What is the justification or the ground of responsibility involved by global justice through global institutional reform? In other words, even if global justice seems to be defined as a specific aim given by what we normally think to be right or just solutions to the global human problems, this does not preclude the necessity of taking into account the difficulties and questions the operational level of global justice raises, institutionally and organizationally speaking. The cultural constraints, the diversity and the (...) nature of problems and so on and so forth, concerning the legitimacy and, also, the social impact of the adopted solutions, are another type of difficulties. My interest here is to analyse the reasons or grounds of the global modalities for solving problems of global justice. The reasons for this enterprise are twofold and, in my opinion, inevitably interconnected: on the one side, the fact that globalization of justice is by itself a difficult concept, and on the other side, that the understanding of global justice rather in an Occidental or democrat liberal way brings specific difficulties both of conceptual and operational nature, requiring further confrontations with other desiderata or other comprehensive doctrines and starting from this, consistent critical analyses. (shrink)

By now one might hope that the robust body of theoretical work recently published on immigration ethics would have taken general political philosophy a long way from the prevailing Rawlsian-style insularity premise, according to which society is “a closed system isolated from other societies” into which persons “enter only by birth and exit only by death.” But there are still a great many political theorists whose focus is unreflectively endogenous and who assume away questions of states’ constitutive scope and boundaries. (...) One of the signal merits of David Miller's new book,Strangers in Our Midst, is that it lucidly demonstrates why ignoring state boundary constitution is untenable for political theory. Miller shows that foundational debates in political philosophy are inescapably related, both as premise and entailment, to many normative immigration questions. (shrink)

Early defenders of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights invoked species hierarchy: human beings are owed rights because of our discontinuity with and superiority to animals. Subsequent defenders avoided species supremacism, appealing instead to conditions of embodied subjectivity and corporeal vulnerability we share with animals. In the past decade, however, supremacism has returned in work of the new ‘dignitarians’ who argue that human rights are grounded in dignity, and that human dignity requires according humans a higher status than animals. Against (...) the dignitarians, I argue that defending human rights on the backs of animals is philosophically suspect and politically self-defeating. (shrink)

The discursive character of human rights prevents a precise summary of historical origin, rationale, or definition outside of the various codifications in religious texts, secular philosophies, founding national documents, and international treaties, charters, conventions, covenants, declarations, and protocols. Regarding the objects of human rights, we can speak of a “foundational five” 1) Personal security 2) Material subsistence 3) Elemental equality 4) Personal Freedom and 5) Recognition as a member of the human community. Despite, or perhaps because of its multivalence, the (...) concept of human rights has been criticized as “foundationalist,” “essentialist,” or “ethnocentric”—its universalism being used as a weapon against itself by critics of cultural imperialism. Even the tolerance discourses so popular in critical theory, however, gain their normative force from the same basic notion of individual or group rights. Notwithstanding these rhetorical abuses, the concept of human rights has proved robust as a doctrine of equality owing to its openness to a pluralism of justifications grounding the basic “goods” agreed as necessary for human development. (shrink)

One major objection to social rights is a failure of determining which precise social and economic claims should be granted rights status. The social rights debate has grappled with this ‘indeterminacy problem’ for quite some time, and a number of proposals have emerged aimed at fixing the content of these rights. In what follows I examine three distinct approaches to fleshing out the idea of a minimum threshold: social rights as the fulfilment of basic needs, social rights as the securing (...) of a minimally decent life and social rights as a requirement of citizenship. Each of these proposals progressively expands on what the minimum threshold of social rights requires and, conversely, what obligations they generate on part of the state. I will show that none of these approaches is entirely satisfactory and suggest that the social rights debate look elsewhere to determine its content. (shrink)

The essay begins from Alan Gewirth's influential account of human rights, and specifically with his argument that the human right to political participation can only be fulfilled by competitive, liberal democracy. I show that his argument rests on empirical, rather than conceptual grounds, which opens the possibility that in China, alternative forms of participation may be legitimate or even superior. An examination of the theory and contemporary practice of ‘democratic centralism’ shows that while it does not now adequately support the (...) right to political participation, a reformed version could. I focus in particular on the roles that could be played by consultative institutions, looking both to recent Chinese proposals and to analogues currently existing in Japan. I conclude that a reformed democratic centralism may well be the objective toward which Chinese people should strive. (shrink)

The human right to health has been established in international law since 1976. However, philosophers have often regarded human rights doctrine as a marginal contribution to political philosophy, or have attempted to distinguish ‘human rights proper’ from ‘aspirations’, with the human right to health often considered as falling into the latter category. Here the human right to health is defended as an attractive approach to global health, and responses are offered to a series of criticisms concerning its demandingness.

