Chapter 6 argues that in interpreting the right to legal capacity ‘on an equal basis with others’, a substantive notion of inclusive equality must be applied. In doing so, it applies but also critiques General Comment No 6: On Equality and Non-Discrimination, published by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Inclusive equality demands recognition of the difference of impairment and associated disadvantages. Once difference is acknowledged, either supported decision-making or decision-making by substitutes may be required to recognise an adult’s legal capacity ‘on an equal basis with others’ and to promote inclusion. This chapter draws on existing commentary explaining the ‘hybrid’ nature of the right to equality in bridging both socio-economic and civil and political rights and driving the principle of indivisibility.

The Investment Court System is the core feature of the EU international investment policy. In its Opinion 1/17 the CJEU confirmed the legality of the new ICS in CETA under EU law, providing important legal and policy implications for the future co-existence of EU law and international investment law. This chapter offers a critical assessment of the ICS, examined through the CJEU’s reasoning in Opinion 1/17. First, we discuss the nature of the ICS in relation to the EU judicial system. Second, we consider the effects of the ICS on the autonomy of the CJEU and the interpretation of EU law. Finally, we focus on the main features of the ICS in light of the rule-of-law criteria, as the core EU value. Where relevant, the CJEU’s Opinion is supplemented by remarks of late Advocate General Bot, which uncover a number of relevant political considerations. The design and functioning of the ICS thus provide important insights into the EU’s understanding of the rule of law in international investment law, which is ultimately envisaged to be implemented through a Multilateral Investment Court.

The tension between democratic autonomy and judicial authority over democratic process cannot be wholly resolved. The best way to balance this dilemma incorporates an unsettling reality about the freedom that vindicates democratic self-rule: the values and realization of freedom are necessarily the subjects of ongoing intractable struggle over its moral meaning. This perpetual contestability also offers the possibility of reimagining judicial review. This chapter exploits the election law doctrine’s fiercely unsettled case law to suggest that continual judicial debate about the appropriate terms of democratic freedom is the best way to reconcile judicial review with constituent self-determination. Conceiving of judicial review of election law as a dispute over self-rule answers the challenge at three levels: it (1) explains how nonaccountable courts can play a legitimate institutional role in democratic self-determination; (2) allows courts to opine on self-rule without overdetermining the meaning of freedom, and thus undermining its moral value; and (3) offers the best account of the doctrine as a battle over the meaning of liberalism.

In creating the WTO and GATT before it, the world’s trading nations did more than enter into a contract. They also created a compact that is imbued with a series of values. No understanding of the WTO would be complete without understanding this qualitative aspect, often explicit, but sometimes only to be derived from the operation of the WTO and its agreements.

No philosopher is more strongly associated with deontological ethics or is a more canonical modern moral philosopher than Immanuel Kant. In this chapter, we focus on Kant, though we begin, after a brief introduction of Kant and his historico-philosophical significance, with Rousseau. Rousseau is best known as a political philosopher, but there are elements of his thought that have great importance for moral philosophy and its history and, especially, for Kant. Kant credits Rousseau as the source of his signature claim of the equal dignity of rational persons. And Rousseau’s conception of political society as an “association” that “defend[s] and protect[s] the person and goods of each associate with the full common force,” but where each “nevertheless obey[s] only himself,” has obvious resonances with Kant’s “kingdom of ends” in which all are governed by self-legislated law. At the same time, Rousseau offers important points of contrast to Kant. Whereas Rousseau’s emphasis is essentially social and political, Kant will attempt to argue for morality as a common law binding all agents that is grounded in practical reason alone. Rousseau, by contrast, points toward an alternative grounding in sociability that is reminiscent more of Grotius, Pufendorf, Smith, and Reid.

Educating responsible moral agents is a central goal of democratic societies committed to the values of justice, equality, and the promotion of individuals’ well-being. How best to pursue the goal through formal schooling is, however, highly debated in moral education, due to reasonable disagreement on values and how to impart them. This chapter suggests that the core concepts of the capability approach provide an ethical framework which can fruitfully inform moral education. The approach’s core idea of evaluating individual well-being and the justice of society in terms of capability, or the substantive freedom to choose one’s valued life, together with the concept of agency and the importance of rational deliberation, set the ethical foundations for educating morally responsible citizens, who consider and treat other people as moral equals, care for social justice, and value their own and others’ well-being.

A focus on care draws attention to the fact that ethical self-cultivation, even in traditions that foreground moral autonomy, relies upon relationships of dependence. The recognition of relational and ethical dependence is familiar to anthropologists and has long been central for feminist ethics. However, the enormous body of anthropological scholarship that has emerged on care over the last decade raises the question of ethical dependence anew. This chapter problematizes the concept of care. It asks: how might ‘care’ as a topic, and as engaged ethnographically, trouble some of the ways that ethical life more broadly has been conceived in the philosophical and anthropological literature? Conversely, how might attention to the ethical stakes of care trouble some of the rich ethnographic scholarship on care? The chapter draws most substantially on anthropological and philosophical scholarship in virtue ethics and in phenomenology to consider both the relational complexities of care and care’s ineffable and elusive ethical dimensions.

Anthropologists and cognitive scientists interested in ethics and morality have much to gain from a two-way dialogue that does not shy away from constructive criticism. This chapter seeks to initiate such a conversation through an overview of three lines of recent research in cognitive science: the evolution of human morality from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology; theories that look to social institutions rather than only evolved psychological dispositions for insight into the variability of human moral dispositions; and studies of how responsibility and intentionality are ascribed in cases of wrongdoing. The final section offers some personal reflections on the methodological challenges of inter-disciplinary engagement, drawing on some of the authors’ recent research on morality and change in western Amazonia. It concludes that anthropologists can use experimental methods creatively, as a way of generating new ethnographic insights; although if genuine conversation on an equal footing is to take place, then ethnography must not only inform experimental design but also be employed to redefine concepts and generate theory.

This chapter describes some of the main areas of interaction, overlap, or mutual concern between the disciplines of anthropology and philosophy, primarily as these are reflected in contemporary moral and political philosophy in the Anglophone tradition. The discussion is focussed on three broad themes, each falling under one of the main branches of moral and political philosophy as conventionally understood, namely ‘moral theory’, ‘applied ethics’, and ‘metaethics’. Under the heading of ‘moral theory’, the focus of discussion is the relationship between ideas of the good, the right, and the virtuous. Under the heading of ‘applied ethics’, the focus is on ideas of equality, justice, and cosmopolitan ideals. Under the heading of ‘metaethics’, the focus is on debates about interpretation, difference, and relativism. In each case, an attempt is made to connect some of the most influential literature in recent moral and political philosophy with relevant work in social anthropology.

This chapter shifts the focus to Europe in the early nineteenth century, where three important archetypes of economic nationalism were conceived. The first two were isolationist. Protectionists in France promoted disengagement from the world economy to forestall a rise in economic inequality which they feared might undermine national unity. Romanticist philosophers such as Adam Müller and Johann Gottlieb Fichte in Germany saw intensifying trade as eroding ‘traditional’ national and cultural values, which led them to advocate strict autarky. Friedrich List drew on these ideas, but also on developmental American approaches, in particular Alexander Hamilton’s ideas. He crafted an intellectual synthesis that sought to spur industrialisation by managing trade. However, List was unable to solve the tension between an ideology defending the economic sovereignty of small nations and one advocating imperialist expansion in search for markets, land and resources.