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Mindful Justice: The Search For Gandhi’S Sympathetic State After Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel
Mindful Justice: The Search For Gandhi’S Sympathetic State After Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel
Nehal A. Patel
One of the most startling examples of unmitigated disaster occurred in Bhopal, India, in 1984, when a Union Carbide pesticide plant exploded tons of methyl isocyanate into the air, killing 3800 people overnight. 30 years later, the plant site has not been remediated, and the estimated death toll from the explosion now has reached over 20,000. Disaster victims repeatedly have sought relief directly from the government. Yet, the Indian and US governments and Union Carbide have refused to provide the necessary resources for proper remediation. In this Article, I examine the state’s response to the Bhopal disaster using the thought …
Confronting The Internet's Dark Side: Moral And Social Responsibility On The Free Highway, Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Confronting The Internet's Dark Side: Moral And Social Responsibility On The Free Highway, Raphael Cohen-Almagor
raphael cohen-almagor
This book focuses on the tension between Free Speech fundamentalism and Social Responsibility at the individual, corporate, and nation-state level. It brings an international perspective to the central topics (child pornography, hate speech, suicidal and homicidal enablers, cybercrime and terrorism). The central philosophical argument of this book is the Promotional Approach, which the author sees as a kind of Golden Mean between Ronald Dworkin and Joseph Raz. The book utilizes the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean to endorse the kind of practical wisdom required to make choices between freedom and security, unlimited license and moral responsibility. It argues that this …
Lessons In Fiscal Activism, Mirit Eyal-Cohen
Lessons In Fiscal Activism, Mirit Eyal-Cohen
Mirit Eyal-Cohen
This article highlights an anomaly. It shows that two tax rules aimed to achieve a similar goal were introduced at the same time. Both meant to be temporary and bring economic stimuli but received a dramatically different treatment. The economically inferior rule survived while its superior counterpart did not. The article reviews the reasons for this paradox. It shows that the causes are both political and an agency problem. The article not only enriches an important and ongoing debate that has received much attention in recent years, but also provides important lessons to policymakers.
Dog Whistling, The Color-Blind Jurisprudential Regime And The Constitutional Politics Of Race, Calvin J. Terbeek
Dog Whistling, The Color-Blind Jurisprudential Regime And The Constitutional Politics Of Race, Calvin J. Terbeek
Calvin J TerBeek
Ian Haney Lopez’s new book, "Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class", has a provocative thesis. Lopez contends that dog-whistling, that is, coded racial rhetoric, “explains how politicians backed by concentrated wealth manipulate racial appeals to win elections and also to win support for regressive policies that help corporations and the super-rich, and in the process wreck the middle class." Though this may seem plausible enough, the thesis cannot stand up to scrutiny; the relevant political science literature provides no support for this. What is more, Lopez's treatment of the Supreme Court's …
The Origins Of Affirmative Fiscal Action, Mirit Eyal-Cohen
The Origins Of Affirmative Fiscal Action, Mirit Eyal-Cohen
Mirit Eyal-Cohen
This article highlights an anomaly. It shows that two tax rules aimed to achieve a similar goal were introduced at the same time. Both meant to be temporary and bring economic stimuli, but received a dramatically different treatment. The less efficient or economically inferior survived. Its superior counterpart did not. The article reviews the reasons for this paradox. It shows that the reason is both political and an agency problem. The article not only enriches an important and ongoing debate that has received much attention in recent years, but also provides important lessons to policymakers.
