In the Introduction, the need for an interdisciplinary approach to human well-being is presented, focusing on law and the social sciences, to elevate the interests of humanity amid rapid scientific and technological change.

In Chapter 10, the book concludes with a review of the numerous means available in the law to support the well-being of humans in an age of rapid scientific and technological development, emphasizing the need to revisit what it is to be human.

In Chapter 9, the final example of the legal exile of humanity is provided, where toxicity in the environment from industry has been legally permitted to accumulate. Tort litigation in the US, using the example of oil and chemical spills, is discussed, noting the decline in strict liability for industrial defendants over the last century.

Chapter 3 offers competing models of regulatory compliance. The first emphasizes the civic duty to cooperate in the formation, implementation, and reform of public policy, including regulatory law. The second serves the logic of financial risk management (FRM), where profitability provides the sole lodestar. Comparing the two highlights the ethical challenges inherent in FRM. Exclusively financial orientations to risk management ignore the law’s moral underpinnings, encourage regulatory capture, and undercount the firm’s political obligations. An argument is advanced linking recent compliance scandals to this FRM orientation and an absence of the cooperative balance. The contrasting models developed in this chapter provide an analytical framework used in the remainder of this book.

In Chapter 6, the history of the rule and role of law over time demonstrates a longstanding but eroding dedication to human well-being, particularly in natural law and constitutional principles derived from natural law. A strict adherence to traditional natural law is criticized for its selective support of certain traits as universal.

Hobbes redefines both distributive justice and merit in Leviathan. Distributive justice is turned from a virtue of subjects into ‘the Justice of an Arbitrator’ by equating distributive justice with equity – the natural law duty that sovereign and subordinate judges administer rights and goods impartially, without regard of person or rank. Accompanying this shift, Leviathan changes the meaning and grounds of ‘merit’. Hobbes now claims, ‘merit … is rewarded of Grace onely’: distributive civil laws create rather than track merit. Leviathan’s novel accounts of distributive justice and merit have major implications for what the natural law of gratitude demands. Citizens are now in addition bound by gratitude to give the sovereign ‘no reasonable cause to repent’ his good will in freely according them legal rights. Leviathan’s bold redefinition of merit ensured that citizens cannot possibly receive less from the sovereign than they deserve; thus removing a major source of civic grievances. Second, by making honours, property, and other civil rights the free gift of sovereigns, Hobbes established that citizens are bound by natural law duties of gratitude to humour and please their sovereign benefactor – including by performing their duties of political obligation.

This chapter considers the conflicting views on whether the Declaration of Independence is law. It sets forth the arguments on either side, ultimately concluding that neither side is completely persuasive. It argues that the Declaration was a legal document of continuing legal significance, even if it is not directly controlling law in the sense of a modern statute. It then sets forth the numerous ways in which American courts have relied on the Declaration, in cases ranging from citizenship to states’ admission to the union to the interpretation of provisions in the federal constitution.

This chapter introduces the reader to the basic structure and history of the international legal system, including the relationship between law and politics and the nature of the international legal order. It is intended to put the reader in a position to understand the role played by international law within the system of international relations. The historical development of international law from its early origins in, for example, the ancient Middle East, through Roman law and the concept of the jus gentium (law of peoples), and the Renaissance to the founders of modern international law, such as Vittoria and Grotius, and onto the nineteenth century and later is surveyed. The chapter refers to the concepts of positivism and naturalism and looks at communist theories of international law in Russia and China. The chapter concludes with a brief survey of the role and position of Developing Countries (Third World; Global South).

This chapter reviews the expanding legal scope of the subject, noting the universalisation of international law beyond its European roots and the development of international human rights law and international criminal law, as well as the rise of international organisations. Modern theories and interpretations are examined, ranging from the natural law/positive law debates, referring to Kelsen and Hart in particular, to more contemporary approaches, such as power politics and balance of power, behaviouralism and the policy-oriented school including the views of McDougal and Franck, with the latter’s focus on legitimacy, and on to the critical legal studies movement, noting the important work of Koskenniemi, particularly emphasising the relationship between law and society. These various theories and approaches illustrate and reveal the political, ethical and social aspects of international law. The chapter then turns to discuss the problem of the fragmentation of international law, with the rise of special treaty regimes and particular rules, and how the system may deal with this phenomenon.