Given the enormous changes in the ways we will live together on the planet Earth, business and economic ethics, with its considerable developments since the1980s, is called to ask itself what major challenges lay ahead for it in the next ten years. It seems three major challenges have emerged with increasing clarity, urgency, and importance. They concern all levels of business, from the personal to the organizational and the systemic level and likely will become even more important in the future. (...) In three sections, the paper explicates the following challenges: (a) a rich and comprehensive understanding of wealth creation as the purpose of business and economics; (b) the guarantee of securing all human rights to all people; and (c) the active involvement of the world’s religions in meeting the challenges of creating wealth and securing human rights. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article examines the presuppositions and theoretical frameworks of the “new-wave” “Post-Westphalian” approach to international business ethics and compares it to the more philosophically oriented moral theory approach that has predominated in the field. I contrast one author’s Post-Westphalian political approach to the human rights responsibilities of transnational corporations (TNCs) with my own “Fair Share” theory of moral responsibility for human rights. I suggest how the debate about the meaning of corporate human rights “complicity” might be informed by the fair (...) share theory. While I point out that Post-Westphalians and moral philosophers may have fundamental disagreements about basic concepts such as legitimacy, justice, and democratic deliberation, I conclude that the Post-Westphalians have made a major contribution to the expansion of the field by presenting business ethicists with an opportunity to inform and guide debates about the potential future course of transnational governance. (shrink)

This paper examines the extent to which the voluntary adoption of codes of conduct by multinational corporations (MNCs) renders MNCs accountable for the performance of actions specified in a code of conduct. In particular, the paper examines the ways in which codes of conduct coordinate the expectations of relevant parties with regard to the provision of assistance by MNCs on grounds of rescue or justice. The paper argues that this coordinative role of codes of conduct renders MNCs more accountable for (...) the performance of actions specified in a code of conduct than they would be without a code of conduct. This interpretation of the significance of codes of conduct is contrasted with the view that codes of conduct render MNCs accountable for performing actions specified in a code of conduct by grounding contractual obligations for the performance of such actions. (shrink)

We argue that the current ethical and regulatory framework for permissible risk levels in pediatric research can be helpfully understood in terms of children’s moral right to adequate protection from harm. Our analysis provides a rationale for what we propose as the highest level of permissible risk in pediatric research without the prospect of direct benefit: what we call “relatively minor” risk. We clarify the justification behind the usual standards of “minimal risk” and “a minor increase over minimal risk” and (...) explain why it is permissible to impose any risks at all on child participants who do not stand to benefit directly from enrollment in research. Finally, we illuminate some aspects of the concept of “best interests.”. (shrink)

This article makes the normative case for a differentiated approach to the sovereignty of states over natural resources. In the first half of the article, drawing on the example of the Yasuní-ITT-Initiative, I will argue that countries commit a moral wrong when they exploit natural resources for their own benefit, but that they have the moral right to do so given the current structure of the international system. In the second half of the article, I address the question of whether (...) states' rights over natural resources can be justified. Central to my argument will be the distinction between “control rights” and “income rights.” Only control rights, I will argue, can be justified as inherently tied to collective self-determination. (shrink)

The institution of owning pets has been subjected to compelling criticism on moral grounds. Yet advocates of a reformed, guardian/dependent model may yet face an abolitionist conclusion. We argue that treating companion animals as dependents entails an indefensible moral priority for them in the face of their guardians’ competing moral demands. An abolitionist dilemma arises as a result: if the property and reformed models fail, a morally acceptable characterization of the moral relationship between humans and their companion animals has yet (...) to be articulated. We close by inviting others to develop plausible alternatives to the ownership and reformed models. (shrink)

This article investigates the technical rationalities of modern forms of government. Conceived in a Foucauldian vein, the paper argues for an interpretation of security dispositifs which sustain the structures of modern government. The main argument developed in the article is that there is a difference between two securities diagrams: the preventive and the anticipatory. The first one is using rational devices like the actuarial table while the second is aiming to instrumentalise the imagination.

