RSS Parrot

In the Shadows: Academic Knowledge and Remedial Action

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/24252/

Published: June 8, 2026 15:40

Open access activists and shadow libraries violate laws that restrict access to academic research. Is such lawbreaking morally permissible? This paper defends an affirmative answer. We argue that the illegal sharing of academic research constitutes a form…

Feasibility as Probability: Rejecting Hard Constraints and the (Im)possibility Distinction

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/24773/

Published: June 8, 2026 15:30

A proper understanding of feasibility is important for a number of ongoing methodological debates within political theory. This paper challenges the frequent reliance in feasibility discussions on distinguishing between “hard” and “soft” constraints…

The Ambitions of Kantian Political Philosophy

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/18469/

Published: June 3, 2026 16:00

Kantian political philosophers and their critics tend to accept an ambitious construal of Kant’s contribution to political thought, according to which his framework aims to answer all the main questions of political philosophy, including those about…

When We May Not Experiment: On the Ethics of Randomized Controlled Trials in Policy and Development

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/18423/

Published: April 28, 2026 16:40

When are governments, non-governmental actors, or researchers permitted to randomly assign citizens to different policies to learn their effects? Randomized policy experiments are increasingly used in development research. Yet randomization involves…

Can Contractualism Be an Account of What We Owe to Each Other?

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/22987/

Published: April 2, 2026 15:30

According to contractualism, very roughly, an action x of type X is wrong, at least in one unified and distinct way, iff and because any principle permitting actions of type X could be reasonably rejected. According to what I will call the “Thesis,”…

For Your Own Good? Authority, Categorical Reasons, and Paternalism

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/23000/

Published: February 24, 2026 18:50

Instrumentalist accounts of authority seek to justify relations of authority—that is, relations in which one person has the ability to give binding directives to another—on the basis of some good, benefit or service that such relations provide for those…

Economic Democracy for the Voiceless

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/23916/

Published: February 11, 2026 16:15

In this article, I argue that instituting a form of economic democracy (ED) may offer a partial remedy to the ongoing ecological crisis. My argument proceeds in three steps. First, I contend that the ecological crisis largely stems from an…

The Separate Grounds of Competence

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/18623/

Published: February 10, 2026 19:55

When a person is competent, they can exercise their autonomy rights, including waiving claims against interference by giving consent. Non-competent persons, by contrast, lack these autonomy rights, which means that others are permitted to make certain…

Authority and Independence

https://freeandequaljournal.org/article/id/18888/

Published: January 19, 2026 21:58

Authority is often justified instrumentally, as a means for conforming to reason. The importance of deciding for ourselves is just as frequently explained by the importance of making our own lives or living life by our own lights. To reconcile these ideas,…