In this chapter I present the Core Argument for why intending death is always wrong. The argument gives reason to hold a sanctity-of-life view but does not depend on such a view.

Although Thomas Hobbes is often portrayed as an egoistic and atomistic thinker, his political philosophy has a great deal to say about vulnerability and relational equality. This chapter draws out four insights from his political philosophy to apply to contemporary political philosophy. First, he outlines a compelling psychological theory that connects our ontological and social vulnerability. Second, he argues the best strategy for minimising our ontological and social vulnerability is to establish a society of equals, thus asserting a vital connection between vulnerability and relational equality. Third, he identifies some key powers that states must possess to establish and maintain equal relations among people and assuage our vulnerabilities. Fourth, he offers a unique justification for relational equality arguing that it is valuable not so much because it represents an authentic expression of our basic human equality as because it is instrumentally necessary to tamp down our anxieties and promote peace.

Although the main focus of the dialogue is practical deliberation rather than political and legal theory, it has over time provided stimulus to such theorizing. In this dialogue, the bond between citizen and state is portrayed as one of personal commitment. Strikingly, Plato does not invoke natural law, divine law, Kantian generalizations, or consequentialist theories where he might have done.

At first glance, Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) remains a marginal figure within US political discourse. However, this chapter argues that revisiting Kelsen is crucial if we are to understand present-day intellectual tendencies supportive of autocratic threats to US democracy. A neglected, yet pivotal, anti-Kelsenian moment proves decisive among influential right wing intellectuals, so-called ‘west coast’ Straussians based at California’s Claremont Institute, who enthusiastically supported Donald Trump and embraced his authoritarianism. The lawyer and Claremont affiliate John Eastman, for example, worked to prevent a peaceful transfer of power to then President-elect Joe Biden in 2020 to keep Trump in power. Trump’s Claremont Institute defenders have absorbed crucial facets of Leo Strauss’s critical rejoinder to Kelsen: Strauss’ longstanding anti-Kelsenianism has morphed into their subterranean anti-Kelsenianism. To validate this claim, the chapter revisits Strauss’ complicated theoretical dialogue with Kelsen, while also highlighting crucial moments in the arcane history of postwar American Straussianism. What is gained theoretically, and not just historically or politically, by doing so? The Claremont Institute’s apologetics for Trump corroborate Kelsen’s worries that attempts to revive natural law under contemporary conditions invite autocracy.

Deals with the problem of “religion and morality,” focusing on interpersonal commandments. Does God prescribe certain actions because they are right, or are they right because God prescribes them? Does God prohibit certain actions because they are wrong, or are they wrong because God prohibits them? Put another way, does Judaism believe in a standard of ethics that is correct independent of God’s commands and will? The chapter begins with two biblical episodes, the akedah or binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) and the sin in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). I argue against Soren Kierkegaard’s celebrated reading of the akedah, and then argue that Genesis as a whole supports belief in an independent standard. After that, I discuss the role that morality plays in motivation for performing interpersonal commandments and then the role it plays in the Jewish legal system.

In the West, liberty and equality emerged as individual rights from theological speculations about the nature of God and human beings, and the relationship of human beings to each other and to God. It was a natural theology in which God is beneficent and glorifies in what God has created, having made a world in which it is possible for human beings to pursue happiness. Derived primarily from the writings of John Locke, that natural theology was embraced and expanded upon by Thomas Jefferson and articulated in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration’s natural theology foundation holds that liberty serves God’s purpose: preservation of creation and flourishing in the pursuit of happiness. And liberty is equal liberty because, as Locke’s philosophy and Jefferson’s Declaration proclaim, human beings’ equality is more than a right; it is a fact of creation. For Locke and Jefferson, and for the “American mind” of the founding era, the theology underlying the Declaration implies duties to one another. Without such obligations beyond the self, egoism would lead to confusion as everyone would assert their own interests, and God’s purpose would not be realized.