The assumption that coercion is largely responsible for our legal systems’ efficacy is a common one. I argue that this assumption is false. But I do so indirectly, by objecting to a thesis I call “(Compliance)”, which holds that most citizens comply with most legal mandates most of the time at least partly in virtue of being motivated by legal systems’ threats of sanctions and other unwelcome consequences. The relationship between (Compliance) and the efficacy of legal systems is explained in (...) section 1. There I also show that (Compliance) must be rejected for it relies on unsubstantiated empirical assumptions. In section 2, I claim that an alternative, and more refined, formulation of (Compliance) also lacks adequate support. I conclude with a few general remarks about the centrality of coercion in our thought and talk about legal systems. (shrink)

In discussing whether legal systems are necessarily coercive, legal philosophers usually appeal to thought experiments involving angels or other morally driven beings who need no coercion to organise their social lives. Such appeals have invited criticism. Critics have not only challenged the relevance of such thought experiments to our understanding of legal systems; they have also argued that, contrary to the intuitions of most legal philosophers, the ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’ would not hold that there is law in a (...) society of angels because the view that law is necessarily coercive ‘enjoys widespread support among laypersons’. This is obviously an empirical claim. Critics, however, never systematically polled the ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’. We boarded that bus. This article discusses findings from five empirical studies on the relationship between law and coercion. (shrink)

Technology scholars and journalists have recently called attention to digital platforms’ and devices’ ability to influence users based on their present moods, stress level, hunger, and other transient features. For them, such influence based on users’ present status – what the chapter calls “real-time profiling” – is not only a clear form of wrongful manipulation but also online manipulation’s future. The chapter aims to explain what makes real-time profiling wrong (when wrong) and discusses problems associated with its regulation. After explaining (...) what real-time profiling consists in and showing that it can be presumed to be a form of manipulation, the chapter argues that real-time profiling is wrong both because the profiler psychologically hijacks profiled subjects and because it works as a gateway to further wrongs. Towards the end, the chapter discusses some implications of the proposed account for the legal regulation of online manipulative technologies like real-time profiling. It is argued that existing legal frameworks are not fine-grained enough to deal with the wrongs associated with real-time profiling and related forms of online manipulation. (shrink)

Most legal and political philosophers agree that typical legal systems are coercive. But there is no extant account of what typically makes typical legal systems coercive when they are coercive. This paper presents such an account and compares it with four alternative views. Towards the end I discuss the proposed account’s payoffs. Among other things, I show how it can help us explain what I call ‘comparative judgements’ about coercive legal systems (judgements such as ‘Legal system a is more coercive (...) than legal system b’) and how it can help the development of social scientific inquiries into the coerciveness of our legal systems. (shrink)

Up until recently, most legal philosophers have argued that an action is a token of sanctioning if, and only if, (i) its performance brings about unwelcome consequences to the targets, and (ii) it is performed as a response to the breach of a duty. In this paper I take issue with this account. I first add some qualifications to it in order to present it in its most plausible form. After doing this, I advance a series of hypothetical cases which (...) suggests that this account fails. I then propose a new account of sanctioning, whereby an action is a token of sanctioning if, and only if, it is performed in an appropriate context and is apt for punishing wrongdoers. (shrink)

Neste artigo defendo a tese de que o direito de não saber é independente do direito à privacidade. Há duas diferenças fundamentais entre esses dois direitos que os tornam independentes: (1) a direção da informação do direito de não saber é oposta a do direito à privacidade e (2) o âmbito do direito de não saber é maior do que o do direito à privacidade. Pretendo clarificar essas diferenças e fazer algumas qualificações sobre o direito de não saber, tal como (...) os requisitos para o seu exercício e os limites desse direito. Apesar de o foco da análise não ser sobre um direito jurídico de não saber, ela traz implicações relevantes para o tratamento jurídico tanto do direito de não saber, quanto para o direito à privacidade. (shrink)