Surely it is not too much to ask a modern liberal theory of justice that it provide a coherent account of why some contracts, e.g., self-sale contract, should be deemed invalid and why the rights such contracts would legally alienate are inalienable. In that sense, the theory of inalienable rights provides a historical litmus test for liberalism.
Archives for Legal theory
Inalienable Rights: Part I The Basic Argument
What is the inalienable rights theory that descends from the Reformation through the Enlightenment and that answers the classical apologies for slavery and autocracy based on implicit or explicit voluntary contracts?
Inalienable Rights: Part II Intellectual History
Where did the ideas behind the inalienable rights theory emerge in the history of thought?
Why was Slavery Wrong? Involuntariness or Treating Persons as Things?
“Involuntariness” is the usual answer. Indeed, classical liberalism takes the most basic framing of a social question as: “consent or coercion?” In this view, democracy is characterized as government “with the consent of the governed” so slavery and non-democratic government were both condemned for the lack of consent. This common condemnation of slavery on the [...]
Associational speech: Citizens United vs. FEC
What is the basis for the liberal-progressive anathema to corporate speech?