Research

Currently, I am focusing on three research themes:

  1. The philosophy of rights. I attempt to answer two crucial yet underexplored questions. The first is why rights violations wrong the right-holder, even when the interest the right aims to protect is morally trivial. The second is what rights add to our normative landscape; in what respects, that is, a world with rights is better than one only containing “undirected” duties.
  2. The idea of a corrective duty. I investigate what it means for a moral agent to commit and to correct a wrong. I further investigate how (liberal-ish, democratic) states can legitimately incorporate corrective practice within the law and whether it makes sense to correct historical wrongs.
  3. The legitimacy of the state, with particular reference to the challenge (although I am not convinced any longer it is much of a challenge) of value pluralism.

Here you can find a list of my published and unpublished papers, with penultimate versions attached.

Published/to be published soon

“Rights, Wronging, and Equality of Status,” – Law & Philosophy, [forthcoming].

“Corrective Justice/Corrective Duties” – Philosophy Compass, 19(3), 2024.

Neglecting Others and Making It Up to Them: The Idea of a Corrective Duty” – Legal Theory, 29(4), 2023.

Human Rights under Emergency: A Normative Assessment of Derogation” – Social Theory & Practice, 49(3), 2023 – with Cristián Rettig.

Conflicts of Rights and Action-Guidingness” – Ratio Juris, 36(2), 2023 – with Cristián Rettig.

“Meaningful and Meaningless Rights Proclamations”Jurisprudence, 13(4), 2022.

Rawls contra Rawls: Legitimacy, Normative Impact, and the Basic Structure” – Ethics, Politics & Society, 5(2), 2022 (special issue on Rawls’s double anniversary in 2021).

Is There Moral Magic in the Word “Right”? Cruft on Rights and the Elusive “Deontically Infused Good”” – Law & Philosophy, 40(4), 2021.

Do We Need Integrity in a Theory of Justice? A Critique of the Argument from Integrity in Favour of Accommodations” – Journal of Applied Philosophy, 36(4), 2019.

Book Reviews

Review of Rowan Cruft, Human Rights, Ownership, and the Individual, (OUP, 2019), Journal of Moral Philosophy, 18(2), 2021.

Completed Papers (contact me for latest drafts)

Paper on human rights and what makes their proclamation meaningful [title redacted after submission] – review & resubmit on Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence.

Paper on corrective duties, distributive justice, and the law [title redacted after submission].

Paper on rights, interests, and wronging [title redacted after submission].

Paper on the beneficiary pays principle and corrective duties [title redacted after submission].

Papers in preparation

“Doxastic Wrongs, Freedom of the Mind, and Rights to Wrong Others (in Our Thought)”

“Does Privilege Create Duties?”

For the General Public

“CoViD 19: The Great Leveller or the Great Sieve?,” “Can Moral Philosophy Tell You Who Should Get the Ventilator,” “On Toppling Monuments, Discomfort, and People Like Us,” “Should the Courts or the People Determine Rights,” “The Banality of Good,” all available at https://www.whattodoaboutnow.com/blog.