Liberal-democratic values and philosophers' beliefs about moral expertise

In recent decades, the discipline of bioethics has grown rapidly, as has the practice of ethical consultation. Interestingly, this new recognition of the relevance of moral philosophy to our daily life has been accompanied by skepticism among philosophers regarding the existence of moral expertise or the benefits of philosophical training. In his recent article in Bioethics, William R. Smith suggested that this skepticism is rooted in philosophers' belief that moral expertise is inconsistent with liberal-democratic values, when in fact they are compatible. In this paper, we provide a unique opportunity to empirically examine Smith's observation by utilizing and extending global data on philosophers' beliefs about moral expertise, involving 4087 philosophers from 96 countries. Our findings support Smith's theoretical observation and show that societal levels of support for liberal-democratic values are associated with greater skepticism about moral expertise. We suggest that these findings might be explained by the cognitive process of motivated reasoning and an invalid inference of "is" from "ought." Consequently, the potential tension between moral expertise and liberal-democratic values is invalidly used for rejecting the existence of moral expertise, while its main and valid implication is for how moral expertise should be applied in liberal-democratic settings

Protecting Rights in the Policy Process: Integrating Legal Proportionality and Policy Analysis

This paper provides an integrative analysis of legal proportionality and policy analysis, and identifies the inherent potential of integrating the proportionality principle in policy analysis for enhancing the protection of rights in the policy process. Our analysis entails three key recommendations: (1) Mandating the inclusion of a rights-impact criterion in policy analysis in order to increase the likelihood that the three proportionality tests will be addressed; (2) The professional norm of considering several distinct alternatives serves the normative requirement of the necessity test and facilitates the mitigation of rights restrictions through the comparison and modification of the alternatives; (3) Requiring policymakers to present the factual basis for the undesirable phenomenon in the course of judicial review of the policy goal. Such integration of policy analysis and proportionality can streamline the consideration of fundamental rights in the policy-making process and consequently increase their protection. Adopting these practical measures may substantially assist courts in identifying ways to implement judicial review, while respecting the discretion of policymakers. Finally, these proposed practices are expected to fine-tune the incentive structure of policy-makers for conducting quality policy analysis while protecting human and civil rights

Blame avoidance and the politics of public inquiries in the UK, 1984-2003

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