Law's Judgement

by William Lucy

Overview

Law's Judgement elucidates and defends a feature of contemporary law that is currently either overlooked or too glibly dismissed as morally troublesome or historically anachronistic. That feature is the abstract nature of law's judgement and its three components show that, when law judges us, it often does so in ignorance of our particular characters and abilities, on the one hand, and in ignorance of our context and circumstances, on the other. Law's judgement is thus insensitive to all or much that makes us the particular people we are. The book explores various connections between this mode of judgement and some of our most important legal and political values. It shows that law's abstract judgement is closely related to important juristic conceptions of personhood, responsibility and impartiality, and that these notions are not without moral significance. The book also examines the connections between modern law's judgement and three of our most important political values, namely, dignity, equality and community. It argues that, if we value particular conceptions of dignity, equality and community, then we must also value law's judgement. Illuminating these connections therefore serves a double purpose: first, it makes a case against those who counsel liberation from law's abstract judgement and, second, it redirects attention to the task of morally evaluating law's abstract judgement in its own terms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509934652
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/28/2019
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

William Lucy is Professor of Law at the University of Durham.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

1 Law's Judgement 1

I How Law Judges Us 4

A Private and Criminal Law 7

B Public Law 11

C Two Points 16

II Why and How? 19

A Why? 19

B How? 26

III Prospect 32

2 Law's Persons 35

I Persons in Law 37

A Presupposition 38

B Consequence 45

II Legalism, Abstraction and Other Vices 53

A Legalism 54

B PaP, the Rationalist Legal Person and Human Beings 62

(i) Against the Rationalist Legal Person (and PaP) 63

(ii) Legal Persons, Legal Fictions and Real Human Beings 70

III Conclusion 76

3 Fairness: Responsibility, Impartiality, Equity 79

I Responsibility 81

A The Three Conditions 82

B Can the Conditions be Justified? 89

II Impartiality 96

A Attitude and Role 96

B Outcome Impartiality 99

C Procedural Impartiality 103

III Equity and Mercy 110

A The Argument from Law 112

B The Argument from Mercy 116

4 Dignity 123

I Concept and Conceptions 125

A Dignity as Value 129

B Dignity as Status 134

II Distinctions without Differences 139

A Blurring the Lines 139

B Entente Cordiale 147

III Connections 153

A Law 153

B LAJ 157

C The Common Thread 159

IV Is Dignity a Value? 162

5 Equality 165

I Making Room 166

A Equality: Thin and Thinner 166

B Luck Egalitarianism 170

II Two Conceptions of Equality 184

A The Social and Political Ideal of Equality 184

B The Right to Equal Concern and Respect 192

III Difference, Confluence, Connections 200

6 Community 205

I Who and How? 206

II What and Why? 214

A Three questions 214

B Group and Community 215

C Community, Citizenship, Fraternity 221

(i) Citizenship: Thin and Thick 223

(ii) Fraternity 230

D LAJ: Conception of Community or Precondition for Community? 241

7 Conclusion 243

I Immanence and Value 244

II Taking Stock 249

Index 255

Editorial Reviews

"In this original monograph William Lucy takes a fresh look at some aspects of the relationship between law and morality that have not attracted much attention in recent years... Law's Judgement achieves a significant contribution to our understanding of normative abstractions inherent in juristic judgements and of their links to an array of values, while it examines the remarkable scope of this array through the lens of a highly inquisitive and invariably vigilant jurisprudential investigator." --The Cambridge Law Journal

From the Publisher