Philosophy

RICHARD NUNAN

Professor of Philosophy

office: 14 Glebe Street, Room 201 tel: (843) 953-6522
fax: (843) 953-6388
e-mail: nunanr@cofc.edu

RICHARD NUNAN (Ph.D. & M.A. in Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; B.A. in Mathematics, Vassar College) I have fairly broad teaching interests in political philosophy, applied ethics, philosophy of science, and history of philosophy. But in recent years my main area of research has tended to be in philosophy of law, especially the areas of constitutional adjudication and contemporary legal theory. Just lately, I've been doing some work on civil unions (the Vermont "gay marriage" law) and the constitutionality of the state and federal DOMAs ("Defense of Marriage" Acts passed in reaction to the prospect of legally sanctioned same-sex marriages in Vermont, Hawaii, or elsewhere). I'm also continuing to work on the significance of the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida. A second paper of mine on this topic, entitled "Who Cares What You Think: Civic Virtue and the 2000 Presidential Election" is forthcoming in an anthology on the election edited by Wade Robeson.

After completing a five-year term as editor of the American Philosophical Association's Newsletter on Philosophy and Law, I no longer serve in that capacity. The current editor is Theodore Benditt, Department of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Selected Publications:

"Legal Moralism and the European Court of Human Rights," in Burton M. Leiser & Tom D. Campell, Human Rights in Philosophy and Practice (Ashgate/Dartmouth, Aldershot, U.K.; Burlington, VT, 2001), 525-48.

"The 2000 Presidential Post-Election Election Campaign: A Cautionary Case Study on Civic Virtue and Democratic Theory," APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy 101, #1 (Fall, 2001), 185-201. Includes an Introduction, a Chronology of Events from election day through the electoral count on January 12th, and an Appendix discussing the significance of the two journalistic recount efforts spearheaded, respectively, by the Miami Herald and the New York Times.

"Religious Belief, Freedom of Conscience, and the Right to Privacy," APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law 100, #1 (Fall, 2000), 109-114.

Critical Race Theory: An Overview
APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law 98, #2 (Spring, 99), 6-23.

Expanding Earth Theories
In Gregory A. Good, History of the Geosciences: An Encyclopedia, Volume I (Garland Press, 1998), 243-250.

Critical Legal Parricide, or What's So Bad About Warmed Over Legal Realism?
In Stephen Griffin & Robert Moffat, Radical Critiques of the Law
(University Press of Kansas, 1997), 21-43.

Gays in the Military and the Excuse of Constitutional Deference
APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law 97, #1 (Fall, 1997), 66-71.

Legal Moralism: From Hart and Devlin to Feinberg and George
APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law, 96, #1 (Fall, 1996), 64-71.

Militant Gays, Gays in the Military, and Privacy as Social Freedom
Law and Philosophy 13 (1994), 481-492.

Heuristic Novelty and the Asymmetry Problem in Bayesian Confirmation Theory
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (1993), 17-36.