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VICTOR TADROS

Welcome!

My Work

What I do

My research interests span across much of moral, legal, and political philosophy. Quite a lot of my work has been concerned with the philosophy of criminal law and the philosophy of war, but I have also written on a wide range of general issues in moral and political philosophy. I am currently mainly working on consent to sex and on responsibility.

Brief Biography

I am Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Warwick. I was educated at Oxford University (BA Hons) and at King’s College, London (PhD). Prior to joining Warwick in 2006, I held lectureships at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh, and in the fall of 2015 I was Carter Visiting Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School. From 2010-13 I held an AHRC Research Grant, with Antony Duff, Lindsay Farmer, Sandra Marshall and Massimo Renzo, to work on criminalization. I held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship from 2014-2018, and was elected as Fellow of the British Academy in 2018. I am an Associate Editor at Ethics.

My Books

I am the sole author of four books for Oxford University Press: Criminal Responsibility (2005), The Ends of Harm (2011), Wrongs and Crimes (2016), and To Do, To Die, To Reason Why (2020). With Antony Duff, Lindsay Farmer and Sandra Marshall, I co-authored The Trial on Trial (3) Towards a Normative Theory of the Criminal Trial (2007). I have co-edited seven books.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Here are some papers that I’m working on at the moment. If you’d like to see any of them, get in touch.

‘Treatment and Accountability’ – A paper that considers the appropriate responses to responsible and non-responsible conduct.

‘Responsibility as Personal Significance’ – A paper about the nature of responsibility, that rejects response-dependent views of responsibility, and defends the idea that responsibility is constituted by significant agential properties.

‘Fairness, Avoidability and Sanctions’ – A paper which explores the extent to which sanctions are made fair by avoidability.

‘Refuge and Aid’ – A paper about whether there are more stringent duties on wealthy states to assist needy migrants than the distant needy.

‘Responsibility without Modality’ In this paper, I argue against the view that responsibility depends on a person being reason responsive, where reason-responsiveness is understood modally.

‘Responding to Cultural Wrongs in Palestine and Israel’. A paper about the obligations that arise from historic culture, focused on the historical Palestinian town of Lydda (renamed Lod).

‘The Centrality of Consent’. A paper arguing that consent is central to the morality of sex, and that it is not otiose in cases of mutual active sex.

‘The Conditional Value of Autonomy’. A paper that explores what the value or disvalue of autonomy is conditional on. It argues (against Raz) that autonomous wrongdoing can be valuable, and (against Kant) that autonomously doing one’s duty can be disvaluable.

MY PUBLICATIONS

Publications

Books:

AUTHORED:

Criminal Responsibility (Oxford: OUP, 2005; paperback 2007) i-xv + 1-389

Reviews: Cambridge Law Journal; Oxford Journal of Legal Studies; New Criminal Law Review; Theoretical Criminology; British Journal of Criminology; Edinburgh Law Review; Criminal Law and Philosophy; Modern Law Review.

The Trial on Trial 3: Towards a Normative Theory of the Criminal Trial (With A Duff, L Farmer and S Marshall) (Oxford: Hart, 2007).

Reviews: New Criminal Law Review (review article), International Commentary on Evidence, Edinburgh Law Review.

The Ends of Harm: The Moral Foundations of Criminal Law (Oxford: OUP, 2011; paperback 2013) i-viii + 1-372.

Special Issues and Reviews:

            Criminal Law and Philosophy (ed. M Renzo with essays by S Uniacke, K Lippert-Rasmussen, H Stewart and D Farrell),

            Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies (ed. D Enoch and A Harel with essays by K Brownlee, L Levanon and R Segev)

            Law and Philosophy (Issues 1 and 2, 2013) (ed. K Ferzan with essays by K Ferzan, R A Duff, F Tanguay-Renaud, A Walen, D Husak, A Haque, L Zaibert, M Berman, V Bergelson, L Alexander).

