Ways to learn more about my research: watch my talk at the 2018 Harvard Horizons Symposium, listen to or read my interview on The UnMute Podcast with Myisha Cherry, or read my interview with the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Current Book Project
Not Just Speaking for Ourselves (under contract with Harvard University Press)
We simply cannot be in all places where we might prefer that our voices are heard, or where our perspectives or ideas are needed if we are to have our values, interests, or preferences considered and perhaps also protected and satisfied. Just as we need political representation, generally, so too do we need informal representation, in particular. This book advances a political ethics of informal representation—an account of what informal representation is and how informal representatives ought to conduct themselves if they are going to advance the interests of the represented and avoid harming or wronging the represented.
Dissertation
Informal Political Representation: Normative and Conceptual Foundations. Ph.D. Dissertation. Harvard University. (2018)
It is possible that, as you read this, there is someone out there standing in for you, speaking in your voice, acting in your stead, making agreements on your behalf, or conceding a point you might not have wanted them to. They are not your congressperson, your lawyer, or your spouse—nor anyone else authorized by means of a formal, corporately organized election or selection procedure. There is another sort of representative out there, someone you did not elect, someone you perhaps would not elect, of whom you may never have heard, speaking or acting on your behalf right now—they are an informal political representative.
Formal political representation is a familiar topic within democratic theory. Much less discussed, though no less widespread, is informal political representation: a practice in which a person speaks or acts for a group before an audience, despite never having been elected or selected to do so by means of a corporately organized election or selection procedure. Informal political representation is an everyday feature of our public communicative landscape. It is woven taut into the fabric of our political lives. Malala Yousafzai claims: “I speak not for myself, but so those without a voice can be heard.” U2 frontman Bono claims to “represent a lot of people who have no voice at all.” President Trump, before his nomination, was said “to give a voice to those who have long felt silenced."
The informal representative, though neither elected nor selected, is ubiquitous and politically influential. They increase the visibility of marginalized and oppressed groups, give voice to interests not adequately expressed in formal political fora, influence public discourse, and serve as conduits between the represented and policymakers. They can, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., did in Montgomery, negotiate on a group’s behalf. But so far, few have attempted to provide a theory of this phenomenon that gives full attention to both its conceptual and normative foundations. My dissertation provides a theory of informal political representation that does not treat the phenomenon as a mere deviant case of formal political representation, but rather takes informal political representation on its own terms.
Committee: Tommie Shelby (chair), Tim Scanlon, Dick Moran, Eric Beerbohm
Papers: Forthcoming and Under Review
Judicial Representation: Speaking for Others from the Bench - Forthcoming in Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics.
Judicial representation occurs when, by virtue of what a judge says from the bench they come to speak or act on behalf of the members of a group whose interests are at stake in a case. This paper introduces and develops the concept of judicial representation as it arises in contexts where the represented group's members are, in some sense, unable to speak for themselves. It then advances an account of what a judge must know in order to be a good judicial representative.
The Conscription of Political Representatives - Invited to revise and resubmit to Ethics.
Informal political representation, the phenomenon of speaking or acting on behalf of others outside of formal political contexts, plays a crucial role in advancing the interests of groups, particularly marginalized and oppressed groups. I advance a new theory of the emergence conditions for becoming an informal political representative and explains how this theory allows us to get at key normative questions that are occluded by existing accounts.
Papers: In Preparation for Submission
Democracy Within, Justice Without: The Duties of Informal Representatives
Informal representation can play an important and distinctive role in promoting a society of equals but, to do so, informal representatives must promote relationships with the represented that foreground such democratic values as respect, publicity, transparency, and openness to criticism, and that eschew domination and suppression of dissent.
Faceless Witnesses and the Frustration of Due Process
International criminal tribunals have come to depend on victim witness testimony as a crucial form of evidence for establishing that war crimes have occurred. However, many potential victim witnesses are reluctant to offer testimony, often due to reasonable fear of retaliation for testifying openly against an accused party. One way that international criminal tribunals have tried to encourage victim witnesses to testify is by establishing procedures for protecting witnesses’ identities, including expunging names and identifying information from tribunals’ public records, allowing victims to provide testimony using image- and voice-distorting technologies, assigning witnesses pseudonyms, and allowing victim testimony to be entered into the tribunal record through affidavits rather than live witness testimony. While these mechanisms provide protections for victim witnesses, they raise serious questions as to whether the due process rights of defendants are being protected. This paper identifies some of the chief justifications that have been provided for employing anonymizing witness protection mechanisms and asks whether these justifications can be defended from a moral point of view.
This paper was recently presented at the Conceptual Engineering in the Ethics of War Workshop at the ConceptLab at the University of Oslo in January 2019 and it is planned that the papers presented at this workshop will be published in an upcoming special issue of Inquiry
The Limits of Similitude and Deference: Reexamining Core Principles of Political Representation
Why should those who speak for us be anything like us? And when should they defer to us about how to speak for us? I argue, contra widely endorsed principles long held by political representation theorists, in many cases, they shouldn't.
The Complaints of the Represented
Doubtless you have heard someone object, at one time or another, You don’t speak for me! or They don’t speak for us! Versions of this complaint are commonplace when represented group members disapprove of their informal representative. However, such complaints do not have the effect of unseating an informal representative. In this paper, I (i) examine these complaints, and others like them, in order to understand the deliberative, dialogical relationship between informal representatives and the represented and (ii) argue that some such complaints can only be sensibly raised by represented group members against those who represent them because they arise out of duties that representatives have to the represented.
