RELIGION AND THE LAW OF CHARITY: A LIBERAL PERSPECTIVE

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-258
Author(s):  
Matthew Harding
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
The Political ◽  
Joseph Raz ◽  
The Law ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Liberal Perspective

AbstractThis article considers the treatment of religious purposes in charity law from a liberal perspective informed by the work of the political philosopher Joseph Raz. The article begins by describing briefly the main ideas in Razian liberalism. It then considers the key question when thinking from a Razian perspective about the treatment of religious purposes in charity law: To what extent does the state's promotion of religious purposes via charity law promote the conditions of autonomy? Finally, the article considers the practical reasoning of state officials who deliberate about religious purposes in the charity law setting, asking to what extent such reasoning meets an ideal of public reason informed by Razian liberalism. The article concludes that in many, but not all, respects the treatment of religious purposes in charity law is consistent with Razian liberal commitments.

La Idea de “Razón Publica” (y su Revisión) en el Último Rawls

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 5-31
Author(s):  
Fernando Aranda Fraga ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Public Good ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Key Topics ◽  
Political Philosopher

In 1993 John Rawls published his main and longest work since 1971, where he had published his reknowned A Theory of Justice, book that made him famous as the greatest political philosopher of the century. We are referring to Political Liberalism, a summary of his writings of the 80’s and the first half of the 90’s, where he attempts to answer the critics of his intellectual partners, communitarian philosophers. One of the key topics in this book is the issue of “public reason”, whose object is nothing else than public good, and on which the principles and proceedings of justice are to be applied. The book was so important for the political philosophy of the time that in 1997 Rawls had to go through the 1993 edition, becoming this new one the last relevant writing published before the death of the Harvard philosopher in November 2002.

The Authority of Vattel

1913 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles G. Fenwick
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Political Philosopher

There is no more significant commentary on the growth of international law, both in precision and in comprehensiveness, than an estimate of the relative authority of the name of Vattel in the world of international relations a century ago and in that of today. A century ago not even the name of Grotius himself was more potent in its influence upon questions relating to international law than that of Vattel. Vattel's treatise on the law of nations was quoted by judicial tribunals, in speeches before legislative assemblies, and in the decrees and correspondence of executive officials. It was the manual of the student, the reference work of the statesman, and the text from which the political philosopher drew inspiration. Publicists considered it sufficient to cite the authority of Vattel to justify and give conclusiveness and force to statements as to the proper conduct of a state in its international relations.At the present day the name and treatise of Vattel have both passed into the remoter field of the history of international law. It is safe to say that in no modern controversy over the existence and force of an alleged rule of international law would publicists seek to strengthen the position taken by them by quoting the authority of Vattel. As an exposition of the law of nations at a given period of its growth, the work can, it is true, lose nothing of its value, but in saying that it has thus won its place irrevocably among the classics of international law, we are merely repeating that it has lost its value as a treatise on the law of the present day.

The Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 256-269
Author(s):  
Diego Quaglioni
Keyword(s):  
Legal Culture ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
The Law ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
Legal Concepts ◽  
The Way

This chapter discusses the way Dante’s major works, like Monarchia and Convivio, articulate a strong and complex interrelation among religious, political, and legal concepts. Dante’s Commedia, too, is a universal masterpiece whose literary-theoretical framework is simultaneously and manifestly a legal one. Dante the political philosopher as well as Dante the poet fully assimilated the legal culture of his century. He was not a canonist or a jurist either, even though he quoted canon and Roman law everywhere, castigating papal decretals and the decretalists in the harshest terms but also following some traditional lines of legal thought. Indeed, the legal maxims quoted by Dante are one with the structure of his discourse and argumentation, even when Dante follows closely precise legal enunciations of the sources, showing how phrases from the texts of the Corpus iuris civilis or of the Corpus iuris canonici had become part of general educated discourse among non-lawyers.

The New Terrain of International Law

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Constitutional Review ◽  
Delegation Of Authority ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law

In 1989, when the Cold War ended, there were six permanent international courts. Today there are more than two dozen that have collectively issued over thirty-seven thousand binding legal rulings. This book charts the developments and trends in the creation and role of international courts, and explains how the delegation of authority to international judicial institutions influences global and domestic politics. The book presents an in-depth look at the scope and powers of international courts operating around the world. Focusing on dispute resolution, enforcement, administrative review, and constitutional review, the book argues that international courts alter politics by providing legal, symbolic, and leverage resources that shift the political balance in favor of domestic and international actors who prefer policies more consistent with international law objectives. International courts name violations of the law and perhaps specify remedies. The book explains how this limited power—the power to speak the law—translates into political influence, and it considers eighteen case studies, showing how international courts change state behavior. The case studies, spanning issue areas and regions of the world, collectively elucidate the political factors that often intervene to limit whether or not international courts are invoked and whether international judges dare to demand significant changes in state practices.

