Overview

Four values--justice, consent, equality, and collective decision in the form of law--have profoundly shaped the practice of law in the twentieth century and beyond. Value and Circumstance revisits these political and moral ideals, uncovering the relationship between value and the moment. Each of the four key subjects is explored by returning to first principles in a way that invites reflection on the nature and functions of morality itself. The author claims that there is a deep and ongoing connection (and sometimes a dialogue) between the ideal and the everyday. As such, each of those things can be fully understood, appreciated, and pursued only in partnership with the other, even in cases when that partnership is unspoken and unacknowledged. Moreover, the book argues that sound moral comprehension is immanent in experience and engagement. We learn fully what justice calls for by doing justice; learn consent properly through practising consent; learn just when, in what manner, and in what domains to pursue equality through engaging with the prevailing equalities (both secured and unsecured) of our particular times and places; and learn what law should look like only by deciding what law is to be. In this dynamic, the moral world is steadily enlarged by our ordinary engagement with it. We construct and draw upon the realm of value, to which we are accountable for our flourishing. We cannot live well with reference to the ideal alone.

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9780198948575

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Author Information

Timothy Macklem is Professor of Law and Philosophy at Queen Mary University of London and Professor Emeritus at King's College London. He began his research career under the supervision of Joseph Raz and in the company of John Gardner, with whom he shared a life-long sense of philosophical mission and wrote numerous papers. For several years before that, he practised constitutional law in Ontario and has been an Academic Bencher at Inner Temple for the past dozen years. He is the author of Beyond Comparison (CUP 2003), Independence of Mind (OUP 2007) and Law and Life in Common (OUP 2015).

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