Legal Philosophy

Defining the Problem — Regulating Behavior

By Ron Dolin | January 8, 2020 | Criminal Justice, Legal Philosophy, Punishment, Regulating Behavior, Robotic Agency | 2 Comments

Retribution for its own sake is certainly questionable for a vacuum cleaner.

The Naughty Vacuum Cleaner: (Re-)defining Free Will

By Ron Dolin | December 7, 2019 | Robotic Agency | Leave a Comment

I have a couple of robotic vacuum cleaners. I named one of them “Lil Miss Naughty” and the other “Dr. Evil”. The first one has a tendency to leave some spots a bit messy. The second one likes to attack cords and rugs. No matter what I say to them, they don’t change their behavior. […]

Eight Is Great?

By Ron Dolin | November 25, 2016 | Constitutional Law, Inconsistency Robustness, Legal Philosophy, Supreme Court | 6 Comments

Why does the U.S. Supreme Court have an odd number of justices; what would happen if it didn’t? In the summer of 2014, well before the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and the ensuing political turmoil about filling his vacancy, I attended a conference at Stanford dealing with the logical formalisms of inconsistency (“Inconsistency Robustness”). It […]