This volume contains nineteen published and unpublished chapters from 1987 to 2009. They are grouped into four parts. The chapters in the first part examine the ways in which being a person grounds the equality of all human beings, acknowledged as law's point even in Roman law and, rather shakily, in modern legal theory (Kelsen, Hart, Dworkin); legal rules can be seen as relationships between persons; persons are primary bearers of meaning and objects of legal interpretation, various aspects of personal identity (both natural and acquired by self-determination) are depicted by Aquinas and Shak ... More

This volume contains nineteen published and unpublished chapters from 1987 to 2009. They are grouped into four parts. The chapters in the first part examine the ways in which being a person grounds the equality of all human beings, acknowledged as law's point even in Roman law and, rather shakily, in modern legal theory (Kelsen, Hart, Dworkin); legal rules can be seen as relationships between persons; persons are primary bearers of meaning and objects of legal interpretation, various aspects of personal identity (both natural and acquired by self-determination) are depicted by Aquinas and Shakespeare (better than Locke); and the reality of human spirit and dignity was vindicated by Elizabeth Anscombe's account of even simple physical gestures. Part Two groups four chapters. The first two carefully analyse what is involved in any group's acting and, consequently, its existence as a group, taking off from Hart's and Dworkin's inconclusive discussions of corporate persons, Honoré's showing of the importance of links and interaction, Thomas Nagel's attempt to distinguish public from private morality, and Scruton's elaborate discussion of corporate persons. The second two seek to show the importance and conditions for nations and national identity, in the face of arguments for a cosmopolitan morality, and of Dworkin's and Raz's arguments about respect and insult. Part Three is the longest part and the seven chapters include close studies of the idea of intention (and of willing, more generally) in Aquinas (poorly understood by many modern theologians, but centre on equally close analysis of intention (including conditional intention) in recent English criminal law, in Anglo-American law of torts, in recent English anti-discrimination law, and more generally. Part Four is about individuality or identity in early human embryonic existence, and in the severely injured conditions often called ‘brain death’ (as discussed by Peter Singer) or, less severe, ‘permanent vegetative syndrome’ (as judicially discussed in Bland).