Current Book Project
Not Just Speaking for Ourselves (under contract with Harvard University Press)
We simply cannot be in all places where we might prefer that our voices are heard, or where our perspectives or ideas are needed if we are to have our values, interests, or preferences considered and perhaps also protected and satisfied. Just as we need political representation, generally, so too do we need informal representation, in particular. This book advances a political ethics of informal representation—an account of what informal representation is and how informal representatives ought to conduct themselves if they are going to advance the interests of the represented and avoid harming or wronging the represented.
Dissertation
Informal Political Representation: Normative and Conceptual Foundations. Ph.D. Dissertation. Harvard University. (2018)
It is possible that, as you read this, there is someone out there standing in for you, speaking in your voice, acting in your stead, making agreements on your behalf, or conceding a point you might not have wanted them to. They are not your congressperson, your lawyer, or your spouse—nor anyone else authorized by means of a formal, corporately organized election or selection procedure. There is another sort of representative out there, someone you did not elect, someone you perhaps would not elect, of whom you may never have heard, speaking or acting on your behalf right now—they are an informal political representative.
Formal political representation is a familiar topic within democratic theory. Much less discussed, though no less widespread, is informal political representation: a practice in which a person speaks or acts for a group before an audience, despite never having been elected or selected to do so by means of a corporately organized election or selection procedure. Informal political representation is an everyday feature of our public communicative landscape. It is woven taut into the fabric of our political lives. Malala Yousafzai claims: “I speak not for myself, but so those without a voice can be heard.” U2 frontman Bono claims to “represent a lot of people who have no voice at all.” President Trump, before his nomination, was said “to give a voice to those who have long felt silenced."
The informal representative, though neither elected nor selected, is ubiquitous and politically influential. They increase the visibility of marginalized and oppressed groups, give voice to interests not adequately expressed in formal political fora, influence public discourse, and serve as conduits between the represented and policymakers. They can, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., did in Montgomery, negotiate on a group’s behalf. But so far, few have attempted to provide a theory of this phenomenon that gives full attention to both its conceptual and normative foundations. My dissertation provides a theory of informal political representation that does not treat the phenomenon as a mere deviant case of formal political representation, but rather takes informal political representation on its own terms.
Committee: Tommie Shelby (chair), Tim Scanlon, Dick Moran, Eric Beerbohm
Papers: Forthcoming and Under Review
Judicial Representation: Speaking for Others from the Bench - Forthcoming in Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics.
Judicial representation occurs when, by virtue of what a judge says from the bench they come to speak or act on behalf of the members of a group whose interests are at stake in a case. This paper introduces and develops the concept of judicial representation as it arises in contexts where the represented group's members are, in some sense, unable to speak for themselves. It then advances an account of what a judge must know in order to be a good judicial representative.
The Conscription of Political Representatives - Invited to revise and resubmit to Ethics.
Informal political representation, the phenomenon of speaking or acting on behalf of others outside of formal political contexts, plays a crucial role in advancing the interests of groups, particularly marginalized and oppressed groups. I advance a new theory of the emergence conditions for becoming an informal political representative and explains how this theory allows us to get at key normative questions that are occluded by existing accounts.
Papers: In Preparation for Submission
Democracy Within, Justice Without: The Duties of Informal Representatives
Informal representation can play an important and distinctive role in promoting a society of equals but, to do so, informal representatives must promote relationships with the represented that foreground such democratic values as respect, publicity, transparency, and openness to criticism, and that eschew domination and suppression of dissent.
Faceless Witnesses and the Frustration of Due Process
International criminal tribunals have come to depend on victim witness testimony as a crucial form of evidence for establishing that war crimes have occurred. However, many potential victim witnesses are reluctant to offer testimony, often due to reasonable fear of retaliation for testifying openly against an accused party. One way that international criminal tribunals have tried to encourage victim witnesses to testify is by establishing procedures for protecting witnesses’ identities, including expunging names and identifying information from tribunals’ public records, allowing victims to provide testimony using image- and voice-distorting technologies, assigning witnesses pseudonyms, and allowing victim testimony to be entered into the tribunal record through affidavits rather than live witness testimony. While these mechanisms provide protections for victim witnesses, they raise serious questions as to whether the due process rights of defendants are being protected. This paper identifies some of the chief justifications that have been provided for employing anonymizing witness protection mechanisms and asks whether these justifications can be defended from a moral point of view.
This paper was recently presented at the Conceptual Engineering in the Ethics of War Workshop at the ConceptLab at the University of Oslo in January 2019 and it is planned that the papers presented at this workshop will be published in an upcoming special issue of Inquiry
The Limits of Similitude and Deference: Reexamining Core Principles of Political Representation
Why should those who speak for us be anything like us? And when should they defer to us about how to speak for us? I argue, contra widely endorsed principles long held by political representation theorists, in many cases, they shouldn't.
The Complaints of the Represented
Doubtless you have heard someone object, at one time or another, You don’t speak for me! or They don’t speak for us! Versions of this complaint are commonplace when represented group members disapprove of their informal representative. However, such complaints do not have the effect of unseating an informal representative. In this paper, I (i) examine these complaints, and others like them, in order to understand the deliberative, dialogical relationship between informal representatives and the represented and (ii) argue that some such complaints can only be sensibly raised by represented group members against those who represent them because they arise out of duties that representatives have to the represented.