Analytic Philosophy in America

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Soames
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
The Impact

This collection of recent and unpublished essays traces milestones in the field of analytic philosophy from its beginnings in Britain and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through its subsequent growth in the United States, up to its present as the world’s most vigorous philosophical tradition. The central chapter chronicles how analytic philosophy developed in the United States out of American pragmatism, the impact of European visitors and immigrants, the mid-century transformation of the Harvard philosophy department, and the rapid spread of the analytic approach that followed. Another chapter explains the methodology guiding analytic philosophy, from the logicism of Frege and Russell through Wittgenstein’s linguistic turn and Carnap’s vision of replacing metaphysics with philosophy of science. Further chapters review advances in logic and the philosophy of mathematics that laid the foundation for a rigorous, scientific study of language, meaning, and information. Other chapters discuss W. V. O. Quine, David K. Lewis, Saul Kripke, the Frege–Russell analysis of quantification, Russell’s attempt to eliminate sets with his “no class theory,” and the Quine–Carnap dispute over meaning and ontology. The book then turns to topics at the frontier of philosophy of language. The final chapters, combining philosophy of language and law, advance a sophisticated originalist theory of interpretation and apply it to U.S. constitutional rulings about due process.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Sarah Esther Lageson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prison Sentence ◽  
Criminal Records ◽  
Valuable Data ◽  
Opt Out ◽  
Data Points ◽  
The Impact

Data-driven criminal justice creates millions of records each year in the United States. Documenting everything from a police stop to a prison sentence, these records take on a digital life of their own as they are collected and posted by police, courts, and prisons, and then re-posted on social media and websites, and bought and sold by data brokers as an increasingly valuable data commodity. The result is “digital punishment,” where mere suspicion or a brush with the law can have lasting consequences. This analysis describes the transformation of criminal records into millions of data points, the commodification of this data into a valuable digital resource, and the impact of this shift on people, society, and public policy. The consequences of digital punishment, as described in hundreds of interviews detailed in this book, lead people to purposefully opt out of society as they cope with privacy and due process violations.

Therapeutic Jurisprudence in International and Comparative Perspective

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Stobbs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Therapeutic Jurisprudence ◽  
Offender Treatment ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Impact

Therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) is a multidisciplinary approach to assessing the impact of the law itself on the emotional and psychological experiences of all those who have contact with the legal system. Variously described as a theory, a method, a lens, or a process of analysis, its distinguishing feature is to conceive of the law as a “therapeutic agent.” That agency can cause both therapeutic and antitherapeutic consequences. By investigating and assessing the social, professional, and political contexts in which laws are made and applied, TJ seeks to identify how unintentional harms are caused and suggests ways to remedy them. It also identifies opportunities to enhance psychological strengths and positive emotional experiences to improve legal outcomes. It has commonalities with positive criminology, restorative justice, procedural justice, and other less adversarial approaches within the criminal justice system. Since being founded by David Wexler and Bruce Winick in the 1980s as a project to improve the experiences of those subjected to mental disability law in the United States, the theory and methodology of TJ has evolved, and its influence has expanded to virtually every major legal system and jurisdiction. TJ was at the core of the operating philosophy of the problem-solving court movement, which now operates across nine countries. It is increasingly influential in new approaches to probation and offender treatment models in the United States, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and in influencing access to justice policies in India and Pakistan. It offers some common conceptual principles for the development of First Nations courts, tribunals, and dispute resolution programs seeking to eradicate systemic, monocultural bias in postcolonial criminal justice systems which tend to lead to intractable, carceral overrepresentation. TJ is currently undergoing a process of “mainstreaming” across disciplines and internationally. This involves encouraging lawyers and other criminal justice workers outside specialist court and diversion jurisdictions to adopt therapeutic outlooks and practices. So far there have been projects to mainstream TJ principles in police interviewing, risk assessment, diversion, criminal settlement conferences, bail, sentencing, conditional release from custody, and appeals. The sorts of reforms, innovations, and changes in mindsets suggested by TJ work has also sparked resistance and criticism. The latter ranges from constructive concerns about conceptual vagueness, risks of paternalism, and coercion to absolute ideological opposition on the grounds that TJ allegedly advocates for the complete abandonment of the adversarial system and strongarms defendants into surrendering their constitutional and due process rights.

