Copyright (c) 2010 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/ekow_yankah Recent documents in Ekow N Yankah en-us Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:30:26 PST 3600 http://works.bepress.com/ekow_yankah/2 http://works.bepress.com/ekow_yankah/2 Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:50:58 PST Prostitution in America is widespread and the harms associated with the sex trade are heartbreaking. Many moved by these harms have argued that there is nothing immoral about prostitution. Others have tried to show that a properly liberal government demands that we separate our moral and legal views. Despite persistent arguments by academics and reforms, little progress has been made in reforming prostitution laws and protecting vulnerable of women. Arguments that prostitution is not immoral or the appropriate liberal role of government fail to respect deeply held moral intuitions and thus cannot garner the consensus for reform. This article argues that progress cannot be made so long as reform arguments are premised on particular or controversial philosophical arguments. Rather, it is critical to see that from a wide range of philosophical starting points, one can agree with the commonly held intuition that prostitution is immoral without advocating legally prohibiting it. The major insight here is to stop viewing prostitution as intractably controversial. Most importantly and in contrast with prior efforts advocating reform, this article shows that agreement is not limited to traditional liberal positions but that agreement is possible even for those committed to the idea that the purpose of law is to promote virtue. Ekow N. Yankah Criminal Law and Procedure General Law Jurisprudence Law and Society Politics Public Law and Legal Theory Social Welfare Women http://works.bepress.com/ekow_yankah/1 http://works.bepress.com/ekow_yankah/1 Sun, 04 Mar 2007 17:33:28 PST Despite the common understanding of law as coercive a number of important legal theorist, including Hart, Raz, Finnis and Oberdiek, have long held that law is not inherently coercive. This position stems from the rejection of earlier jurisprudencial models of law, forwarded by Austin and Bentham, which erroneously described law as little more than state sponsored coercion. In noting what was wrong in the older models, that law is importantly normative and authoritative, modern theorists have dismissed what was right, that law is inherently coercive. This piece argues that law is inherently coercive. The piece first distinguishes coercion from sanctions, arguing that neither is a subset of the other. The piece then clarifies a model of coercion which, though explicit in understanding coercion as sensitive to a moral balance does not rely on Kantian models which locate coercion solely in a threat to violate the rights of others. Rather the model identifies coercion as a restriction imposed on another's will. Given this model of coercion the piece argues that without understanding law as coercive one cannot delineate the concept of law from other competing normative systems. Against the arguments of many leading jurisprudence scholars, the piece argues that coercion in law cannot be understood as necessary merely in light of human weakness but rather is a conceptual necessity. Lastly, it is argued law's coercion offers intriguing implications for the long running analytical jurisprudence debate regarding the role moral principles play in the definition and criteria of law as well as powerful suggestions regarding the need and form of moral justification needed in our political morality. Ekow N. Yankah General Law International Law Jurisprudence Public Law and Legal Theory