Part I: Foundations for a Defense of Justice
1. Introduction
1.1. The Problem of Legal Injustice
1.2. Injustice in the Legal System
1.3. The Primacy of Authority and the Primacy of Justice
1.4. A Brief Preview
2. Law and Morality
2.1. The Autonomy of Ethics
2.2. The Challenge of Natural Law
2.2.1. “Unjust Law Is Not Law”
2.2.2. Normative Reading
2.2.3. Weak Descriptive Readings
2.2.4. Semantic Disputes
2.3. The Challenge of Legal Relativism
2.4. In Defense of Moral Rights
2.4.1. Intuitive Support for Rights
2.4.2. The Trolley Objection
2.4.3. Against Consequentialism
2.4.4. Differences Between Trolley and Organ Harvesting
2.4.5. Accommodating Rights to the Trolley Exception
2.4.6. Why Speak of Rights?
2.5. Intuition and Moral Knowledge
2.5.1. The Concept of Ethical Intuition
2.5.2. Intuitionist Methodology
2.6. Moral Realism
Part II: Legal Injustices
3. Unjust Laws
3.1. The Presumption Against Law
3.1.1. An Argument that Laws Are Presumptively Unjust
3.1.2. The Right Against Harmful Coercion
3.1.3. In Defense of Prima Facie Rights
3.1.4. Laws Are Harmfully Coercive
3.2. Drug Prohibition
3.2.1. Prohibition Violates Prima Facie Rights
3.2.2. Harm to Users
3.2.3. Harm to Others
3.2.4. Other Problems of Prohibition
3.2.5. Why Drug Laws Exist
3.3. Immigration Restrictions
3.4. Other Unjust Laws
3.5. The Trolley Exception
3.6. Just Laws
3.7. Ideological Controversy
4. The Price of Justice
4.1. The Price of Legal Services
4.2. The State’s Responsibility for Legal Prices
4.2.1. Supply Factors: Licensing
4.2.2. Demand Factors: Complexity
4.2.3. Demand Factors: Overcriminalization
4.2.4. Demand Factors: The Threat of Legal Harm
4.3. From Causation to Culpability
4.3.1. When Costs Are Unjust
4.3.2. Licensing
4.3.3. Complexity
4.3.4. The Threat of Legal Harm
4.4. The Duty to Provide Justice
4.4.1. The Function of Government
4.4.2. Duties to Society vs. Individuals
4.4.3. Prohibitive Pricing Violates the Duty to Provide Justice
4.4.4. Indigent Defense in the Status Quo
4.5. Facilitation of Injustice
4.6. Objections
4.6.1. Burdens to Taxpayers
4.6.2. The Problem of Frivolous Lawsuits
4.7. Reforms
5. Extorted Pleas
5.1. The Practice of Plea Bargaining
5.2. The Injustice of Plea Bargaining
5.2.1. Plea Bargaining as Coerced Confession
5.2.2. When the Innocent Plead Guilty
5.2.3. Disproportionate Punishment
5.3. Plea Bargaining Is Unconstitutional
5.4. Plea Bargaining Defeats Due Process Protections
5.5. Defenses of Plea Bargaining
5.5.1. “Plea Bargaining Is Not Coercive”
5.5.2. “Individuals Have the Right to Sell Their Rights”
5.5.3. “Trials Are Too Expensive”
5.6. Reforms
5.6.1. Limiting the Trial Penalty
5.6.2. The Right to Sue
5.6.3. Cost Reduction
6. Unjust Punishments
6.1. Principles of Just Punishment
6.1.1. Why We Punish
6.1.2. The Need for Retributive Justice
6.1.3. The Proportionality Principle
6.1.4. Unconscionable Punishments
6.2. Disproportionate Punishments
6.2.1. The Origins of Mass Incarceration
6.2.2. Excess Punishment
6.3. Unconscionable Punishment
6.3.1. The Problem of Prison Abuse
6.3.2. The Impermissibility of Imprisonment
6.3.3. The Duty to Prevent Crime
6.3.4. The Prospects for Reform
6.4. Reforms
6.4.1. Advantages of a Restitution-Based System
6.4.2. The Need for Incapacitation
7. Abuse of Power
7.1. The Problem of Abuse of Power
7.2. Police Abuse
7.2.1. The Problem of Police Violence
