Why value democracy? One familiar answer is that democracy expresses respect for citizens, whereas non-democratic modes of governance insultingly express disrespect. Recent work has subjected this view to substantial criticism, raising serious doubts about its plausibility. This article contends that [...]
The proposal that the criminal justice system should focus on rehabilitation—rather than retribution, deterrence, or expressive denunciation—is among the least popular ideas in legal philosophy. Foremost among rehabilitation’s alleged weaknesses is that it treats criminals like blameless patients to be [...]
Is it wrong for the state to induce its citizens to commit crime? Legal and political philosophers tend to agree that entrapment is morally problematic, yet we lack a convincing explanation as to why. This article furnishes a new explanation [...]
Democratic contractarianism aspires to unite two previously unconnected strands in political philosophy: firstly, a democratic commitment to a social world in which citizens yield equal power; and secondly, a contractarian commitment to a strictly prudential justification of political morality. I [...]
This article advances a partially epistemic justification of democratic authority by defending what David Estlund has called the democracy/contractualism analogy: the idea that democracy can track justice due to crucial similarities between effective democratic politics and the hypothetical deliberations employed [...]
The idea that victims of social injustice who commit crimes ought not to be subject to punishment has attracted serious attention in recent legal and political philosophy. R. A. Duff has argued, for example, that states that perpetrate social injustice [...]