HOW TO JUSTIFY MANDATORY ELECTORAL QUOTAS: A POLITICAL EGALITARIAN APPROACH

ABSTRACTThis paper offers a novel substantive justification for mandatory electoral quotas—e.g., gender or racial quotas—and a new methodological approach to their justification. Substantively, I argue for a political egalitarian account of electoral quotas. Methodologically, based on this account and a political egalitarian grounding of political participatory rights, I offer an alternative to the External Restriction Approach to the justification of electoral quotas. The External Restriction Approach sees electoral quotas as at best justified restrictions on political participatory rights. I argue for the Internal Restriction Approach instead, which can justify electoral quotas by specifying the pro tanto scope of political participatory rights rather than by justifying restrictions on the pro tanto scope of these rights. On this approach, adequately set electoral quotas do not even conflict with and are not balanced against political participatory rights, while electoral quotas—when justified—are pro tanto required rather than merely permitted.

THE INTEREST THEORY OF RIGHTS: STILL STANDING

ABSTRACT In two recent papers, Mark McBride has attacked the interest theory of rights, both introducing new arguments and claiming that interest theorists have not successfully deflected Gopal Sreenivasan's earlier arguments. This essay replies to all of McBride's criticisms, showing them to be mistaken.

CRIMES AS PUBLIC WRONGS

ABSTRACT Despite the notion's prominence, scholarship has yet to offer a viable account of the view that crimes constitute public wrongs. Despite numerous attempts, some scholars are now doubting whether a viable account is forthcoming whereas others are reeling back expectations for what the concept itself can offer. This article vindicates crime's public character while asserting the relevance of political theory in doing so. After critiquing prior attempts and clarifying expectations, the article offers a novel account, relying on both key doctrinal features and a deliberative democratic framework through which to interpret their public significance. In doing so, it demonstrates how this framework explains the public nature of censure, and ultimately argues that crimes are public wrongs not because such actions themselves necessarily wrong or harm the public, but instead because they are the type of wrong that the public has a stake in addressing. This gives rise to an understanding of sentencing as public decision-making within which citizens and their representatives decide how best to use public power to manage public interests.

OBJECTIVE INTENTIONALISM AND DISAGREEMENT

Intentionalist theories of legal interpretation are often divided between objectivist and subjectivist variants. The former take an interpretation to be correct depending on what the reasonable/rational lawmaker intended or what the reasonable/rational audience thinks they intended. The latter take an interpretation to be correct where the interpretation is what the speaker actually intended. This paper argues that objectivism faces serious problems as it cannot deal with disagreement: reasonable and rational persons can often disagree as to what the interpretation of a text should be. It also defends subjectivism against criticisms by objectivists.

CONSENT TO UNJUST INSTITUTIONS

John Rawls wrote that people can voluntarily acquire political obligations to institutions only on the condition that those institutions are at least reasonably just. When an institution is seriously unjust, by contrast, attempts to create political obligation are “void ab initio.” However, Rawls's own explanation for this thought was deeply problematic, as are the standard alternatives. In this paper, I offer an argument for why Rawls's intuition was right and trace its implications for theories of authority and political obligation. These, I claim, are more radical than is often thought.

FREEDOM FROM THINGS: A DEFENSE OF THE DISJUNCTIVE OBLIGATION IN CONTRACT LAW

This article argues that the disjunctive obligation in contract law can be justified on moral grounds. It argues that from a perspective that regards human beings as free agents capable of choice and therefore independent of material objects, the contracting parties must be understood as agreeing to mutually guarantee one another's ownership of a certain value. This guarantee can be fulfilled either by handing over what was promised or by making up the difference between the market value and the contract value of what was promised. The plaintiff's contractual right is therefore a right that the defendant perform or pay. This makes expectation damages intelligible as a vindication of the plaintiff's contractual right. Moreover, the disjunctive obligation can be reconciled with all the doctrines that others take to be decisive arguments against it—with the doctrines of specific performance, inducing breach, impossibility, preexisting duty consideration, and nominal damages.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND SOCIAL COERCION

ABSTRACT Much legal and philosophical work has been devoted to discussing the importance of protecting freedom of expression from legislative curtailment by the state. That state-centric focus has meant that the ways that wider social phenomena can stifle freedom of expression have, with a notable exception, escaped sustained philosophical attention. The paper reflects on the nature of socially coercive restrictions on free expression and offers an account of how it is appropriate to respond to such forms of social coercion. First, it considers a range of social costs pertaining to expression and argues that such costs can constitute meaningful restrictions on the freedom to express. Second, it reflects on the normative implications concerning that threat to free expression and defends two related moral duties citizens have to refrain from being complicit in unjustified social coercion—a duty of expressive toleration and a duty of respect for expressive agency.

RIGHTS AS RATIONALIZATIONS? PSYCHOLOGICAL DEBUNKING OF BELIEFS ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS

ABSTRACT This paper explores a novel type of argument in legal theory—a psychological debunking argument—by the example of the justification of human rights and based on a psychological dual-process model of decision-making. Debunking arguments undermine confidence in a belief because of shortcomings of the empirical conditions under which it was formed. They thereby open a route from the descriptive to the evaluative, from Is to Ought, without illicitly crossing metaethical waters since they involve normative premises. As they are epistemic, they cannot replace substantive arguments on the merits. However, they may be useful when substantive arguments are stalled or the necessity to make a judgment precludes further discussions. The controversial justification of human rights is a good test case for debunking arguments. The challenge is to find features in the formation of beliefs about human rights that undermine their epistemic justification. Some psychologists claim that relevant beliefs arise from the rationalization of intuitions. This process is ill-suited to generate correct beliefs; so formed beliefs may be debunked. This also shows how legal reasoning might be improved.