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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 |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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Broughton_princeton_0181D_15176.pdf | 1.12 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Download |
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