Symposia and special events on The Ends of Harm:

  1. Hebrew University Jerusalem (Nov 2011) (with K Brownlee, L Levanon and R Segev)
  2. The University of Gotingen (May 2011) – Public Lecture and discussion organised with the departments of Law and Philosophy, organised by Kai Ambos and Berndt Ludwig),
  3. Harvard University (April 2012) (Roundtable, chaired by C Steiker, with E Kelly, J Goldberg, Y Lee, K Simons and E Blumenson),
  4. Rutgers Law and Philosophy Institute (May 2011 – speakers: K Ferzan, R A Duff, F Tanguay Renaud, A Walen, A Haque, L Zaibert, M Berman, V Bergelson, J McMahan)
  5. Oxford University (May 2012) (with J Edwards and M Thorburn).
  6. Society of Applied Philosophy workshop organized by Helen Frowe (Philosophy, Kent) held in Croatia (2013). Speakers: J McMahan, J Parry, H Frowe, S Uniacke, K Lippert-Rasmussen, S Bazargan, M Renzo, G Lang.

Wrongs and Crimes (Oxford: OUP, 2016) 1-349. 

Reviews: Law Society Gazette, Criminal Law Forum, Law and Philosophy.

A special issue of Criminal Law and Philosophy vol.13 (2019) with essays by Tom Dougherty, Douglas Husak, Dana Nelkin and Derk Pereboom and a response by me.

To Do, To Die, To Reason Why: The Individual Ethics of Armed Conflict (OUP, 2020).

Review: Saba Bazargan-Forward in Ethics July 2021.

A workshop on the book, organised by Helen Frowe, was held in Princeton in October 2022, co-hosted by the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace with discussion by Johann Frick, Colleen Murphy, Anna Stilz, Daniel Viehoff, and Kit Wellman

EDITED:

Faith in Law: Essays in Legal Theory (ed. jointly with P Oliver and S Douglas-Scott, both King’s College, London, with co-authored introduction) (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2000).

The Trial on Trial 1: Truth and Due Process (ed. jointly with R A Duff (Stirling), L Farmer (Glasgow) and S Marshall (Stirling) with co-authored introduction) (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2004).

The Trial on Trial 2: Judgement and Calling to Account (ed. jointly with Duff, Farmer and Marshall with co-authored introduction) (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2006).

The Boundaries of the Criminal Law (ed. Jointly with R A Duff, L Farmer, S E Marshall and M Renzo) (Oxford: OUP, 2010)

The Structures of the Criminal Law (ed jointly with Duff, Farmer, Marshall and Renzo) (Oxford: OUP, 2011)

The Constitution of the Criminal Law (ed jointly with Duff, Farmer, Marshall and Renzo) (Oxford: OUP 2013)

Criminalization: the Aims and Limits of the Criminal Law (ed jointly with Duff, Farmer, Marshall and Renzo) (Oxford: OUP, 2014).

Special Issues of Journals:

Political Theory and Criminal Law (2013 7 Criminal Law and Philosophy 179-307, with Y Lee, S Garvey, A Haque, F Tanguay-Renaud and M Matravers and an introduction by V Tadros.

Full Length Journal Articles:

