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The papers in this book have been collected in celebration of Carl Wellman, who, after forty-five years, is retiring from teaching. Here I would like to highlight a few of the moments which have shaped Carl as a person and a philosopher. Although his childhood was not unhappy, Carl faced considerable challenges growing up in Manchester, New Hampshire. He ne ver knew his father; he and his mother, Carolyn, had little money; and he fought a long battle with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, an illness which made hirn more familiar with hospitals than any young person should be. (His mother once told me that there were times when the doctors put Carl in his own hospital room because, while he was too y...
This book presents a definition of terrorism that is broad and descriptive and much needed to prevent misunderstanding. The book identifies the features that make terrorism ‘wrong’, including coerciveness, the violation of rights and undermining of trust. Next, it evaluates reasons given for terrorism such as the protection of human rights and the liberation of oppressed groups as not normally justified. Following this, the book identifies and evaluates international responses to terrorism, taking into account General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, United Nations conventions and criminalization in international law. It also looks at national responses which often take the shape of surveillance, detention, interrogation, trials, targeted killings, intrusion and invasion. Finally, the book discusses how, if at all, the moral norms of personal morality apply to the actions of nation states.
This book makes two important contributions toward a general and systematic theory of rights-a powerful philosophical analysis of the language of rights and an explanation of the nature of rights. In working out these ideas, Wellman has provided a new and cohesive way of thinking and talking about rights of every sort. Wellman succeeds in bringing all kinds of rights-moral, legal, institutional, etc.-under one unified theory in a way that illuminates their similarities and differences. This enables him to deal in a consistent way with a very broad range of philosophical questions, questions that are too often dealt with in isolation from each other.
The Proliferation of Rights explores how the assertion of rights has expanded dramatically since World War II. Carl Wellman illuminates for the reader the historical developments in each of the major categories of rights, including human rights, civil rights, women's rights, patient rights, and animal rights. He concludes by assessing where this proliferation has been legitimate and helpful, cases where it has been illusory and unproductive, and alternatives to the appeal to rights.
Do patients undergoing intolerable irremediable suffering have a moral right to physician-assisted suicide? Ought they to have a comparable legal right? Do the moral duties of a mother to care for and not abuse her child also apply to her fetus? This work provides an examination of court cases that shows how US law answers these questions.
Mr. Wellman's highly original contribution to the relatively new field of justification in ethics consists of characterizing the different ways in which ethical statements can be challenged and showing how each sort of challenge can be met by an appropriate response, enabling reasonable men to appropriately discuss or reflect on ethical issues. In developing his unique, systematic, methodology of ethics, Mr. Wellman has, first, rigorously reviewed and refuted the main arguments for the view of the nature of all reasoning as deductive and, second, convincingly presented arguments for the existence of nondeductive evidences in ethics. Mr. Wellman's broad definition of reasoning and his rejection of the identification of justification with reasoning reveals new dimensions of justification which will have wide implications in other areas of human speculation.
What does it mean to have a right? Previous answers to this question fall into two groups: interest/benefit theories of rights and choice/will theories. This book proposes an alternative to these traditional views: the justified-constraint theory of rights, which avoids the pitfalls of earlier theories, and solves the puzzle of the relational nature of rights. The analysis shows that this theory applies without modification to past, present and future beings.
An original and systematic discussion of the grounds of rights, this book has concrete judicial implications, and should interest a wide range of scholars and practitioners in philosophy, law, and political science.