What's Happening to the Right to a Fair Hearing

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 522-544
Author(s):  
Arthur Chaskalson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Fair Hearing ◽  
The Right ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
The Impact

The policies of the U.S.—developed in response to the threat of terroism have been criticized. This is of importance, not only because of the harm it does to the United States own reputation, but because of the influence such measures have on other countries with less commitment to the protection of human rights than the United States has historically had. It is, however, a crucial issue because of the impact that such policies can have on the political will of the international community to respect and promote half a century of endeavor to build an international human rights culture, and on attitudes and behavior in countries affected by such measures. The exception becomes the rule; the temporary becomes permanent; and fairness and due process cease to have the meaning they once had. This Article's remarks are directed to the right to a fair hearing which must be seen, however, in a broader context as a concern about a discourse which, whilst retaining the label, seeks to change the content of established principles of human rights.

scholarly journals Defining Due Process Down: Expedited Removal in the United States

Refuge ◽  
2001 ◽  
pp. 41-47
Author(s):  
Stephen M. Knight
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Removal Process ◽  
The Impact

Canadians debating the merits of restricting access to the national territory by asylum seekers and others should consider the experience of the United States with its new expedited removal process. Three years after its enactment, U.S. immigration authorities have come to rely on expedited removal. Yet many troubling questions have been raised about the treatment by immigration officers of individuals in expedited removal and about the impact of the mandatory detention of asylum seekers. A particular concern arises from the elimination of the fundamental safeguard of judicial review.

scholarly journals Gender, Violence, and Trauma in Immigration Detention in the United States

Social Work ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie Cook Heffron
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Detention Facilities

While international law protects the rights of individuals to seek asylum and to be treated humanely and with dignity, immigration detention, the practice of confining individuals accused of violating immigration law, has surfaced as a growing response to the large numbers of individuals and families on the move throughout the world in search of freedom, safety, and economic security. Detention has long been used as a strategy for enforcement of immigration laws across the globe, and has also been used as a tactic to dissuade and control future migration. The detention of immigrants consistently presents concerns about and allegations of civil and human rights violations and negative bio-psycho-social impacts on those detained. Given the contemporary expansion of the immigration detention system in the United States, this bibliography will focus primarily on the context of immigration detention within the United States. This bibliography includes selected scholarly resources from the social sciences, health, and legal fields to present an overview of immigration detention, the impact on survivors of violence and trauma, and detention alternatives. While the Global Detention Project and other nonprofit organizations aim to track the scope of immigration detention worldwide, numbers of individuals detained, as well as the number and location of detention facilities, immigration detention remain difficult to track. In the United States, the average daily population of immigration detention facilities in the United States had increased from 6,785 in 1994 to more than 38,000 in 2017. That number has risen to closer to 50,000 in recent years and manifests across a wide variety of facilities, including temporary and long-term holding facilities operated by a host of federal, state, local, and private for-profit entities. The US government has broad, though not absolute, power over immigration and immigration detention. Authorization of the detention of immigrants dates back to 1798 with the Alien Enemies Act, which allowed for the detention of immigrants from “hostile” countries during times of war. As of 1875, another series of laws expanded the framework of detention, in particular pertaining to the incarceration of individuals with criminal convictions. Further changes were made in 1952 with the Immigration and Nationality Act, then more drastically in the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which served to begin a decades-long expansion of the US immigration detention system. This expansion has also led to numerous allegations of civil and human rights violations related to due process, exploitative labor practices, sexual and physical abuse, and inadequate medical care, as well as growing concern about the impact of immigration detention on survivors of violence and trauma, particularly children, women, and LGBTQ communities. The author would like to acknowledge the significant contributions of Jessenia Herzberg in researching and reviewing literature on immigration detention.

W. V. QUINE AND THE ORIGINS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNITED STATES

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOEL ISAAC
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Analytic Tradition ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
History Of

W. V. Quine is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Quine wrote and lectured on logic, philosophy of language, and epistemology throughout his long career, and was one of the American figures who did most to establish the analytic tradition of philosophy in the United States. Until recently, the historical development of both Quine's philosophy and the analytic tradition of which it is a part remained unexamined by historians and philosophers alike. In the last decade or so, however, analytic philosophers have begun to assess the history of their enterprise, and Quine's place within it. Building on this welcome development with the tools of intellectual history, this essay examines Quine's philosophical apprenticeship in the late 1920s and 1930s.The basic tenets of Quine's mature thought set in early in his studies. Most notably, he displayed in his student writings a commitment to science as the primary theory of the world within which philosophical inquiry should take place. Yet he found the uncertain direction of interwar American philosophy uncongenial to his views. During a year of postdoctoral research in Europe, Quine encountered the work of analytic philosophers and logicians such as Rudolf Carnap and Alfred Tarski. Their scientific program for philosophy captivated Quine, who returned to Harvard a champion of their work. For the rest of the 1930s, Quine was an indefatigable advocate of the analytic tradition; he brought news of European logic and scientific philosophy to American universities. His purpose in doing so was to move American philosophy towards science and away from what he saw as its metaphysical entanglements. The reception and transformation of analytic philosophy in the United States is shown to have involved a complex dynamic between foreign and domestic conceptions of philosophy.

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