Tsarnaev (and capital punishment, the morality of the death penalty, and equivocation)

The Justice Department has announced that it will seek the death penalty against the surviving Boston bomber, 20 year old, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Now seems a good time to consider the arguments for whether the death penalty is a just punishment. I recognize, of course, that the Justice Department might be pursuing the death penalty in […]

Law and Morality (Columbia MD, gun rights, consequentialism, Kantianism, and client counseling)

I was responding to a very interesting comment on another blog when some new thoughts on an issue that I find myself thinking about frequently quickly materialized: the intersection and overlap of law and morality. It’s a thorny issue for me, because as a moral realist I think that there are objective moral truths and […]

Columbia, Maryland (and rights, gun control, and arguments from analogy)

I have refrained from writing on the controversial topic of gun control but I feel now that I must address it as today’s shooting in Columbia mall is literally too close to home for me to not comment – my father goes to a new age church in Columbia, Maryland, and I have friends who […]

Is Surveillance by the NSA Just? (deontology, Kant, Ross, and the priority of the right)

To say that there has been a vociferous response to the continuing revelations of surveillance conducted by the NSA might be to state the facts mildly; there has been heated debate in the public sphere on the matter, culminating in a presidential address yesterday declaring that (modest) changes would be made. President Barack Obama’s remarks […]

Batman (and Kierkegaard on the suspension of ethics)

I am unashamedly a big fan of Batman; I grew up watching the PG-rated cartoons and reading innocent adaptations of the mythology (some more innocent than others — I definitely read “A Death in the Family” a little too young”), and in high school read the more mature trade paperbacks and graphic novels, an interest […]