Research
Broadly speaking, my research looks at the role thick concepts (e.g., ‘dignity,’ ‘disease,’ or ‘neutrality’) play in ethics, politics, and law. I have published papers in analytic jurisprudence (in particular as it relates to emerging legal phenomena such as international law and transnational law), as well as on gay rights and reproductive rights in American Constitutional law.
Methodologically, I am committed to the view that philosophy happens everywhere. Practioners and laymen don't simply use moral concepts handed down to them from philosophy, but actively participate in shaping and creating moral principles. This isn't to say there is no role for the philosopher in this process; rather, it is important to recognize the 'flow' of knowledge is not unidirectionality.
Works in Progress
Book Project
[A Jurisprudence of Dignity]
‘Dignity’ is a contested concept. And the apparent conflict in values and policy decisions that appeals to ‘dignity’ have been used to support has led some to disparage appeals to the term wholesale (Pinker 2008, Macklin 2003). Additionally, legal commentators—influenced by the conservative legal movement—were quick to criticize the Court’s appeals to dignity in LGBTQ+ rights cases as being wholly ungrounded in the Constitution’s text or Court’s precedent (Turley 2015, Koppelman 2015).
This book argues these critiques are wrong. Dignity’ is not only a value deeply rooted in this nation’s history, but there exists extensive judicial precedent for using dignity as the relevant interpretive background to understand the content and limits of the Constitution’s structure, provisions, and amendments. In short, the use of ‘dignity’ need not, and has not been, neatly cabined to areas that spring to mind for most scholars (e.g., the eighth amendment, or any number of the liberties protected under the fourteenth amendment); but has far broader application within American jurisprudence and interpreting the Constitution.
Paper
[A Politics of Dignity]
This paper puts forward a new understanding of a 'politics of dignity' that may be useful both as a tool of resistance in President trump's second term, but also the long-term project of understanding the nature of dignity and liberalism's commitments. This paper contends that the Trump administration's policies--particularly those targeting immigrants, intellectuals, and institutions--inflict dignitary harms through the use of spectacle and humiliation. Drawing on philosophical understandings of dignity (including understandings of dignity as an inviolable value and aristocratic dignity), the analysis highlights how practices such as family separation, public threats of inhumane treatment of citizens and immigrants, and the public humiliation and degradation of judges, professionals, as well as legal and educational institutions, undermine dignity. This paper further explores how the scale on which these tactics operate evoke the feelings of helplessness and terror reminiscent of the sublime in Kant's aesthetics and previous atrocities inflicted on humans by governments. By tracing common threads across these disparate actions, this paper demonstrates that many of these different uses of dignity should be considered polysemous. Ultimately, this paper calls for rethinking what a politics of dignity demands in the current era, urging political responses that foreground the restoration and protection of dignity as a central value.
Paper
[Phil Sci & Phil Law]
This paper draws an analogy between the value-free ideal (VFI) found in the domains of science and law. In science, the past few decades have borne witness to a paradigm shift in the field: with proponents of VFI now finding themselves in the minority position. In contrast, despite similar arguments being made within the legal domain, the past few decades have seen the continued rise of originalism and textualism as the dominant approach to legal interpretation and jurisprudence: in part under the guise of judicial impartiality and what we call the 'legal value-free ideal.' This paper argues that appreciating the similarities between these misplaced ideals not only mutually reinforces the arguments against VFI in each domain, but can open up new conceptual space within debates about the proper role(s) of values within the practices of science and law alike.
Paper
[Reproductive Rights]
Since the Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) decision was first leaked in the spring of 2022, there has been a resurgence of interest in abortion: both in terms of the legal case, but ethically as well. This paper argues that while philosophers tend to presume an asymmetrical relationship between moral philosophy and the messy business of law and politics–with philosophy properly informing the practices of judges, lawyers, and politicians but not vice versa–the recent debates surrounding abortion law demonstrates this presumption is misguided. There is plenty for moral philosophy to learn from the case law surrounding abortion: both about the ethics of reproductive rights, as well as the nature of ‘dignity’ itself.