Encounters with Unjust Authority

Defying Unjust Authority: An Exploratory Study

This research explores the psychological factors potentially involved in fostering disobedience to an unjust authority. Our paradigm was modeled after that of the Utrecht Studies on Obedience (Meeus and Raaijmakers European Journal of Social Psychology 16:311-324, 1986) in which participants are ordered to give each of 15 increasingly hostile comments to a participant/victim whenever he fails a...

On the dynamics of disobedience: experimental investigations of defying unjust authority

Across six Experimental conditions with university student participants (N=600), we examined some of the dynamics underlying expressed defiance to unjust authority. Results revealed disobedience was best enacted by participants low in right-wing authoritarianism and was more likely to occur when: 1) in physical proximity of other rebels, 2) the authority made two demanding requests instead of o...

Unjust War

I The Traditional Theory of the Just War The traditional theory of the just war comprises two sets of principles, one governing the resort to war (jus ad bellum) and the other governing the conduct of war (jus in bello). One of the central pillars of the traditional theory is that the two set of principles are, in Michael Walzer's words, " logically independent. It is perfectly possible for a j...

The Prevention of Unjust Wars

Encounters with Language

First of all, I am overwhelmed and humbled by the honor the ACL Executive Committee has shown me, an honor that should be shared by the colleagues and students I’ve been lucky enough to have around me this past decade-and-a-half while I’ve been engaged in the FrameNet Project at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. I’ve been asked to say something about the evolution of the...