I wouldn’t have thought it necessary to weigh in on the civil unrest sweeping across the U.S., and now across the entire western world. I’d have thought it almost analytic that people who are pissed off, and are taking their… Read More ›
Hobbes
AMERICA’S POLICING DILEMMA
The question, I suppose, is this. At what point should the penny have dropped for the Jews of Europe? When should they have started shooting the authorities at the door rather than come along peacefully? It’s easy to say in retrospect,… Read More ›
THE LEGACY OF GEORGE FLOYD
A law that’s impossible to obey isn’t a law. A law that’s impossible to disobey isn’t a law. A law that’s impossible to enforce isn’t a law. And a law that isn’t enforced isn’t a law. The most it can be… Read More ›
THE HARMS RACE
According to John Stuart Mill, in a liberal democracy all is permitted save what is prohibited. And what can be prohibited must be demonstrably harmful. But what’s meant by harm? It can’t be just a setback of interests. Your opening… Read More ›
THE SUMMA POLITICA
I’d like to buy the world a Coke. I imagine you would too, though perhaps we’d both make it something a little lower in sugar. Unfortunately, making the world a better place for some people, even for the vast majority… Read More ›
AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING TRANSPHOBIC …
Apart from the half dozen things I do care about – and for aught I know I’m the only one who does – I pretty much live in my own little world. My wife, by contrast, researches everything. She even… Read More ›
AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING RACIST …
Let’s not quibble about whether they came across the Bering Strait or miraculously burst into being sui generis. Let’s just say that those who descended from those who could be found in the Western Hemisphere prior to 1492 shall be… Read More ›
WHAT DO REVENGE FANTASIES TELL US ABOUT ETHICS?
I am not going to claim that all of us play host to revenge fantasies, because then I couldn’t deny – which I categorically do – that I certainly do. So everything I say here is prefixed by an I-hear-tell,… Read More ›
CHALLENGE versus RIDICULE
Much as I’d sometimes like to be, I’m not a knee-jerk civil libertarian. I understand that the maintenance – and before that the promotion – of a civil society sometimes requires limits to freedom of movement, of association, of expression,… Read More ›
TWO LECTURES YOU WON’T GET AT LAW SCHOOL
LESSON 1: NATURAL LAW AND POSITIVE LAW There are, among the Great Unwashed – that’s everybody except me, by the way – some pretty serious misconceptions about law. Some people, including some philosophers, think there’s something called natural law, by… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 