Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Moral Officials, Retail Justice, and Three Caveats
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Seven Questions about What Is Fit for an Official to Do
- 1 Law and Office
- 2 The Stakes: The Interests of Others in Official Actions
- 3 Officials' Obligations Arise from More Than the Law Alone
- 4 The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials
- 5 Patterns of Relationship between Legal and Moral Obligations
- 6 Breaching Obligations
- 7 Tools for the Trade: Maxims and Fallacies
- Epilogue: What the Official Ought to Do: Law and Justice
- Appendix: Taxonomy of Headings: The Lawes and Libertyes of Massachusetts (Discussed in Chapter 1)
- Index
- References
2 - The Stakes: The Interests of Others in Official Actions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Moral Officials, Retail Justice, and Three Caveats
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Seven Questions about What Is Fit for an Official to Do
- 1 Law and Office
- 2 The Stakes: The Interests of Others in Official Actions
- 3 Officials' Obligations Arise from More Than the Law Alone
- 4 The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials
- 5 Patterns of Relationship between Legal and Moral Obligations
- 6 Breaching Obligations
- 7 Tools for the Trade: Maxims and Fallacies
- Epilogue: What the Official Ought to Do: Law and Justice
- Appendix: Taxonomy of Headings: The Lawes and Libertyes of Massachusetts (Discussed in Chapter 1)
- Index
- References
Summary
Those who propose to take charge of the affairs of government should not fail to remember two of Plato's rules: first, to keep the good of the people so clearly in view that regardless of their own interests they will make their every action conform to that; second, to care for the welfare of the whole body politic and not in serving the interests of some one party to betray the rest.
Cicero, On Duties, Book I, Chapter XXVChapter 1 presented one way to understand the law as the result of the actions of officials, in which the law is an archive of rules created by past officials, applied in a current culture of official expectation and practice, in which individual officials carry out their offices with sole discretion yet as part of a corporate whole. A working definition of the official follows from that, which is both formal and functional: an official of the law is any person who holds an office that is given authority by law to act in a way that can alter the opportunities or condition of another person through the apparatus of the legal system. That is hardly a revelation, but it is a necessary foundation for asking what interests different people have in the actions that are taken by anyone holding that office.
There are two broad answers. The first is that the law requires that others care about officials' actions because others must do what officials say.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- I Do Solemnly SwearThe Moral Obligations of Legal Officials, pp. 49 - 101Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
References
introduction to Social Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume, and Rousseau (Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar
, “The Rule of Recognition and the Constitution,” 85 Michigan Law Review621 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Normative (or Ethical) Positivism,” in Hart's Postscript: Essays on the Postscript to the Concept of Law 411, 424–53 (, ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar
Foundations of Colonial America: A Documentary History (, ed.) (6 vols.) (Chelsea House, 1973)
, Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts: A Study in Tradition and Design135–40 (University Press of America, 1960)Google Scholar
, ed., Colonial Justice in Western Massachusetts, 1639–1702: The Pynchon Court Record, an Original Judges' Diary of the Administration of Justice in the Springfield Courts in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Harvard University Press, 1961)
The Lawes and Liberties of Massachusetts: Reprinted from the copy of the 1648 edition in the Henry E. Huntington Library (1647) (, ed.) (Legal Classics Library, 1982)
, “Paul Dudley: Heritage, Observation, and Conscience,” 5 Massachusetts Legal History (2000)Google Scholar
, “The Concept of a Supreme Court: Massachusetts Bay, 1630–1686,” in The History of the Law in Massachusetts: The Supreme Judicial Court 1692–199243 (, ed.) (Supreme Judicial Court Historical Society, 1992)Google Scholar
& , American Colonial Courts and Lawyers: An Annotated Bibliography (Library of Congress, 1976)Google Scholar
, The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture (Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar
, Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664–1830 (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)Google Scholar
, The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–38: A Documentary History (Wesleyan University Press, 1968)Google Scholar
, Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (University of North Carolina Press, 1962)Google Scholar
, The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–49275–6 (, , & , eds.) (Harvard University Press, 1996)Google Scholar
, Crime and Punishment in Early Massachusetts, 1620–1692: A Documentary History408 (Beacon Press, 1966)Google Scholar
, Saints and Strangers: Being the Lives of the Pilgrim Fathers & Their Families, with Their Friends & Foes; & an Account of Their Posthumous Wanderings in Limbo, Their Final Resurrection & Rise to Glory, & the Strange Pilgrimages of Plymouth Rock (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1945)Google Scholar
, Legal Development in Colonial Massachusetts, 1630–8696–111 (Studies in History, Economics and Public Law 37:2, no. 98, Columbia University Press, 1910)Google Scholar
