This thesis is a study of the coerciveness of legal systems. I defend two main claims: that typical legal systems are much less coercive than most legal and political philosophers think, and that legal systems are not necessarily coercive. My defence is developed in three parts. The first is dedicated to building the necessary theoretical framework to defend the main claims of this thesis. This is where I offer a rigorous formulation of the questions that this thesis addresses and contextualise them within broader debates about the relationship between law and coercion. A substantial portion of the first part of the thesis is devoted to the development of two accounts: an account of coercion and an account of the conditions legal systems must satisfy in order to be coercive. The second part is where I advance two arguments for the claim that typical legal systems are much less coercive than it is usually thought. The first is an argument that establishes that our legal systems rarely issue conditional threats. Given that issuing conditional threats is a necessary condition for any legal system to be coercive - or so I claim in the first part of the thesis - the fact that our legal systems rarely do so undermines the view that our legal systems are pervasively coercive. The second argument is based on the reasons why citizens comply with legal mandates. I analyse the relevant empirical data and show that compliance is not frequently owed to the threat of unwelcome consequences. This should not have been the case had our legal systems been as coercive as philosophers generally think. The third part deals with the claim that legal systems are necessarily coercive. There I address some methodological concerns that this claim gives rise to and propose two arguments for viewing coerciveness as a contingent feature of our legal systems.

Criminology and legal philosophy still have much to gain from the exchange of ideas. However, attention must be paid to how this exchange is being made and what is being transferred. This project attempts to examine a currently unacknowledged exchange between the disciplines; that of an historicist, logos-centric method of knowledge production. Specifically, using a refashioned dialectic method, the debate between H.L.A. Hart and Lon L. Fuller will be compared and contrasted with Robert Agnew’s representation of criminology. This will give some clarity to the different ways by which the disciplines (re)produce knowledge. Importantly, the process of (re)production detailed here is characterized by a (dis)unity between how the disciplines rhetorically justify their methodology and the actual analyses being produced. To give this process colour, it will be examined in relation to criminology’s crisis. Ultimately, the analysis presented here raises doubts about the truthfulness of legal philosophical and criminological knowledge produced in this way.

The issues raised in this thesis concern the adverse effects of EU's wildlife trade regulations, mainly the unequal treatment of captive and wild-born endangered animals. The nature of these regulations is analyzed from an animal law perspective. The purpose of the analysis is to determine whether the regulations are anthropocentric and, if so, what issues arise from it. Previous research has studied the legal personhood of animals in relation to animal welfare. This thesis continues that discussion by examining legal animal rights as a potential solution to the issues of wildlife trade. The analysis is pragmatic and employs a non-formalistic view of law. Consequentially, it uses a doctrinal and legal philosophical approach, meaning that sources outside of law are integral to the discussion. The results of the analysis show that EU’s wildlife trade regulations are anthropocentric and that this has led to severe issues regarding the welfare of endangered animals. In addition, the practical enforcement of the regulations has proven defective. Legal rights for animals seem to provide a viable solution to these issues, yet their practical implementation is complicated. The reasons for this are primarily financial and opinion-based. Therefore, a step-by-step approach, starting with limited fundamental rights and resulting in full legal personhood for animals, is recommended for this approach to be successful.

abstract: Art and law have a troubled relationship that is defined by steep hierarchies placing art subject to law. But beyond the interplay of transgressions and regulations, manifest in a number of high-profile cases, there are more intricate connections between the two disciplines. By expanding the notion of law into the concept of a hybrid collectif of legality, the hierarchies flatten and unfamiliar forms of possible interactions emerge. Legality, the quality of something being legal, serves as a model to show the capricious workings of law outside of its own profession. New juridical actors—such as algorithms—already challenge traditional regulatory powers and art could assume a similar role. This thesis offers a point of departure for the involvement of art in shaping emergent legalities that transcend existent jurisdictions through computer code. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Art History 2018

