balances in modern jurisprudence. It presents legislation by a representative assembly as a form of law making which is especially apt for a society whose members disagree with one another about fundamental issues of principle, for it is a form of law making that does not attempt to conceal the fact that our decisions are made and claim their authority in the midst of, not in spite of, our political and moral disagreements. This timely rights-based defence of majoritarian legislation will be welcomed by scholars of legal and political philosophy throughout the world.
Author: Jeremy Waldron Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191024473 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
When people disagree about justice and about individual rights, how should political decisions be made among them? How should they decide about issues like tax policy, welfare provision, criminal procedure, discrimination law, hate speech, pornography, political dissent and the limits of religious toleration? The most familiar answer is that these decisions should be made democratically, by majority voting among the people or their representatives. Often, however, this answer is qualified by adding ' providing that the majority decision does not violate individual rights.' In this book Jeremy Waldron has revisited and thoroughly revised thirteen of his most recent essays. He argues that the familiar answer is correct, but that the qualification about individual rights is incoherent. If rights are the very things we disagree about, then we are quarrelling precisely about what that qualification should amount to. At best, what it means is that disagreements about rights should be resolved by some other procedure, for example, by majority voting, not among the people or their representatives, but among judges in a court. This proposal - although initially attractive - seems much less agreeable when we consider that the judges too disagree about rights, and they disagree about them along exactly the same lines as the citizens. This book offers a comprehensive critique of the idea of the judicial review of legislation. The author argues that a belief in rights is not the same as a commitment to a Bill of Rights. He shows the flaws and difficulties in many common defences of the 'democratic' character of judicial review. And he argues for an alternative approach to the problem of disagreement: when disagreements about rights arise, the respectful way to resolve them is by decision-making among the right-holders on a basis that reflects an equal respect for them as the holders of views about rights. This respect for ordinary right-holders, he argues, has been sadly lacking in the theories of justice, rights, and constitutionalism put forward in recent years by philosophers such as John Rawls and Donald Dworkin. But the book is not only about judicial review. The first tranche of essays is devoted to a theory of legislation, a theory which highlights the size, the scale and the diversity of modern legislative assemblies. Although legislation is often denigrated as a source of law, Waldron seeks to restore its tattered dignity. He deprecates the tendency to disparage legislatures and argues that such disparagement is often a way of bolstering the legitimacy of the courts, as if we had to transform our parliaments into something like the American Congress to justify importing American-style judicial reviews. Law and Disagreement redresses the balances in modern jurisprudence. It presents legislation by a representative assembly as a form of law making which is especially apt for a society whose members disagree with one another about fundamental issues of principle, for it is a form of law making that does not attempt to conceal the fact that our decisions are made and claim their authority in the midst of, not in spite of, our political and moral disagreements. This timely rights-based defence of majoritarian legislation will be welcomed by scholars of legal and political philosophy throughout the world.
Author: Samantha Besson Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1847310184 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 624
Book Description
This book explores the relationship between the law and pervasive and persistent reasonable disagreement about justice. It reveals the central moral function and creative force of reasonable disagreement in and about the law and shows why and how lawyers and legal philosophers should take reasonable conflict more seriously. Even though the law should be regarded as the primary mode of settlement of our moral conflicts,it can, and should, also be the object and the forum of further moral conflicts. There is more to the rule of law than convergence and determinacy and it is important therefore to question the importance of agreement in law and politics. By addressing in detail issues pertaining to the nature and sources of disagreement, its extent and significance, as well as the procedural, institutional and substantive responses to disagreement in the law and their legitimacy, this book suggests the value of a comprehensive approach to thinking about conflict, which until recently has been analysed in a compartmentalized way. It aims to provide a fully-fledged political morality of conflict by drawing on the analysis of topical jurisprudential questions in the new light of disagreement. Developing such a global theory of disagreement in the law should be read in the context of the broader effort of reconstructing a complete account of democratic law-making in pluralistic societies. The book will be of value not only to legal philosophers and constitutional theorists, but also to political and democratic theorists, as well as to all those interested in public decision-making in conditions of conflict.
Author: Ronald Dworkin Publisher: ISBN: 9788175342569 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
In 'Law's Empire', Ronald Dworkin relects on the nature of the law, its authority, its application in democracy, the prominent role of interpretation in judgement and the relations of lawmakers and lawgivers in the community.