  1. ‘Between Governance and Discipline: The Law and Michel Foucault’ [1998] 18 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies75-103 (reprinted in R Cotterell (ed) Law in Social Theory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006 and Fitzpatrick and Golder Foucault and the Law Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010).
  2. ‘No Consent: A Historical Critique of the Actus Reus of Rape’ (1999) 3 Edinburgh Law Review 317-340.
  3. ‘Practical Reasoning and Intentional Action’ [2000] 20 Legal Studies 104-123.
  4. ‘The Characters of Excuse’ [2001] 21 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 495-519.
  5. ‘Insanity and the Capacity for Criminal Responsibility’ (2001) 5 Edinburgh Law Review 325-354
  6. ‘Recklessness, Consent and the Transmission of HIV’ (2001) 5 Edinburgh Law Review 371-380
  7. ‘The System of the Criminal Law’ (2002) 22 Legal Studies 448-467.
  8. ‘The Structure of Defences in Scots Criminal Law’ (2003) 7 Edinburgh Law Review 60-79.
  9. ‘The Presumption of Innocence and the Human Rights Act’ (2004) 67 Modern Law Review 402-434 (co-authored with Stephen Tierney. This article was handed to the House of Lords by Tim Owen QC (Matrix Chambers) as part of his submissions in Sheldrake v DPP).
  10. ‘The Distinctiveness of Domestic Abuse: A Freedom Based Account’ (2005) 65 Louisiana Law Review 989-1014.
  11. ‘Rape Without Consent’ (2006) 26 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 515-543.
  12. ‘Rethinking the Presumption of Innocence’ (2007) 1 Criminal Law and Philosophy 193-213.
  13. ‘Justice and Terrorism’ (2007) 10 New Criminal Law Review 658-689.
  14. ‘The Scope and the Grounds of Responsibility’ (2008) 11 New Criminal Law Review 91-118.
  15. ‘Crimes and Security’ (2008) 71 Modern Law Review 940-970.
  16. ‘Poverty and Criminal Responsibility’ (2009) 43 Journal of Value Inquiry 391-413. Spanish translation: (2014) 15 Revista Argentina de Teoria Juridica.
  17. ‘Harm, Sovereignty and Prohibition’ (2011) 17 Legal Theory 35-65
  18. ‘Consent to Harm’ (2011) 64 Current Legal Problems 23-49.
  19. ‘Duty and Liability’ (2012) 24 Utilitas 259-77 (Special issue on J McMahan Killing in War).
  20. ‘Replies’ (2012) 5 Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies 89-109.
  21. ‘Responses’ (2013) 32 Law and Philosophy 241-325.
  22. ‘The Impossibility of Defining Terrorism’ (co-authored with Jackie Hodgson), (2013) 16 New Criminal Law Review 494-526.
  23. ‘The Ideal of the Presumption of Innocence (2014) 8 Criminal Law and Philosophy 449-467.
  24. ‘Answers’ (2015) 9 Criminal Law and Philosophy 73-102.
  25. ‘Resource Wars’ (2014) 33 Law and Philosophy 361-89 (followed by a response by C Fabre).
  26. ‘Orwell’s Battle with Brittain: Vicarious Liability for Unjust Aggression’ (2014) 42 Philosophy and Public Affairs 42-77.
  27. ‘Punishment and the Appropriate Response to Wrongdoing’ (2017) 11 Criminal Law and Philosophy, 229-248.
  28. ‘Unjust Wars Worth Fighting For’ (2016) 4 Journal of Practical Ethics 52-78.
  29. ‘Moving Mountains: Variations on a Theme by Shelly Kagan’ (2017) 11 Criminal Law and Philosophy 393-405 (followed by a response by Shelly Kagan).
  30. ‘Wrongful Intentions Without Closeness’ (2015) 43 Philosophy and Public Affairs 52-74.
  31. ‘Doing Without Desert’ (2017) 11 Criminal Law and Philosophy 605-616
  32. ‘Permissibility in a World of Wrongdoing’ (2016) 44 Philosophy and Public Affairs 101-32.
  33. ‘The Persistence of the Right of Return’ (2017) 375 Philosophy, Politics, and Economics 375-399.
  34. ‘The Moral Distinction Between Combatants and Non-Combatants: Vulnerable and Defenceless’ (2018) 37 Law and Philosophy 289-312.
  35. ‘Causal Contributions and Liability’ (2018) 128 Ethics 402-31.
  36.  ‘Past Killing and Proportionality’ (2018) 46 Philosophy and Public Affairs 9-35.
  37. ‘Ownership and the Moral Significance of the Self’ (2019) Social Philosophy and Policy 51-70.
  38. ‘Response and Responsibility’ (2019) 19 Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies 155-172.
  39. ‘Responses to Wrongs and Crimes’  (2019) 13 Criminal Law and Philosophy 455-478.
  40. ‘Criminalization: In and Out’ (2020) 14 Criminal Law and Philosophy 365-380.
  41. ‘Appropriate Normative Powers’ (2020) 94 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 301-326.
  42. ‘Distributing Responsibility’ (2020) 48 Philosophy and Public Affairs 217-314.
  43. ‘Inheriting the Right of Return’ (2020) 21 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 343-367.
  44. ‘Consent to Sex in an Unjust World’ (2021) 131 Ethics 293-318.
  45. ‘Two Grounds of Liability’ (2021) 178 Philosophical Studies 3503-3522.
  46. ‘The Rights and Wrongs of No-Platforming’ (2022) 85 Modern Law Review 968-996.
  47. ‘Beyond the Scope of Consent’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, forthcoming.

