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Much theorising in our field is focused on what planning should do. Such work is generally informed by perspectives borrowed from social and political theory that are used as an analytical lens to examine where planning practice has gone wrong and as a platform to prescribe how planning should be corrected to deliver better ends. For example, the work of Dewey and Habermas has deeply influenced the communicative and collaborative approaches to planning by informing stances on how planning should be democratically orientated to provide an effective means to identify and provide for ends. Associated with these theories but differentiated by emphasis, is a strand of planning theory that combines social and political thinking to focus on the ends to which planning practice should be directed and specifying the means necessary to deliver such ends. This family of planning theory includes Just City, advocacy planning and phronetic planning approaches. Another prominent vein of planning theory is primarily occupied with critiquing consensus focused approaches, and is illustrated by neoliberal and post-political critiques, as well as work on the dark side of planning. Although different in their particularities, what all these approaches have in common is a concentration on what planning should or shouldn't do, rather than what planning is. 1 Linking these approaches together is an implicit prioritisation of means over ends, such that democracy, participation, recognition, respect, (re)distribution and avoiding abuses of power become the focus through which the formulation and delivery of ends are evaluated. In this sense, a concern with means is implicitly privileged over, or even conflated with ends in theorising and interpreting practice. For example, a common theory-infused planning analysis would seek the provision of more affordable housing (ends) through greater state intervention in house building (means #1) and collaborative methods in decision-making (means #2), rather than seeking the provision of more affordable housing (ends #1), by relying primarily on a private sector dominated system of property companies acquiring and developing land banks in response to market dynamics (means), with the ultimate aim of maximising shareholder profit (ends #2).

This Article sets out what I believe are the relevant justifications for free speech, the term "free speech" being meant to cover both freedom of speech and freedom of the press. These are the justifications one might use to assess whether communications fall within a political or judicial principle of free speech and how great the protection of the communications that are covered should be. Such assessments are undertaken in a longer study that is mainly about the ways in which different uses of language affect the application of principles of freedom of speech to the criminalization of behavior. That study concentrates on the communicative acts that lie on the border of free speech, especially solicitations to crime and threats, in an attempt to examine the proper boundaries of free speech. My broader purpose illuminates the ambitions and limits of this Article. What follows is an attempt to set out the various justifications for free speech in a systematic way. This attempt should provide some antidote for confusion and for oversimplification, the main disease of legal and philosophical scholarship. The Article reveals the subtle plurality of values that does govern the practice of freedom of speech; and one can surmise that a similarly close investigation would reveal a plurality of values behind almost any important social practice. This Article also reflects my own sense that, whatever may be true at some ultimate level, human beings dealing with practical problems not only do but should rely on a plurality of values. Rather than undertaking an exhaustive analysis of any individual justification, this Article attempts to set forth the relevant justifications for free speech as clearly, systematically and accurately as possible. The main virtue of the following pages is that they provide a coherent and comprehensive overview of justifications for free speech, an overview that will enable the reader to see how one justification relates to others, to understand what may be left out if one or two justifications are portrayed as dominant, and to assess with a suitably critical eye claims about the content of particular justifications and why they should be given a central place or rejected. Most of the Article is devoted to particular justifications for free speech, but first some preliminary matters are covered. Part I indicates why one can speak of a principle, or principles, of free speech only if there are bases for protecting speech that do not apply similarly to some substantially broader category of acts. Once Part I clarifies the idea of a principle of free speech, Part II examines the nature and classification of justifications. It maintains that efforts to arrive at any single unifying justification risk either simplifying or obscuring the complex values undergirding freedom of expression. This Part also suggests how the distinction between consequentialist and nonconsequentialist justifications usefully differentiates between reasons depending directly on empirical grounds and those resting on other normative claims. Parts III and IV then provide an account of multiple justifications divided along consequentialist and nonconsequentialist lines.

The classical and the former Catholic doctrines of tyrannicide remind us that in the Western tradition of citizenship and political thought, tyrannicide is worthy. Recent legislation against the glorification of terrorism is too wide and vague, and denies any link between tyrannicide and liberty. A good production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar should not make the act of tyrannicide per se problematic, but should seize the dilemma of whether or not Julius Caesar was becoming a tyrant rather than a consul with constitutional powers for war or emergency. Both Hannah Arendt and our contemporary Ted Honderich offer philosophical justifications of violence in defined and not uncommon circumstances. Terrorism is sometimes the only resort of the poor and oppressed.

Liberal contractualists continually seek justifications that are widely acceptable to 'reasonable' people. The danger is that the reasons deployed ease people into liberal settlement by masking the true nature of liberalism as a regime. Argues for a principled liberal moderation, with respect for diversity within a common moral framework. (SJK)

PUBLISHED ; This paper argues that the philosophy of explanation can help inform core debates in value theory. Specifically, it argues that there is a consistent parallelism between the properties of explanation and the properties of justification such that one can reasonably infer that any property of explanation has a counterpart property of justification. Thus, by appealing to facts about the nature of explanation, one can derive various conclusions about the justifications offered by normative theorists. The paper illustrates this point by considering a debate within political philosophy over whether inequality requires justification in a way that equality does not. Egalitarians typically presume an affirmative answer to this question. However, libertarian critics note that this justificatory asymmetry cannot be simply assumed without argument. This paper argues that, by appealing to the explanation-justification parallelism, one can resolve this debate in favor of the egalitarians, as there are two properties of explanation, the justificatory analogs of which vindicate the egalitarian presumption.