Law's Meaning of Life : Philosophy, Religion, Darwin and the Legal Person.

Prelims -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Table of Cases -- Table of Treaties and Legislation -- 1 The Question: Who is Law For? -- Is this the Right Question? The Question Disputed -- Matching Law to Life: the Question Affirmed -- Competing Views of Human Nature and their Implications for Law -- The Concept of the Person and its Problematic Nature -- Instability of the Concept of the Legal Person -- Social Significance of the Concept and its Implications for Justice -- Law's Changing Community of Persons -- The Mission -- Finding the Legal Person -- 2 The Debate: Legalists v Realists -- The Positions -- The Legalists -- The Metaphysical Realists -- Setting the Boundaries of Personhood -- Disciplinary Influences -- The Thinkers and their Creation Stories -- Etymology of Persons -- 3 Strictly Legal Persons -- The Person as a Purely Legal Creation -- Law as a Closed System -- The Legal Person as Legal Language Use -- Hart and Wittgenstein -- Keeping the Legal Legal -- 4 Loosening the Strictures -- The Legal Person as Cluster Concept -- Division Between Persons and Property -- Chameleon Nature of Personality Strictly Conceived -- The Legalist's Person in the Courtroom -- Can we be Strict about Persons? -- Hohfeld on Legal Conceptions -- Real Uses of Persons -- 5 Moral Agents and Responsibility -- Creation Story -- The Legal and the Philosophical Person -- Influence of Kant -- Gray on Legal Persons and the Rational Will -- Will Theory of the Person -- Respect for Persons and Responsibility -- The Legal Subject of Criminal Law -- Two Criminal Legal Thinkers -- Are We Really So Rational? -- 6 Persons of Limited Reason -- Ronald Dworkin on the Patient as Author of a Life -- Safeguarding the Future Person: Dena Davis and the Child's Right to an Open Future -- Persons in Training: Mrs Gillick and the Contraceptive Advice -- Rationalists on Non-persons.

Recognising Reason -- Emotional Intelligence -- 7 The Divine Spark: the Principle of Human Sanctity -- The Human Rights Movement and the Revival of Belief in Human Preciousness -- Ronald Dworkin on Human Sanctity -- The Human Person and the Catholic Church -- John Finnis on Law's Person -- Implications -- 8 Human and Non-human Animals: the Implications of Darwin -- What We might have Expected after Darwin -- Intelligent Design and Kitzmiller v Dover -- Humans as Animals -- Dismantling the Human/Animal Divide -- Peter Singer and the Levelling of Humans -- Animal Lawyers and the Elevation of Animals -- Steven Wise and the Intelligent Apes -- Gary Francione and the Abolition of Property in Animals -- Legal Response -- Cass Sunstein: Questioning the Species Divide -- Buttressing Humanity -- 9 Embodiment: Humans as Biological Beings -- Kant and the Body in Law -- Principle of Bodily Integrity -- Making Sense of the Legal Body: The Compromised Naturalism of Ronald Dworkin -- Humbling Naturalism of Gray and Fernandez-Armesto -- Embracing our Creature Status: Moral Philosophers and Legal Feminists -- Jennifer Nedelsky and the Bounded Self -- Reconciling Agency and Animality -- 10 The Myths We Live By -- Cash Value -- Four Metaphysical Approaches -- A Fifth Approach: the Relational Person -- Legal Philosophies as Acts of Faith and Incommensurable World Views -- Distinctive Nature of the Legal Enterprise -- Why Law is Still Flexible -- Should Personality be Severed From Human Beings? -- Implications for Justice -- The Myths We Live by -- Bibliography -- Index.

The book offers a clear, coherent and critical account of these complex moral and intellectual processes entailed in the making of legal persons.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.