We have largely forgotten that there is another way to pursue justice than by deciding what the answer to every problem is going to be ahead of time through legislation. Casuistry or case-centric jurisprudence is anti-legislation. It is the practice of taking each case as it comes, using judgment to discern the right outcome, while allowing plenty of room for mitigating or exacerbating circumstances. It is not a technique, but a state of mind. It involves taking a few steps back and thinking about what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears instead of trying to fit circumstances into the tight definitions in lawbooks. Judges who practice casuistry put their own intuition and, yes, judgment, ahead of what’s written down in laws compiled by people in faraway places.
Casuistry requires a major conceptual shift, from ‘classical’ to ‘quantum’ jurisprudence we might say. We are used to seeing court cases as equations where legal formulas are filled in with information and the results issue forth in ‘Guilty’ or ‘Innocent’ verdicts. However, casuistry sees cases in terms of relationships among people connected by a common injustice and requiring the careful, attentive, thoughtful, and imaginative application of fair judgment in order to right the wrong and restore all parties to good graces with one another as best as can be done. Under casuistry, justice is a work in progress, with a lot of gray mixed in with the black and white. There are no Newtonian certainties, only Heisenbergian approximations.
Ancient Judgments
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 2020 / January 2021-Ausgabe von Philosophy Now.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 2020 / January 2021-Ausgabe von Philosophy Now.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Metaphors & Creativity
Ignacio Gonzalez-Martinez has a flash of inspiration about the role metaphors play in creative thought.
Medieval Islam & the Nature of God
Musa Mumtaz meditates on two maverick medieval Muslim metaphysicians.
Robert Stern
talks with AmirAli Maleki about philosophy in general, and Kant and Hegel in particular.
Volney (1757-1820)
John P. Irish travels the path of a revolutionary mind.
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
Becky Lee Meadows considers questions of guilt, innocence, and despair in this classic Christmas movie.
"I refute it thus"
Raymond Tallis kicks immaterialism into touch.
Cave Girl Principles
Larry Chan takes us back to the dawn of thought.
A God of Limited Power
Philip Goff grasps hold of the problem of evil and comes up with a novel solution.
A Critique of Pure Atheism
Andrew Likoudis questions the basis of some popular atheist arguments.
Exploring Atheism
Amrit Pathak gives us a run-down of the foundations of modern atheism.