The Rise And Rise Of The One Percent: Getting To Thomas Piketty's Wealth Dystopia, Shi-Ling Hsu
The Rise And Rise Of The One Percent: Getting To Thomas Piketty's Wealth Dystopia, Shi-Ling Hsu
Shi-Ling Hsu
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-first Century, which is surely one of the very few economics treatises ever to be a best-seller, has parachuted into an intensely emotional and deeply divisive American debate: the problem of inequality in the United States. Piketty's core argument is that throughout history, the rate of return on private capital has usually exceeded the rate of economic growth, expressed by Piketty as the relation r > g. If true, this relation means that the wealthy class – who are the predominant owners of capital – will grow their wealth faster than economies grow, which …
Reconciling Liberalism And Judaism? Human Rights In Israel, Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Reconciling Liberalism And Judaism? Human Rights In Israel, Raphael Cohen-Almagor
raphael cohen-almagor
This essay argues that mixing religion in politics is problematic. It becomes destructive when the religion is unyielding and coercive. Whenever religious powers are on the rise, the foundations of liberal democracy are shaken and its protective mechanisms are regressing. Indeed, in Israel egalitarianism is still in the making. Orthodox Judaism and liberal democracy are in conflict. The rise of one comes at the expense of the other in a situation where religion does not encompass the concept of freedom from religion. This essay further argues that Palestinians and Israelis are entitled to the same rights and liberties. Accommodations and …
Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz
Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …
Costs Of Codification, Dru Stevenson
Costs Of Codification, Dru Stevenson
Dru Stevenson
Between the Civil War and World War II, every state and the federal government shifted toward codified versions of their statutes. Academia has so far ignored the systemic effects of this dramatic change. For example, the consensus view in the academic literature about rules and standards has been that precise rules present higher enactment costs for legislatures than would general standards, while vague standards present higher information costs for courts and citizens than do rules. Systematic codification – featuring hierarchical format and numbering, topical arrangement, and cross-references – inverts this relationship, lowering transaction costs for legislatures and increasing information costs …
Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz
Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
Neoliberalism can be understood as the deregulation of the economy from political control by deliberate action or inaction of the state. As such it is both constituted by the law and deeply affects it. I show how the methods of historical materialism can illuminate this phenomenon in all three branches of the the U.S. government. Considering the example the global financial crisis of 2007-08 that began with the housing bubble developing from trade in unregulated and overvalued mortgage backed securities, I show how the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking, allowed this …
The Limits Of Debate Or What We Talk About When We Talk About Gender Imbalance On The Bench, Keith Bybee
The Limits Of Debate Or What We Talk About When We Talk About Gender Imbalance On The Bench, Keith Bybee
Keith J. Bybee
What do we talk about when we talk about gender imbalance on the bench? The first thing we do is keep track of the number of female judges. Once the data has been gathered, we then argue about what the disparity between men and women in the judiciary means. These arguments about meaning are not freestanding. On the contrary, I claim that debates over gender imbalance occur within the context of a broader public debate over the nature of judicial decisionmaking. I argue that this public debate revolves around dueling conceptions of the judge as impartial arbiter and as politically …
Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development, Frede G. Moreno, Susana Evangelista Leones
Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development, Frede G. Moreno, Susana Evangelista Leones
Frede G Moreno
Landownership problem and control of resources remains as a political development issue in the Philippines. Agrarian reform is a necessary condition for agricultural modernization and rural industrialization and the fundamental mooring for global competition. Agrarian Reform has contributed to improvement of the socio-economic conditions of landless farmers and political development of the Philippines in terms of engaging the landless in the process of policy making and distribution of large private landholdings to the landless. Modalities giving peasants a stake in society such as decisive role in agrarian legislations, engaging them in dialogue to resolve agrarian cases, presenting manifesto pinpointing their …
Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development, Frede G. Moreno, Susana Evangelista Leones
Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development, Frede G. Moreno, Susana Evangelista Leones
Frede G Moreno
Landownership problem and control of resources remains as a political development issue in the Philippines. Agrarian reform is a necessary condition for agricultural modernization and rural industrialization and the fundamental mooring for global competition. Agrarian Reform has contributed to improvement of the socio-economic conditions of landless farmers and political development of the Philippines in terms of engaging the landless in the process of policy making and distribution of large private landholdings to the landless. Modalities giving peasants a stake in society such as decisive role in agrarian legislations, engaging them in dialogue to resolve agrarian cases, presenting manifesto pinpointing their …
It Ain’T Necessarily So: The Misuse Of “Human Nature” In Law And Social Policy And Bankruptcy Of The “Nature-Nurture” Debate, 21 Tex. J. Women & L. 187 (2012))., Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
Debate about legal and policy reform has been haunted by a pernicious confusion about human nature: and the idea that it is a set of rigid dispositions, today generally conceived as genetic, that is manifested the same way in all circumstances. Opponents of egalitarian alternatives argue that we cannot depart far from the status quo because human nature stands in the way. Advocates of such reforms too often deny the existence of human nature because, sharing this conception, they think it would prevent changes they deem desirable. Both views rest on deep errors about what kind of thing a “nature” …
Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development, Frede G. Moreno
Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development, Frede G. Moreno
Frede G Moreno
No abstract provided.
Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development, Frede G. Moreno, Susana Evangelista Leones
Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development, Frede G. Moreno, Susana Evangelista Leones
Frede G Moreno
Landownership problem and control of resources remains as a political development issue in the Philippines. Agrarian reform is a necessary condition for agricultural modernization and rural industrialization and the fundamental mooring for global competition. Agrarian Reform has contributed to improvement of the socio-economic conditions of landless farmers and political development of the Philippines in terms of engaging the landless in the process of policy making and distribution of large private landholdings to the landless. Modalities giving peasants a stake in society such as decisive role in agrarian legislations, engaging them in dialogue to resolve agrarian cases, presenting manifesto pinpointing their …
Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development, Frede G. Moreno, Susana Evangelista Leones
Agrarian Reform And Philippine Political Development, Frede G. Moreno, Susana Evangelista Leones
Frede G Moreno
Landownership problem and control of resources remains as a political development issue in the Philippines. Agrarian reform is a necessary condition for agricultural modernization and rural industrialization and the fundamental mooring for global competition. Agrarian Reform has contributed to improvement of the socio-economic conditions of landless farmers and political development of the Philippines in terms of engaging the landless in the process of policy making and distribution of large private landholdings to the landless. Modalities giving peasants a stake in society such as decisive role in agrarian legislations, engaging them in dialogue to resolve agrarian cases, presenting manifesto pinpointing their …
Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz
Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …
Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz
Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …
Don’T Split The Baby: How The U.S. Could Avoid Uncertainty And Unnecessary Litigation And Promote Equality By Emulating The British Surrogacy Law Regime, Austin R. Caster
Don’T Split The Baby: How The U.S. Could Avoid Uncertainty And Unnecessary Litigation And Promote Equality By Emulating The British Surrogacy Law Regime, Austin R. Caster
Austin R Caster
This article will show that the United States can protect the rights of the intended parents, the surrogate, and the child while avoiding uncertainty and unnecessary litigation by enacting uniform legislation akin to the United Kingdom’s regime. The first section will examine the history of surrogacy law in the United States, demonstrate the inconsistency of these laws, and suggest that reform is needed. Section two will discuss the United Kingdom’s legislative response to the problem of surrogacy arrangements, which has provided more uniformity despite obstacles similar to those faced in the United States. The third section will illustrate that the …
Race, Colorblindness And Equality In Recent Supreme Court Jurisprudence: Assessing An Evolving Standard, Steven V. Mazie
Race, Colorblindness And Equality In Recent Supreme Court Jurisprudence: Assessing An Evolving Standard, Steven V. Mazie
Steven V. Mazie
This essay weighs the merits of the ascendant interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment: a colorblind reading of equality that received a boost in the Court’s Ricci v. DeStefano decision of 2009. In Ricci, the Court concluded that the City of New Haven had acted illegally when it scrapped a promotion exam for firefighters on which whites had vastly outperformed black and Hispanic candidates. The article opens by surveying the major twists and turns of the Supreme Court’s view of racial classifications since the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868. It updates that history through an …
Why Same-Sex Marriage Will Not Repeat The Errors Of No-Fault Divorce, Austin R. Caster
Why Same-Sex Marriage Will Not Repeat The Errors Of No-Fault Divorce, Austin R. Caster
Austin R Caster
Because so many negative ramifications resulted from changing marriage laws through no-fault divorce legislation, it is understandable that those who rightfully feared no-fault divorce would also fear any additional changes to the definition of marriage. Those fears are unfounded as applied to same-sex marriage legislation, however, because the same consequences resulting from no-fault divorce do not apply to same-sex marriage. Whereas changing marriage exit rights through laws such as no-fault divorce legislation resulted in an increased divorced rate throughout the world, the opposite has happened in countries that have allowed same-sex marriage laws by changing marriage entrance rights. Society has …
Responsibility Of And Trust In Isps, Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Responsibility Of And Trust In Isps, Raphael Cohen-Almagor
raphael cohen-almagor
This discussion is about the neglected concepts of trust and social responsibility on the Internet. I will discuss and explain the concepts and their implications to people and society. I then address the issue of moral and social responsibilities of ISPs and web-hosting companies. I argue that ISPs and web-hosting companies should aspire to take responsibility for content and that they should respect and abide by their own terms of conduct.