Author: John Hart Ely Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674263294 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 281
Book Description
This powerfully argued appraisal of judicial review may change the face of American law. Written for layman and scholar alike, the book addresses one of the most important issues facing Americans today: within what guidelines shall the Supreme Court apply the strictures of the Constitution to the complexities of modern life? Until now legal experts have proposed two basic approaches to the Constitution. The first, “interpretivism,” maintains that we should stick as closely as possible to what is explicit in the document itself. The second, predominant in recent academic theorizing, argues that the courts should be guided by what they see as the fundamental values of American society. John Hart Ely demonstrates that both of these approaches are inherently incomplete and inadequate. Democracy and Distrust sets forth a new and persuasive basis for determining the role of the Supreme Court today. Ely’s proposal is centered on the view that the Court should devote itself to assuring majority governance while protecting minority rights. “The Constitution,” he writes, “has proceeded from the sensible assumption that an effective majority will not unreasonably threaten its own rights, and has sought to assure that such a majority not systematically treat others less well than it treats itself. It has done so by structuring decision processes at all levels in an attempt to ensure, first, that everyone’s interests will be represented when decisions are made, and second, that the application of those decisions will not be manipulated so as to reintroduce in practice the sort of discrimination that is impermissible in theory.” Thus, Ely’s emphasis is on the procedural side of due process, on the preservation of governmental structure rather than on the recognition of elusive social values. At the same time, his approach is free of interpretivism’s rigidity because it is fully responsive to the changing wishes of a popular majority. Consequently, his book will have a profound impact on legal opinion at all levels—from experts in constitutional law, to lawyers with general practices, to concerned citizens watching the bewildering changes in American law.
Author: Brian Z. Tamanaha Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139459228 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
The contemporary US legal culture is marked by ubiquitous battles among various groups attempting to seize control of the law and wield it against others in pursuit of their particular agenda. This battle takes place in administrative, legislative, and judicial arenas at both the state and federal levels. This book identifies the underlying source of these battles in the spread of the instrumental view of law - the idea that law is purely a means to an end - in a context of sharp disagreement over the social good. It traces the rise of the instrumental view of law in the course of the past two centuries, then demonstrates the pervasiveness of this view of law and its implications within the contemporary legal culture, and ends by showing the various ways in which seeing law in purely instrumental terms threatens to corrode the rule of law.
Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates Publisher: American Bar Association ISBN: 9781590318737 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
Author: Scott Stephenson Publisher: Holt Prize ISBN: 9781760020675 Category : Civil rights Languages : en Pages : 243
Book Description
The bills of rights adopted in the Commonwealth countries of Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and, at the subnational level, Australia in recent decades, have prompted scholars and institutional actors involved in the process of constitutional design and reform to rethink how to evaluate and compare the different approaches to human rights protection. They have challenged a number of assumptions in the field, for example, that courts must have the power to invalidate laws that are found to violate rights (ie courts can now be given non-binding powers), that courts must have the 'final word' on rights issues (ie legislatures can now be given the power to override judicial decisions) and that bills of rights are enforced exclusively by courts (ie legislators can now be given new responsibilities to ensure that the laws they enact are compatible with rights).This book addresses three questions arising from these developments. How do these new bills of rights differ from the traditional approaches to rights protection? Why, if at all, should we consider the Commonwealth's approach over the traditional approaches? What compromises must be struck in the course of adopting a bill of rights of this variety? In answering these questions, the book sets out a new framework for comparison that focuses on the types of inter-institutional disagreement facilitated by and found in the different approaches to rights protection. It also identifies a previously unrecognised element of the Commonwealth's approach - the normative trade-offs with other constitutional principles and values - that is pivotal to understanding its operation. Finally, it seeks to contribute to future debates about rights reform in Australia and elsewhere by setting out a number of lessons that emerge from the answers to these three questions.**Dr Scott Stephenson, From Dialogue to Disagreement in Comparative Rights Constitutionalism, was joint winner of the inaugural Holt Prize 2015.
Author: Ruti G. Teitel Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190221372 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
Among the most prominent and significant political and legal developments since the end of the Cold War is the proliferation of mechanisms for addressing the complex challenges of transition from authoritarian rule to human rights-based democratic constitutionalism, particularly with regards to the demands for accountability in relation to conflicts and abuses of the past. Ruti G. Teitel provides a collection of her own essays that embody her evolving reflections on the practice and discourse of transitional justice.
Author: Jeremy Waldron Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674069919 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 271
Book Description
Every liberal democracy has laws or codes against hate speech—except the United States. For constitutionalists, regulation of hate speech violates the First Amendment and damages a free society. Against this absolutist view, Jeremy Waldron argues powerfully that hate speech should be regulated as part of our commitment to human dignity and to inclusion and respect for members of vulnerable minorities. Causing offense—by depicting a religious leader as a terrorist in a newspaper cartoon, for example—is not the same as launching a libelous attack on a group’s dignity, according to Waldron, and it lies outside the reach of law. But defamation of a minority group, through hate speech, undermines a public good that can and should be protected: the basic assurance of inclusion in society for all members. A social environment polluted by anti-gay leaflets, Nazi banners, and burning crosses sends an implicit message to the targets of such hatred: your security is uncertain and you can expect to face humiliation and discrimination when you leave your home. Free-speech advocates boast of despising what racists say but defending to the death their right to say it. Waldron finds this emphasis on intellectual resilience misguided and points instead to the threat hate speech poses to the lives, dignity, and reputations of minority members. Finding support for his view among philosophers of the Enlightenment, Waldron asks us to move beyond knee-jerk American exceptionalism in our debates over the serious consequences of hateful speech.
Author: Jeremy Waldron
Author: Jeremy Waldron
Author: Samantha Besson
Author: Ronald Dworkin
Author: Learned Hand
Author: John Hart Ely
Author: Brian Z. Tamanaha
Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates
Author: Scott Stephenson
Author: Ruti G. Teitel
Author: Jeremy Waldron