Legal TheoryPub Date : 2022-02-07DOI: 10.1017/S1352325221000276
B. Watson
{"title":"IN DEFENSE OF THE STANDARD PICTURE: WHAT THE STANDARD PICTURE EXPLAINS THAT THE MORAL IMPACT THEORY CANNOT","authors":"B. Watson","doi":"10.1017/S1352325221000276","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352325221000276","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT How do legal texts determine legal content? A standard answer to this question—sometimes called “the standard picture”—is that legal texts communicate something and what they communicate is identical to legal content. Mark Greenberg criticizes the standard picture and offers in its place his own “moral impact theory.” My goal here is to respond to Greenberg by showing how the standard picture better explains legal practice than the moral impact theory does. To that end, I first clarify certain aspects of the moral impact theory. I then critique the theory, focusing on its inability to explain (i) why practitioners reason about legal content as they do and (ii) why they agree on legal content as often as they do. Finally, I refine the standard picture and demonstrate how it explains what the moral impact theory cannot.","PeriodicalId":44287,"journal":{"name":"Legal Theory","volume":"28 1","pages":"59 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46688745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Legal TheoryPub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S1352325221000252
Attila Mráz
{"title":"HOW TO JUSTIFY MANDATORY ELECTORAL QUOTAS: A POLITICAL EGALITARIAN APPROACH","authors":"Attila Mráz","doi":"10.1017/S1352325221000252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352325221000252","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper offers a novel substantive justification for mandatory electoral quotas—e.g., gender or racial quotas—and a new methodological approach to their justification. Substantively, I argue for a political egalitarian account of electoral quotas. Methodologically, based on this account and a political egalitarian grounding of political participatory rights, I offer an alternative to the External Restriction Approach to the justification of electoral quotas. The External Restriction Approach sees electoral quotas as at best justified restrictions on political participatory rights. I argue for the Internal Restriction Approach instead, which can justify electoral quotas by specifying the pro tanto scope of political participatory rights rather than by justifying restrictions on the pro tanto scope of these rights. On this approach, adequately set electoral quotas do not even conflict with and are not balanced against political participatory rights, while electoral quotas—when justified—are pro tanto required rather than merely permitted.","PeriodicalId":44287,"journal":{"name":"Legal Theory","volume":"27 1","pages":"285 - 315"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43110881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Legal TheoryPub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.1017/S1352325221000215
J. Kennedy
{"title":"CRIMES AS PUBLIC WRONGS","authors":"J. Kennedy","doi":"10.1017/S1352325221000215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352325221000215","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Despite the notion's prominence, scholarship has yet to offer a viable account of the view that crimes constitute public wrongs. Despite numerous attempts, some scholars are now doubting whether a viable account is forthcoming whereas others are reeling back expectations for what the concept itself can offer. This article vindicates crime's public character while asserting the relevance of political theory in doing so. After critiquing prior attempts and clarifying expectations, the article offers a novel account, relying on both key doctrinal features and a deliberative democratic framework through which to interpret their public significance. In doing so, it demonstrates how this framework explains the public nature of censure, and ultimately argues that crimes are public wrongs not because such actions themselves necessarily wrong or harm the public, but instead because they are the type of wrong that the public has a stake in addressing. This gives rise to an understanding of sentencing as public decision-making within which citizens and their representatives decide how best to use public power to manage public interests.","PeriodicalId":44287,"journal":{"name":"Legal Theory","volume":"27 1","pages":"253 - 284"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45001771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Legal TheoryPub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.1017/S1352325221000203
Visa A. J. Kurki
{"title":"THE INTEREST THEORY OF RIGHTS: STILL STANDING","authors":"Visa A. J. Kurki","doi":"10.1017/S1352325221000203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352325221000203","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In two recent papers, Mark McBride has attacked the interest theory of rights, both introducing new arguments and claiming that interest theorists have not successfully deflected Gopal Sreenivasan's earlier arguments. This essay replies to all of McBride's criticisms, showing them to be mistaken.","PeriodicalId":44287,"journal":{"name":"Legal Theory","volume":"27 1","pages":"352 - 364"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45884579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Legal TheoryPub Date : 2021-11-09DOI: 10.1017/S1352325221000197
David Tan
{"title":"OBJECTIVE INTENTIONALISM AND DISAGREEMENT","authors":"David Tan","doi":"10.1017/S1352325221000197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352325221000197","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Intentionalist theories of legal interpretation are often divided between objectivist and subjectivist variants. The former take an interpretation to be correct depending on what the reasonable/rational lawmaker intended or what the reasonable/rational audience thinks they intended. The latter take an interpretation to be correct where the interpretation is what the speaker actually intended. This paper argues that objectivism faces serious problems as it cannot deal with disagreement: reasonable and rational persons can often disagree as to what the interpretation of a text should be. It also defends subjectivism against criticisms by objectivists.","PeriodicalId":44287,"journal":{"name":"Legal Theory","volume":"27 1","pages":"316 - 351"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42376063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Legal TheoryPub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1017/S1352325221000161
Jennifer Nadler
{"title":"FREEDOM FROM THINGS: A DEFENSE OF THE DISJUNCTIVE OBLIGATION IN CONTRACT LAW","authors":"Jennifer Nadler","doi":"10.1017/S1352325221000161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352325221000161","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article argues that the disjunctive obligation in contract law can be justified on moral grounds. It argues that from a perspective that regards human beings as free agents capable of choice and therefore independent of material objects, the contracting parties must be understood as agreeing to mutually guarantee one another's ownership of a certain value. This guarantee can be fulfilled either by handing over what was promised or by making up the difference between the market value and the contract value of what was promised. The plaintiff's contractual right is therefore a right that the defendant perform or pay. This makes expectation damages intelligible as a vindication of the plaintiff's contractual right. Moreover, the disjunctive obligation can be reconciled with all the doctrines that others take to be decisive arguments against it—with the doctrines of specific performance, inducing breach, impossibility, preexisting duty consideration, and nominal damages.","PeriodicalId":44287,"journal":{"name":"Legal Theory","volume":"27 1","pages":"177 - 206"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48811734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}