7.2.2. The System’s Response
7.2.3. The Role of Race
7.3. Prosecutorial Abuse
7.3.1. Prosecuting the Innocent
7.3.2. Skewed Trials
7.3.3. Civil Immunity
7.4. Executive Abuse
7.4.1. Richard Nixon
7.4.2. George W. Bush
7.4.3. Barack Obama
7.4.4. Necessity vs. Imminence
7.4.5. Divisiveness
7.5. Diagnosing Abuse
7.5.1. Ambition
7.5.2. Confirmation Bias
7.5.3. Love of Power
7.5.4. Ingroup Bias
7.5.5. Deference to Power
7.6. Reforms
Part III: In Defense of Justice
8. The Primacy of Justice
8.1. Questions of Individual Ethics
8.2. The Meaning of the Primacy of Justice
8.2.1. The Ethical Juror
8.2.2. The Ethical Lawyer
8.2.3. The Ethical Judge
8.3. The Role of Law in a System of Justice
8.3.1. Law Affects Justice
8.3.2. Resolving Unclear Cases
8.4. The Common Sense Case for Justice
8.4.1. The General Duty of Justice
8.4.2. The Argument from Instrumental Rationality
9. The Authority of Law
9.1. The Need for a Theory of Authority
9.2. The Social Contract Theory
9.3. The Hypothetical Contract Theory
9.4. The Democratic Theory
9.5. The Utilitarian Theory
9.6. Conclusion
10. Role Playing
10.1. Role Playing
10.2. The Knowledge Argument
10.2.1. Ignorance of Justice
10.2.2. Certainty Is Not Required
10.2.3. Uncertainty of Law
10.2.4. Extreme Skepticism Is Unreasonable
10.2.5. The Streetlamp Fallacy
10.3. The Problem of Subjectivism
10.3.1. The Subjective Belief Objection
10.3.2. The Subjective Belief Objection Entails Absurdity
10.3.3. Pursuing Real vs. Apparent Justice
10.4. Faith in Democracy
10.4.1. The Problem of Undemocratic Decisions
10.4.2. The Reliability of Democracy
10.4.3. The Reliability of Juries and Judges
10.5. Promises and Role Obligations
10.5.1. The Obligation to Fill a Role
10.5.2. Implicit Contracts
10.5.3. The Juror’s Oath
10.6. Faith in the System
10.6.1. The Appeal to the System
10.6.2. Increasing the Odds of Unjust Outcomes
10.6.3. Prosecutors vs. Defense Attorneys
10.6.4. Judge and Jury
10.6.5. Universalization
10.7. What Is the Role of a Jury?
10.7.1. Determining the Jury’s Role
10.7.2. Framers’ Intent
10.7.3. Case Law
10.7.4. Moral and Practical Considerations
11. The Rule of Law
11.1. The Appeal to the Rule of Law
11.2. Anarchic Precedents
11.2.1. Warnings of Anarchy
11.2.2. Existing Precedents
11.2.3. The Influence of Juries
11.2.4. Lawyers’ Duties
11.2.5. The Importance of Justice
11.3. The Value of Uniformity
11.3.1. Advantages of Uniformity: Fairness, Planning, and Deterrence
11.3.2. Factual and Moral Innocence
11.3.3. Negative versus Positive Rule of Law
11.3.4. Sources of Uncertainty
11.4. The Virtue of Social Deference
11.4.1. The Problem of Normative Disagreement
11.4.2. The Process-Based Solution
11.4.3. Deference to the Law
11.4.4. The Limits of Social Deference
11.4.5. The Abuse of Democracy
11.4.6. Jury Nullification as Part of the Process
11.5. The Virtue of Defiance
11.5.1. The Difficulty of Defiance
11.5.2. The Harm of Obedience
12. Conclusion
12.1. Flaws in the U.S. Legal System
12.1.1. Unjust Laws
12.1.2. Unjust Prices
12.1.3. Plea Bargaining
12.1.4. Unjust Punishments
12.1.5. Abuse of Power
12.2. Toward a Justice-Oriented Legal Philosophy
12.2.1. Placing Justice Before the Law
12.2.2. Against Authority
12.2.3. Role Obligations
12.2.4. The Need for Uniformity
12.2.5. Social Deference
12.3. An Error Theory: The Cognitive Handicap of Jurisprudence
12.4. Virtues of American Justice