A sound theory of adjudication and of judicial duty requires or presupposes a sound theory of law and of legal argument. Jurisprudential inquiry is properly grounded not in reflections on conceptual properties of law but in reflections on human goods and needs as understood in a morally articulated theory of practical reason and compactly expressed in the normative concept of the common good. Such reflections confirm that law exists, in its central case, as a means to various types of authoritative co-ordination solutions. The underdetermined nature of (a) the positive requirements of practical reasonableness and the common good and of (b) the appropriate means of enforcing compliance and remedying non-compliance with either these requirements or the determinate negative precepts of practical reasonableness entails that a practically necessary aspect of the positive law’s role is constituting the requirements of justice, i.e. of what is due to whom generally and in particular situations (including situations where an injustice has been or is alleged to have been done). As a distinct and practically necessary mode of legal co-ordination for the common good, adjudication, in its central case, answers litigated questions of justice by applying all relevant law in accordance with the legal system’s practice of legal argument. Thus adjudication is performed by authoritative law-applying institutions precisely because it is about answering questions of justice, and not despite that fact. Theories of law developed on the assumption that it is possible to understand the ‘what’ of law without reliance on any moral judgments deny any practically necessary connection between (a) the promotion of justice and the common good and (b) the nature of law, in its central case, and, hence, the adjudicative application of the law. In the absence of this connection a judicial duty to do justice according to law is unintelligible.

The impressive growth of antidiscrimination law in liberal democracies in the past few decades belies the inadequacy of the normative bases on which it has been sought to be justified. Popular ideals such as rationality, equality and dignity have been unsuccessful in providing a coherent liberal framework for the fundamental aspects of the practice of antidiscrimination law. In this thesis, I have argued that a unified normative framework comprising autonomy and dignity-as-autonomy does a markedly better job of justifying the most fundamental aspects of these laws. The ideal of personal autonomy is understood here as a principle that seeks to guarantee an adequate range of valuable options to individuals. Dignity-as-autonomy is understood to be an expressive norm, which forbids certain persons from expressing contempt for the autonomy of another. These ideals have different forms: autonomy is a non-action-regarding principle, while dignity-as-autonomy is action-regarding. They are also distinct substantively: it is often possible to violate one of them without affecting the other. When these ideals make incompatible demands, I argue that those made by autonomy should prevail. Mandating positive action and reasonable accommodation on the one hand, and prohibiting indirect discrimination and harassment on the other, are essential features of a model of antidiscrimination law based on this framework. Further, under this framework, antidiscrimination law is not vulnerable to objections such as ‘levelling down’ and responds well to claims of discrimination on ‘intersectional grounds’. Furthermore, it is not essential to find an ‘appropriate comparator’ in order to prove discrimination. This model also explains when, and under what conditions, can some forms of discrimination be ‘justified’. Finally, on an autonomy-based model, antidiscrimination law is only one of several complementary tools that should be employed to protect and promote personal autonomy.

The introduction (§§1-33) to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is the key to the work’s structure, its argumentative strategy and it functions as a foundation for Hegel’s practical philosophy in general. Its explanatory potential is best realised by situating it within the systematic context of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences and the Science of Logic. This interpretative strategy reveals that for Hegel, the true site of agency is ‘the concept’ and that particular individuals and their arbitrary activity are at best the concept’s ‘appearance’. This does not render their activity ‘false’ but describes how willing and freedom are ‘for us’ as self-conscious subjects that confront an external world. For Hegel, ‘true’ freedom in the sense of ‘self-determination to itself’ resides with the universal and singular concept that negatively unites itself with its objectivity to form what he calls the ‘Idea of the will’ or ‘right’. This interpretation contradicts the mainstream of contemporary Hegel scholarship since its proponents either deny the reality of the universal concept as agent or absolutely differentiate between the concept’s activity (subjective action) and its objective reality (norms, institutions). This prevents the interpreter from appreciating that it is Hegel’s concept that is manifest in form of particular willing subjects and their socio-political context. Since most commentators associate ‘activity’ or ‘freedom’ primarily with particular subjects, their notions of freedom are, by Hegel’s standards, either empty and fail to describe actual willing or they fall short of the standard of ‘true freedom’, viz. ‘self-determination to itself’ because their agents’ freedom depends on something that differs from the agents.1 The present commentary argues that such a dilemma can be avoided by an interpretation that attributes agency to Hegel’s concept. By determining itself to be Idea, the universal concept determines itself (as subject) to itself (as object) and rational agency and rational institutions are grasped as aspects of the same entity. This is what Hegel calls the unconditioned Idea of right or ‘objective freedom’.

