Contemporary discussions of private law theory often assume that parties in a private law interaction can relate as equals if, and only if, equality is cast in terms of formal equality (sometimes called transactional equality). I devote these pages to refute this conceptual view, showing that it does not draw correctly the map of the logical space in which conceptions of private law equality are located. Negatively, I argue that the formal conception of equality, most comprehensively defended by certain influential corrective justice theories, does not exhaust this space. Affirmatively, I argue that this space provides room for at least one more conception which I call ‘substantive equality’.

This two-part article addresses the “Who?” question in the hate speech debate: namely, which characteristics, social identities or statuses should or should not be treated as protected characteristics within a body hate speech laws? Using United Kingdom incitement to hatred laws as a focal point, the article outlines and critically appraises five broad approaches to specification. Part 1 deals with consistency specification, which highlights norms of consistency both within incitement to hatred law itself and in relation to other laws, practical specification, which focuses on the ostensible goals or apparent aims of incitement to hatred laws, and formal specification, which looks at the formal qualities of the characteristics themselves and to the different forms of people’s relationships with those characteristics. And Part 2 considers functional specification, which concentrates on the underlying or real functions, purposes or objectives of incitement to hatred laws, and democratic specification, which appeals to democratic procedures as well as to democratic values, norms and principles that speak to the proper scope of incitement to hatred laws. Along the way I shall also critically assess a range of substantive arguments about which particular characteristics should or should not be covered by incitement to hatred laws given the aforementioned approaches. My main conclusion shall be that each of the approaches has its strengths and weakness and that, partly because of this, no single approach is adequate by itself as a tool for specifying the proper scope of incitement to hatred laws, but also, by the same token, no approach should be ruled out entirely. Instead, the best strategy is one that combines together all five approaches in reasonable ways given the law, the characteristic and the context.

The current approach to statutory interpretation in Canada, viz., the ubiquitous “modern principle,” is an empty rhetorical gesture that masks the contingent, subjective nature of language and naturalizes institutionally sanctioned definitions. Since the late-nineties, virtually every relevant decision cites the same passage as methodology, positing the discoverability of objective textual meaning by looking to things like the “ordinary sense” and “intention of Parliament.” This is theoretically incoherent and incompatible with most credible understandings of language and interpretive subjecthood. This paper begins with a critical reading of each directive in the “modern principle” to demonstrate the normative force of its outdated approach. After discussing the legitimizing function of an ostensibly consistent method that elides the difficulties of linguistic meaning, I conclude with a preliminary discussion on the possibility of progress—or the idea of (literally) a postmodern principle of statutory interpretation.

Judicial formalism is perceived as fully compliant with the requirements of the rule of law. With its reliance on plain meaning and its reluctance to apply historical, purposive and functional interpretative premises, it seems an ideal tool for constraining discretionary judicial powers and securing the predictability of law’s application, which latter is one of the main tenets of the rule of law. In this paper, I argue that judicial formalism is based on a misguided model of language, and as such cannot deliver what it promises. In fact, judicial decisions based on formalistic reasoning are surprising to their addressees and instead of promoting predictability, they undermine it. A judicial strategy fully compliant with the rule of law requires a different vision of language than that proposed by judicial formalism, and as a consequence, a different, moderately non-formalistic conception of legal interpretation.

Among the classic arguments which advocates of open government use to fight government secrecy is the appeal to a “people’s right to know.” I argue that the employment of this idea as a conceptual weapon against state secrecy misfires. I consider two prominent arguments commonly invoked to support the people’s right to know government-held information: an appeal to human rights and an appeal to democratic citizenship. While I concede that both arguments ground the people’s right to access government information, I argue that they also limit this right and in limiting it, they establish a domain of state secrecy. The argument developed in the essay provides a novel interpretation of Dennis Thompson’s claim, who in his seminal work on the place of secrecy in democratic governance, has argued that some of the best reasons for secrecy are the same reasons that argue for openness and against secrecy.

When exploring the relations between the concept and the nature of law, ample philosophical reflection has been dedicated to the relations between the intension of terms (or the content of concepts) and their extension. Much less consideration has been given to the causal relations between concept and thing within socially constructed entities. This paper examines the interactive causal relationship between law and the concept we have of it and reflects on its implications for legal philosophy. First, it explains the causal role played by concepts in processes of social construction and applies this explanation to the analysis of the special case of law. Second, it compares this causal role played by the concept of law to the role assigned to it in the context of externalist theories of meaning and mental content. Lastly, it demonstrates the advantages of seeing law as an interactive kind in answering some contemporary methodological difficulties stemming from conceptual plurality or uncertainty, and in opening new avenues for research in legal philosophy.

There are a set of wrongs that are normatively distinct as ‘criminal wrongs’, and yet, there is disagreement as to ‘the basic features of criminal liability’ that explain this normative distinctiveness. The only consensus has been that criminal wrongs are ‘public wrongs’. For some, they are public wrongs in the sense that they infringe the values and interests for which the community has a shared and mutual concern. For others, they are public wrongs in the sense that they are the wrongs that public officials are responsible for punishing. A third view is that they are public wrongs in the sense that there are procedural advantages of having public officials empowered to address the wrongdoing. I argue here that the first two views are analytically inseparable: the considerations that explain the wrongs that merit social prohibition are the same considerations that explain the censuring and punitive response of the criminal law. I also argue here that, contrary to the third view, the powers of public officials in criminal law procedures follow from, rather than explain, the concept of a crime being a public wrong. Procedural advantages can explain how criminal wrongs are public wrongs, but they cannot explain why criminal wrongs are public wrongs.

Current legal trends tend to obscure the sharp distinction between substance and procedure. This tendency is manifested, inter alia, as a growing dependence of procedural norms in substantive law; greater flexibility of procedural norms; and growing judicial discretion to deviate from procedural rules. In order to evaluate these contemporary trends, we provide a theoretical analysis of the basic relationships between procedural norms and substantive legal outcomes. This framework reveals the moral commitments underling these modern trends as opposed to the moral foundations of the traditional view that legal decisions should be made under rigid procedural constraints. Focusing on criminal evidence law, the proposed theoretical framework is applied to some of the ongoing legal debates, such as about the admissibility of evidence seized in violation of rights, the exclusion of statistical and character evidence, and the flexibility of the reasonable doubt standard of proof.

During his career, Ronald Dworkin wrote extensively on an impressive range of issues in moral, political, and legal philosophy, but, like many of his contemporaries, international law remained a topic of relative neglect. His most sustained work on international law is a posthumously published article, “A New Philosophy for International Law” (2013), which displays some familiar aspects of his views in general jurisprudence, in addition to some novel (though perhaps surprising) arguments as well. This paper argues that the moralized account of international law we might have expected is conspicuously missing from this posthumous article; with Dworkin advancing an argument based on a form of political realism instead.

This article revisits long-standing debates about objective interpretation in the common law system by focusing on a crime novel by Agatha Christie and judicial opinion by the Ontario High Court. Conventions of the crime fiction and judicial opinion genres inform readers’ assumption that the two texts are objectively interpretable. This article challenges this assumption by demonstrating that unreliable narration is often, if not always, a feature of written communication. Judges, like crime fiction writers, are storytellers. While these authors might intend for their stories to be read in certain ways, the potential for interpretive disconnect between unreliable narrators and readers means there can be no essential quality that marks a literary or legal text’s meaning as objective. Taken to heart, this demands that judges try to narrate their decisions more reliably so that readers are able to interpret the texts correctly when it matters most.