prior probability

Hey, what’s up? Let’s put on hold our previous objections to John Finnis’s theory of law and proceed with our review of “Natural Law and Natural Rights,” shall we? By my count, Professor Finnis identifies no less than six separate categories of unjust laws in subsection 2 of Chapter XII: Continue reading →

We begin with Chapter XII of “Natural Law and Natural Rights” because Finnis himself recommends that we do so. This fascinating chapter is divided into four separate subsections (XII.1 through XII.4). In first subsection (XII.1), Finnis makes two important claims. One claim is about the classical natural law maxim lex injusta non est lex (unjust laws are not law). According to Finnis, this famous maxim is, at best, a “subordinate theorem” or “subordinate concern” of natural law theory. Instead,

the principal jurisprudential concern of a theory of natural law is … to identify the principles and limits of the Rule of Law, and to trace the ways in which sound laws, in all their positivity and mutability, are to be derived (not, usually, deduced) from unchanging principles–principles that have their force from their reasonableness, not from any originating acts or circumstances.

In other words, natural law is about distinguishing reasonable laws from unreasonable ones. Say what? Forgive me for raising the alarm and sounding such a skeptical tone at the outset of this review, but let me lay my cards or philosophical priors on the table. Simply put, the criterion of “reasonableness” has to be one of the most amorphous and ambiguous criteria ever devised. Why is “reasonableness” such a useless criterion in practice? Because it is so slippery and subjective, for there is no neutral or impartial standpoint from which to decide how reasonable a law is. That’s why! In short, whether a law is “reasonable” is always going to be in the eye of the beholder.

Finnis makes another important claim in the first section of Chapter XII, a claim about the source of legal authority or political power. According to Finnis, “The ultimate basis of rulers’ authority is the fact that they have the opportunity, and thus the responsibility, of furthering the common good by stipulating solutions to a community’s coordination problems.” For my part, I like Finnis’s original idea of equating the common good (an otherwise vague if not empty concept like “reasonableness”) with a group’s ability to solve co-ordination problems. Why? Because by making an explicit link between co-ordination problems and the common good, we can formulate a fruitful and testable theory of law: laws are good if and only if they are able to solve co-ordination problems.

That said, we can already spot two potential blind spots or gaps in Finnis’s theory of law. One gap is this: how do we define the relevant community? The other blind spot is based on our critique above of Finnis’s slippery “reasonableness” criterion. How do we decide when a solution to a co-ordination problem is “reasonable” or not? Some solutions to co-ordination problems might be effective or efficient, but at the same time such solutions might still be unfair or unjust. (Consider by way of example the quotation by Robert Pirsig below.) If so, we are back to where we started. Nevertheless, we will proceed with our review of Chapter XII in our next post.

Let’s begin our review of John Finnis’s treatise on “Natural Law and Natural Rights,” and let’s start with the preface. In fact, Finnis wrote two separate prefaces, one for the original edition of the book (published in 1980), and another for the second edition (2011). In the 2011 preface, Finnis identifies the image that appears on the cover of the second edition of his book (pictured below). It is an oil painting called White Saltbush that was painted in 1891 by Edward White. According to Finnis, this painting “depicts results of human purpose and action, to ‘subdue the earth’, in vast areas of marginal land in South Australia that are neither as near-desert as Lake Torrens nor as hospitable and fertile as Adelaide or the Barossa Valley ….” In other words, Finnis is using a work of art to dramatize and visualize his abstract theory of law.

In the preface to the first edition, Professor Finnis reveals two things of note. One is that he wrote most of his book in Africa. Specifically, he states that “the book was mainly written in Africa, in Chancellor College at the University of Malawi, in an environment at once congenial and conducive to contemplation of the problems of justice, law, authority, and rights.” This revelation thus poses an intriguing question: to what extent do Finnis’s travels in Africa influence his theory of law? The other revelation of note is Finnis’s recommendation to some of this readers to turn first to Chapter XII of his book, the chapter devoted to unjust laws: “And those who want to see, in advance, how [Finnis’s theory of law] yields an understanding very different from the accounts of ‘natural law’ in their textbooks of jurisprudence and philosophy might turn first to Chapter XII, and then perhaps to Chapter II.” We shall follow Finnis’s recommendation and proceed directly to Chapter XII in our next post …

Happy Easter! I put aside “Infinite Jest” during Holy Week in order to begin reading “Natural Law and Natural Rights,” a classic that I have been meaning to crack open for many years now. (The author of this erudite tome, the Australian legal philosopher John Finnis, is pictured below.) If you are fascinated by such timeless questions as “What is law?” or “What is the relation between law and morality?,” then stay tuned in, for I will restate and review some of the most salient ideas from Professor Finnis’s beautiful (but as we shall see, deeply flawed) book in my next few posts …

The Rev Thomas Bayes died on this day (17 April) in 1761. His tomb is pictured below. While you’re here, check out this biography of Bayes’s life and his major contributions to probability theory. Hat tip: @mathshistory. What will you be remembered for?

This guy! Trust us, this hilarious video is worth 9 minutes of your time. (File under “Best TED Talk ever.”)

Although the people of Puerto Rico have been debating Puerto Rico’s political status for centuries, no resolution to this deadlock is in sight. My previous work has modelled this stalemate as a war of attrition or “hawk-dove game” (2010) and as a truel or “three-person duel” (2008). My third Puerto Rico status paper, by contrast, explains how the impasse over Puerto Rico’s constitutional status can be modelled as a Condorcet cycle. In addition, this paper presents a tentative solution to this impasse: the creation of a “Bayesian ballot” in which voters would be allowed to express the relative intensity of their preferences for each status. The paper is available here via SSRN.

In presidential politics, a “swing state” refers to any State that could be won by either the Democratic or Republican presidential candidate, i.e. where the outcome is up for grabs or uncertain. The map pictured below, for example, shows the number of visits to each State by a major presidential candidate during the 2016 election campaign. Hat tip: u/Flitterquest, via Reddit.