Senior Lecturer in Law

School of Law Director of Research   

Current Research

My central research areas are legal philosophy and criminal law theory. At the moment my main project is a book that proposes a subjective philosophy of criminal attempting.  3 recent projects have examined the various relationships between adjudicative processes and morality. Conceptual issues in jurisprudence are an ongoing interest as is the relationship between law / morality and human nature.

Recent Publications

Books   

A Philosophy of Criminal Attempts (Forthcoming, Cambridge University Press)

A Natural Law Approach to Normativity (Ashgate, 2007).

Articles and Chapter Contributions    

‘Dworkin’s Morality and its Limited Implications for Law’, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, January 2012.  

‘The Figuring of Morality in Adjudication: Not so Special?’ 24 Ratio Juris 3, 2011. 

 ‘Possibility, Impossibility and Extraordinariness in Attempts’ Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence (2010)

‘Natural Law and the Possibility of Universal Normative Foundations’ (Hart Publishing, 2010: Select Proceedings of the European Society of International Law, Volume 2, Edited by Hélène Ruiz Fabri, Rüdiger Wolfrum and Jana Gogolin)

'Sentencing and Consequences: A Divergence between Blameworthiness and Liability to Punishment.' 2007 10 New Criminal Law Review 3, 392-414.

'Natural Law and Ecocentrism' (2007), 19 Journal of Environmental Law, 89-101. (With Patrick Bishop) 

“M Pettenger (ed): ‘The Social Construction of Climate Change: Power, Knowledge, Norms, Discourses’”, The Journal of Environmental Law 20, 3, (2008), 486-9 (review)

'Subjectivity and Law's Fields of Enquiry' (2007), 20 Ratio Juris, 77-96.

'The Epistemic Importance of the Factual Base in New and Traditional Natural Law Theory' (2006), 25 Law and Philosophy, 1-29.

Papers   

‘ “Is” and “Ought” in Law and Justice in Community, Trinity College Dublin, 2011

‘Adjudication’s Necessary Engagement with Morality; Why it does not Establish a Moral Purpose in Law’, University of Edinburgh, 2010

‘Natural Law and the Possibility of Universal Normative Foundations’ ESIL Conference, Heidelberg, September 2008     

‘The role of morality in adjudication: not so special?’  Trinity College Dublin (Irish Jurisprudence Society) and Exeter University, 2008   

'Sentencing and Consequences: A Divergence between Blameworthiness and Liability to Punishment', School of Law research seminar series, Swansea University, September 2006.

'A New and Traditional Natural Law Analysis of Ecocentrism and Anthropocentrism', Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference, University of Strathclyde, 2005. (With Patrick Bishop)

'Teleology and Moral Duty' Oxford Jurisprudence Discussion Group, Trinity College Oxford, June, 2003.

'Evaluation and Legal Theory' Legal Theory Reading Group, School of Law, University of Birmingham, January 2002. 

Research Supervision

Current PhD Student

Carly James

Abayomi Al-Ameen

"I welcome research proposals with a significant theoretical element, particularly those concerned with the origins of normativity, the nature of judicial reasoning, law and human nature, or theoretical issues in criminal law."