Law, Liberty, and Morality

Author: H. L. A. Hart
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804701549
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Book Description
This incisive book deals with the use of the criminal law to enforce morality, in particular sexual morality, a subject of particular interest and importance since the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957. Professor Hart first considers John Stuart Mill's famous declaration: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community is to prevent harm to others." During the last hundred years this doctrine has twice been sharply challenged by two great lawyers: Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the great Victorian judge and historian of the common law, and Lord Devlin, who both argue that the use of the criminal law to enforce morality is justified. The author examines their arguments in some detail, and sets out to demonstrate that they fail to recognize distinction of vital importance for legal and political theory, and that they espouse a conception of the function of legal punishment that few would now share.

The Ethics of Liberty

Author: Murray N. Rothbard
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479893382
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Book Description
The authoritative text on the libertarian political position In recent years, libertarian impulses have increasingly influenced national and economic debates, from welfare reform to efforts to curtail affirmative action. Murray N. Rothbard's classic The Ethics of Liberty stands as one of the most rigorous and philosophically sophisticated expositions of the libertarian political position. Rothbard’s unique argument roots the case for freedom in the concept of natural rights and applies it to a host of practical problems. And while his conclusions are radical—that a social order that strictly adheres to the rights of private property must exclude the institutionalized violence inherent in the state—Rothbard’s applications of libertarian principles prove surprisingly practical for a host of social dilemmas, solutions to which have eluded alternative traditions. The Ethics of Liberty authoritatively established the anarcho-capitalist economic system as the most viable and the only principled option for a social order based on freedom. This classic book’s radical insights are sure to inspire a new generation of readers.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

Author: James Fitzjames Stephen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Equality
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description

Morality and the Law

Author: Roslyn Muraskin
Publisher: Pearson
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Book Description
This is a work on the role of morality in the various components of the criminal justice system. Specifically the role of defense counsel and prosecutor, the role of the police, the court, corrections, probation and parole officers, and the victims of crimes themselves as well as related issues.

Law and Morality

Author: David Dyzenhaus
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802094899
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1095

Book Description
Since its first publication in 1996, Law and Morality has filled a long-standing need for a contemporary Canadian textbook in the philosophy of law. Now in its third edition, this anthology has been thoroughly revised and updated, and includes new chapters on equality, judicial review, and terrorism and the rule of law. The volume begins with essays that explore general questions about morality and law, surveying the traditional literature on legal positivism and contemporary debates about the connection between law and morality. These essays explore the tensions between law as a protector of individual liberty and as a tool of democratic self-rule, and introduce debates about adjudication and the contribution of feminist approaches to the philosophy of law. New material on the Chinese Canadian head tax case is also featured. The second part of Law and Morality deals with philosophical questions as they apply to contemporary issues. Excerpts from judicial decisions as well as essays by practicing lawyers are included to provide theoretically informed legal analyses of the issues. Striking a balance between practical and more analytic, philosophical approaches, the volume's treatment of the philosophy of law as a branch of political philosophy enables students to understand law in its function as a social institution. Law and Morality has proved to be an essential text in both departments of philosophy and faculties of law and this latest edition brings the debates fully up to date, filling gaps in the previous editions and adding to the array of contemporary issues previously covered.

The Enforcement of Morals

Author: Patrick Devlin
Publisher: Amagi Books
ISBN: 9780865978058
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Are morals always relative? Are private actions--among consenting adults-- always beyond the law? Or are there some behaviors which so weaken a society that common beliefs about right and wrong must be enforced to protect the common good? In opposing the decriminalization of private acts of homosexuality in Britain, Patrick Devlin maintained that not only is it reasonable to allow popular morality to influence lawmaking, it is imperative: " . . . For a society is not something that is kept together physically; it is held by the invisible bonds of common thought." Today, as divisive issues such as same-sex marriage and "don't ask, don't tell" confront our legislative, judicial, and executive branches, the views expressed by Devlin in The Enforcement of Morals resonate and reverberate anew. Patrick Devlin (1905-1992) studied history and law at Cambridge University and became a successful lawyer.

Moral Foundations of American Law

Author: Geoffrey C. Hazard (Jr.)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781780681443
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"This book is about relationships between law and morality as it developed in the United States. It is a tour for the general reader and perhaps of interest to professional scholars"--Page [1].

Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty

Author: Joel Feinberg
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400853974
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
This volume of essays by one of America's preeminent philosophers in the area of jurisprudence and moral philosophy gathers together fourteen papers that had been published in widely scattered and not readily accessible sources. All of the essays deal with the political ideals of liberty and justice or with hard cases for the application of the concept of a right. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Freedom's Law

Author: Ronald Dworkin
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0198265573
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 438

Book Description
Dworkin's important book is a collection of essays which discuss almost all of the great constitutional issues of the last two decades, including abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, homosexuality, pornography, and free speech. Dworkin offers a consistently liberal view of the Constitution and argues that fidelity to it and to law demands that judges make moral judgments. He proposes that we all interpret the abstract language of the Constitution by reference to moral principles about political decency and justice. His 'moral reading' therefore brings political morality into the heart of constitutional law. The various chapters of this book were first published separately; now drawn together they provide the reader with a rich, full-length treatment of Dworkin's general theory of law.

Freedom

Author: Annelien De Dijn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674988337
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
The invention of modern freedom—the equating of liberty with restraints on state power—was not the natural outcome of such secular Western trends as the growth of religious tolerance or the creation of market societies. Rather, it was propelled by an antidemocratic backlash following the Atlantic Revolutions. We tend to think of freedom as something that is best protected by carefully circumscribing the boundaries of legitimate state activity. But who came up with this understanding of freedom, and for what purposes? In a masterful and surprising reappraisal of more than two thousand years of thinking about freedom in the West, Annelien de Dijn argues that we owe our view of freedom not to the liberty lovers of the Age of Revolution but to the enemies of democracy. The conception of freedom most prevalent today—that it depends on the limitation of state power—is a deliberate and dramatic rupture with long-established ways of thinking about liberty. For centuries people in the West identified freedom not with being left alone by the state but with the ability to exercise control over the way in which they were governed. They had what might best be described as a democratic conception of liberty. Understanding the long history of freedom underscores how recently it has come to be identified with limited government. It also reveals something crucial about the genealogy of current ways of thinking about freedom. The notion that freedom is best preserved by shrinking the sphere of government was not invented by the revolutionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who created our modern democracies—it was invented by their critics and opponents. Rather than following in the path of the American founders, today’s “big government” antagonists more closely resemble the counterrevolutionaries who tried to undo their work.