This chapter presents an overview of Plato’s moral realism. The metaphysical framework of Plato’s moral realism is explained. This framework’s fundamental principle is the superordinate Idea of the Good, which is both the anchor for moral realism and the unhypothetical first principle of all. Thus, for Plato normativity is woven into metaphysics (Section 1.1). A taxonomy of types of moral realism is provided within which Plato’s moral realism can be situated (Section 1.2). Plato’s moral realism is compared to versions of antimoral realism and naturalistic versions of moral realism (Section 1.3). The priority of “good” to “right” in Plato is explained (Section 1.4). The priority of “good” to “value” is further explained. The universality of the Good goes beyond objectivity and is intended to preclude the possibility that “good” and “good for me” can possibly conflict (Section 1.5).

This chapter considers the law of civil remedies: the definition and nature of ‘remedies’ and the relationship between remedy and right. It provides extracts which discuss the ongoing debate about whether judges should have discretion in the remedies they grant. It considers the nature of the common law and equity divide in Australian law as expressed in case law and in academic discussion. Finally, it outlines a functional approach to remedies.

Kant’s Rechtslehre is concerned with the freedom that is to coexist with the freedom of choice of others in accordance with a universal law. I argue that this freedom is not to be directly equated with freedom of choice: it is instead the independence that is a condition of genuine free choice because it ensures that one is not constrained to act in accordance with the choices of others. Kant’s distinction between active and passive citizenship, however, is incompatible with this notion of independence because property rights of a certain type make it possible for some citizens to dominate other citizens, who cannot, therefore, be classed as genuinely independent. Thus the concept of property is central to the question of how right can secure the freedom of citizens. I show that Kant understands this concept in terms of a relation between persons with respect to things, rather than in terms of only a relation between a person and a thing. I argue that although Kant appears to argue in favour of private property, he does not sufficiently justify this form of property by demonstrating that other forms of property would be less compatible with the freedom that right is to secure and guarantee.

I begin with an account of the fundamental aims of Hegel’s ‘science of right’ so as to show how his account of property faces two key challenges: justifying the concept of property and any specific form of it, on the one hand, and integrating property into the system of right, which includes subordinating it to any higher moments of right, on the other. I then turn to Hegel’s argument for private property. I distinguish between two interpretations of his argument: the ‘embodiment’ interpretation and the ‘recognition’ interpretation. I identify serious problems with the first interpretation and then argue for a version of the second one that entails the type of triadic model of the concept of property developed by Fichte and already implicit in Kant’s Rechtslehre. I show that this triadic model, and thus Hegel’s full argument for private property, becomes explicit only at the stage of contract. Next, I discuss how Hegel seeks to integrate private property into ethical life, and I argue that the idea of ethical life is, in fact, more compatible with some form of common or collective property because this form of property is more expressive of this idea.

This chapter begins with Fichte’s early theory of property as presented in his defence of the French Revolution from 1793. My intention is to show how tensions within this theory of property can be explained in terms of an unsuccessful attempt to establish a necessary connection between the right to property and labour. In the later Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte’s attempt to explain the connection between the right to property and labour leads him to reject his earlier dyadic (person–thing) model of the concept of property. A triadic (person–thing–person) model is instead shown to follow from Fichte’s understanding of the concept of right and the role of recognition in his theory of right. The connection between the right to property and labour is explained in terms of how each person’s property rights must enable him or her to live from his or her labour. This will be shown to demand forms of property other than private property in relation to certain activities and the resources required by them. Fichte nevertheless speaks of ‘absolute property’ and thereby suggests the possibility of some role for private property within the rational state.

