Ngaire Naffine

Law's Meaning of Life

Philosophy, Religion, Darwin and the Legal Person

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

The perennial question posed by the philosophically-inclined lawyer is "What is law?" or perhaps "What is the nature of law?" This book poses an associated (but no less fundamental) question about law which has received much less attention in the legal literature. This question is: "Who is law for?" Whenever people go to law, they are judged for their suitability as legal persons. They are given or refused rights and duties on the basis of ideas about who matters. These ideas are basic to legal-decision making. They form the intellectual and moral underpinning of legal thought. They help to determine whether law is essentially for rational human beings, or whether it also speaks to and for human infants, adults with impaired reasoning, the comatose, fetuses, and even animals. Are these the right kind of beings to enter legal relationships and so become legal persons? Are they considered sufficiently rational, sacred, or simply human? Is law meant for them? This book reveals and evaluates the type of thinking that goes into these fundamental legal and metaphysical determinations about who should be capable of bearing legal rights and duties. It identifies and analyzes four influential ways of thinking about legal persons, each with its own metaphysical suppositions. One approach derives from rationalist philosophy, a second from religion, a third from evolutionary biology, while the fourth is strictly legalistic and so endeavors to eschew metaphysics altogether. The book offers a clear, coherent, and critical account of these complex moral and intellectual processes entailed in the making of legal persons.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury 3PL
• Seitenzahl: 226
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Januar 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 156mm x 12mm
• Gewicht: 351g
• ISBN-13: 9781841138664
• ISBN-10: 1841138665
• Artikelnr.: 25557978

Autorenporträt

Ngaire Naffine

Inhaltsangabe

1. The Question: Who is Law For? Is this the Right Question? The Question
Disputed Matching Law to Life: the Question Affirmed Competing Views of
Human Nature and their Implications for Law The Concept of the Person and
its Problematic Nature Instability of the Concept of the Legal Person
Social Significance of the Concept and its Implications for Justice Law's
Changing Community of Persons The Mission Finding the Legal Person 2. The
Debate: Legalists v Realists The Positions The Legalists The Metaphysical
Realists The Rationalists The Religionists The Naturalists Setting the
Boundaries of Personhood Disciplinary Influences The Thinkers and their
Creation Stories Etymology of Persons 3. Strictly Legal Persons The Person
as a Purely Legal Creation Law as a Closed System The Legal Person as Legal
Language Use Hart and Wittgenstein Keeping the Legal Legal 4. Loosening the
Strictures The Legal Person as a Cluster Concept Division Between Persons
and Property Chameleon Nature of Personality Strictly Conceived The
Legalist's Person in the Courtroom Can We be Strict about Persons? Hohfeld
on Legal Conceptions Real Uses of Persons 5. Moral Agents and
Responsibility Creation Story The Legal and the Philosophical Person
Influence of Kant Gray on Legal Persons and the Rational Will Will Theory
of the Person Respect for Persons and Responsibility The Legal Subject of
Criminal Law Two Criminal Legal Thinkers The Uncompromising Michael Moore
John Gardner: the English Rationalist Are We Really So Rational? 6. Persons
of Limited Reason Ronald Dworkin on the Patient as Author of a Life
Safeguarding the Future Person: Dena Davis and the Child's Right to an Open
Future Persons in Training: Mrs Gillick and the Contraceptive Advice
Rationalists on Non-persons Recognising Reason Emotional Intelligence 7.
The Divine Spark: the Principle of Human Sanctity The Human Rights Movement
and the Revival of Belief in Human Preciousness Ronald Dworkin on Human
Sanctity The Human Person and the Catholic Church John Finnis on Law's
Person Implications 8. Human and Non-human Animals: the Implications of
Darwin What We might have Expected after Darwin Intelligent Design and
Kitzmiller v Dover Humans as Animals Dismantling the Human/Animal Divide
Peter Singer and the Levelling of Humans The Cases of Baby Theresa and Baby
Fae Animal Lawyers and the Elevation of Animals Steven Wise and the
Intelligent Apes Gary Francione and the Abolition of Property in Animals
Legal Response Cass Sunstein: Questioning the Species Divide Buttressing
Humanity 9. Embodiment: Humans as Biological Beings Kant and the Body in
Law Principle of Bodily Integrity Making Sense of the Legal Body: the
Compromised Naturalism of Ronald Dworkin Dawkins v Dworkin Humbling
Naturalism of Gray and Fernandez-Armesto Embracing our Creature Status:
Moral Philosophers and Legal Feminists Jennifer Nedelsky and the Bounded
Self Reconciling Agency and Animality 10. The Myths We Live By Cash Value
Four Metaphysical Approaches A Fifth Approach: the Relational Person Legal
Philosophies as Acts of Faith and Incommensurable World Views Distinctive
Nature of the Legal Enterprise Why Law is Still Flexible Should Personality
be Severed from Human Beings? Implications for Justice The Myths We Live By