Ethics and Public Policy
Co-Directors:
Contact: ethicsandpublicpolicy@gmail.com
Goals:
- Promote research on the ethical dimensions of public policy.
- Improve ethics education for Public Policy/Public Affairs/Public Administration students.
- Build a community of teachers and researchers.
Members:
- Scholars teaching and conducting research on the normative dimension of public policy.
See: Upcoming Workshops and Events | Past Workshops and Events | Member Directory | Recent Publications | Teaching Resources
Upcoming Workshops and Events
January 24th, 1:00pm ET (Zoom): Brookes Brown, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto
Title: “Legitimacy, Political Obligation, and the Rule of Law Beyond the Unitary State”
Abstract: Political philosophers advance normative claims about civic ethics. Many of these, I show, rely on a hidden empirical premise: that the state has a particular structure and set of capacities that I call the unitary sovereign state. Unfortunately, this model proves not only inaccurate but unrealistic as a vision of how governing institutions do or could function. This has significant consequences for our theories of political obligation, legitimacy, and the value of the rule of law, among others. If we want to provide moral guidance, we need to develop moral theories capable of speaking to quite different empirical conditions than we have recognized.