In this paper I focus on duties we owe refugees from conflict zones. I argue that it is important to distinguish between two types of duties one might have with respect to refugees from conflict zones. Belligerents from wars that resulted in excess numbers of refugees, I argue, have a stringent duty to remedy past harms and provide for resulting refugees. Other states have a duty to aid which is context-dependent and can be in some cases as stringent as the (...) duty to remedy past harms. I argue that making a distinction between the grounds and types of duties different actors have with respect to refugees from conflict zones has significant consequences both for just war theory, but also for practical questions about how best to discharge our duties to refugees from conflict zones. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss a children’s rights-based argument for the duty of states, as a joint effort, to establish an effective program to help bring children out of conflict zones, such as parts of Syria, and to a safe haven. Children are among the most vulnerable subjects in violent conflicts who suffer greatly and have their human rights brutally violated as a consequence. Furthermore, children are also a group whose capacities to protect themselves are very limited, while their (...) chance to flee is most often only slim. I will then discuss three counterarguments: the first counterargument would be that, instead of getting the children out of a particular country, it would be better to improve their situation in their home countries. A second counterargument could be that those states, which have such a duty to bring children to a safe haven, would be overburdened by it. Finally, the third counterargument I want to discuss states that such a duty would also demand a military intervention, which could worsen the situation even further. (shrink)

The idea of human rights either as a moral system or as a set of legal practices does not sit well with the concept of honor. This is true for both ontological reasons and because of some reprehensible misuses of the term in constructs such as “honor killings.” Yet the absence of honor as an argument for human rights comes with a high cost in the defense of human rights generally. As Hobbes made clear in his early theory, rights—and dignity—are (...) grounded in the human capacity to make promises and in the necessity of honoring them. In his view then, honor is an essential feature of human rights and one closely linked to the human capacity for dignity. In this article, I explore how environmental human rights place a renewed emphasis on honor as a requirement for the protection of the rights of future generations. In the process, I explore the general relationship between honor, dignity, and human rights. (shrink)

Linkage arguments, which defend a controversial right by showing that it is indispensable or highly useful to an uncontroversial right, are sometimes used to defend the right to health care. This article evaluates such arguments when used to defend RHC. Three common errors in using linkage arguments are neglecting levels of implementation, expanding the scope of the supported right beyond its uncontroversial domain, and giving too much credit to the supporting right for outcomes in its area. A familiar linkage argument (...) for RHC focuses on its contributions to the right to life. Among the problems with this argument are that it requires a positive conception of the right to life that is not uncontroversial and that it only justifies the subset of RHC that seeks to prevent loss of life. A linkage argument for RHC with better prospects claims that a well-realized right to health care enhances the realization of a number of uncontroversial rights. (shrink)

Obligations of global justice rest mainly on the global rich but also to a lesser extent on the global poor. The governments of poor countries are obliged to fulfill requirements of non-aggression, good governance and decency, along with all other requirements which facilitate the achievement of global justice. So far, obligations of poor countries seem to be taken as given yet the behavior of governments in poor countries and occurrences therein attest to the contrary;this suggests a need to mainstream these (...) obligations in discussions about global justice. If poor countries do not live up to these requirements obstacles arise to the realization of global justice; and they act unjustly in relation to citizens of rich countries which provide them with aid. Uganda is taken as a case in point. (shrink)

In discussing water justice, this paper distinguishes four concepts of water justice: Distributive justice claims a fair share of water, ecological justice focuses on the integrity of water as a vulnerable resource, cultural justice addresses values attached to water reservoirs, and procedural justice explicates fair procedures in negotiating water conflicts. After having given an overview over recent contributions to the various meanings of water justice, the paper tries to answer the question of how standards of justice can be integrated into (...) an approach that overcomes the alleged tragedies of the commons. It focuses on the example of a water reservoir whose access conditions provoke conflicts among neighbors. (shrink)

It is well known that there are large differences in the per capita income levels of the world's states. While a few poor countries are catching up with the rich world, for some countries, the gaps are growing wider. Most of this global inequality isbetweencountries, notwithinthem. In other words, even if income were equalized within countries, a large part of the gap in average income levels between countries would remain.At the same time, the majority of movements in the wealthier countries (...) for greater distributive equality have tended to focus on inequalities within their own borders: on issues such as raising minimum wages, changing the domestic tax rate, and ending national health disparities. This state-centric focus is frequently justified in moral terms. It is a familiar claim, for example, that we have special obligations to our own citizens and that these obligations are both weightier and more extensive than our obligations to strangers outside our borders. (shrink)