Pacts or “social contracts” form the basis of sovereignty in many early modern theories of political authority, and in Pufendorf’s too. Most such theories treat the pact as the means by which a pre-existing right—for example, divine right, or the natural right of individuals grounded in their strength, reason, or property—is transferred to a sovereign on the condition that the right be protected, to be rescinded if it is not. For Pufendorf, however, there is no pre-existing right since the sovereignty pact creates a new right—the right to issue unchallengeable commands for the purposes of achieving social peace—by instituting two new moral personae: the citizen who obeys the sovereign in exchange for protection, and the sovereign invested with the right of absolute command to provide social peace. Since Pufendorf’s sovereignty is constituted not by a prior moral right, but rather by the capacity to exercise unchallengeable authority for the end of social peace, there is no naturally rightful form of government. Pufendorf thus takes a neutral and pluralistic view of the three traditional forms of government—monarchical, aristocratic and democratic—insofar as each is capable of exercising the capacity for sovereign rule.

The Catholic Church holds the concept of natural law in reference to a created order. While this concept has been put aside in philosophy and science the Church deems that creation implies an inherent relationship between all its components. The Social doctrine of the Church is built on the concept of natural law accessible to human intelligence. The teaching of Thomas Aquinas drawing from Aristotle remains the main source of Catholic understanding of natural law. Natural law and natural rights are not to be confused. Right refers to a natural order of things, which is the natural law apprehended by reason at a given moment. The source of human rights is entailed in a measure inscribed in the order created by God. So natural rights are determined on the basis of what constitutes a just relationship between persons in accordance with natural law. The attention given today to the ecosystem including the biosphere and human society altogether brings us back to the core of natural law. The ecosystem witnesses to an order which pre-exists to our attempts to use it arbitrarily. ’Integral ecology’ apprehends the human being in its interdependence with the created order of the universe.

Payne offers an account of the unsettling effects of confessions of violence by armed left guerillas or revolutionary fighters in Argentina in two moments in Argentine history. The chapter considers how the timing of these confessions shaped responses to them. In the years shortly after the transition from authoritarian rule, contentious debate moved toward a full accounting on the left for its role in past violence. In recent years, this proved less possible. As the right reconsolidated its political power, the confessional narratives from the Argentine armed left fueled fears of a backlash against the left, reinforcing a view of the left’s shared responsibility with the authoritarian regime for human rights violations, and a call for its prosecution. This silencing of open debate over the left’s past actions prevented the process of condemning violations regardless of who committed them. The prescriptive dimension to this observation highlights the need for urgency in thinking self-critically, to reflect broadly on the motives and consequences of violence, and to use moments of political advantage to condemn those parts of the (temporarily) dominant power’s past that deserve condemnation.

Chapter 2 explicates Augustine’s critique of political pride, as tending to foment “lust for domination” (libido dominandi), in books I–V of The City of God. In this opening segment, Augustine depicts pride as unnatural for human beings and unjust, thereby paving the way for a greater appreciation of the naturalness and justice of moderation and humility in political life.

Are legal traditions incommensurable? Professor H. Patrick Glenn argued that the idea that legal traditions were not suitable for comparison was a result of the reification of cultures. This chapter discusses Glenn’s insights of tradition and commensurability by examining the variants of the concepts and practices of lineage property in historical Confucianism. In the Confucian sphere of influence, marked by the shared precept of ancestral worship and primacy of ritual obligation, legal developments concerning lineage organization and property converged and diverged, revealing the complexity in humanity’s efforts to respond to the various challenges it faced. This examination illustrates Glenn’s central idea that legal traditions of the world are not only comparable and translatable but also transplantable. Transformation and transmission of law in East Asia underscore the need to compare legal traditions, both within and without in all its independence and interdependence, and further to understand the past in its own terms in all the interconnectedness of autonomous dimensions of life at a given time.

In the concluding Chapter Seven, the study brings together the analysis conducted in previous chapters in order to extract their combined meaning. This book shows that the concept of human dignity made its first appearance in legal history in a religious form and was later transformed into a secularized concept, as a reaction to and limit upon the classical conception of sovereign dignity, enshrined in State sovereignty. This origin is at the root of and is still manifested in the various legal formulations of human dignity in different areas of law. To explain human dignity, to seek its religious roots, to see its evolution and its many legal manifestations, ultimately demonstrates that international law was historically shaped, despite the multi-cultural context in which it unfolded, by a secularization process akin to that of many domestic legal systems. Chapter Seven adopts this macro view and discusses the secularization argument in the light of the transformative function of human dignity in international law.

