University Hall 310

Department of Philosophy

McMaster University

sciaraf at mcmaster.ca

905-525-9140, ext. 23467

Recent and Upcoming Courses

Phi 769: The Rule of Recognition


Phil 3Q03: The Philosophy of Law


Phil 3N03: Political Philosophy


Authority, Democracy, and Judicial Review


Publications

“The Ineliminability of Hartian Social Rules,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (forthcoming).


“The Justificatory View and Theoretical Disagreement,” Problema (forthcoming).


“Hermeneutic Concepts and Immodest Conceptual Analysis of the Law,” APA Newsletter, Philosophy of Law Section (forthcoming).


“Two Perspectives on the Requirements of  a Practice,” New Waves in Philosophy of Law (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2011).


“Identification, Meaning, and the Normativity of Social Roles,” European Journal of Philosophy (2011) 19 (1):107-128.


“The Underlying Value of MacCormick’s Post-Positivism,”  Jurisprudence (2010) 1: 121-36.


“On Content-Independent Reasons,” Law and Philosophy (2009) 28(3):233-60.


“Legal Positivism and the Nature of Legal Obligation,” Law and Philosophy (with Thomas Christiano)(2003) 487-512.


“Critical Legal Studies: A Marxist Rejoinder,” Legal Theory (1999) 5: 201-19.


Works in Progress

Book Project

The Nature of Law: A Philosophical Inquiry (Routledge) (expected late 2012).


Articles

A General Conception of Authority


Impartial Partiality


Legal Metasemantics: How to Argue about the Structure and Content of the Rule of Recognition Draft











About Me I received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Arizona (2007) and a J.D. from the University of Texas (1997). I practiced law for two years as an associate with the commercial litigation section of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP. Now, I am an assistant professor of philosophy at McMaster University My core research interests are in the philosophy of law and value theory generally (i.e moral, social and political philosophy). I have taught many courses in the philosophy of law, moral philosophy, and political philosophy, and I have taught a number of courses in substantive areas of law (American Constitutional Law, Legislation, and Property). Research Interests Philosophy of Law The main focus of my research within the philosophy of law is the defense of a non-positivist theory of law. I plan to write a number of articles and a book developing this view and exploring its implications. See the sidebar for publications and works-in-progress pursuant to this project. I sketch a few details of this view in the next two paragraphs. On the Hartian positivist’s account, a legal system exists only if its officials’ respective conceptions of the kinds of norms that count as law within the system converge sufficiently. The Hartian further holds that the legal officials’ convergent conception of what counts as law determines what is law. On this view, if a system’s officials convergently hold that legislative enactments are law, then legislative enactments are law. I accept the first Hartian claim and reject the second. On my view, legal officials’ convergent conception of what kinds of norms count as law does not determine what is law in a given legal system; rather, the ideally moral and rational official’s conception does. I also draw a number of implications that this non-positivist position has for how legal officials should reason about the law when deciding cases. Exemplars of the form of legal reasoning this approach supports can be found in Justice Scalia’s A Matter of Interpretation and Justice Breyer’s Active Liberty. My second project in the philosophy of law is an exploration and defense of the idea that our analysis of the concept of law is directly informative with respect to the phenomenon of law, for the concept of law is a special sort of concept that not only refers to its referent but also constitutes it. Social Philosophy The focus of my research within social philosophy concerns the value of being at home in one’s social institutions, such as the state, the family, and the institutions of civil society. I explore the meaning and importance of this value, and I assesses the conditions under which social institutions can be a home. A theme in these papers is that social institutions, including the state, are defective not only insofar as they fail to realize the value of authoritative legitimacy; they are also defective insofar as they are not homes for their occupants. I also assess the extent to which it is possible or desirable to be fully at home in an institution that claims authority. 
Ethics The focus of my research in ethics is the defense and development of an egalitarian rights-focused moral theory. I argue that morality requires that we treat others impartially, and I compare two mutually exclusvie ways of doing this: following act-utilitarianism and pursuing one’s interests within a sphere of freedom no greater or lesser than those others enjoy. I argue for the latter approach and against the former on grounds relating to the separateness of persons. An implication of this discussion is that treating others as equals is only fully possible within social and legal institutions that secure and maintain equal spheres of freedom. http://livepage.apple.com/