Patrick Tomlin

I am a Professor of Philosophy, specialising in moral, political, and legal philosophy. I am the founding Director of the Politics, Philosophy, and Law degree. I joined Warwick in 2018, having previously held positions at the University of Reading and the University of Oxford.

As well as being a member of the Philosophy Department, I am a member of Warwick's Centre for Ethics, Law and Public Affairs, which draws together moral, political, and legal theorists from different departments.

I am an associate editor, and a member of the founding editorial team, of Free & Equal: A Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs. Free & Equal was launched in September 2024, by the team that formerly ran Philosophy & Public Affairs.

I help to run the Pea Soup website.

Contact

Email: patrick dot tomlin at warwick dot ac dot uk

My office is S2.43Link opens in a new window in the Philosophy Department (Social Sciences Building).

2025-26 Office Hours:

Term 2: I am on academic leave, and so will not run regular office hours. Email me if you need to make an appointment.

Term 3: Email for an appointment.

Research

My research ranges over a wide variety of issues in moral, political, and legal philosophy. I have interests in distributive ethics (including aggregation), equality, criminal law and punishment, children and the family, the ethics of war and self-defence, and moral uncertainty.

In 2025 I published Violence in Proportion (Oxford University Press), which examines the proportionality limit on harm and violence in self-defence, war, (some theories of) punishment, and many other areas of moral and political life.

Other recent work has examined the necessity principle (and those who make harm necessary), the doctrine of double effect, the validity of consent under coercion, and who gets to parent which kids.

PPL

I am the Director of the PPL (Politics, Philosophy, and Law) degree. We welcomed our first cohort in 2018-19, and each year since then the course, and community, has grown.

Teaching

My teaching varies each year. For the last few years it has primarily centred on the following modules —

• Intro to PPL (PPL year 1)
• Crime and Punishment (years 2 and 3; co-taught with Victor Tadros in the Law School) - open to both law and philosophy students
• Principles of Political Economy: Philosophy & Politics (PPE year 3; co-taught with Simon Caney in Politics and International Studies)

Publications

MONOGRAPH

• Patrick Tomlin, Violence in ProportionLink opens in a new window (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025).

PAPERS

• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Making Harm Necessary: An Essay on Punishment and Self-Defence,’ Ethics (forthcoming).
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Accidentally Killing on Purpose Again: Intentions under Uncertainty,’ Ratio 38.4 (2025): 228-238.
• Sameer Bajaj and Patrick Tomlin, ‘Consenting under Coercion: The Partial Validity Account,’ Philosophical Quarterly 74.3 (2024): 709-731.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘What does the Best Available Parent View Require?,’ Ethics 133.4 (2023): 573-586.
  • A discussion of Anca Gheaus's paper, 'The Best Available Parent'.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Accidentally Killing on Purpose: Transferred Malice and Missing Victims,’ Law and Philosophy 41 (2022): 329-350.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘The Impure Non-Identity Problem,’ in Jeff McMahan, Tim Campbell, James Goodrich, and Ketan Ramakrishnan eds., Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Proportionality in War: Revising Revisionism,’ Ethics 131 (2020): 34-61.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Duffing Up the Criminal Law?,’ Criminal Law and Philosophy 14.3 (2020): 319-333.
• Patrick Tomlin, 'Distributive Justice for Aggressors,' Law and Philosophy 39 (2020): 351-379.
• Aart van Gils and Patrick Tomlin, ‘Relevance Rides Again? Aggregation and Local Relevance’ in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 6 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘The Value of Childhood’ in Anca Gheaus, Gideon Calder, and Jurgen De Wispelaere eds., The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Subjective Proportionality,’ Ethics 129.2 (2019): 254-283.
• Christian Barry and Patrick Tomlin, ‘Moral Uncertainty and the Criminal Law’ in Larry Alexander and Kimberly Kessler Ferzan eds., Palgrave Handbook of Applied Ethics and the Criminal Law (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Saplings or Caterpillars? Trying to Understand Children’s Wellbeing,’ Journal of Applied Philosophy 35.S1 (2018): 29-46.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘On Limited Aggregation,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 45.3 (2017): 232-260.
  • Honourable Mention in Gregory Kavka/UCI Prize in Political Philosophy, American Philosophical Association, 2020
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Innocence Lost: A Problem for Punishment as Duty,’ Law and Philosophy 36.3 (2017): 225-254.
• Christian Barry and Patrick Tomlin, ‘Moral Uncertainty and Permissibility: Evaluating Option Sets,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46.6 (2016): 898-923.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Should Kids Pay Their Own Way?,’ Political Studies 63.3 (2015): 663-678.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Should Retributivists Prefer Pre-Punishment?,’ Social Theory and Practice 41.2 (2015): 275-285.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘What is the Point of Egalitarian Social Relationships?’ in Alexander Kaufman ed., Distributive Justice and Access to Advantage: G.A. Cohen’s Egalitarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Retributivists! The Harm Principle is not for you!,’ Ethics 124.2 (2014): 272-298
  • Winner of Berger Memorial Prize, American Philosophical Association, 2017
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Time and Retribution,’ Law and Philosophy 33.5 (2014): 655-682
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Could the Presumption of Innocence Protect the Guilty?,’ Criminal Law and Philosophy 8.2 (2014): 431-447.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Choices, Chance and Change: luck egalitarianism over time,’ Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16.2 (2013): 393-407.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Extending the Golden Thread? Criminalisation and the presumption of innocence,’ Journal of Political Philosophy 21.1 (2013): 44-66.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Can I be a Luck Egalitarian and a Rawlsian?,’ Ethical Perspectives 19.3 (2012): 371-397.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘On Fairness and Claims,’ Utilitas 24.2 (2012): 200-213.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Should We Be Utopophobes about Democracy in Particular?,’ Political Studies Review 10.1 (2012): 38-49.
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Internal Doubts about Cohen’s Rescue of Justice,’ Journal of Political Philosophy 18.2 (2010): 228-247
• Patrick Tomlin, ‘Envy, Facts and Justice: a critique of the treatment of envy in justice as fairness,’ Res Publica 14.2 (2008): 101-116.

EDITED BOOKS

• Robert Jubb and Patrick Tomlin eds., Issues in Political Theory, 5th Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026).
• Catriona McKinnon, Robert Jubb, and Patrick Tomlin eds., Issues in Political Theory, 4th Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
• Andrew Ashworth, Lucia Zedner, and Patrick Tomlin eds., Prevention and the Limits of the Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).