Welcome to new subscribers
A short announcement
Thanks to discussions and links over at HollyMathNerd’s place and a couple of popular posts, quite a lot of you have made your way over here.
You’ll find my substack is less frequent than Holly’s, mainly because I’m an established writer in the dreaded “MSM” and publish there as a rule. I’ll make sure to draw attention to my recent publications from time-to-time in here, because people can’t be expected to subscribe to a whole stack of newspapers and magazines on the strength of a single author, and social media is a bit hit and miss when it comes to promoting articles.
Professionally, I’m a lawyer as well as a writer so if I disappear for long periods it’s because I’m consulting.
I don’t plan to charge for this; realistically, I’d have to lose all my other writing gigs and legal consulting work for that to happen.
I’ll also host periodic guest posts from writers I consider interesting.
I’ve been a professional writer in a variety of outlets since 1993, and in various forms of legal practice since 2005. I’ve written three novels, hundreds of thousands of words of legal and political commentary, and have been Senior Writer at Law & Liberty since January 2021. I have won or been shortlisted for a number of literary awards, initially in Australia and then elsewhere. I now live in the UK, in an area often described as the “Home Counties” or “Tory Shires”.
I’m still on the demon bird app; you can find me @_HelenDale (yes, I’m a blue tick; don’t judge).
Well I'm *not* a new subscriber, but I enjoyed your comment on Holly's blog too. Especially your appreciation of how so many thinkers like Harris fool themselves into ignoring the is-ought problem. (Though Bentham was worse than Harris, and he certainly did know about law.)
But I had a thought which was off topic for Holly's post, where you point out the following very depressing mostly-truth:
> ... and the province of elected politicians and their senior advisers and senior civil servants, to the exclusion of all others, including scientists—is to make ethical choices on policy ...
It's a scary thought that the ethical function of our society is delegated to this lot. And this explains much that is wrong with society.
That said, there is another source of law. A common law judge is expected to make rulings and thus make precedent in the light of what is. This includes fact, law and something in between where the meaning of facts get interpreted (with or without the help of a jury). Was action X "reasonable", was it "undue" etc.
If the judge is doing her job badly, she will substitute her own preferences into these decisions (it's only human). If she is doing her job well, she will observe the customs and expectations of actual people in society and encode it into case law. This is a channel through which (to Bentham's chagrin) everybody's moral actions shape the law.