Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: The United States abolished the death penalty for juvenile offenders yet it remains one of the only countries in the world to consider the sentence of life without parole a suitable alternative. In 2005, there were over 2,000 inmates sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for crimes committed when they were children. Worldwide, there are only a dozen juveniles serving the same sentence. Life without parole sentences ignore the differences between children and adults and abandon the concept of redemption and rehabilitation for minors.The punishment is meant to fit the crime; yet the nature of the offense and the culpability of the offender must be taken into consideration.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Much of the current discomfort with mainstream methodology is rooted either in outright rejection of or ambivalence toward a Humean model of causation. The Humean legacy has at least two parts, however. It is not just a question of constant conjunction. The second part of the legacy is the dualism of belief and desire (reason and the passions) which underpins a simple and influential model of instrumentalism. As it stands however, current debates about methodology, particularly the innovations of those participants who are self-consciously anti-Humean, whether in a strong or weak form, do not appear to have recognized that a full-blown challenge to the Humean legacy requires the rejection of instrumentalism and the dictum that reasons are causes, and not simply the rejection of the constant conjunction model of causation. And they therefore do not recognize that what may be left at the heart of the human sciences, when they are evacuated of the Humean legacy, are explanations without causes.

This paper examines the place of explanations without causes in the social and human sciences. First of all, do such explanations exist? Second, if they do exist, what is their logical structure? Third, what is their import? And, finally, assuming for the moment that they exist, what are their problems?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Lijphart’s (1977, 1984, 1999) conceptualization of the distinction between consensual and majoritarian democracy has been one of the most important developments in the study of comparative political systems in the last thirty years, and has indeed served as an antidote to the anglocentrism that previously existed in the study of democratic institutions. However, the concept of consensual democracy is problematic from the point of view of social choice theory. Theorists of consensual democracy have emphasized consensus as an alternative to majority rule. I will argue, however, that many of the countries most often cited as “consensual” are actually amongst the world’s purest examples of government by majority rule, having virtually no constitutional checks and balances (examples include the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and to a lesser extent Austria and Belgium). Furthermore, I will argue that the institutions of consensual democracy follow axiomatically from the requirement of political equality. Far from being a new form of democracy, consensual democracy might better be described as “simple democracy”.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, I put forward what I take to be a plausible non-religious foundation for the idea of human rights. In particular, I make a procedural and practical argument here, one that steps back from arguments about a universal human nature. To do so, I look to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to claim that human rights represent a political consensus of overlapping ideas from cultures and communities around the world. It is not simply that no single tradition was victorious in setting out the foundation of human rights that others could accept, though it is true that none was; instead, the Declaration’s chief virtue is that everyone was able to agree upon and endorse a common foundation: the dignity of the human person. The nations of the world may disagree on a great many things – philosophical as well as practical – but they have all agreed on this important point: every human being is entitled to the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration by virtue of the inherent dignity that is common to us all. This idea can be embraced by those who subscribe to what Michael Perry calls a religious cosmology and also by those who do not. In constructing this consensus, then, we have succeeded in establishing a practical non-religious foundation upon which the idea of human rights can rest.

Publication Type: Proceeding