UC Irvine

I propose three ways to reform the law that concretely address major concerns across philosophical and legal scholarship: one on making civil litigation fairer and more efficient by reworking the civil procedure of awarding damages in court, another on imposing tort liability for risk impositions by recognizing what I call “infliction of precarity” as tortious conduct, and the last on reconceiving and justifying differential punishment of successful and failed criminal attempts by challenging the merger doctrine in criminal law. These proposals show how to rework existing features of the law to design novel interventions that address three questions: (1) How can we make justice through civil litigation more accessible to the public and less dependent on their wealth? (2) Why should people face civil liability for putting others at persistent risk of harm whether or not the risk materializes into the harm? (3) Why should criminal law punish offenders who complete a criminal attempt more so than offenders who fail to complete the attempt? These proposals provide concrete answers to the foregoing questions that integrate philosophical and legal scholarship. They represent my vision of legal philosophy that sees substantive legal reform as one of its inherent themes.