Law Commons^™

Why Confronting The Internet’S Dark Side?, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

raphael cohen-almagor

Raphael Cohen-Almagor, the author of Confronting the Internet's Dark Side, explains his motivation for exploring the dangerous side of the world wide web. This new book is the first comprehensive book on social responsibility on the Internet.

Clemency 2.0, Paul J. Larkin Jr.

Paul J Larkin Jr.

A trope heard throughout criminal justice circles today is that the system is a dystopia. Although most of the discussion and proposed remedies have centered on sentencing or release, this article focuses on clemency, which has become a controversial subject. The last few Presidents have rarely exercised their pardon power or have used it for ignoble reasons. The former withers the clemency power; the latter besmirches it. President Obama sought to kick start the clemency process through the Clemency Project 2014, which sought to provide relief to the 30,000 crack cocaine offenders unable to take advantage of the prospective-only nature …

Facing The Unborn, Richard Stith

Richard Stith

Modern science tells us of the identity of each individual human being from conception to adulthood, but our imagination does not fully cooperate. It is difficult to look at a photograph of a zygote and see a fellow human being. There are, however, two strong ways to better align our knowledge and our intuition. One is to look backward in the developmental process. It is easy to grasp that our fellow human beings all used to be zygotes. A second method is now becoming available. DNA can be used to reveal the future face and even the eyes of each …

The Culture Wars Of Climate Change, Matthew Rimmer

Matthew Rimmer

Of late, there has been a growth in cultural expression about climate change – with the rise of climate fiction (‘cli-fi’); art and photography responding to changes in nature; musical anthems about climate change; plays and dramas about climate change; and environmental documentaries, and climate cinema. Drawing comparisons to past controversies over cultural funding, this paper considers the cultural wars over climate change. This article considers a number of cultural fields. Margaret Atwood made an important creative and critical contribution to the debate over climate change. The work examines Ian McEwan's novel, Solar, a tragi-comedy about authorship, invention, intellectual property, …

Series: Mindful Law, Mindful World: Property, Possession, And Consumption Via Gandhi's Thought, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

The following two Articles explore the nuanced relationship between property law, the human-environment relationship, and Gandhi’s thought.

ARTICLE 1: MINDFUL USE: GANDHI’S NON-POSSESSIVE PROPERTY THEORY

ARTICLE 2: “RENOUNCE AND ENJOY”: THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS THROUGH GANDHI’S SIMPLE LIVING AND HIGH THINKING

Virtuous Billing, Nancy B. Rapoport, Randy D. Gordon

Nancy B. Rapoport

Aristotle tells us, in his Nicomachean Ethics, that we become ethical by building good habits and we become unethical by building bad habits: “excellence of character results from habit, whence it has acquired its name (êthikê) by a slight modification of the word ethos (habit).” Excellence of character comes from following the right habits. Thinking of ethics as habit-forming may sound unusual to the modern mind, but not to Aristotle or the medieval thinkers who grew up in his long shadow. “Habit” in Greek is “ethos,” from which we get our modern word, “ethical.” In Latin, habits are moralis, which …

Reforming Restorative Justice For Legal Philosophy, Hyun G. Lee

Hyun G Lee

Many jurisdictions around United States and rest of the world have implemented restorative justice practices as part of its justice system. Despite the growing number of restorative justice initiatives, “scholars of jurisprudence and legal philosophy … have paid little attention to the developments….” If the legal philosophy scholars accepted or engaged in restorative justice theory, there would be even broader acceptance of restorative justice practices. There are, however, several obstacles that prevent a broader acceptance of restorative justice.

First, restorative justice practitioners must use the same terminology and definition as legal philosophers, particularly the terms retribution and punishment. Restorative justice …

Hard Determinism, Moral Responsibility And Free Will, Hyun G. Lee

Hyun G Lee

There have been many scientific findings in neuroscience that suggests that people have no free will. Most philosophers, however, have been reluctant to embrace hard determinism. Hard determinism states that free will is incompatible with determinism, that free will does not exist, and that determinism is true. It further states that since moral responsibility requires free will, there can be no moral responsibility. However, must this be the case? Must all good aspiring hard determinists believe in no ultimate moral responsibility? I would like to argue that a good hard determinist may believe in ultimate moral responsibility, that even if …