Writers on human dignity roughly divide between those who stress the social origins of this concept and its role in marking rank and hierarchy, and those who follow Kant in grounding dignity in an abstract and idealized philosophical conception of human beings. In these lectures, Jeremy Waldron contrives to combine attractive features of both strands. In the first lecture, Waldron presents a conception of dignity that preserves its ancient association with rank and station, thus allowing him to tap rich historical resources while avoiding what many perceive as the excessive abstraction and dubious metaphysics of the Kantian strand. At the same time he argues for a conception of human dignity that amounts to a generalization of high status across all human beings, and so attains the appealing universality of the Kantian position. The second lecture focuses particularly on the importance of dignity - understood in this way - as a status defining persons' relation to law: their presentation as persons capable of self-applying the law, capable of presenting and arguing a point of view, and capable of responding to law's demands without brute coercion. Together the two lectures illuminate the relation between dignity conceived as the ground of rights and dignity conceived as the content of rights; they also illuminate important ideas about dignity as noble bearing and dignity as the subject of a right against degrading treatment; and they help us understand the sense in which dignity is better conceived as a status than as a kind of value.

Dignity, Rank, and Rights (The Berkeley Tanner Lectures)

Waldron, Jeremy

Ethics & Professional Responsibility

Oxford University Press

Debating Targeted Killing: Counter-Terrorism or Extrajudicial Execution? (Debating Ethics)

Politics & Social Sciences

Meisels, Tamar

Philosophy

Known terrorists are often targeted for death by the governments of Israel and the United States. Several thousand have been killed by drones or by operatives on the ground in the last twenty years. Is this form of killing justified, when hundreds or thousands of lives are possibly at risk at the hands of a known terrorist? Is there anything about it that should disturb us? Ethically-sound and practical answers to these questions are more difficult to come by than it might seem. Renowned political theorists Jeremy Waldron and Tamar Meisels here defend two competing positions on the legitimacy of targeted killing as used in counterterrorism strategy in this riveting and essential for-and-against book. The volume begins with a joint introduction, briefly setting out the terms of discussion, and presenting a short historical overview of the practice: what targeted killing is, and how it has been used in which conflicts and by whom. It then hones in on killings themselves and the element of targeting. The authors tackle difficult and infinitely complex subjects, for example the similarities and differences between targeted killing of terrorists and ordinary killings in combat, and they ask whether targeted killing can be regarded as a law enforcement strategy, or as a hybrid between combat and law enforcement. They compare the practice of targeted killing with assassination and the use of death squads. And they consider the likelihood that targeted killing has been or will be abused against insurgents, criminals, or political opponents. Meisels analyzes the assassination by Israeli operatives of nuclear scientists working for regimes hostile to Israel. Meisels and Waldron carefully consider whether this sort of killing can ever be justified in terms of the danger it, in theory, averts. The conclusions drawn are at once as surprising as they are insightful, cautioning us against a world in which targeted killing is the norm as it proliferates rapidly. This is essential reading not only for students of political and war theory and military personnel, but for anyone interested in or concerned by the future of targeted killing.

Presenting a comprehensive, critical examination of the claim that private property is one of the fundamental rights of humankind, Waldron here contrasts two types of arguments about rights: those based on historical entitlement, and those based on the importance of property for freedom. He illustrates this contrast with a detailed discussion of the theories of property found in Locke's Second Treatise and Hegel's Philosophy of Rights, and offers original analyses of the concept of ownership, the idea of rights, and the relation between property and equality, finding that traditional arguments about property yield some surprisingly radical conclusions.

The Right to Private Property (Clarendon Paperbacks)

Social Sciences

Clarendon Press

Presenting a comprehensive, critical examination of the claim that private property is one of the fundamental rights of humankind, Waldron here contrasts two types of arguments about rights: those based on historical entitlement, and those based on the importance of property for freedom. He illustrates this contrast with a detailed discussion of the theories of property found in Locke's Second Treatise and Hegel's Philosophy of Rights, and offers original analyses of the concept of ownership, the idea of rights, and the relation between property and equality, finding that traditional arguments about property yield some surprisingly radical conclusions.

