KJuris: Martin Smith (Edinburgh) - 'Rights and the ethics of risk imposition'

KJuris seminar with Martin Smith (Edinburgh)

Title: 'Rights and the ethics of risk imposition'

Abstract

My concern in this paper is with a series of problems that are known to beset rights-based approaches to the ethics of risk imposition. Existing attempts to deal with these problems tend to proceed in one of two ways; either by fine-tuning the precise nature of the relevant rights, or by making various adjustments to the broader rights-framework. The strategy that I will pursue, while not altogether distinct from these approaches, shifts the focus onto the nature of risk, and to the different ways in which we can conceptualise the risk to which one individual is subjected by the actions of another.

Speaker biography

Martin Smith is a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. While his primary research areas are epistemology and logic, some of his recent work has concerned topics such as legal standards of proof, the nature of surprise and the nature of risk. He is currently co-investigator on the AHRC funded Varieties of Risk project.