[A Paper on the Jurisprudence of Dignity]
Although this paper uses Obergefell v Hodges as its frame, it aims to bring out some distinctive features of a ‘jurisprudence of dignity’ more broadly. The philosophical upshot from this investigation thus provides us with: (1) the requisite backdrop for considering whether appeals to dignity are as unsalvageable as some critics claim; and (2) a concrete example of the way in which legal reasoning can sharpen our understanding of contested concepts such as ‘dignity.’
[A Paper on the Paradox of State Sovereignty]
For theorists interested in international law, the paradox of State sovereignty is well-trodden ground. Typically, legal theorists argue that this paradox can be overcome by appealing to the fact that States consent to international laws and international law-making institutions. In this paper, I show this answer leaves the paradox unresolved, and motivate a dignity-based account of State sovereignty that would provide us with new conceptual resources to resolve the problem once and for all.
Laws, generally, are general. And legal knowledge does not seem to be exhausted by knowing what the law says. Following Sunstein (2018) and Scanlon (2014), I defend the claim that we know a given proposition P (be it a proposition in mathematics, ethics, or law) is true, if it is the result of thinking about ‘it’ (the proposition) in the right way. The upshot of my analysis isn't merely to provide an account of legal knowledge, but it also provides a meaningful response to legal realists.
[A Paper on a Concept of 'Dignity']
The goal of this paper isn’t to show that all accounts of dignity are doomed to fail, or to provide a full-fledged theory of dignity that is ready to usurp other accounts. Rather, my modest goal is to lay the groundwork for building up an account of dignity that has the possibility of succeeding. To proceed, I examine the three main criticisms of appeals to ‘human dignity,’ as this will help to establish what pitfalls any account of dignity must avoid.