Tag: Martin Carcieri

Rawls, Civil Disobedience, and Edward Snowden

Rawls, Civil Disobedience, and Edward Snowden

Martin Carcieri

June 15, 2014

Martin Carcieri
Martin Carcieri

Under what conditions does violation of law have the moral legitimacy of civil disobedience? If Edward Snowden were prosecuted in an American court for leaking classified NSA documents to journalists, for example, would his actions be justified under principles of civil disobedience as articulated by John Rawls, the most influential political philosopher of our time? In his third presentation of Rawls’ work to HCSV, Marty Carcieri (Associate Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University) will present Rawls’ theory of civil disobedience and apply it to the case of Edward Snowden.

Humanist Community Forum (2014-06-15): Rawls, Civil Disobedience, and Edward Snowden from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

Martin Carcieri

Physician-Assisted Suicide and Beyond: What Would Rawls Do?

Marty Carcieri

January 5, 2014

Martin Carcieri
Martin Carcieri

Physician-Assisted Suicide, even for the terminally ill, is legal in only four U.S. States. Yet there are now proposals in the U.S. and abroad to extend the right to die (i.e., to obtain and consume a reliable lethal dose of barbiturates) even further: 1) to those over 70 years of age, and 2) to those whose longtime spouses are near death and who wish to die with them. How would these proposals fare under the principles of justice articulated and defended by John Rawls, the most influential political theorist of our time? Friend of SVH Martin Carcieri will present his application of Rawlsian principles to one of the most urgent public policy issues of our time.

Martin Carcieri is an Associate Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University, where he teaches courses and seminars on Constitutional Law and Political Theory. He holds a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California, and has published twenty-five journal articles and book chapters.

To learn more before the presentation on Sunday, you can read the handout.

 

 

Martin Carcieri

John Rawls and Humanism

Martin Carcieri

 October 6, 2013

Martin Carcieri
Martin Carcieri

John Rawls is the most influential Anglo-American political theorist of the past three centuries. In bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rawls in 1999, Bill Clinton noted that he had put our liberties on a brilliant new foundation. That foundation is a refined version of the social contract as developed by early modern thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. It is of particular interest for Humanists since it provides an objective but workable basis for politics and ethics. It is neither objective, that is, in the sense of some transcendental foundation like God or Nature, nor purely subjective, with the nihilist dead end to which that leads. It is a contract, the basic terms of which, Rawls argues, we would (and do) accept as the basis of our politics and ethics. Besides presenting the basic method and principles for which Rawls argues, Carcieri will also present Rawls’ famous theory of civil disobedience, which builds upon the work of Thoreau, Gandhi, King, and others.

Martin Carcieri is an Associate Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University, where he teaches courses and seminars on Constitutional Law and Political Theory. He holds a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California, and has published twenty-five journal articles and book chapters.

Click here to view the Handout for this fascinating and informative talk.

 

 

Martin Carcieri

Citizens United & the Amendment Process

Martin D Carcieri

July 28, 2013

Marti Carcieri
Marti Carcieri

Citizens United v. FEC (2010) may be the most infamous Supreme Court ruling of the past decade. In this case, the Court struck down two provisions of federal law which limited corporate and union expenditures to advocate the election or defeat of candidates for federal office, holding that the provisions violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Martin Carcieri will explain that although this ruling rests firmly on earlier Court rulings, not only is an amendment to the U.S. Constitution invalidating Citizens United the most likely amendment that could be ratified in the next ten or twenty years, but also that such a recalibration of the balance between private and public power would be a highly appropriate use of the amendment process of Article V of the Constitution.  To learn more before the presentation on Sunday, you can read the Handout.

Martin Carcieri is an Associate Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University, where he teaches courses and seminars on Constitutional Law and Political Theory. He holds a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California, and has published twenty-five journal articles and book chapters.  He is a long time humanist, skeptic, and rationalist.