The Exemption That Confirms the Rule: Reflections on Proceduralism and the UK Hybrid Embryos Controversy

Forthcoming in 'Res Publica: A Journal of Legal and Social Philosophy', vol. 15, no. 3.

This paper provides an interpretation of the licensing provisions
envisaged under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 as a model for a rule and exemption-based procedural strategy for the adjudication of potential ethical controversies, and it offers an account of the liberal-democratic legitimacy of the procedure's outcomes as well as of the legal procedure itself. Drawing on a novel articulation of the distinction between exceptions and exemptions, the paper argues that such a rule and exemption mechanism, while not devoid of attractions, is not immune from the criticisms often levied against procedural approaches to the management of pluralism: it either has to fall back on substantive justification in ways that are not helpful when trying to arbitrate a moral controversy, or it appears justificatorily groundless.

Liberal Democracy and the Challenge of Ethical Diversity

Published in 'Human Affairs', Vol. 18, n. 1 (June 2008), pp. 10-22.

Many theorists claim that liberal democracy ought to be reformed or rejected for not being sufficiently 'inclusive' towards diversity; others argue that, on the contrary, liberalism is desirable because it accommodates (some level of) diversity. Moreover, it has been argued that concern for diversity should lead us to favour (say) neutralistic over perfectionist, universalistic over particularistic, participative over representative versions of liberal democracy. This paper provides a conceptual framework to situate those debates, and argues that there are two fundamental ways in which diversity constitutes a challenge to the justificatory status of liberal democracy: consistency (whereby diversity causes clashes between the prescriptions generated by normative political theories), and adequacy (whereby diversity generates a rift between our experience of what is considered valuable and what the theory treats as such).

Liberalism, Modernity, and Communal Being

Forthcoming in 'Imprints: Egalitarian Theory and Practice', Vol. 10, n. 3 (2009)

A critical discussion of Toula Nicolacopoulos' 'The Radical Critique of Liberalism'. I analyse her methodology of 'critical reconstructionism' and argue that considerations about the epistemic status of the inquiring practices leading to the formulation of liberal political theory need not affect the viability and desirability of liberal political practice, especially if we adopt a historically-informed realist account of the foundations of liberalism.

(With Maria Paola Ferretti) 'Usi e abusi del piano inclinato in circostanze di pluralismo: esempi dal dibattito sull’embriologia in Germania e Gran Bretagna' [Uses and Abuses of the Slippery Slope in Circumstances of Pluralism: Examples from the Embryology Debate in Germany and in the UK]

forthcoming in 'Notizie di Politeia: Rivista di Etica e Scelte Pubbliche' (Sept. 2009).