This paper argues that liberal philosophy underestimates the importance of political ethics, which I define as the question of how individual citizens should comport themselves politically under largely normal conditions. Using three case studies from popular dystopian science fiction as ‘intuition pumps’, I contend that the behaviour of such individuals, both discretely and collectively speaking, has significant causal potency when it comes to contemporary politics. Upon this basis, I diagnose as pathological the faith that liberal philosophers place in the power of institutional arrangements to curtail human behaviour. I conclude that liberal philosophy should embrace an ‘ethical turn’, in pursuit of which I make some indicative recommendations as to what such a development might comprise.

The future is in flux. There are many vectors of change, and none seem positive. Dark dystopian futures of war, climate catastrophe, polarising inequalities and digital disruption seem to be looming. This narrating of the future suggests the significance of science fiction. Science fiction acts as a storehouse for the imagining of the future. It also offers new approaches to justice and law. This symposium on ‘Jurisprudence of the Future’ contains contributions that bring together science fiction, justice and law. There is a sense of urgency to the contributions, to understand the science fictionality of the present and imagining alternative futures.

This article advances a novel account of ad hominem criminalisation that draws upon a distinct theory of the Rule of Law and its egalitarian foundations. Employing the recent and controversial example of Knife Crime Prevention Orders, as established by the Offensive Weapons Act 2019, it argues that the concept of civic equality is central to understanding the vice of ad hominem criminalisation as an aberrant form of government by law. This vice consists in the manner that such criminalisation individualises, differentiates and instrumentalises the regulatory subject, placing them outwith the bounds of civic equality as established by the Rule of Law.

Some scholars assume that the content and validity of international legal norms turns upon the existence of convergent attitudes and behaviors of state representatives and other ‘international legal officials’. By converging upon the criteria for what counts as a ‘formal source’ of international law and what does not, such officials provide a ‘rule of recognition’ in relation to which the normative content of the international legal system is determined. In this Article I present two theoretical problems with this view, arguing that, depending on exactly what role this rule is intended to fulfil within international legal theory, it is either metaphysically insupportable or fundamentally at odds with the disagreements that persist in relation to the formal sources of international law. Both problems risk undermining the rationality of international legal argumentation and that any reliance upon the existence of an international rule of recognition should be eschewed as a result.