Background: In this webinar I'll be making the case that we should give more, not less, discretionary power to those who are in charge of implementing and enforcing rules in a firm or society. These are people like police officers, prosecutors, judges, and also doctors, nurses, and everyday workers. The argument rest on a case against Legalism, the political philosophy that job titles, roles, rules, laws, policies, and procedures must be detailed, explicit, and blindly administered to ensure an efficiently functioning and fair society. Instead, my view is that basic tenets of what makes for a good person and a society of good people requires that we build into rules and regulation the ability for people in charge of those rules to ignore or bend them.

Speaker:

Professor Barry Lam is Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Riverside, and host and producer of Slate's Hi-Phi Nation podcast, a documentary series about the connection between philosophy and the law, science, technology, and everyday life.