Full Description
In every Western democracy today, inheritances have a very profound influence on people's lives. This motivates renewed scholarship on inheritance law by philosophy and the legal sciences. The present volume aims to contribute to some ongoing areas of inquiry while also filling some gaps in research.
It is organized in a highly interdisciplinary way. In the thirteen chapters of the book, written by outstanding philosophers and legal scholars, the following questions, among others, are discussed: What is the nature of the right to bequeath? What are the social functions of bequest and inheritance? What arguments concerning justice have philosophers and legal scholars advanced in favour or against practices of bequest and inheritance? How should we think about taxing the wealth transfers that occur in bequest and inheritance? In discussing these questions, the authors break new ground and offer much needed insight into several related domains, such as the philosophy of law; legal theory; general and applied ethics; social and political philosophy; theories of justice; and the history of legal, political, and economic thought.
This book will be of great interest to scholars in these areas as well as policy-makers.
Contents
Introduction 1
THOMAS GUTMANN, DANIEL HALLIDAY, AND HANS-CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT AM BUSCH
2 What, if anything, is wrong with bequest? A preliminary sketch
STEFAN GOSEPATH
3 The morality of charitable bequests
MIRANDA PERRY FLEISCHER
4 Is the right to bequeath a supernatural power?
HILLEL STEINER
5 The right to bequeath as a common legal power
CONSTANTIN LUFT AND THOMAS GUTMANN
6 Property rights and the power to transfer
DANIEL HALLIDAY
7 The double function of inheritance: Rethinking conditional bequests
SHELLY KREICZER-LEVY
8 Remembrance, esteem, and the right to bequeath
HANS-CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT AM BUSCH
9 Inheritance law and the challenge of securing care in old age: A three-pronged solution
DAPHNA HACKER
10 Natural right or convention? Fichte on the status of the right to bequeath property and the right to inherit property
DAVID JAMES
11 Property in the tension between family and civil society: Inheritance according to G. W. F. Hegel and Eduard Gans
CHRISTOPHER YEOMANS
12 Inheritance tax, justice and family businesses
CHRISTIAN NEUHÄUSER
13 Taxing wealth and wealth transfers in the 21st century
JENNIFER BIRD-POLLAN
List of contributors
Index
