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A v B and C [2012] EWCA Civ 285: heteronormativity, poly-parenting, and the homo-nuclear family
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Affirming animal rights, anthropocentrically
Full text linkCalls to recognise animal rights and to abandon anthropocentrism are now virtually ubiquitous in pro-animal literature. However, these calls are plagued by conceptual confusion and theoretical misapprehensions. I recommend distinguishing between two meanings of anthropocentrism: epistemic anthropocentrism (the truism that we can only know the world as humans) and normative anthropocentrism (the idea that humans hold a special place in ethics). Anthropocentrism, in both these senses, is unavoidable. But this conclusion is without prejudice to the question of whether animals have (moral) rights. Animals have such rights because their well-being matters independently of our own; and yet we can only affirm animal rights anthropocentrically. The fact that animals have moral rights, however, does not entail that making animals holders of fundamental legal rights is the unmitigated good it has been recently assumed to be. Not only would introducing legally protected fundamental animal rights risk compromising human rights practice and prove divisive; there is also little reason to think it would constitute the solution it is touted to be for the shortcomings of underinclusive and underenforced animal welfare laws
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'Boys love' in anime and manga: Japanese subcultural production and its end users
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Why rights are not optimisation requirements
Full text linkIn this article I pursue the implications of the statement that constitutional rights are – as Alexy’s principles theory argues – optimisation requirements, and show that they are not. I argue that, applied to moral rights, optimisation obfuscates their nature, their relationship to human well-being, and the work they do in practical thought. As to constitutional rights, I argue that the fact that they belong in an institutional framework suggests some reasons for treating them like optimisation requirements in circumscribed cases. But these reasons are far from conclusive; and treating rights like optimisation requirements in other scenarios (conflicts of rights, structural discretion) indicates that optimisation, as defined in the principles theory, does not assist us in thinking well about the structure of constitutional rights. Constitutional rights demand compliance with whatever the interests on which they are based demand – whether or not what they demand is antecedently clear – not with some purported optimisation requirement
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The foundations of the rule of law
No full textFormal conceptions of the rule of law are popular among contemporary legal philosophers. Nonetheless, the coherence of accounts of the rule of law committed to these conceptions is sometimes fractured by elements harkening back to substantive conceptions of the rule of law. I suggest that this may be because at its origins the ideal of the rule of law was substantive through and through. I also argue that those origins are older than is generally supposed. Most authors tend to trace the ideas of the rule of law and natural law back to classical Greece, but I show that they are already recognisable and intertwined as far back as Homer. Because the founding moment of the tradition of western intellectual reflection on the rule of law placed concerns about substantive justice at the centre of the rule of law ideal, it may be hard for this ideal to entirely shrug off its substantive content. It may be undesirable, too, given the rhetorical power of appeals to the rule of law. The rule of law means something quite radical in Homer; this meaning may provide a source of normative inspiration for contemporary reflections about the rule of law
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Constitutional innovation and same-sex desire in D’Annunzio’s Fiume, 1919-1920
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Philosophical problems with the gender critical feminist argument against trans inclusion
Full text linkThe Reform of the Gender Recognition Act: Government Consultation (2018) catalyzed a heated debate on transgender rights and trans inclusion in the United Kingdom. I start by explaining what the reforms to the U.K. system of gender recognition propose, why gender-critical feminists oppose them, and how other feminist academics have responded to their arguments. I then offer a more detailed philosophical critique of gender-critical trans-exclusionary feminist arguments. I argue that the gender-critical feminist case against trans women’s access to women-only (or sex-segregated, or single-sex) spaces suffers from a number of fallacies, and introduces modes of argument that are at odds with well-established and sound uses of practical reason. I try to make sense of these problems with gender-critical feminist thought by appealing to the idea of presupposed paranoid structuralism. I also argue that gender-critical feminists’ enthusiastic use of social media and allied online platforms may be implicated in generating some of these problems
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