Shorter Pieces

  1. ‘Conflicts about Conflicts’ (2002) 4 Juridical Review 183-194. (Review article of S Veitch Moral Conflict and Legal Reasoning)
  2. ‘Attribution, Ethics and Emotions in Criminal Responsibility’ (2004) 67 Modern Law Review 322-338. (Review article of W Wilson Central Issues in Criminal Theory).
  3. ‘The Homicide Ladder’ (2006) 69 Modern Law Review 601-618 (an analysis of the Law Commission’s ‘A New Homicide Act for England and Wales? A Consultation Paper’ No.177).
  4. ‘Distinguishing General Theory, Doctrine and Evidence in Criminal Responsibility: A Response to Lacey’ (2007) 1 Criminal Law and Philosophy 259-265.
  5. ‘The Architecture of Criminalization’ (2009) 28 Criminal Justice Ethics 74-88 (J Kleinig, ed, symposium on D Husak Overcriminalization).
  6. ‘Law, Strategy and Democracy’ (2009) 26 Journal of Applied Philosophy 269-75.
  7. ‘How to Make a Terrorist Out of Nothing’ (2009) 72 Modern Law Review 984-998. (Co-authored with Jackie Hodgson, this is a longer case analysis of R v G [2009] UKHL 13).
  8. ‘Independence Without Interests?’ (2011) 31 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 193-213 (review article of A Ripstein Force and Freedom)
  9. ‘Response to Blumenson’ (2015) 3 Law, Ethics and Philosophy 56-72.

Chapters in Books:

  1. ‘A Few Thoughts on Copyright Law and the Subject of Writing’ in L Bently and S Maniatis Perspectives on Intellectual Property: Intellectual Property and Ethics (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1998) 129-145.
  2. ‘A Comfortable Inauthenticity’ in Tadros, Oliver and Douglas-Scott Faith in Law (above) 107-127.
  3. ‘Recklessness and the Duty to Take Care’ invited contribution in S Shute and A P Simester Criminal Law Theory: Doctrines of the General Part (Oxford: OUP, 2002) 227-258.
  4. ‘The Distinctiveness of Domestic Abuse: A Freedom Based Account’ invited contribution in R A Duff and S P Green Defining Crimes (Oxford: OUP, 2005) 119-142. This paper was also one of two papers selected from the volume to be jointly published in the Louisiana Law Review.
  5. ‘Power and the Value of Privacy: a Response to de Hert and Gutwirth’ in E Claes, A Duff and S Gutwirth Privacy and the Criminal Law (Antwerp: Intersentia, 2006) 105-120.
  6. ‘Two Particular Truths’ in Z Bankowski Universals and Particulars (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) 177-190.
  7. ‘The Scots Law of Murder’ in J Horder (ed) Homicide Law in Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Hart, 2007).
  8. ‘Enabling Proceduralism’ in E Christodoulidis and S Tierney Public Law and Politics: The Scope and Limits of Constitutionalism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) 205-217.
  9. ‘The Limits of Manslaughter’ in C M V Clarkson and S Cunningham Criminal Liability for Non-Aggressive Death(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) 35-60.
  10. ‘Institutions and Aims’ in M del Mar and Z Bankowsksi Law as Institutional Normative Order (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009) 83-101.
  11. ‘The Human Right to a Fair Criminal Law?’ in J Chalmers, L Farmer and F Leverick Essays in Honour of Sir Gerald Gordon (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010) 103-125.
  12. ‘Criminalization and Regulation’ in R A Duff, L Farmer, S E Marshall, M Renzo and V Tadros The Boundaries of the Criminal Law (Oxford: OUP, 2010) 163-190.
  13. ‘Wrongdoing and Motivation’ in R A Duff and S P Green Philosophical Foundations of the Criminal Law (Oxford: OUP, 2011) 206-227.
  14. ‘Outcomes and Obligations’ in R Cruft, M Kramer, and M Reiff volume in honour of Antony Duff (Oxford: OUP, 2011) 173-92.
  15. ‘Wrongness and Criminalization’ in A Marmor The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law (London: Routledge, 2012) 157-73.
  16. ‘Fair Labelling and Social Solidarity’ in J Roberts and L Zedner Principles and Values in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice: Essays in Honour of Andrew Ashworth (OUP, 2012) 67-80.
  17. ‘Controlling Risk’ in A Ashworth, P Tomlin and L Zedner Prevention and the Limits of the Criminal Law (Oxford: OUP, 2012) 133-55.
  18. ‘Punishment’ in D Edmonds and N Warburton Philosophy Bites Again (Oxford: OUP, 2014).
  19. ‘Punitive War’ in H Frowe and G Lang How We Fight (Oxford: OUP, 2014) 38-61.
  20. ‘What Might have Been’ in J Oberdiek Philosophical Foundations of The Law of Torts (Oxford: OUP, 2014) 171-92.
  21. ‘Rights and Security for Human Rights Sceptics’ in M Liao and M Renzo Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights (Oxford: OUP, 2015) 442-458.
  22. ‘The Wrong and the Free’ in K K Ferzan and S J Morse Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Truths: The Philosophy of Michael S Moore (Oxford: OUP, 2016) 79-94.
  23. ‘Causation, Culpability, and Liability’ in C Coons and M Weber The Ethics of Self Defense (Oxford: OUP, 2016) 110-130.
  24. ‘Duress and Duty’ in S Bazargan and S Rickless The Ethics of War: Essays (Oxford: OUP, 2017) 94-115.
  25. ‘Uncertainties of War’ in J Gardner, L Green and B Leiter Oxford Studies in Legal Philosophy Vol.3 (Oxford: OUP, 2018).
  26. ‘Dimensions of Intentions: Ways of Killing in War’ in H Frowe and S Lazar The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of War (Oxford: OUP, 2018) 401-417.
  27. ‘Localised Restricted Aggregation’ in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy vol.5 (Oxford: OUP, 2019) 171-204
  28. ‘Secondary Duties’ in P B Miller and J Oberdiek Civil Wrongs and Justice in Private Law (Oxford: OUP, 2020).
  29. ‘Overdetermination and Obligation’ in J McMahan, T Campbell, J Goodrich and K Ramakrishnan Principles and Persons: The Legacy of Derek Parfit (Oxford: OUP, 2021).

Other Publications

  1. An ‘Open Letter to the Scottish Law Commission’ (2006) Scots Law Times (an open letter outlining the discussion at a workshop on the Scottish Law Commission’s consultation on rape reform, drafted by Dr Sharon Cowan and myself).
  2. ‘The Scottish Law of Murder’ Appendix to the Law Commission Consultation Document A New Homicide Act for England and Wales? 2005.
  3. Three contributions to the New Oxford Companion to Law.
  4. A podcast discussion on Philosophy Bites on punishment. The transcript will be published in the third Philosophy Bites volume.
  5. Contribution to ‘A Murderer’s Right? Three thinkers on a killer’s euthanasia request’ BBC News Magazine, 7thJanuary 2015.
  6. ‘Is it Sometimes Right to Fight in an Unjust War?’ Aeon March 2017.
  7. ‘Democracy and War’ Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace, February 2020.

Contact

Get in Touch

School of Law,
University of Warwick
Coventry, CV4 &AL
UK
v.tadros@warwick.ac.uk

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