In a pair of texts published in 1795, the philosopher, physician, and public intellectual Johann Benjamin Erhard offered a broadly Kantian defense of the right to revolution under conditions of structural injustice. Erhard’s theory of revolution is of continuing interest, for Erhard’s theory touches on difficult practical questions related to what we might call the ethics of revolutionary action. The primary aim of my paper is reconstructive; I aim to give a philosophical account of the overall shape of Erhard’s theory of justified revolutionary action. In the course of my reconstruction of Erhard’s account, I focus especially on the central role of epistemic limitations regarding the consequences of revolutionary action in Erhard’s account. Erhard is focused on the fact that revolution is an inherently risky endeavor, with potentially enormous downsides for society, and for those on whose behalf revolutionaries purport to act. Erhard takes the problem of revolution’s dangerous unpredictability very seriously as an obstacle to the justification of revolutionary action. This is both a merit of his account, and the source of some interpretative and philosophical puzzles, which occupy me in the second half of the paper.

In his Foundations of Natural Right, J. G. Fichte advances the innovative thesis that the theory of right is independent of, or separate from, moral theory. Although Fichte is concerned to stress the originality of his approach, he refers approvingly to some “excellent hints” in the writings of J. B. Erhard. Given the recent scholarly interest in Fichte’s account of the relationship between right and morality, it is surprising that Erhard’s position is seldom discussed. Where it is discussed, it is often presented as merely a hesitant precursor of Fichte’s position. This paper provides a corrective to that view by arguing that Erhard’s account of the relationship between right and morality constitutes a distinctive and philosophically compelling position. In the first two sections, I reconstruct Erhard’s account of the relationship between right and morality. I argue that Erhard’s position is best characterized as focusing on the dynamic interplay between the theory of right and the requirements of morality as articulated by Kantian moral theory. In the third section, I demonstrate the coherence and significance of Erhard’s position by considering it in relation to a central debate in the philosophy of law—the debate between legal positivism and natural law theory.

This chapter unpacks the federal intervention in the War on Drugs and analyzes the strategies the president followed across states depending on governors’ political affiliations. We disaggregate the intervention on the military, judicial, communicative, and social policy dimensions and assess patterns of cooperation and conflict between federal and subnational authorities. Using extensive interviews with federal and subnational elites and case studies from three cities in three states, we show how Mexico’s federal government followed differentiated strategies to deal with drug violence. The president protected subnational co-partisans (PAN) in Tijuana (PAN); partially cooperated with centrist opposition authorities (PRI) in Ciudad Juáreza; but confronted leftist governors and mayors (PRD), leaving them at the mercy of drug cartels in Apatzingán. Cartels responded by launching strategic attacks and challenging their rivals in municipalities with vulnerable leftist states.Thus, the politicization of law enforcement in the War on Drugs – which was possible because Mexico transitioned to electoral democracy without developing the rule of law – became a major stimulant of violence.

In On the Citizen, Hobbes depends on the claim that right reason is a part of human nature. Right reason figures in definitions there of natural right and natural law, and Hobbes depends upon the fact that we each possess right reason in arguing that each of us can know the laws of nature. The theories of motivation, reason, and the good in On the Citizen share a great deal with their counterparts in the Elements of Law and Leviathan. In this respect, though, On the Citizen stands out. Hobbes does not depend upon right reason in a similar way in either of these other texts: in the Elements of Law he claims that right reason is “not existent,” and in Leviathan he contends that we lack a “right reason constituted by nature.” This essay describes Hobbes's accounts of motivation, reason, and the good in On the Citizen; documents this distinguishing feature of the text; and offers reasons for the conclusion that Hobbes's account of right reason there is not sincere.