, Journal of the Transactions and Occurences in the Settlement of Massachusetts and the Other New England Colonies in 2 Winthrop's History of New England64–6, 116–20 (April 22, 1642) (, ed.) (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908)Google Scholar
, “A Famous Colonial Litigation: The Case between Richard Sherman and Capt. Robert Keayne, 1642,” 30 Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society217 (1920)Google Scholar
, “Massachusetts and the Common Law: The Declaration of 1646,” 31 American Historical Review443 (1926)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Introductory Essay,” in Plymouth Court Records: 1686–1859 (, ed.) (Pilgrim Society, 1978)Google Scholar
, The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided (University Press of Kansas, 2005)Google Scholar
, “Cultural Heterogeneity and Law: Pornography, Blasphemy, and the First Amendment,” 76 California Law Review297 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Ireland's Secular Revolution: The Waning Influence of the Catholic Church and the Future of Ireland's Blasphemy Law,” 18 Connecticut Journal of International Law395 (2002)Google Scholar
, “Real Laws; in Law, Morality and Society100 ( & , eds.) (Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar
, De Corpore Politico, or, the Elements of Law, Moral and Politick with Discourses upon Severall Heads, as of the Law of Nature, Oathes and Covenants, Several Kinds of Government: With the Changes and Revolutions of Them104 (T. R. for J. Ridley, 1652)Google Scholar
The Sixteen Satires45 (, trans.) (Penguin, 1998)
, Witchcraft and Witch Trials: A History of English Witchcraft and Its Legal Perspectives, 1542 to 1736 (Barry Rose Law Publishers, 2000)Google Scholar
The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692239–46 ( & , eds.) (Da Capo Press, 1977)
, “Spectral Evidence, Non-Spectral Acts of Witchcraft and Confessions in Salem in 1692,” 40 Historical Journal331 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, A Farther Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches with the Observations of a Person Who Was upon the Place Several Days When the Suspected Witches Were First Taken into Examination: to Which Is Added, Cases of Conscience Concerning Witchcrafts and Evil Spirits Personating Men / Written at the Request of the Ministers of New-England by Increase Mather (J. Dunton, 1693)Google Scholar
and , The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651–1695146–52 (University of Toronto Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “William Stoughton,” in Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts From 1630 to the Revolution in 1775242–7 (Little and Brown, 1840)Google Scholar
, “Samuel Sewall,” in Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts From 1630 to the Revolution in 1775258–63 (Little and Brown, 1840)Google Scholar
The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729297 (, ed.) (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1973)
, Judge Sewall's Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience (Fourth Estate, 2005)Google Scholar
, Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692, 91–109 (Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar
Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth Century New England: A Documentary History, 1638–1693315–54 (2d ed.) (, ed.) (Northeastern University Press, 1999)
, “Trial by Jury of Things Supernatural,” in Legal Essays 329, 341 (1908) (Rothman, 1972)Google Scholar
, Political Authority and Obligation in Aristotle178–218 (Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Introduction,” in Social Contract: Locke, Hume, Rousseau (Oxford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar
, “The State Interest in the Good Citizen: Constitutional Balance between the Citizen and the Perfectionist State,” 45 Hastings Law Journal969, nn.1–3 (1994)Google Scholar
, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (1957) (Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar
The Spirit of the Laws (1741) (, , & , eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
, “Defensor Fidei: The Travails of a Post-Realist Formalist,” 47 Florida Law Review815 (1995)Google Scholar
, The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric244–5 (Paul Dry Books, 2002)Google Scholar
, The Roosevelt Court: Study in Judicial Politics and Values, 1937–1947286 (Macmillan, 1947)Google Scholar
, “Judicial Activism: Old and New,” 55 University of Virginia Law Review385 (1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality, and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse,” 16Cardozo Law Review245 (1994)Google Scholar
, “Fire, Metaphor, and Constitutional Myth-Making,” 93 Georgetown Law Journal181 (2004)Google Scholar
, “What Metaphors Mean,” in On Metaphor 29, 44 (Sheldon Sacks, ed.) (University of Chicago Press, 1979)Google Scholar
, “Let Me Hear Your Web Sights: Visual and Aural Metaphors for the Internet,” 40 Idaho Law Review299 (2004)Google Scholar
& , “Gore, Gibson, and Goldsmith: The Evolution of Internet Metaphors in Law and Commentary,” 16 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology (2002)Google Scholar
& , More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar
& , Metaphors in Mind: Transformation through Symbolic Modeling (Developing Company Press, 2000)Google Scholar
& , Resolving Traumatic Memories: Metaphors and Symbols in Psychotherapy (Irvington Publishers, 1989)Google Scholar
, “What Metaphors Mean,” in On Metaphors 29, 30 (, ed.) (University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar
, The Rule of Metaphor, Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language (, trans.) (University of Toronto Press, 1975)Google Scholar
Stereotypes as Explanations: The Formation of Meaningful Beliefs about Social Groups (, , & , eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRef
, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think310–21 (2d ed.) (University of Chicago Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Defending the Use of Narrative and Giving Content to the Voice of Color: Rejecting the Imposition of Process Theory in Legal Scholarship,” 79 Iowa Law Review803 (1994)Google Scholar
, Two Treatises of Government: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and Apparatus Criticus15–17 (, ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1967)Google Scholar
, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar
, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Princeton University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” in Political Writings 309, 310–11 ( & , eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar
Law's Violence ( & , eds.) (University of Michigan Press, 1992)
, Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising (Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar
, Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (Vintage, 1958)Google Scholar
, “The Constitution of Empire: The Case for the Colonists,” 124 University of Pennsylvania Law Review1157 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Stories, the Statistics, and the Law: Why ‘Driving While Black’ Matters,” 84 Minnesota Law Review265–326 (1999)Google Scholar
, The Centurions' Shield: A History of the Los Angeles Police Department, Its Badges and Insignia (RHS Enterprises, 1996)Google Scholar
, Second Treatise, in , Two Treatises of Government: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and Apparatus Criticus15–17 (, ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1967)Google Scholar
, Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar
, “Is It Better That Ten Guilty Persons Go Free Than That One Innocent Person Be Convicted?” 23 Criminal Justice Ethics3 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Metamorphoses of Reasonable Doubt: How Changes in the Burden of Proof Have Weakened the Presumption of Innocence,” 78 Notre Dame Law Review1165 (2003)Google Scholar
, “The State Interest in the Good Citizen: Constitutional Balance between the Citizen and the Perfectionist State,” 45 Hastings Law Journal 969, 1027 (1994)Google Scholar
, “Enforcing Rights Generated in Court-Connected Mediation: Tension between the Aspirations of a Private Facilitative Process and the Reality of Public Adversarial Justice,” 19 Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution509 (2004)Google Scholar
, “Spectral Evidence, Non-Spectral Acts of Witchcraft, and Confession at Salem in 1692,” 40 The Historical Journal331 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (HarperCollins, 2004)Google Scholar
, Does the Law Morally Bind the Poor? Or, What Good's the Constitution When You Can't Afford a Loaf of Bread (NYU Press, 1996)Google Scholar
, Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas (1861) (Everyman's Library, 1972)Google Scholar
, Social Statics: or, The Conditions Essential to Happiness Specified, and the First of them Developed (John Chapman, 1851)Google Scholar
, “What Is a Tragedy of the Commons? Overfishing and the Campaign Spending Problem,” 69 Albany Law Review75 (2005–2006)Google Scholar
& , “Subglobal Regulation of the Global Commons: The Case of Climate Change,” 32 Ecology Law Quarterly183 (2005)Google Scholar
, The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006)Google Scholar
, “Officials' Obligations to Children: The Perfectionist Response to Liberals and Libertarians, or Why Adult Rights Are Not Trumps over the State Duty to Ensure Each Child's Education,” 2005 Michigan State Law Review809Google Scholar
, “The Resurgence and Validity of Antismoking Legislation,” 7 University of California-Davis Law Review167 (1974)Google Scholar
, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Harvard University Press, 1997)Google Scholar
, “Address to Congress, December 1, 1862,” in 5 Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln527 (, ed.) (Rutgers University Press, 1953)Google Scholar
, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (Crown, 2005)Google Scholar
, “Passion and Nation: War, Crime, and Guilt in the Individual and the Collective,” 78 Notre Dame Law Review751 (2003)Google Scholar
, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423: Conjunctions of Religion and Power (Cornell University Press, 2003)Google Scholar
& , “Social, Political, and Philosophical Perspectives on Felony Disenfranchisement in America: Civic Engagement and Reintegration: Toward a Community-Focused Theory and Practice,” 36 Columbia Human Rights Law Review241 (2004)Google Scholar
, 2 Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology956 ( & , eds.) (University of California, 1968)Google Scholar
, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” in –, Political Writings309 ( & , eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar
, Capital Corruption: The New Attack on American Democracy i (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1984)Google Scholar
, The Cloaking of Power: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism (University of Chicago Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
& , Trust in the Law: Encouraging Public Cooperation with the Police and the Courts63–8 (Russell Sage Foundation, 2002)Google Scholar
, Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption Are Undermining America (Three Rivers Press, 2004)Google Scholar
, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It398–401 (Basic Books, 1989)Google Scholar
, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” in Political Writings364–8 (Peter Lassman & Donald Speirs, eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar
, 9 The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Part VI, “The Scapegoat” (Macmillan, 1913)Google Scholar