10 found
Order:
  1. Transcending community some throughts on Havel and Bergson.Brian Slattery - 1993 - Rechtstheorie. Beiheft 15:265-276.
    What is the persuasive basis for the doctrine of universal human rights - rights that pertain to all human beings, regardless of national, racial, or religious affiliation? This essay offers some reflections on the subject by considering the contrasting approaches of two thinkers: Vaclav Havel, the playwright, essayist, human rights advocate, and onetime President of Czechoslovakia; and Henri Bergson, the once influential French philosopher and apostle of creative evolution, unfortunately now often forgotten.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. Aboriginal Sovereignty and Imperial Claims.Brian Slattery - 1991 - Osgoode Hall Law Journal 29:681-703.
    It is commonly assumed that Indigenous nations had neither sovereignty in international law nor title to their territories when Europeans first arrived in North America. Thus the continent was legally vacant and European powers could gain title to it simply by such acts as discovery, symbolic acts, or occupation, or by concluding treaties among themselves. This paper argues that this viewpoint is misguided and cannot be justified either by reference to positive international law or to basic principles of justice. To (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  3. Three Concepts of Law: The Ambiguous Legacy of H.L.A. Hart.Brian Slattery - 1998 - Saskatchewan Law Review 61:323-39.
    The law presents itself as a body of meaning, open to discovery, interpretation, application, criticism, development and change. But what sort of meaning does the law possess? Legal theory provides three sorts of answers. The first portrays the law as a mode of communication through which law-makers convey certain standards or norms to the larger community. The law's meaning is that imparted by its authors. On this view, law is a vehicle, conveying a message from a speaker to an intended (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. The Paradoxes of National Self-Determination.Brian Slattery - 1994 - Osgoode Hall Law Journal 32:703-33.
    Some have argued that the right of national self-determination gives every national group the power to decide for itself whether to remain part of an existing state or to secede unilaterally and form its own state. Such a theory underpins the claim that Quebec is entitled to decide on its own whether or not to leave Canada. This paper examines the main philosophical arguments for the theory and finds them one-dimensional and inadequate; they fail to take account of the full (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  5. The Grounds of Human Rights.Brian Slattery - manuscript
    What is the rational foundation for the doctrine of universal human rights? Some philosophers, such as Alan Gewirth, argue that it may be discovered simply by reflection on certain essential features of the human constitution. However this approach has significant problems, achieving its ends by smuggling certain tacit premises into the argument. A better approach is one that appeals to the communal practices and traditions within which doctrines of human rights have evolved historically. It is here that Alasdair MacIntyre's work (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Rights, Communities, and Tradition.Brian Slattery - 1991 - University of Toronto Law Journal 41:447-67.
    This paper argues that there is a close connection between basic human rights and communal bonds. It reviews the views expressed by Alan Gewirth and Alasdair MacIntyre, which in differing ways deny this connection, and concludes that the deficiencies in their accounts reinforce the case for communal bonds.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  7. The Tragedy and Promise of Self-Determination.Brian Slattery - 2020 - Yale Law Journal 129.
    The principle of self-determination, like Janus, has two faces: negative and positive. Often understood as enabling the fracture of states into national components, the principle is better seen as facilitating the creation of multinational frameworks that foster toleration and human rights.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. Law's Meaning.Brian Slattery - 1996 - Osgoode Hall Law Journal 34:553-81.
    It is often thought that the meaning of a legal provision must reside in the minds of its authors or its interpreters, or a combination of the two. Indeed, the point may seem so obvious that it scarcely needs any justification. Is there any sense, then, in the claim sometimes made by judges that a law has a meaning of its own, one that is distinct from the intentions of authors and interpreters alike? At first sight, the claim appears extravagant (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. Our Mongrel Selves: Pluralism, Identity and the Nation.Brian Slattery - 2003 - In Ysolde Gendreau (ed.), Community of Rights - Rights of Community. Editions Themis. pp. 85-120.
    This paper examines the view that ‘nations’ are natural entities, composed of homogeneous linguistic and cultural groups, and argues that this theory fails to take account of our multiple and overlapping identities.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. The Myth of Retributive Justice.Brian Slattery - 1992 - In Wesley Cragg (ed.), Retributivism and Its Critics. Franz Steiner Verlag. pp. 27-34.
    In fairy tales, villains usually come to a bad end, snared in a trap of their own making, or visited with a disaster nicely suited to their particular villainy. Read a story of this kind to children and you will be struck by the profound satisfaction with which this predictable of events is greeted. Yet, if children cheer when the villain is done in, they are just as satisfied when the hero manages to get the villain by the throat but (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark