In Dubio Pro Futura
This post introduces a proposal to promote the long-term interests of humanity and to avert existential and other catastrophic risks, such as those resulting from extreme climate change, pandemics and unaligned artificial intelligence, through the adoption of a novel legal decision rule: in dubio pro futura. In the face of legal indeterminacy, when the law does not provide a single correct answer but a range of several acceptable answers, courts should choose the one most favorable to the future of humanity. Continue reading >>Long-term Constitutional Law for Global Public Goods
The rules-based order necessary for realizing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) requires antagonistic, perennial struggles for justice challenging abuses of power and struggling for collective protection of the SDGs. Without such a ‘Sisyphus morality’ and stronger leadership from constitutional democracies for improving multilevel governance of global public goods, realization of the SDGs and protecting ‘human rights of all’ risk remaining a utopia. Continue reading >>Extratemporal Jurisdiction
When may a court legitimately rule over affairs of the future at all? Before thinking about how to resolve such cases, we need to clarify the conditions legitimatising the exercise of judicial authority. My (necessarily cursory) argument in this blogpost is twofold. First, I argue that it is both useful and conceptually apt to think about legitimate authority as a jurisdictional question. Second, I propose a heuristic condition that justifies the judicial exercise of extratemporal jurisdiction over future events: preserving choice.
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