This dissertation proposes a normative theory of political representation grounded in popular sovereignty and positive law, rather than in democracy and efficient labour allocation. The first three chapters assess the contributions to the idea of representation of three early modern thinkers. Hobbes proposes a formal model of authorised action at a distance, but, contrary to a long-standing consensus in political thought, not an actual theory of representation. Rousseau, a well-known opponent of representation, proposes ideas about government, sovereignty, and positive law, which, despite his contrary intentions, form a foundation for a normative theory of representation. Sieyes refines concepts from both to create a more mature practical statement on representation which he attempts to implement in three revolutionary constitutions in France in the 1790's. The next three chapters make an argument connecting representation to law creation. First the concept of a decision is defined, and then abstracted through various levels of political authority and action. Law creation is distinguished from all other classes of authorised political decision making by four unique properties which tie in with problems initially raised by the early modern philosophers regarding popular sovereignty. Various numbers of authorised actors are considered as constituting political bodies credentialed to carry out the relevant decisions identified as meeting the minimal conditions of law, and ultimately only assembly — a body numbering in the hundreds, with a reserved place for making recognised decisions, and a formal connection to expressed popular preferences — meets the conceptual requirements of the class of decisions mooted. The thesis ends with an argument connecting law to representation as the solution to the problem of plurality.

This thesis examines the rationale for religious liberty in England and Wales. Currently, United Kingdom religious liberty literature shows very little sustained interrogation of the topic. Authors are likely to assume religious liberty is, most notably, a species of personal autonomy. This fails to explain why we should care about religious liberty and deepens religion’s privatisation, its separation from politics or public life. Drawing from a theological sensibility known as Radical Orthodoxy (RO), this thesis criticises current assumptions and argues that religious liberty discourse should be re-envisioned. The Introduction and Chapter One explore the current problems facing religious liberty discourse and map rationales given by prominent authors. Chapter Two argues that the main problem is that current discourse is shaped by a secularisation narrative: the differentiation of religious and secular spheres. Chapter Three relates the RO argument that this differentiation is underpinned by three themes, all of which have theological components: the rise of secular order as the protection of individual rights; the invention of private religion in modernity; and the contemporary shift to 'authenticity' or diffuse individual experiences as the hallmark of religion. Chapter Four contends that these three themes are echoed in religious liberty discourse and jurisprudence, leaving us with the question of why religious liberty matters. Chapters Five and Six explore the RO-influenced alternative, in theory and with reference to common questions in religious liberty discourse: the relationship between an individual claimant and the group; the reality of plural religious traditions; and the tension between sexual orientation non-discrimination and religious liberty. On the RO-influenced account, religious liberty concerns, against sphere differentiation, a commitment to the flourishing of multiple groups contributing to desirable social ends, understood ultimately as participating in the life of 'charity', the love of God and of others. This encapsulates two themes, both rooted in the Christian tradition: judgement against politics (as reflected in the secular order), and transformation of society along social pluralist lines. These two themes, the thesis argues, better explain why religious liberty matters.

La thèse analyse les transformations de l’encadrement juridique de la guerre, et montre sa reconfiguration contemporaine dans la régulation de la sécurité globale. Celle-ci se caractérisé par des assemblages normatifs nouveaux et par une rationalité managériale visant à gérer la sécurité par l’anticipation des risques. / The dissertation analyzes transformations in the legal construction of war, claiming it is now being reimagined within a global regulation of security. This contemporary security governance is characterized by new normative assemblages and by a managerial rationality, aiming at managing security by preventing risk.