Brian M. Keenan Prize

Your Name Here	2012 Your Paper's Title Here Your Paper's subtitle here. Please consider entering your work to be considered for the first ever presentation of The Brian M. Keenan Prize. Displayed here will be the successful candidate's photo and the winning paper, along with some information, in brief, about the recipient, their interests, and their work. And $1250.00 in your pocket!
Eric Mathison	2011 The Insufficiency of Negative Rights for Children In this paper I argue that negative rights are insufficient for children if the goals of liberal justice are to be fulfilled. I begin by adopting Will Kymlicka's two preconditions for liberalism: that lives must be led from the inside, and that we must have the freedoms to revise our conceptions of the good life. I focus on the importance of autonomy development in children for those preconditions to obtain. Next I evaluate the right to an open future, which posits that children have the right to choose the type of lives they wish to lead as adults. I argue, however, that approaches of this type cannot fulfill the goals of liberalism because they fail to sufficiently address positive rights.
	2011 Short List Congratulations to the the following applicants whose papers were short listed for the Keenan Prize for 2011! Mike Kryluk - The Dialectic of the Hemlock William Brooke - The Formal Failure and Social Success of Logic Jesse Robertson - Theorizing Progress in the Black Canoe Anthony Sangiuliano - Defending the Kantian Approach to Justification and Legitimacy.
Michael Anthony	2010 Imminent Humanity Re-evaluating individual responsibility, liability, and immunity in times of war from a liberal perspective. What do we owe each other in times of war? Although we may claim to understand our obligations in personal contexts, war presents extraordinary moral problems which are not easily solved by the application of familiar principles. This fact often tempts theorists and philosophers to assume either (a) wars, and the killing done in them, are in principle unethical or (b) wars are outside the realm of moral consideration. This paper takes a broadly liberal approach to examining the principles governing the forfeiture of human rights. Specifically, this paper looks at Igor Primoratz's claim that liberalism is committed to terroristic implications; this paper also provides a number of key revisions to Michael Walzer's just war paradigm on issues of the moral equality of soldiers, noncombatant immunity, and the doctrine of double effect. This paper was written in part to demonstrate the importance of philosophical reflection on issues that have been increasingly considered matters of state policy or strict legality.
	2010 Short List Congratulations to the the following applicants whose papers were short listed for the Keenan Prize for 2010! Pani Sarkis-Michael - Inclusive Legal Positivism vs Exclusive Legal Positivism Shawn Bartlett - Robert Nozick, Rights, and What We Owe Others Kajia Eidse-Rempel - Lyotard and Foucault: Condemning Us to the Computerized and Disciplinized Society Rebecca Vasluianu - Democracy and the Problem of Epistemic Adequacy