Jeremy Waldron Quotes
Jeremy Waldron is a New Zealand-born British and American legal and political philosopher, University Professor at the New York University School of Law and emeritus Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford. Law and Disagreement defended a strong democratic case against judicial review of legislation on rights, on the basis of his thesis that reasonable disagreement on rights is an enduring feature of any free society and so should be settled by the political institutions in which equal citizens disagree as equals. The quotes below are attributed to Jeremy Waldron, organized by topic.
Jeremy Waldron on Justice
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“As Nozick acknowledges, a modern state should not feel morally constrained by property holdings which might have had a Lockean pedigree but in fact do not. In this regard it is interesting that one of the main uses of Lockean theory these days is in defending the property rights of indigenous people—where a literal claim is being made about who had first possession of a set of resources and about the need to rectify the injustices that accompanied their subsequent expropriation.”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – "Property and Ownership
Jeremy Waldron on Knowledge
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“Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – "Property and Ownership”
As Nozick acknowledges, a modern state should not feel morally constrained by property holdings which might have had a Lockean pedigree but in fact do not. In this regard it is interesting that one of the main uses of Lockean theory these days is in defending the property rights of indigenous people—where a literal claim is being made about who had first possession of a set of resources and about
Jeremy Waldron on Politics
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Attributed to Jeremy Waldron:
“Reasonable disagreement on rights is the condition under which any free society must be governed.”
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Attributed to Jeremy Waldron:
“Judicial review of legislation on rights is not the cure for democratic disagreement; it is one of its forms.”
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Attributed to Jeremy Waldron:
“Hate speech is a public dignitary harm, not merely a private offense.”
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Attributed to Jeremy Waldron:
“Basic equality is harder to defend than to assume; the philosophical work is mostly still to be done.”
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Attributed to Jeremy Waldron:
“Rank, in the older meaning, has been generalized; we are all of equal rank now, or we are not equal at all.”