Overview
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Ethics and Law
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Front Matter
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Methods in Legal Theory
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Front Matter
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Methods in Contemporary Ethical Theories
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
The law serves a function that is not often taken seriously enough by ethicists, namely practicability. A consequence of practicability is that law requires elaborated and explicit methodologies that determine how to do things with norms. This consequence forms the core idea behind this book, which employs methods from legal theory to inform and examine debates on methodology in applied ethics, particularly bioethics. It is argued that almost all legal methods have counterparts in applied ethics, which indicates that much can be gained from comparative study of the two.
The author first outlines methods as used in legal theory, focusing on deductive reasoning with statutes as well as analogical reasoning with precedent cases. He then examines three representative kinds of contemporary ethical theories, Beauchamp and Childress’s principlism, Jonsen and Toulmin’s casuistry, and two versions of consequentialism—Singer’s preference utilitarianism and Hooker’s rule-consequentialism—with regards to their methods. These examinations lead to the Morisprudence Model for methods in applied ethics.
Reviews
“Paulo’s book is perhaps the most sophisticated and illuminating exploration of casuistry available to date. He shows that casuistry, when done properly, is much closer to legal reasoning than other theorists have appreciated. The book also contains the most comprehensive and deep criticism of principlism I have seen.” (Allen E. Buchanan, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law, Duke University, USA)
“Norbert Paulo’s book is an outstanding treatment of methods in both legal theory and contemporary ethical theory. It contains original and forceful analyses of methods of applied ethics. Everyone interested in methods of applied ethics will want to be familiar with Paulo’s arguments and conclusions. The evaluations of Principlism, Casuistry, and Consequentialism are especially noteworthy.” (Tom L. Beauchamp, Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar, Georgetown University, USA)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Norbert Paulo is a lecturer in practical philosophy at the University of Salzburg, Austria. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Hamburg University, Germany, where he studied both philosophy and law. His primary research concerns applied ethics, ethical theory, philosophy of law, and empirical ethics.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Confluence of Philosophy and Law in Applied Ethics
Authors: Norbert Paulo
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55734-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-55733-9Published: 10 June 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-55734-6Published: 26 May 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 250
Number of Illustrations: 3 b/w illustrations
Topics: Moral Philosophy, Analytic Philosophy, Bioethics, Theories of Law, Philosophy of Law, Legal History, Social Philosophy