Depressions Plural

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
K W M (Bill) Fulford ◽  
David Crepaz-Keay ◽  
Giovanni Stanghellini
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Personal Values ◽  
The Political ◽  
Medical Law ◽  
Isaiah Berlin ◽  
Political Philosopher

This chapter examines how values influence the heterogeneity of depression. The plurality of values is increasingly significant for contemporary person-centred mental health care with its emphasis on quality of life and development of self-manvnagement skills. Values-based practice is a partner with medical law invn working with the plurality of personal values. The chapter explains what values are, shows how the plurality of values influences the heterogeneity of depression at several levels, and provides an overview of values-based practice. It looks at the resources available for combining values-based practice with medical law in contemporary person-centred care and indicates some of the challenges this raises. It concludes with a brief reflection on these challenges understood as an instance of what the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin called the challenge of pluralism.

Property in Human Body Parts

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine Pila
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Human Body ◽  
First Principles ◽  
The Political ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Regulatory Approach ◽  
Legal Position ◽  
The Law

This chapter surveys the current legal position concerning property in bodies and bodily materials. Of especial relevance in the current age of advanced genetic and other bio technologies, it looks beyond property in bodies and their materials ‘as such’ to consider also (a) the availability of rights of personal and intellectual property in objects incorporating or derived from them, and (b) the reliance on quasi-property rights of possession and consent to regulate the storage and use of corpses and detached bodily materials, including so-called ‘bio-specimens’. Reasoning from first principles, it highlights the practical and conceptual, as well as the political and philosophical, difficulties in this area, along with certain differences in the regulatory approach of European and US authorities. By way of conclusion, it proposes the law of authors’ and inventors’ rights as simultaneously offering a cautionary tale to those who would extend the reach of property even further than it extends currently and ideas for exploiting the malleability of the ‘property’ concept to manage the risks of extending it.

On the Nature of Necessary Truths in Jurisprudence: Putting Wittgensteinian Hinges to Use

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-237
Author(s):  
Yi Tong
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Nature ◽  
Joseph Raz ◽  
Necessary Truths ◽  
The Law

Inquiring into the fundamental nature of law has been traditionally formulated as an attempt to answer the question, “What is Law?” Such an inquiry typically proceeds by identifying the necessary features of law. Joseph Raz, for example, writes: A theory consists of necessary truths, for only necessary truths about the law reveal the nature of the law. We talk of ‘the nature of law’, or the nature of anything else, to refer to those of the law’s characteristics which are of the essence of law, which make law into what it is. That is those properties without which the law would not be law.1

V. II principio dell’irretroattività della legge nell’esperienza giuridica romana dell’età repubblicana

2021 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-273
Author(s):  
Umberto Laffi
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
The Law ◽  
Criminal Legislation ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

Abstract The Principle of the Irretroactivity of the Law in the Roman Legal Experience in the Republican Age. Through an in-depth analysis of literary and legal sources (primarily Cicero) and of epigraphic evidence, the author demonstrates that the principle of the law’s non-retroactivity was known to, and applied by, the Romans since the Republican age. The political struggle favored on several occasions the violation of this principle by imposing an extraordinary criminal legislation, aimed at sanctioning past behaviors of adversaries. But, although with undeniable limits of effectiveness in the dynamic relationship with the retroactivity, the author acknowledges that at the end of the first century BC non-retroactivity appeared as the dominant principle, consolidated both in the field of the civil law as well as substantive criminal law.

Jesus' Legal Theory—A Rabbinic Reading

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaim Saiman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
American Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
President Bush

These are heady times in America's law and religion conversation. On the campaign trail in 1999, then-candidate George W. Bush declared Jesus to be his favorite political philosopher. Since his election in 2001, legal commentators have criticized both President Bush and the Supreme Court for improperly basing their decisions on their sectarian Christian convictions. Though we pledge to be one nation under God, a recent characterization of the law and religion discourse sees America as two sub-nations divided by God. Moreover, debate concerning the intersection between law, politics and religion has moved from the law reviews to the New York Times Sunday Magazine, which has published over twenty feature-length articles on these issues since President Bush took office in 2001. Today, more than anytime in the past century, the ideas of an itinerant first-century preacher from Bethlehem are relevant to American law.

Law as Practical Reason

1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Detmold
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
The State ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
A Priority ◽  
The Law ◽  
John Finnis ◽  
Vast Range

Law is practical. Legal reasoning is practical reasoning. We could make nothing of a judge who having listened to counsel's arguments and reflected about the law governing his case thought that the state of knowledge that he had achieved was the natural termination of his enterprise and submitted his conclusions to the editors of Halsbury's Laws of England rather than performed the action of giving judgment. The parties would be outraged, and rightly. And if the judge continued to do such a thing he would be dismissed. Legal reasoning is practical in the sense that its natural conclusion is an action (in the judge's case the action of giving judgment) rather than a state of knowledge. This is taking “practical” in a strong sense. By this definition thought is practical whose natural conclusion is an action (or decision against action): its strongest contrast is with theoretical thought whose natural conclusion is knowledge. But it also contrasts with hypothetical thought about action (say, my thinking it would be good to play cricket again). I do not call this practical because it does not conclude in an action or decision against action (others do; for example John Finnis in Fundamentals of Ethics; my reasons for differing in this matter will emerge). A judge's practical reasoning towards the action of giving judgment has priority for our understanding of law over that vast range of practically idle things that lawyers do, from the construction of digests like Halsbury to casual reflection about the rule in Shelley's case (of course there is one sort of doing involved in both these, but not legal doing). It is important here to be clear about this priority. It is a priority of practicality, not a priority of judges or lawyers.

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