The concept of rights, as has often been noted, became prominent at a particular time in our history. It is associated especially with seventeenth and eighteenth century political ideas about the rights of individuals versus those of governments, and with such notable events as the American Declaration of Independence. It was at this time, too, that debates about rights of property and liberty became prominent. What was the role of this concept in earlier times? Has it always existed? Does it (...) have a permanent place in our moral thinking? According to H.L.A. Hart. (shrink)

I argue that recognizing a human right to adequate food and enforcing it as a legal right is an important way to promote and ensure sustainable food security. I consider objections that have been raised against subsistence rights and socio-economic rights, including the argument that such rights are not feasible, that they are not justiciable, and that they are too amorphous—that it is not clear what is required to fulfill these rights and by whom. I defend the right to adequate (...) food against these objections by considering how this right has been interpreted and applied in international law and how it has been protected in other domestic legal systems. I analyze different dimensions of the right to adequate food and I apply these to recent issues concerning sustainable food security in the United States, such as food deserts. (shrink)

Si bien al hablar de igualdad y derechos colectivos nos situamos aparentemente en dos espectros distintos de los derechos humanos, siguiendo a VASAK y su teoría de las tres generaciones, de un lado en el rango de un derecho fundamental, y del otro, en toda una amplia gama de derechos de tercera generación, es en realidad, en una misma órbita en donde debemos ubicarnos: en la del Estado de Social Derecho. Y es allí, donde la capacidad que éste tenga para (...) hacer frente a los desafíos que trae consigo su cumplimiento -sin olvidar el de los derechos económicos, sociales y culturales-, se convierte en el mejor elemento de juicio para determinar su éxito o fracaso, en una sociedad fracturada por un sinnúmero de fenómenos que atentan cada vez más contra las garantías y libertades de los ciudadanos. En este contexto, en el marco del programa de actividades formativas del Doctorado en Estudios Interdisciplinares de Género y Políticas de Igualdad, se organizó un Foro Académico cuya pretensión no era otra sino la de presentar a la comunidad una serie de reflexiones sobre algunos de estos mencionados fenómenos, a partir de la visión aquí propuesta. (shrink)

Se hace un llamado de atención a través de este capítulo de libro a los gobiernos locales y la Academia, para proponer políticas públicas donde se incluyan bases o lineamientos para la estructuración de un derecho global de acceso a los medicamentos. Para estos efectos, se importan a manera de pilares, tres planteamientos desde la óptica de la justicia global, que consideramos pueden acoplarse a esta problemática, y que aportan elementos novedosos al abordaje de los numerosos obstáculos que se suelen (...) presentar en las discusiones, especialmente en lo que respecta a la regulación del monopolio de la patente, y al tratamiento diferenciado que se les da a los ciudadanos de países desarrollados y en desarrollo. (shrink)

I explore the usefulness of Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach in regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD aims at empowering people with disabilities by granting them a number of civil and political, but also economic, social and cultural rights. Implementing the CRPD will clearly be politically challenging and also very expensive for states. Thus, questions might arise as to whether the requirements set in the CRPD can be justified from an ethical perspective. (...) I will first investigate if Nussbaum's capabilities approach provides support for the rights claimed in the CRPD. Second, I will investigate to what extent Nussbaum's capabilities approach is a useful tool to set priorities among rights in the course of the implementation of the convention. This is an urgent question because seen realistically, it will not be possible to realize all rights at once and thus some rights need to receive greater priority than others. I will argue that the capabilities approach can be regarded as supporting the rights specified in the CRPD, but that it proves unable to guide the implementation process due to an insufficient grounding of the capabilities. Employing the capabilities approach thus leads to only limited results. (shrink)

Associative duties—duties inherent to some of our relationships—are most commonly discussed in terms of intimate associations such as of families, friends, or lovers. In this essay I ask whether impersonal associations such as state or nation can also give rise to genuinely associative duties, i.e., duties of patriotism or nationalism. I distinguish between the two in terms of their objects: the object of patriotism is an institutionalized political community, whereas the object of nationalism is a group of people who share (...) a common identity, often grounded in a belief in shared history, and an aspiration for collective self-government together. I explore three arguments for the thesis that a special concern for one’s polity and fellow-citizens, or one’s nation and co-nationals, is an associative duty: from reciprocity, from collective self-determination, and from the well-being of compatriots or co-nationals. I argue that the relationship among compatriots is a more plausible contender for generating associative duties than the relationship among co-nationals, although even in this case there are questions whether these are genuinely associative duties, or simply special duties. Although the relationship among co-nationals is a less plausible contender for associative duties, the well-being argument does apply to the relationship among both co-nationals and compatriots. I also suggest that there is a certain privileging of the status quo in the way that associative duties arguments work, because they tend to operate from existing relations and associations. (shrink)

