A substantial minority (35%) of the Dutch population is in favor of capital punishment. In this paper, it is argued that in a staunchly abolitionist country such as The Netherlands, the existence and perseverance of such support can be better understood and explained by conceiving of capital punishment support in attitudinal terms as part of a law and order syndrome. Death penalty attitudes are...

There are several reasonable conceptions of liberalism. A liberal polity can survive a measure of disagreement over just what constitutes liberalism. In part, this is because of the way a liberal order makes possible a dynamic, heterogeneous civil society and how that, in turn, can supply participants with reasons to support a liberal political order. Despite the different conceptions of justic...

Unlike his theory of justice as fairness, John Rawls’s political liberalism has generally been spared from critiques regarding what is due to the disabled. This paper demonstrates that, due to the account of the basic ideas of society and persons provided by Rawls, political liberalism requires that the interests of numerous individuals with disabilities should be put aside when the most fundam...

In this paper, I want to explore possible explanations of the ‘welfare state’. I am not here interested in defending the welfare state, or criticising it, or suggesting how it might be made more effective. I want rather to treat it as a political phenomenon, and to ask what kind of explanation (or explanations) the rational choice tradition of political theory might offer as to why the welfare ...

As I use the term here, the central component of political liberalism holds that political institutions are not to be guided by substantive principles of the good about which reasonable people may disagree. If a particular policy or institutional action is a requirement of justice, this cannot be because this policy or action promotes human welfare, well-being, or flourishing. Morality, on the ...

This article reports on research conducted on the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, New York. It theorizes the structure and process of community justice, focusing on the model offered by community courts and examining how the Red Hook Community Justice Center’s development and implementation are products of its immersion in the intersection of societal, spatial, and political dyna...

In cooperation with: ii 1. Executive summary This Concept Paper presents a framework for monitoring and evaluation of the rule of law and justice in the European Union. The development of the framework has been based on a number of principles-objectivity and neutrality, validity and reliability, actionability. It also firmly follows the commitment of the Stockholm programme towards the needs an...