While much has been written on both political obligation and the justification of punishment, there has been little sustained effort to link the two.
In Playing Fair , Richard Dagger aims to fill this gap and provide a unified theory of political obligation and the justification of punishment that takes its bearings from the principle of fair play. To do this, he first establishes the principle of fair play-the idea that people in a cooperative venture have obligations to one another to shoulder a fair share of the burdens because they receive a fair share of the benefits of cooperation-as the basis of political obligation. Dagger then argues that the members of a reasonably just polity have an obligation to obey its laws because they have an obligation of reciprocity, or fair play, to one another. This theory of political obligation provides answers to fundamental and still debated questions about how to justify punishment, who has the right to carry it out, and how much to punish.
Playing Fair brings two long-standing concerns of political and legal philosophy together to rebut those who deny the possibility of a general obligation to obey the law, to defend the link between political authority and obligation, and to establish the proper scope of criminal law.
**
Review
'Do we have a duty to obey the law?' and 'What gives us the right to punish?' are two pressing yet seemingly separate questions. Richard Dagger connects them more clearly than anyone else has. Both are, he explains, a matter of fairness. Agree or not, after reading Dagger you will see these perennial questions in a fresh light." -- William A. Edmundson, Georgia State University, and author of Three Anarchical Fallacies
"Richard Dagger, for the first time, presents both a theory of political obligation and a theory of punishment under the principle of fair play. Forceful arguments on the two subjects combine for a powerful overall theory." -- George Klosko, Henry L. and Grace Doherty Professor of Politics, University of Virginia
" Playing Fair expertly canvasses a number of debates on the justification of political obligation and the justification of punishment in order to develop a unified account of these two problems. Dagger's arguments are compelling and elegantly presented. This is a timely and important book." -- Massimo Renzo, King's College London
About the Author
Richard Dagger is E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Chair in the Liberal Arts and Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law at the University of Richmond. He is the author of Civic Virtue: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism .
Cover 1
Series 3
Playing Fair 4
Copyright 5
Dedication 6
Contents 8
Acknowledgments 10
Introduction 16
Part I Political Obligation as Fair Play 28
1. Political Obligation: Concepts and Challenges 30
2. Fair Play and Cooperative Practices 57
3. Fair Play and Its Rivals 83
4. Political Obligation as Fair Play: Elaboration and Defense 116
Part II Punishment as Fair Play 152
5. Justifying Punishment: Concepts and Challenges 154
6. Playing Fair with Punishment: Elaboration and Defense 191
7. Punishing Fairly 219
Part III Fair Play and the Polity 274
8. Authority, Deference, and Fair Play 276
9. Political Obligation, Punishment, and the Polity 298
Index 312

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Dagger, Richard

Steffen Dagger

IRL Press at Oxford University Press

Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

German Historical Institute London

Studies in penal theory and philosophy, New York, NY, 2018

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

producers:
ImageMagick 6.9.3-1 Q16 x86_64 2016-01-16 http://www.imagemagick.org

Memory of the World Librarian: Calamitous Annunciation

"Is there a general obligation to obey the laws of a reasonably just polity? Is there any justification for imposing suffering, in the form of punishment, on those who break the law? Political and legal philosophers have long debated these vexing questions, but the debates typically have taken up each question in isolation. Playing Fair, however, treats the two questions as intertwined and provides affirmative answers to both--answers grounded, in both cases, in the principle of fair play. According to this principle, those who are engaged in a mutually beneficial cooperative practice or enterprise have a duty to the cooperating participants to bear a fair share of the burdens of the practice. Applied to the political order, the principle holds that a reasonably just polity is a cooperative enterprise whose members receive benefits from the rule of law only because other members obey the law even when they find obedience burdensome. The members of a reasonably just polity thus have a political obligation, understood as a defeasible moral duty to obey the law, to one another. Those who break the laws fail to fulfill this obligation, and their failure justifies the law-abiding members, acting through the proper authorities, in punishing the lawbreakers. Rather than two separate problems, then, political obligation and punishment are two aspects of the same fundamental concern for sustaining a polity that its members can reasonably regard as a cooperative enterprise under the rule of law" (ed.)

"While much has been written on both political obligation and the justification of punishment, including numerous essays in recent years that approach one or the other topic in fair-play terms, there has been no sustained effort to link the two in a fair-play theory of political obligation and punishment. In Playing Fair, Richard Dagger aims to fill this gap and provide a unified theory of political obligation and the justification of punishment that takes its bearings from the principle of fair play. To do this, he first establishes the principle of fair play-the idea that citizens in a cooperative venture have obligations to each other to shoulder a fair share of the burdens because they receive a fair share of the benefits of cooperation-as the basis of political obligation. Dagger then argues that the members of a reasonably just polity have an obligation to obey its laws because they have an obligation of reciprocity or fair play to one another. This theory of political obligation provides answers to fundamental and still debated questions about how to justify punishment, who has the right to carry it out, and how much to punish. Playing Fair brings two long-standing concerns of political and legal philosophy together to rebuke those who deny the possibility of a general obligation to obey the law, to defend the link between political authority and obligation, and to establish the proper scope of criminal law"--Provided by publisher

"This book addresses two long-standing concerns of political and legal philosophy: the problems of political obligation and of punishment. Even though political obligation and punishment are often treated as independent topics and there are broad literatures on each, Richard Dagger sees them as closely related problems and attempts to resolve them together. Dagger first establishes the principle of fair play ... the idea that citizens in a cooperative venture have obligations to each other to shoulder a fair share of the burdens because they receive a fair share of the benefits of cooperation ... as the basis of political obligation. Dagger then argues that the members of a reasonably just polity have an obligation to obey its laws because they have an obligation of reciprocity or fair play to one another. This theory of political obligation then provides answers to fundamental and still debated questions about how to justify punishment, who has the right to carry it out, and how much to punish. He concludes by bringing the two concerns together to rebuke those who deny the possibility of a general obligation to obey the law, to defend the link between political authority and obligation, and to establish the proper scope of criminal law" ..

2025-10-27