Humility as a necessary virtue in common-law decision making
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Date
2023
Authors
Stevens, Katharina
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Abstract
Humility holds a modest but important place among the judicial virtues. But in spite of its growing popularity, it does not yet have a place on the ‘central judicial virtues’ lists. This paper provides an argument that judicial humility, especially institutional judicial humility, should be considered a necessary judicial virtue at least in common-law jurisdictions. This is because it is a necessary ingredient in precedent-based decisions that are fully justified from the point of view of the law and of political morality. Further, while it is sufficient that individual judges make decisions that a humble judge would have made, the judicial community must in fact be humble in order to produce fully justified common-law decisions – humility is therefore necessary as a community-virtue.
Description
Accepted author manuscript
Keywords
Virtue jurisprudence , Humility , Precedent , Common-law , Community virtue
Citation
Stevens, K. (2023). Humility as a necessary virtue in common-law decision making. Jurisprudence (Oxford, England), 14(4), 443-461. https://doi.org/10.1080/20403313.2023.2214484