With regard to the problem of world poverty, libertarian theories of corrective justice emphasize negative duties and the idea of responsibility whereas utilitarian theories of help concentrate on positive duties based on the capacity of the helper. Thomas Pogge has developed a revised model of compensation that entails positive obligations that are generated by negative duties. He intends to show that the affluent are violating their negative duties to ensure that their conduct will not harm others: They are contributing to (...) and profiting from an unjust global order. But the claim that negative duty generated positive obligations are more acceptable than positive duties is contestable. I examine whether Henry Shue’s model that is integrating negative duties and positive duties is more convincing concerning the foundation of positive duties to protect others. I defend the idea that there are positive duties of justice. This approach can integrate an allocation of positive duties via responsibility and maintain the advantage of an independent foundation of positive duties. (shrink)

Distinguishing between reasonable partiality and reasonable impartiality makes a difference in resolving the serious clashes between 'priority for compatriots' versus cosmopolitan global duties. Defenders of a priority for compatriots have to acknowledge two strong moral constraints: states have to fulfil all their special, domestic and trans-domestic duties, and associative duties are limited by distributive constraints resulting from the moral duty to fight poverty and gross global inequalities. In the recent global context, I see four main problems for liberal-nationalist defenders of (...) priority for compatriots: Reasonable particularists often forget that associative duties for compatriots compete with many sub-national and trans-domestic associative duties. They tend to forget that associative national duties compete with other, strong special obligations regarding not only citizens and residents inside nation-states but also trans-domestic obligations across state borders. They do not properly discuss the problem of unallocated duties in addressing global poverty and insecurity. The design of supra-national and global 'mediating' institutions, and the crafting of policies to remedy the misallocation of duties and to coordinate the required state activities is an urgent task neglected by liberal nationalists. In the recent context, reasonable partiality's bias towards partiality is most unwelcome and morally dubious. Reasonable impartiality's bias towards cosmopolitanism helps to stimulate a drastic shift in obligations and stimulates productive trans-national institutional design. (shrink)

This paper addresses the criticism recently directed at Internet companies who have chosen to do business in China. Currently, in order to conduct business in China, companies must agree to the Chinese government's rule of self-censoring any information the government deems inappropriate. We start by explaining how some of these companies have violated the human rights of Chinese citizens to freely trade information. We then analyze whether the justifications and excuses offered by these companies are sufficient to absolve them of (...) moral responsibility. We argue that both justifications and excuses offered are insufficient. Wilfully abiding by unjust laws, albeit necessary to do business in China, should not trump moral actions that protect rights. (shrink)

No reverberatory effect of the great war has caused American public opinion more solicitude than the failure of the “melting-pot.” The tendency... has been for the national clusters of immigrants, as they became more and more firmly established and more and more prosperous to cultivate more and more assiduously the literatures and cultural traditions of their homelands. Assimilation, in other words, instead of washing out the memories of Europe, made them more and more intensely real. Just as these clusters became (...) more and more objectively American, did they become more and more German or Scandinavian or Bohemian or Polish.... [This] is not, however, to admit the failure of Americanization. It is not to fear the failure of democracy. It is rather to urge us to an investigation of what Americanism may rightly mean. It is to ask ourselves whether our ideal has been broad or narrow—whether perhaps the time has not come to assert a higher ideal than the “melting pot.”... We act as if we wanted Americanization to take place only on our own terms, and not by the consent of the governed. All our elaborate machinery of settlement and school and union, of social and political naturalization, however, will move with friction just in so far as it neglects to take into account this strong and virile insistence that American shall be what the immigrant will have a hand in making it, and not what a ruling class, descendent of those British stocks which were the first permanent immigrants, decide that America shall be made. Randolph Bourne (1916/1977, 248ff). (shrink)

Are there any coherent and defensible alternatives to liberal democracy? The author examines the possibility that a reformed democratic centralism-the principle around which China's current polity is officially organized-might be legitimate, according to both an inside and an outside perspective. The inside perspective builds on contemporary Chinese political theory; the outside perspective critically deploys Rawls's notion ofa "decent society " as its standard. Along the way, the author pays particular attention to the kinds and degree of pluralism a decent society (...) can countenance, and to the specific institutions in China that might enable the realization of a genuine and/or decent democratic centralism. The author argues that by considering both inside and outside perspectives, and the degrees to which they inter-penetrate and critically inform one another, we can engage in a global philosophy that neither pre-judges alternative political traditions nor falls prey to false conceptual barriers. (shrink)

