University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP SERIES
presents
Larry May
Vanderbilt University
The Nature and Value of Procedural Rights
12:30 – 2:00
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Flavelle Dining Room – 78 Queen’s Park
I will begin this paper by discussing Joel Feinberg’s thought-experiment about Nowheresville. Feinberg said it was characteristic of a place where there are no rights that people do not make claims since they “do not have a notion of what is their due.” In recent cases at Guantanamo and Bagram, the lack of procedural rights is not a matter of failing to see what is one’s due, but rather of having officials recognize what are their duties in light of claiming by inmates and detainees under their care. Being able to claim is only part of what rights involve. And if there are places where only claiming goes on, without corresponding recognition of the claiming person’s status, that is another instance of Nowheresville. Guantanamo and Bagram are unfortunately like Nowheresville in this latter sense.
The dividing line between substantive and procedural rights is not always easy to see. It is often the case that a given right has both a substantive and a procedural component. And there is often considerable disagreement about whether a given right should be seen as substantive or procedural. In trying to ascertain what is the nature and value of procedural rights, the main example that I will examine in this paper is the procedural right of habeas corpus.
Larry May is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. He is a political philosopher and legal theorist who works on normative issues in international law. Professor May has a BS in international affairs from Georgetown University, and an MA and Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research, where he was Hannah Arendt’s last research assistant. He also has a JD in law from Washington University. May has published 21 books and more than 80 articles. His writings have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, Serbian, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
He has recently published a series of books on international criminal law: "Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account" Cambridge, 2005); "War Crimes and Just War" (Cambridge, 2007); "Aggression and Crimes Against Peace" (Cambridge 2008); and "Genocide: A Normative Account" (Cambridge, forthcoming in 2009). These books have won awards in law (from the American Society of International Law, and the International Association of Penal Law, American Section); and also in philosophy (from the American Philosophical Association, and the North American Society for Social Philosophy), as well as two awards in the field of international relations from the American Library Association. The books have also been well reviewed by military historians and military lawyers. He has just finished a book on "Global Justice and Due Process" and is currently in the beginning stages of a book on the normative principles of jus post bellum.
A light lunch will be served.
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca
