The Basic Liberties: An Essay on Analytical Specification

We characterize, more precisely than before, what Rawls calls the “analytical” method of drawing up a list of basic liberties. This method employs one or more general conditions that, under any just social order whatever, putative entitlements must meet for them to be among the basic liberties encompassed, within some just social order, by Rawls’s first principle of justice (i.e., the liberty principle). We argue that the general conditions that feature in Rawls’s own account of the analytical method, which employ the notion of necessity, are too stringent. They ultimately fail to deliver as basic certain particular liberties that should be encompassed within any fully adequate scheme of liberties. To address this under-generation problem, we provide an amended general condition. This replaces Rawls’s necessity condition with a probabilistic condition and it appeals to the standard liberal prohibition on arbitrary coercion by the state. We defend our new approach both as apt to feature in applications of the analytical method and as adequately grounded in justice as fairness as Rawls articulates the theory’s fundamental ideas

What is the Incoherence Objection to Legal Entrapment?

Some legal theorists say that legal entrapment to commit a crime is incoherent. So far, there is no satisfactorily precise statement of this objection in the literature: it is obscure even as to the type of incoherence that is purportedly involved. (Perhaps consequently, substantial assessment of the objection is also absent.) We aim to provide a new statement of the objection that is more precise and more rigorous than its predecessors. We argue that the best form of the objection asserts that, in attempting to entrap, law-enforcement agents lapse into a form of practical incoherence that involves the attempt simultaneously to pursue contrary ends. We then argue that the objection, in this form, encompasses all cases of legal entrapment only if it is supplemented by appeal to the premise that law-enforcement agents have an absolute duty never to create crimes

Knowledge of Necessity: Logical Positivism and Kripkean Essentialism

AbstractBy the lights of a central logical positivist thesis in modal epistemology, for every necessary truth that we know, we know it a priori and for every contingent truth that we know, we know it a posteriori. Kripke attacks on both flanks, arguing that we know necessary a posteriori truths and that we probably know contingent a priori truths. In a reflection of Kripke's confidence in his own arguments, the first of these Kripkean claims is far more widely accepted than the second. Contrary to received opinion, the paper argues, the considerations Kripke adduces concerning truths purported to be necessary a posteriori do not disprove the logical positivist thesis that necessary truth and a priori truth are co-extensive.</jats:p

BASIC LIBERTIES, THE MORAL POWERS AND WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY

The article responds to previous work, by Martin O’Neill, about the Rawlsian case for an entitlement to an element of workplace democracy. Of the three arguments for such an entitlement that O’Neill discusses, this article focuses mainly on the one he rejects (on the grounds of its having an implausible premise): the Fundamental Liberties Argument, according to which the right to an element of workplace democracy is a basic liberty. This article argues that while the argument can be improved to withstand O’Neill’s objection, it is invalid. The article sets out a new argument, the Argument from Risk to the Moral Powers. While inspired by the Fundamental Liberties Argument, it is valid. Moreover, its premises are at least as plausible as those of one of the two arguments upon which O’Neill builds his Rawlsian case for an entitlement to an element of workplace democracy.Este artigo responde ao trabalho de Martin O’Neill sobre o argumento rawlsiano a favor do direito a um elemento de democracia no local de trabalho. De entre os três argumentos para este direito que O’Neill discute, este artigo concentra-se principalmente no argumento por ele rejeitado (por causa de ter uma premissa implausível): o Argumento das Liberdades Fundamentais, segundo o qual o direito a um elemento de democracia no local de trabalho é uma liberdade básica. Apesar de o argumento poder ser melhorado para resistir à objeção de O’Neill, este artigo defende que este é inválido e apresenta um novo argumento, o Argumento do Risco para os Poderes Morais. Embora este seja inspirado pelo Argumento das Liberdades Fundamentais, é válido. Além disso, as suas premissas são, pelo menos, tão plausíveis como as de um dos dois argumentos sobre os quais O’Neill constrói o seu caso rawlsiano a favor do direito a um elemento de democracia no local de trabalho

The Concept of Entrapment

Our question is this: What makes an act one of entrapment? We make a standard distinction between legal entrapment, which is carried out by parties acting in their capacities as (or as deputies of) law- enforcement agents, and civil entrapment, which is not. We aim to provide a definition of entrapment that covers both and which, for reasons we explain, does not settle questions of permissibility and culpability. We explain, compare, and contrast two existing definitions of legal entrapment to commit a crime that possess this neutrality. We point out some problems with the extensional correctness of these definitions and propose a new definition that resolves these problems. We then extend our definition to provide a more general definition of entrapment, encompassing both civil and legal cases. Our definition is, we believe, closer to being extensionally correct and will, we hope, provide a clearer basis for future discussions about the ethics of entrapment than do the definitions upon which it improves

Liberalism and the right to strike

Source at https://www.publicethics.org/post/liberalism-and-the-right-to-strike.Although trade union membership in the UK went into serious decline in the decades following the Conservative election victory of 1979, recent years have seen an increase. Strikes nowadays are typically lesser in scale and duration than the big strikes of the twentieth century. The law on ballot thresholds under the Trade Union Act 2016 represents a formidable obstacle. Nevertheless, strikes remain common. In the first ten weeks of 2022, BBC News reported on strikes by gritters in Carmarthenshire (GMB), stationary manufacturers in Dalkeith (Unite), bin lorry drivers in Coventry (Unite), staff in higher education (UCU), teachers at a private school in Norwich (NASUWT), confectionary makers in York (GMB), workers on the London Underground (RMT), and refuse collectors in Wiltshire (GMB). (The European Trade Union Institute strike map of Europe shows that in the two decades to 2019 strikes generated higher average numbers of lost work days per 1,000 employees in many Mediterranean and Nordic countries than in the UK.