This essay defends a strong right against displacement as part of a basic individual right to secure access to one’s home. The analysis is purposefully situated within the difficult context of climate change adaptation policies. Under increasing environmental pressures, especially regarding water security, there are weighty reasons motivating the forced displacement of persons—to safeguard water resources or prevent water-related disasters. Even in these pressing circumstances, I argue, individuals have weighty rights to secure access to their homes. I explain how the (...) home provides a functional context for conditions of autonomous agency. Being coerced from the home disrupts and subverts the conditions necessary for autonomous processes. I conclude by suggesting that the right to the home could be a foundational element of territorial rights. (shrink)

De acuerdo a este artículo, la extensión realizada por Rawls de su concepción de justicia doméstica al contexto de las relaciones internacionales contradice premisas básicas de su propia teoría de justicia. Una extensión de la teoría doméstica consistente con sus propias premisas debería llevar a considerar una clase mayor de demandas como derechos humanos y a aceptar algún principio de distribución global.

This paper focuses on examining the right to development. More specifically, the paper examines two questions relating to the right to development. The first focuses on the issue of justification: can the right to development that appears in the UN Declaration on the Right to Development be provided an adequate philosophical justification? The second question focuses on the function of the right to development: If the right to development simply ‘repackages’ duties correlative to other existing human rights – as it (...) may be argued to be the case with the right enshrined in the Declaration on the Right to Development – does it serve any meaningful function? In answering the first question, the paper argues that the right to development enshrined in the Declaration on the Right to Development is essentially a derivative right, and ultimately its philosophical justification is dependent on whether or not the legal human rights the realisation of which it seeks to enable can be provided an adequate philosophica.. (shrink)

The current legal and political practice of human rights invokes entitlements to freely chosen work, to decent working conditions, and to form and join labor unions. Despite the importance of these rights, they remain under-explored in the philosophical literature on human rights. This article offers a systematic and constructive discussion of them. First, it surveys the content and current relevance of the labor rights stated in the most important documents of the human rights practice. Second, it gives a moral defense (...) of these rights arguing that their support involves an appropriate response to important human interests and to the human dignity of workers. Finally, it explores central normative issues about the relation between labor rights and human dignity. It responds to some objections about the importance of work, explains why labor human rights may not exhaust the demands of dignity regarding labor and arbitrates a common tension between independence and solidarity within our practical affirmation of human dignity. (shrink)

This paper examines a broad range of ethical perspectives and principles relevant to the analysis of issues raised by the science of climate change and explores their implications. A second and companion paper extends this analysis to the contribution of ethics, economics and politics in understanding policy towards climate change. These tasks must start with the science which tells us that this is a problem of risk management on an immense scale. Risks on this scale take us far outside the (...) familiar policy questions and standard, largely marginal, techniques commonly used by economists; this is a subject that requires the full breadth and depth of what economics has to offer and a much more thoughtful view of ethics than economists usually bring to bear. Different philosophical approaches bring different perspectives on understanding and policy, yet they generally point to the case for strong action to manage climate change. (shrink)

During the last half of the twentieth century, legal philosophy (or legal theory or jurisprudence) has grown significantly. It is no longer the domain of a few isolated scholars in law and philosophy. Hundreds of scholars from diverse fields attend international meetings on the subject. In some universities, large lecture courses of five hundred students or more study it. The primary aim of the Law and Philosophy Library is to present some of the best original work on legal philosophy from (...) both the Anglo-American and European traditions. Not only does it help make some of the best work avail able to an international audience, but it also encourages increased awareness of, and interaction between, the two major traditions. The primary focus is on full-length scholarly monographs, although some edited volumes of original papers are also included. The Library editors are assisted by an Editorial Advisory Board of internationally renowed scholars. Legal philosophy should not be considered a narrowly circumscribed field. (shrink)

In American jurisprudence, there can be no presumption of constitutional rights coextensive with those of adults for children in any institutional context. This includes public schools, in part because of the legal status of minors and in part because the ‘special characteristics of the school environment’ are predicated on a ‘custodial and tutelary’ relationship between teachers and pupils.