LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP
presents
Kimberly Ferzan
University of Virginia School of Law
Stand Your Ground
Friday, February 22, 2019
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (Room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
This chapter examines the moral justifiability of “stand your ground” (SYG) laws. First, it sets forth the parameters of self-defense as understood in the philosophical literature. Next, it focuses on the necessity limitation, and questions whether this limitation can be defensibly weakened to accommodate SYG laws. Finding no comfort for SYG statutes in a weakened necessity limitation, the chapter turns to the proportionality constraint and examines approaches that increase the interests that may permissibly be defended as well as approaches that abandon proportionality altogether. Notably, however, SYG laws adopt proportionality requirements; they do not abandon them wholesale. Finally, this chapter maintains that the most perspicuous lens through which to view SYG laws is that of law enforcement because what SYG laws actually do is place citizens in the role of police. The justifiability of such enforcement authority turns, then, on two further questions. It must be appropriate for citizens to serve this function. But secondly, it must be appropriate for the state to stand its ground. This chapter concludes by problematizing this final assumption and claiming that anyone who wishes to justify such behavior by citizens should start by trying to unearth the justification for this behavior by the state.
Kimberly Kessler Ferzan is Harrison Robertson Professor of Law and Joel B. Piassick Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School. She is also affiliated faculty to Virginia’s philosophy department. Ferzan is the co-editor-in-chief of Law and Philosophy, and serves on the editorial boards of Criminal Law and Philosophy and Legal Theory. Ferzan writes in criminal law theory; her publications include Crime and Culpability: A Theory of Criminal Law (Cambridge University Press 2009)(with Larry Alexander), Reflections on Crime and Culpability: Problems and Puzzles (Cambridge University Press 2018)(with Larry Alexander), Beyond Crime and Commitment, Minnesota Law Review (recipient of the APA’s Berger Prize), and Beyond Intention, Cardozo Law Review (selected for presentation at the Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum). Ferzan previously taught at Rutgers University, and has been a visiting professor at the LSE, Harvard, Penn, Chicago, and the University of Illinois. She was also a Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at Princeton’s University Center for Human Values.
To be added to the paper distribution list, please send an email to events.law@utoronto.ca. For further information, please contact Professor Larissa Katz (larissa.katz@utoronto.ca) and Professor Sophia Moreau (sr.moreau@utoronto.ca).
