LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP
presents
Peter Vallentyne
University of Missouri
Department of Philosophy
Rights and Wronging: A Choice-Prioritizing Conception of Rights
Friday, March 17, 2016
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (Room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
Standard choice-protecting accounts of rights hold that actions that intrude upon a person’s rights without her consent always wrong her. I agree that consent plays a crucial role, but I deny that a person is always wronged in such situations. I develop, and partially defend, choice-prioritizing theory that gives requires actual valid consent, when communication about consent/dissent is possible, but is sensitive to both hypothetical consent/dissent and the rightholder’s interests, when communication is not possible.
Peter Vallentyne is Florence G. Kline Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri. He writes on issues of liberty and equality in the theory of justice (and left-libertarianism in particular) and, more recently on enforcement rights (rights to protect primary rights). He was associate editor of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics and of Ethics; he was co-editor of Economics and Philosophy; and he is currently associate editor of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association and of Social Choice and Welfare. He edited Equality and Justice (2003, 6 volumes) and Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on David Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement (1991), and he co-edited, with Hillel Steiner, The Origins of Left Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings and Left Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate (2000). He has held an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship and directed a National Endowments for the Humanities project on ethics across the curriculum. He can be contacted at Vallentynep@missouri.edu.
A light lunch will be served.
To be added to the paper distribution list, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca. For further information, please contact Professor Larissa Katz (larissa.katz@utoronto.ca) and Professor Sophia Moreau (sr.moreau@utoronto.ca).
