Projects
Dissertation: project on the nature of legal reasoning
As part of my dissertation project, I argue the concept of purpose or function plays a central, perhaps the most central, role in understanding the nature of legal reasoning. Other views have argued that the role played by morality or language is the most central feature of legal reasoning. But I argue the role played by purpose is more systematic and explanatorily fundamental than these other notions.
Project on the nature of basic moral equality (under review)
What grounds basic moral status? Existing answers focus almost solely on similarity between persons, thus making them especially vulnerable to the variability objection. I argue that persons’ uniqueness must also play a role in grounding moral status. Resultantly, we have to replace the equality relation with the parity relation to understand how we relate to one another at the most fundamental moral level.
Project on the positivism vs. anti-postivism debate
Ronald Dworkin presents the argument from theoretical disagreements about law (“ATD”) as a challenge for positivist theories of law. Important recent work has defended positivism against ATD. I argue these responses all fail. This project started during my time at Rutgers University. Some work that came out of this project was published in Law and Philosophy.
