Jurisprudence

Benjamin Bestgen explores trust and trustworthiness in his latest jurisprudential primer. See his last post here. Literature and movies are full of stories that have, either at their core or as a necessary ingredient, the topic of trust and trustworthiness. Recently, Marriage Story (2019) dealt with

In his latest jurisprudential primer, Benjamin Bestgen explains why there is more to the concept of 'hard work' than meets the eye. See his last post here. The legal profession and many others are notorious for being associated with stressful work, tight deadlines and demanding unsociable, even unhe

Benjamin Bestgen discusses how moral judgements are affected by aesthetic perception in his latest jurispurdential primer. See also parts one, two and three. In March 2020, Singapore’s High Court dismissed a challenge to repeal s.377A, a colonial-era law that penalises homosexual acts between

In the third of his jurisprudential primers, Benjamin Bestgen look at truth. See part two here. Author Irvine Welsh reacted with disbelief when former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond was acquitted of several sexual offences last month: “For fuck sake. NINE women were lying? Come on.&

In the second of his jurisprudential primers, Benjamin Bestgen invokes Greek wisdom in thinking about the merits of democracy. See part one here. Likening statecraft to captaining a ship goes back to the Greek poet Alcaeus of Mytilene but was made famous in Plato’s Republic.

In the first in a series of jurisprudential primers, Benjamin Bestgen reflects on philosophical thinking. When I studied philosophy, one of the typical remarks from well-meaning people with little knowledge of the subject were pointers to Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker and that it must be inter