Dear all,

Hereby we would like to announce the next meeting of the Study Group Political Philosophy of the OZSW (Dutch Research School of Philosophy), which will be held on Tuesday May 13 from 13.30-17.00 in Utrecht. We will be discussing papers by Laurens van Apeldoorn (Leiden University), Thomas Fossen (Leiden University) and Jurriën Hamer (Utrecht University). Please see below for programme.

To register for this meeting please send an email to demaagt@fwb.eur.nl. Papers will be distributed one week in advance. During the meeting the speakers will briefly introduce their paper, followed by a commentary and a general discussion. Everyone is expected to have read the papers before the meeting.

If you are interested in presenting a paper during one of the next meetings of the study group please send an email to demaagt@fwb.eur.nl.

Best wishes,

Sem de Maagt
Gijs van Oenen

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Programme Tuesday May 13 from 13.30-17.00
Location Stijlkamer Janskerkhof (0.06), Janskerkhof 13. Utrecht.

Laurens van Apeldoorn – International Taxation and the Demands of Justice
Commentator: Bruno Verbeek

There is evidence that current practices in the taxation of international capital flows contributes to inequalities between rich and poor countries. It is estimated that developing countries lose up to $1 trillion annually (twice the total development aid) through capital flight, at least half of which is the result of tax avoidance schemes.  NGO’s such as Oxfam and Christian Aid have drawn attention to international taxation as cause of global distributive injustice. In this paper I attempt to develop a philosophical justification for that position by drawing on Thomas Pogge’s account of the negative duty individuals have not to harm the global poor.

Thomas Fossen – Judgment in the Face of Authority: Representations of Power and the Dynamics of Disputing Legitimacy
Commentator: Enzo Rossi

What is the relation between representing an authority in one way or another (say, as a parliamentary democracy, or a police state), and judging its legitimacy? The view implicit in most normative theories of legitimacy is that representing an authority is a matter of getting the facts about the case straight, and judging its legitimacy is to subsequently apply independently justified criteria of legitimacy. But can facts and norms be so neatly separated? This paper explores the contrary view that representing power and judging it are intertwined. On this view, representation affects not merely the circumstances of application of criteria of judgment, but their very content and justification.

Jurriën Hamer – Dignity, Rights and Judicial decision-making
Commentator: Roland Pierik

In this paper an analysis will be given of the ways the concepts of human dignity and human rights function in judicial reasoning, and based on that analysis critical questions will be raised about the practice of human rights courts. In other words: what does it mean to enable a court to rule on issues of human rights and human dignity, and what does this meaning tell us about how we should evaluate such a procedure?