Philosophy Speaker Series

Friday, February 4

Time: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

Contact: kdyck@wlu.ca for Zoom link

Speaker: Dr. Katharina Stevens, University of Lethbridge

Humility as a Necessary Virtue in Common Law Decision Making

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 at least from a positivist point of view and at least in common-law jurisdictions, humility should be considered a necessary judicial virtue. Judicial humility, understood roughly as “knowing ones place”, 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.