Equality, Race And Gifted Education: An Egalitarian Critique Of Admission To New York City's Specialized High Schools, Steven V. Mazie
Equality, Race And Gifted Education: An Egalitarian Critique Of Admission To New York City's Specialized High Schools, Steven V. Mazie
Steven V. Mazie
Educational programs for gifted students face both philosophical and practical challenges from egalitarians. Some object that gifted schools inherently undermine a commitment to equality in education, while others observe that schools for talented students cater to privileged youth and effectively discriminate against disadvantaged minorities. This article taps into recent theorizing on equality to explore an illuminating case study: admissions policies at New York City’s so-called ‘specialized’ high schools. After dismissing less nuanced proposals on both ends of the spectrum, I draw upon Elizabeth Anderson’s theory of ‘democratic egalitarianism’ to argue that, while schools devoted to talented students could be seen …
The Mexican Kidnapping Industry: Does Federalism Hold The Government Hostage In Its Efforts To Combat Such Criminality?, Charles B. Bowers
The Mexican Kidnapping Industry: Does Federalism Hold The Government Hostage In Its Efforts To Combat Such Criminality?, Charles B. Bowers
Charles Bowers
No abstract provided.
The Intersection Of Judicial Attitudes And Litigant Selection Theories: Explaining U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making, Jeff L. Yates, Elizabeth Coggins
The Intersection Of Judicial Attitudes And Litigant Selection Theories: Explaining U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making, Jeff L. Yates, Elizabeth Coggins
Jeff L Yates
Two prominent theories of legal decision making provide seemingly contradictory explanations for judicial outcomes. In political science, the Attitudinal Model suggests that judicial outcomes are driven by judges' sincere policy preferences -- judges bring their ideological inclinations to the decision making process and their case outcome choices largely reflect these policy preferences. In contrast, in the law and economics literature, Priest and Klein's well-known Selection Hypothesis posits that court outcomes are largely driven by the litigants' strategic choices in the selection of cases for formal dispute or adjudication -- forward thinking litigants settle cases where potential judicial outcomes are readily …
Bargaining In The Shadow Of Violence: The Npt, Iaea, And Nuclear Non-Proliferation Negotiations, Arsalan M. Suleman
Bargaining In The Shadow Of Violence: The Npt, Iaea, And Nuclear Non-Proliferation Negotiations, Arsalan M. Suleman
Arsalan Suleman
The NPT non-proliferation regime is both a multilateral treaty of international law and a dispute system designed to manage conflict over the use of nuclear technology. The system seeks to balance the competing desires of member-states to have access to peaceful nuclear technology and to provide national security. In the course of implementation, the system must handle disputes over alleged violations of the NPT and IAEA safeguards agreements. Negotiations, crucial to the functioning of the NPT dispute system, are undertaken in the shadow of the law and the shadow of violence. The NPT and any relevant agreement signed with the …
Assuming Bosnia: Democracy After Srebrenica, Timothy W. Waters
Assuming Bosnia: Democracy After Srebrenica, Timothy W. Waters
Timothy W Waters
Assuming Bosnia: Democracy after Srebrenica Timothy William Waters Associate Professor, Indiana University School of Law (Bloomington) This essay is a reflection on democracy, justice and intervention. It focuses on the Bosnian experience, which requires one to consider several actors: Bosnia as a state, Bosnians as a people or peoples, and the international community. For since Dayton, the indispensable context for reform in Bosnia has been the international protectorate, which is to say the deliberate abrogation of autonomous, democratic, domestic processes for some defined, and hopefully higher, set of purposes. These purposes are expressed in the Dayton Accords, though increasingly the …
Assuming Bosnia: Taking The Polity Seriously In Ethnically Divided Societies, Timothy W. Waters
Assuming Bosnia: Taking The Polity Seriously In Ethnically Divided Societies, Timothy W. Waters
Timothy W Waters
This essay is a reflection on democracy, justice and intervention. It focuses on the Bosnian experience, where since the Dayton Accords the indispensable context for reform has been the international protectorate. This essay examines the assumptions used by the international community to govern Bosnia, which suggest a policy premised upon resistance to the fragmentation of the state under any circumstances, and a belief that the international intervention is simultaneously morally justified and a purely technical process for increasing efficiency. How necessary – indeed, how related at all – are those commitments to the dictates of justice? What is their relationship …
Strategic Planning For Combating Terrorism: A Critical Examination, Arsalan Suleman
Strategic Planning For Combating Terrorism: A Critical Examination, Arsalan Suleman
Arsalan Suleman
This article engages in a thorough assessment of the Bush Administration's main security strategy documents related to combating terrorism, namely the 2002 and 2006 National Security Strategy documents, the 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, and the 2006 National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism. First, the article assesses the value and importance of strategy documents and the utility in analyzing them. Second, the strategies are analyzed based on the process by which they were authored, the structural elements of the strategy, and the strategy's content. Third, the article discusses the overall content of counter-terrorism strategy and makes …