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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp010v838396n
Title: Essays on Free Speech, Legal Reasoning, and the Limits of Morality
Authors: Broughton, Gabriel
Advisors: Rosen, Gideon
Contributors: Philosophy Department
Keywords: Blame
Free Speech
Legal Reasoning
Morality
Precedent
Supererogation
Subjects: Philosophy
Ethics
Law
Issue Date: 2024
Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University
Abstract: This dissertation includes three stand-alone papers in value theory, broadly understood. In the first paper, "Supererogation, blame, and paradox," I present a novel argument for the conclusion that moral supererogation is less common than common sense supposes. I then consider how this conclusion might be avoided, raising questions in the process about the relationship between blame and wrongdoing, as well as the distinctive offices of the moral ought and must. In the second paper, "On weakening the plaintiff's case without strengthening the defendant's," I prove a startling result about the leading formal model of common-law precedential constraint: Given a plausible assumption about how certain legal reasons are related, the lauded reason model collapses into the friendless result model, and it does so even in the standard setting in which these models were originally formalized. Finally, in "Refining the argument from democracy," I develop a new version of the democratic argument for the freedom of expression that can give a plausible reply to the perennial objection---ordinarily considered fatal---that such accounts fail to protect lots of deserving nonpolitical speech.
URI: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp010v838396n
Type of Material: Academic dissertations (Ph.D.)
Language: en
Appears in Collections:Philosophy

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