Rebuilding the Harm Principle

In September 2020, I had my second paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. This one is in Australia's top law journal, the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. The paper was co-written with my wife, Dr Tanya Wyatt, and is titled:

"Rebuilding the Harm Principle: Using an Evolutionary Perspective to Provide a New Foundation for Justice"

Abstract
Following Mill’s (1859) definition, the ‘harm principle’ came to dominate legal debates about crime and the appropriate response of the justice system, effectively replacing official talk of morality in modern secular societies. However, the harm principle has collapsed without an accepted definition of harm or a method to adjudicate between competing claims. To address this, we propose a definition of ‘good’ derived from evolutionary perspectives. From this, a universal goal for society can be recognised, specific objectives to reach that goal can be listed, and a new definition for harm can be used to repair the harm principle and restore its ability to underpin criminal law and the principles of justice in society.

This is another bold essay (like my peer-reviewed paper about the is-ought divide), that uses an evolutionary perspective to modify the three main camps of moral philosophy and unite them around a new definition of good. From this, flows our new definition for harm — that which makes the survival of life more fragile.

This paper has been published in an open access journal so feel free to download a copy using the Scribd link below, or share the link I used above to its home with IJCJSD. Either way, I'd love to hear feedback on this if you have any.
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