Author: Kent Greenawalt Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0195058240 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 396
Book Description
Powerful emotion and pursuit of self-interest have many times led people to break the law with the belief that they are doing so with sound moral reasons. This study is a comprehensive philosophical and legal analysis of the gray area in which the foundations of law and morality clash. In examining the extent of the obligations owed by citizens to their government, Greenawalt concentrates on the possible existence of a single source of obligation that reaches all citizens and all laws.
Author: Raymond Wacks Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 9780199214969 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
Law touches every aspect of our daily lives, and yet the main concepts, terms, and processes of the legal system remain obscure to many. This Very Short Introduction provides a clear, jargon-free account of modern legal systems, explaining how the law works both in the Western tradition and around the world.
Author: David Dyzenhaus Publisher: University of Toronto Press ISBN: 0802094899 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 1095
Book Description
Since its first publication in 1996, Law and Morality has filled a long-standing need for a contemporary Canadian textbook in the philosophy of law. Now in its third edition, this anthology has been thoroughly revised and updated, and includes new chapters on equality, judicial review, and terrorism and the rule of law. The volume begins with essays that explore general questions about morality and law, surveying the traditional literature on legal positivism and contemporary debates about the connection between law and morality. These essays explore the tensions between law as a protector of individual liberty and as a tool of democratic self-rule, and introduce debates about adjudication and the contribution of feminist approaches to the philosophy of law. New material on the Chinese Canadian head tax case is also featured. The second part of Law and Morality deals with philosophical questions as they apply to contemporary issues. Excerpts from judicial decisions as well as essays by practicing lawyers are included to provide theoretically informed legal analyses of the issues. Striking a balance between practical and more analytic, philosophical approaches, the volume's treatment of the philosophy of law as a branch of political philosophy enables students to understand law in its function as a social institution. Law and Morality has proved to be an essential text in both departments of philosophy and faculties of law and this latest edition brings the debates fully up to date, filling gaps in the previous editions and adding to the array of contemporary issues previously covered.
Author: Adil Ahmad Haque Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199687390 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
The laws are not silent in war, but what should they say? What is the moral function of the law of armed conflict? Should the law protect civilians who do not fight but help those who do? Should the law protect soldiers who perform non-combat functions or who may be safely captured? How certain should a soldier be that an individual is a combatant rather than a civilian before using lethal force? What risks should soldiers take on themselves to avoid harming civilians? When do inaccurate weapons become unlawfully indiscriminate? When does 'collateral damage' to civilians become unlawfully disproportionate? Should civilians lose their legal rights by serving, voluntarily or involuntarily, as human shields? Finally, when should killing civilians constitute a war crime? These are the questions that Law and Morality at War answers, contributing to a cutting-edge international debate. Drawing on the concepts and methods of contemporary moral and legal philosophy, the book develops a normative framework within which the laws of war and international criminal law can be evaluated, criticized, and reformed. While several philosophical works critically examine the moral status of civilians and combatants, this book fills a gap, offering both an account of the laws of war and war crimes, and proposing how the law could be improved from a moral point of view. Finally, it explores when, if ever, the emotional pressures under which soldiers act should partially or wholly excuse their wrongful actions --Flap of book cover.
Author: Leon Petrazycki Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351509624 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 396
Book Description
In analyzing the socio-psychic nature and operations of intuitive legal rules, Petrazycki formulates a theory of law around five conceptual themes: anti-formalism, imperative-attributive legal relationships, law's functional control, law's subjective reality and morality. Petrazycki presents the two ways by which law coordinates and regulates social conduct as through its distributive and organizing functions. Law and Morality has a basic objective: to analyze interrelations between positive and intuitive law. Petrazycki's socio-psychic orientation toward law is behavioral as well as thoughtful. He finds the most suitable methods for obtaining knowledge about legal experiences to be internal and external observation. His technique of introspection is similar to Max Weber's conceptual method. Petrazycki distinguishes between two kinds of interpretive understanding. External observation involves deriving the meaning of an act or symbolic expression from immediate observation without reference to any broader context, and internal observation involves placing the particular act in a broader context of meaning involving facts that cannot be derived from a particular act or expression. Petrazycki's socio-legal ideas remain relevant in today's society. His arguments concerning the global expansion of human love have an attraction for those working towards a better world. In the context of positive psychology and the growing happiness industry, Petrazycki's ideas will compel legal scholars to consider his arguments. Petrazycki's work stands out for the scientific ambitions and systematic nature of his thought as well as the influence of his work on later scholars in the sociology of law.
Author: Phil Harris Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139461451 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 634
Book Description
Since the publication of its first edition, this textbook has become the definitive student introduction to the subject. As with earlier editions, the seventh edition gives a clear understanding of fundamental legal concepts and their importance within society. In addition, this book addresses the ways in which rules and the structures of law respond to and impact upon changes in economic and political life. The title has been extensively updated and explores recent high profile developments such as the Civil Partnership Act 2005 and the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. This introductory text covers a wide range of topics in a clear, sensible fashion giving full context to each. For this reason An Introduction to Law is ideal for all students of law, be they undergraduate law students, those studying law as part of a mixed degree, or students on social sciences courses which offer law options.
Author: H. L. A. Hart Publisher: Stanford University Press ISBN: 9780804701549 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 100
Book Description
This incisive book deals with the use of the criminal law to enforce morality, in particular sexual morality, a subject of particular interest and importance since the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957. Professor Hart first considers John Stuart Mill's famous declaration: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community is to prevent harm to others." During the last hundred years this doctrine has twice been sharply challenged by two great lawyers: Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the great Victorian judge and historian of the common law, and Lord Devlin, who both argue that the use of the criminal law to enforce morality is justified. The author examines their arguments in some detail, and sets out to demonstrate that they fail to recognize distinction of vital importance for legal and political theory, and that they espouse a conception of the function of legal punishment that few would now share.
Author: Larry Alexander Publisher: Duke University Press ISBN: 0822380021 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
Rules perform a moral function by restating moral principles in concrete terms, so as to reduce the uncertainty, error, and controversy that result when individuals follow their own unconstrained moral judgment. Although reason dictates that we must follow rules to avoid destructive error and controversy, rules—and hence laws—are imperfect, and reason also dictates that we ought not follow them when we believe they produce the wrong result in a particular case. In The Rule of Rules Larry Alexander and Emily Sherwin examine this dilemma. Once the importance of this moral and practical conflict is acknowledged, the authors argue, authoritative rules become the central problems of jurisprudence. The inevitable gap between rules and background morality cannot be bridged, they claim, although many contemporary jurisprudential schools of thought are misguided attempts to do so. Alexander and Sherwin work through this dilemma, which lies at the heart of such ongoing jurisprudential controversies as how judges should reason in deciding cases, what effect should be given to legal precedent, and what status, if any, should be accorded to “legal principles.” In the end, their rigorous discussion sheds light on such topics as the nature of interpretation, the ancient dispute among legal theorists over natural law versus positivism, the obligation to obey law, constitutionalism, and the relation between law and coercion. Those interested in jurisprudence, legal theory, and political philosophy will benefit from the edifying discussion in The Rule of Rules.
Author: Eyal Zamir Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0195372166 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 376
Book Description
This work examines the possibility of combining economic methodology and deontological morality through explicit and direct incorporation of moral constraints into economic models.
Author: Kent Greenawalt
Author: Raymond Wacks
Author: David Dyzenhaus
Author: Lon Luvois Fuller
Author: Adil Ahmad Haque
Author: Leon Petrazycki
Author: Phil Harris
Author: H. L. A. Hart
Author: Larry Alexander
Author: Eyal Zamir