Humility as a necessary virtue in common-law decision making
| dc.contributor.author | Stevens, Katharina | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-10-21T21:43:30Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-10-21T21:43:30Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023 | |
| dc.description | Accepted author manuscript | |
| dc.description.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. | |
| dc.description.peer-review | Yes | |
| dc.identifier.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 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10133/7190 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Taylor & Francis | |
| dc.publisher.department | Department of Philosophy | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Arts and Science | |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Lethbridge | |
| dc.publisher.url | https://doi.org/10.1080/20403313.2023.2214484 | |
| dc.subject | Virtue jurisprudence | |
| dc.subject | Humility | |
| dc.subject | Precedent | |
| dc.subject | Common-law | |
| dc.subject | Community virtue | |
| dc.title | Humility as a necessary virtue in common-law decision making | |
| dc.type | Article |