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Author: Lynn Stout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140083600X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
How the science of unselfish behavior can promote law, order, and prosperity Contemporary law and public policy often treat human beings as selfish creatures who respond only to punishments and rewards. Yet every day we behave unselfishly—few of us mug the elderly or steal the paper from our neighbor's yard, and many of us go out of our way to help strangers. We nevertheless overlook our own good behavior and fixate on the bad things people do and how we can stop them. In this pathbreaking book, acclaimed law and economics scholar Lynn Stout argues that this focus neglects the crucial role our better impulses could play in society. Rather than lean on the power of greed to shape laws and human behavior, Stout contends that we should rely on the force of conscience. Stout makes the compelling case that conscience is neither a rare nor quirky phenomenon, but a vital force woven into our daily lives. Drawing from social psychology, behavioral economics, and evolutionary biology, Stout demonstrates how social cues—instructions from authorities, ideas about others' selfishness and unselfishness, and beliefs about benefits to others—have a powerful role in triggering unselfish behavior. Stout illustrates how our legal system can use these social cues to craft better laws that encourage more unselfish, ethical behavior in many realms, including politics and business. Stout also shows how our current emphasis on self-interest and incentives may have contributed to the catastrophic political missteps and financial scandals of recent memory by encouraging corrupt and selfish actions, and undermining society's collective moral compass. This book proves that if we care about effective laws and civilized society, the powers of conscience are simply too important for us to ignore.
Author: Lynn Stout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140083600X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Get Book
Book Description
How the science of unselfish behavior can promote law, order, and prosperity Contemporary law and public policy often treat human beings as selfish creatures who respond only to punishments and rewards. Yet every day we behave unselfishly—few of us mug the elderly or steal the paper from our neighbor's yard, and many of us go out of our way to help strangers. We nevertheless overlook our own good behavior and fixate on the bad things people do and how we can stop them. In this pathbreaking book, acclaimed law and economics scholar Lynn Stout argues that this focus neglects the crucial role our better impulses could play in society. Rather than lean on the power of greed to shape laws and human behavior, Stout contends that we should rely on the force of conscience. Stout makes the compelling case that conscience is neither a rare nor quirky phenomenon, but a vital force woven into our daily lives. Drawing from social psychology, behavioral economics, and evolutionary biology, Stout demonstrates how social cues—instructions from authorities, ideas about others' selfishness and unselfishness, and beliefs about benefits to others—have a powerful role in triggering unselfish behavior. Stout illustrates how our legal system can use these social cues to craft better laws that encourage more unselfish, ethical behavior in many realms, including politics and business. Stout also shows how our current emphasis on self-interest and incentives may have contributed to the catastrophic political missteps and financial scandals of recent memory by encouraging corrupt and selfish actions, and undermining society's collective moral compass. This book proves that if we care about effective laws and civilized society, the powers of conscience are simply too important for us to ignore.
Author: Jeffrey B. Hammond
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108835384
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 471
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Book Description
This book explores the Christian theological, legal, constitutional, historical, and philosophical meanings of conscience for both scholarly and educated general audiences.
Author: Kimberley Brownlee
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191645923
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
The book shows that civil disobedience is generally more defensible than private conscientious objection. Part I explores the morality of conviction and conscience. Each of these concepts informs a distinct argument for civil disobedience. The conviction argument begins with the communicative principle of conscientiousness (CPC). According to the CPC, having a conscientious moral conviction means not just acting consistently with our beliefs and judging ourselves and others by a common moral standard. It also means not seeking to evade the consequences of our beliefs and being willing to communicate them to others. The conviction argument shows that, as a constrained, communicative practice, civil disobedience has a better claim than private objection does to the protections that liberal societies give to conscientious dissent. This view reverses the standard liberal picture which sees private 'conscientious' objection as a modest act of personal belief and civil disobedience as a strategic, undemocratic act whose costs are only sometimes worth bearing. The conscience argument is narrower and shows that genuinely morally responsive civil disobedience honours the best of our moral responsibilities and is protected by a duty-based moral right of conscience. Part II translates the conviction argument and conscience argument into two legal defences. The first is a demands-of-conviction defence. The second is a necessity defence. Both of these defences apply more readily to civil disobedience than to private disobedience. Part II also examines lawful punishment, showing that, even when punishment is justifiable, civil disobedients have a moral right not to be punished. Oxford Legal Philosophy publishes the best new work in philosophically-oriented legal theory. It commissions and solicits monographs in all branches of the subject, including works on philosophical issues in all areas of public and private law, and in the national, transnational, and international realms; studies of the nature of law, legal institutions, and legal reasoning; treatments of problems in political morality as they bear on law; and explorations in the nature and development of legal philosophy itself. The series represents diverse traditions of thought but always with an emphasis on rigour and originality. It sets the standard in contemporary jurisprudence.
