Profile
John Tasioulas joined UCL in January 2011 as the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence. He was previously a Reader in Moral and Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He has also taught at the universities of Melbourne and Glasgow and has held visiting research posts at Melbourne and the Australian National University. His research grants include two Research Leave Awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2001 and 2004) and a British Academy Research Development Award (2008-2010) for a monograph-length project on the philosophy of human rights. He is currently a member of the AHRC Peer Review College. He is on the editorial boards of the American Society of International Law Studies in International Legal Theory and the Journal of Applied Philosophy.
Research
Professor Tasioulas’ research interests revolve around Socrates' question, 'How should one live?', and the attempt to draw out the moral, political and legal implications of an acceptable answer to it. His current research is mainly focused on the following three strands of inquiry:
(a) the philosophy of human rights: He is engaged in writing a monograph that develops a pluralistic, interest-based account of human rights, one that - among other things – seeks to provide us with the intellectual resources to respond to the familiar objection that human rights reflect merely Western values. It also tries to draw out the theory's implications for the evaluation and development of international law;
(b) the philosophy of crime and punishment: He has defended a new version of the 'communicative' theory of punishment, the idea that punishment is justified as censure for certain kinds of wrong-doing. This version of the theory strives to make room for both the values of retributive justice and mercy. He also has an ongoing interest in the question of the grounds for criminalizing conduct; and
(c) the philosophy of international law, including such topics as the legitimacy of international law, the nature and scope of state sovereignty, international crimes (e.g. crimes against humanity), and the nature of customary international law.
Professor Tasioulas also has on-going research interests in a number of other topics, including the nature of moral wrong-doing and the responses appropriate to it, the components of human well-being, the plurality of ethical values, as well as meta-ethical questions about the reality of moral values and the possibility of moral knowledge.
Publications
Work in progress:
Human Rights: From Morality to Law (under contract with Oxford University Press)
Selected recent publications include:
Books
The Philosophy of International Law, co-editor (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Articles
'Human Rights', in A. Marmor (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Law (Routledge, forthcoming).
‘Justice, Equality, and Rights’, in R. Crisp (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics (OUP, forthcoming 2011).
'Where is the Love? The Topography of Mercy', in R. Cruft, M. Kramer and M. Reiff (eds.), Crime, Punishment, and Responsibility: The Jurisprudence of Antony Duff (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp.37-53.
‘Taking Rights out of Human Rights’, Ethics 120 (July 2010), pp.647-678.
‘Justice and Punishment’, in J. Skorupski (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Ethics (Routledge, 2010)
‘The Legitimacy of International Law’, in S. Besson and J. Tasioulas (eds.), The Philosophy of International Law (OUP, 2010), pp.97-116.
‘Are Human Rights Essentially Triggers for Intervention?’, Philosophy Compass 4 (2009), pp.938-50.
‘The Moral Reality of Human Rights’, in T. Pogge (ed.), Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? (OUP, 2007), pp.75-101. Spanish translation ‘La Realidad Moral de los Derechos Humanos’, Anuario de Derechos Humanos 4 (2008), pp.41-67 http://www.cdh.uchile.cl/anuario04/3-Articulos/JohnTasioulas.pdf
‘Repentance and the Liberal State’, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 4 (2007), pp.487-521.
‘Customary International Law and the Quest for Global Justice’, in A. Perreau-Saussine and J.B. Murphy (eds.),
The Nature of Customary Law: Philosophical, Historical and Legal Perspectives ( Cambridge University Press, 2007)
‘Punishment and Repentance’, Philosophy 81 (2006), pp.279-322.
‘Games and the Good’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society supplementary volume LXXX (2006), pp.237-264. Reprinted in M.J. McNamee (ed.), The Ethics of Sports: A Reader (Routledge, 2010), pp.62-76.
Current Teaching
Undergraduate
To be confirmed
Graduate
To be confirmed
PhD Supervision
Professor Tasioulas welcomes approaches for supervision from prospective PhD
students.
Page updated on
31 January, 2012
APPLICATION NOTICES
The application process for the 2013-14 academic session is open.
The deadline for applications to be received has been extended to Monday 1 July 2013
Please refer to the How to apply section for information on the application process.