The Right to Private Property

When people disagree about justice and about individual rights, how should political decisions be made among them? How should they decide about issues like tax policy, welfare provision, criminal procedure, discrimination law, hate speech, pornography, political dissent and the limits of religious toleration? The most familiar answer is that these decisions should be made democratically, by majority voting among the people or their representatives. Often, however, this answer is qualified by adding ' providing that the majority decision does not violate individual rights.' In this book Jeremy Waldron has revisited and thoroughly revised thirteen of his most recent essays. He argues that the familiar answer is correct, but that the qualification about individual rights is incoherent. If rights are the very things we disagree about, then we are quarrelling precisely about what that qualification should amount to. At best, what it means is that disagreements about rights should be resolved by some other procedure, for example, by majority voting, not among the people or their representatives, but among judges in a court. This proposal - although initially attractive - seems much less agreeable when we consider that the judges too disagree about rights, and they disagree about them along exactly the same lines as the citizens. This book offers a comprehensive critique of the idea of the judicial review of legislation. The author argues that a belief in rights is not the same as a commitment to a Bill of Rights. He shows the flaws and difficulties in many common defenses of the 'democratic' character of judicial review. And he argues for an alternative approach to the problem of disagreement: when disagreements about rights arise, the respectful way to resolve them is by decision-making among the right-holders on a basis that reflects an equal respect for them as the holders of views about rights. This respect for ordinary right-holders, he argues, has been sadly lacking in the theories of justice, rights, and constitutionalism put forward in recent years by philosophers such as John Rawls and Donald Dworkin. But the book is not only about judicial review. The first tranche of essays is devoted to a theory of legislation, a theory which highlights the size, the scale and the diversity of modern legislative assemblies. Although legislation is often denigrated as a source of law, Waldron seeks to restore its tattered dignity. He deprecates the tendency to disparage legislatures and argues that such disparagement is often a way of bolstering the legitimacy of the courts, as if we had to transform our parliaments into something like the American Congress to justify importing American-style judicial reviews. Law and Disagreement redresses the balances in modern jurisprudence. It presents legislation by a representative assembly as a form of law making which is especially apt for a society whose members disagree with one another about fundamental issues of principle, for it is a form of law making that does not attempt to conceal the fact that our decisions are made and claim their authority in the midst of, not in spite of, our political and moral disagreements. This timely rights-based defense of majoritarian legislation will be welcomed by scholars of legal and political philosophy throughout the world.

Law and Disagreement

Author Jeremy Waldron has thoroughly revised thirteen of his most recent essays in order to offer a comprehensive critique of the idea of the judicial review of legislation. He argues that a belief in rights is not the same as a commitment to a Bill of Rights. This book presents legislation by a representative assembly as a form of law making which is especially apt for a society whose members disagree with one another about fundamental issues of principle.

Legal Theory & Systems

Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs: Philosophy for the White House

Jeremy Waldron has been a challenging and influential voice in the moral, political and legal debates surrounding the response to terrorism since 9/11. His contributions have spanned the major controversies of the War on Terror including the morality and legality of torture, whether security can be 'balanced' with liberty, and the relationship between public safety and individual rights. He has also tackled underlying questions essential to understanding the practical debates - including what terrorism is, and what a right to security would entail.This volume collects all Waldron's work on these issues, including six published essays and two previously unpublished essays. It also includes a new introduction in which Waldron presents an overview of his contribution, and looks at the problems currently facing the Obama administration and the UK Government in dealing with the legacy of the Bush White House.The volume will be essential reading for all those engaged with contemporary politics, security law, and the continuing struggle for an ethical response to terrorism.

Foreign & International Law

Jeremy Waldron has been a challenging and influential voice in the moral, political and legal debates surrounding the response to terrorism since 9/11. His contributions have spanned the major controversies of the War on Terror - including the morality and legality of torture, whether security can be 'balanced' with liberty, and the relationship between public safety and individual rights. He has also tackled underlying questions essential to understanding the practical debates - including what terrorism is, and what a right to security would entail. This volume collects all Waldron's work on these issues, including six published essays and two previously unpublished essays. It also includes a new introduction in which Waldron presents an overview of his contribution, and looks at the problems currently facing the Obama administration and the UK Government in dealing with the legacy of the Bush White House. The volume will be essential reading for all those engaged with contemporary politics, security law, and the continuing struggle for an ethical response to terrorism.

Writers on human dignity roughly divide between those who stress the social origins of this concept and its role in marking rank and hierarchy, and those who follow Kant in grounding dignity in an abstract and idealized philosophical conception of human beings. In these lectures, Jeremy Waldron contrives to combine attractive features of both strands. In the first lecture, Waldron presents a conception of dignity that preserves its ancient association with rank and station, thus allowing him to tap rich historical resources while avoiding what many perceive as the excessive abstraction and dubious metaphysics of the Kantian strand. At the same time he argues for a conception of human dignity that amounts to a generalization of high status across all human beings, and so attains the appealing universality of the Kantian position. The second lecture focuses particularly on the importance of dignity - understood in this way - as a status defining persons' relation to law: their presentation as persons capable of self-applying the law, capable of presenting and arguing a point of view, and capable of responding to law's demands without brute coercion. Together the two lectures illuminate the relation between dignity conceived as the ground of rights and dignity conceived as the content of rights; they also illuminate important ideas about dignity as noble bearing and dignity as the subject of a right against degrading treatment; and they help us understand the sense in which dignity is better conceived as a status than as a kind of value.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Waldron, Jeremy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Waldron, Jeremy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Waldron, Jeremy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Dignity, Rank, and Rights (The Berkeley Tanner Lectures)

Debating Targeted Killing: Counter-Terrorism or Extrajudicial Execution? (Debating Ethics)

Debating Targeted Killing: Counter-Terrorism or Extrajudicial Execution? (Debating Ethics)

The Right to Private Property (Clarendon Paperbacks)

The Right to Private Property

Law and Disagreement

Law and Disagreement

Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs: Philosophy for the White House

Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs: Philosophy for the White House

Dignity, Rank, and Rights (The Berkeley Tanner Lectures)