Author: David Mellinkoff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780314284020
Category : Defense (Criminal procedure)
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
On trial practice, defense lawyers, and legal ethics, by discussing the murder of Lord William Russell in London, May 5, 1840, and a reconstruction of the trial of his valet, Benjamin François Courvoisier.
Author: Kent Greenawalt
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195058240
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
Powerful emotion and pursuit of self-interest have many times led people to break the law with the belief that they are doing so with sound moral reasons. This study is a comprehensive philosophical and legal analysis of the gray area in which the foundations of law and morality clash. In examining the extent of the obligations owed by citizens to their government, Greenawalt concentrates on the possible existence of a single source of obligation that reaches all citizens and all laws.
Author: Irit Samet
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198766777
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
This book sets out to defend the claim that Equity ought to remain a separate body of law; the temptation to iron-out the differences between neighbouring doctrines on the two sides of the Equity/Common Law divide should, in most cases, be resisted. The theoretical part of the book is argues that the characteristics of Equity, namely, appeal to conscience, flexibility, retroactivity and the use of morally-freighted jargon, are essential for the implementation of a legal ideal that has been neglected by the Common Law: 'Accountability Correspondence'. According to this fundamental legal ideal, liability imposed by legal rules should correspond to the pattern of moral duty in the circumstances to which the rules apply. Equity promotes this ideal in the fields of property and obligations by disallowing parties to exploit the rule-like nature of Common Law norms in a way that breaches their moral duty to the other party. By reference to various equitable doctrines, it is argued that the faults identified by critics of Equity, especially from the perspective of the Rule of Law, are highly exaggerated, and that the criticism often reflects a political belief in the supremacy of individualism and free market over empathy and social justice. The theoretical part is followed by three chapters, each dedicated to an in-depth analysis of the equitable doctrines of fiduciary duties, proprietary estoppel, and clean hands. For each doctrine, it is shown how their equitable characteristics are indispensable for achieving their social, ethical and economic purpose.
Author: H. Jefferson Powell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226677303
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
While many recent observers have accused American judges—especially Supreme Court justices—of being too driven by politics and ideology, others have argued that judges are justified in using their positions to advance personal views. Advocating a different approach—one that eschews ideology but still values personal perspective—H. Jefferson Powell makes a compelling case for the centrality of individual conscience in constitutional decision making. Powell argues that almost every controversial decision has more than one constitutionally defensible resolution. In such cases, he goes on to contend, the language and ideals of the Constitution require judges to decide in good faith, exercising what Powell calls the constitutional virtues: candor, intellectual honesty, humility about the limits of constitutional adjudication, and willingness to admit that they do not have all the answers. Constitutional Conscience concludes that the need for these qualities in judges—as well as lawyers and citizens—is implicit in our constitutional practices, and that without them judicial review would forfeit both its own integrity and the credibility of the courts themselves.
Author: Alexander Nikolaevich Shytov
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401597456
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
THE CONSCIENCE OF JUDGES AND APPLICA nON OF LEGAL RULES The book is devoted to the problem of the influence of moral judgements on the result of judicial decision-making in the process of application of the established (positive) law. It is the conscience of judges that takes the central place in the research. Conscience is understood in the meaning developed in the theory of Thomas Aquinas as the complex capacity of the human being to make moral judgements which represent acts of reason on the question of what is right or wrong in a particular situation. The reason why we need a theory of conscience in making judicial decisions lies in the nature of the positive law itself. On the one hand, there is an intrinsic conflict between the law as the body of rigid rules and the law as an living experience of those who are involved in social relationships. This conflict particularly finds its expression in the collision of strict justice and equity. The idea of equity does not reject the importance of rules in legal life. What is rejected is an idolatrous attitude to the rules when the uniqueness of a human being, his well being and happiness are disregarded and sacrificed in order to fulfil the observance of the rules. The rules themselves are neither good or bad. What makes them good or bad is their application.
Author: John McLaren
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791440025
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
Examines claims to freedom of religion by minority, unorthodox faith groups and how these challenges to the state and the law have contributed to the development of civil rights discourse and practice.
Author: Timothy Sandefur
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1939709040
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty documents a forgotten truth: the word “democracy” is nowhere to be found in either the Constitution or the Declaration. But it is the overemphasis of democracy by the legal community–rather than the primacy of liberty, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence–that has led to the growth of government power at the expense of individual rights. Now, more than ever, Sandefur explains, the Declaration of Independence should set the framework for interpreting our fundamental law. In the very first sentence of the Constitution, the founding fathers stated unambiguously that “liberty” is a blessing. Today, more and more Americans are realizing that their individual freedoms are being threatened by the ever-expanding scope of the government. Americans have always differed over important political issues, but some things should not be settled by majority vote. In The Conscience of the Constitution, Timothy Sandefur presents a dramatic new challenge to the status quo of constitutional law.
