This fourth edition of Precedent in English Law presents a basic guide to the current doctrine of precedent in England, set in the wider context of the jurisprudential problems which any treatment of this topic involves. Such problems include the nature of _ratio_ _decidendi_ of a precedentand of its binding force, the significance of precedents alongside other sources of law, their role in legal reasoning, and the account which must be taken of them by any general theory of law. Considerable (...) re-writing has been undertaken to update case-law and take account of the possibleimplications for the doctrine of precedent of the impact of European Community law, making it an indispensable work of reference for readers interested in the past history, present state, and future developments of English rules of precedent. (shrink)

Reductionists about dispositions must either say the natural properties are all dispositional or individuate properties hyperintensionally. Lewis stands in as an example of the sort of combination I think is incoherent: properties individuated by modal profile + categoricalism.

This paper orchestrates various moments in which Derrida makes recourse to the notion of anachrony – in analyses of khōra and demiurgic creation in the Timaeus and of the trace in Husserl – in order to describe a structural law according to which philosophy attempts to determine some ‘thing’ with the very categories that it makes possible and that are therefore structurally derivative, both too early and too late, in a word, anachronous.

Most theorists of public reason, including both its proponents and critics, now accept that it is inconclusive, meaning that its correct application can result in a plurality of reasonable solutions to the issues it addresses. While some early critics argued that the inconclusiveness of public reason presented a serious problem for political legitimacy – a charge often associated with ‘the completeness objection’ – defenders of public reason have generally dismissed this objection on the grounds that political legitimacy does not hinge (...) on the selection of a singularly reasonable or most reasonable resolution to political disputes. We argue, however, that once the notion of political legitimacy accepted by prominent public reason theorists has been successfully disambiguated, the inconclusiveness of public reason is far more problematic than public reason theorists have acknowledged. (shrink)

I recall an old man selling Paul Lafargue’s Right to be Lazy on a busy street in the Latin Quarter in the 1980s. At the time, I was writing then my first book on the history of work time and leisure and felt by seeing this strange and grumpy man so energetically promoting the nearly forgotten work of Marx’s son-in-law somehow vindicated in my efforts. Paul Lafargue’s pamphlet makes an interesting assumption: The “natural” state of human being was relaxation and (...) that only a century or so of propaganda convinced the naïve worker and labor movement to embrace the doctrine of the “right” to work. The industrial revolution had produced the craziness of workers’ overproduction and legions of savants and servants for the small utterly unbusy rich. Once freed from the illusion of the right to work, machines, Lafargue insisted, would liberate us all from the drudgery of labor and let us live as the ancient Greek philosophers had dreamed—but without the dependence upon slaves. Lafargue’s view was hardly unique for its day. Many in the late nineteenth century believed that overwork caused production gluts and the irrational excesses of the rich. Busyness was a false doctrine of modern capitalism that was devoted to endlessly extending and intensifying work. Before and after him, many fought to win freedom from busyness with the reduction of worktime. But Lafargue’s dream that mechanical progress would liberate humanity from labor hardly happened. Instead, the “overproduction” that ceaseless toil created was “absorbed” by mass consumption. Even the “wastefulness” of the rich and their minions came to be seen merely as indifferent contributions to the Gross Domestic Product. So what happened? (shrink)

Human rights discourse has been likened to a global lingua franca, and in more ways than one, the analogy seems apt. Human rights discourse is a language that is used by all yet belongs uniquely to no particular place. It crosses not only the borders between nation-states, but also the divide between national law and international law: it appears in national constitutions and international treaties alike. But is it possible to conceive of human rights as a global language or lingua (...) franca not just in a figurative or metaphorical sense, but in a literal or linguistic sense as a legal dialect defined by distinctive patterns of word choice and usage? Does there exist a global language of human rights that transcends not only national borders, but also the divide between domestic and international law? Empirical analysis suggests that the answer is yes, but this global language comes in at least two variants or dialects. New techniques for performing automated content analysis enable us to analyze the bulk of all national constitutions over the last two centuries, together with the world’s leading regional and international human rights instruments, for patterns of linguistic similarity and to evaluate how much language, if any, they share in common. Specifically, we employ a technique known as topic modeling that disassembles texts into recurring verbal patterns. The results highlight the existence of two species or dialects of rights talk—the universalist dialect and the positive-rights dialect—both of which are global in reach and rising in popularity. The universalist dialect is generic in content and draws heavily on the type of language found in international and regional human rights instruments. It appears in particularly large doses in the constitutions of transitional states, developing states, and states that have been heavily exposed to the influence of the international community. The positive-rights dialect, by contrast, is characterized by its substantive emphasis on positive rights of a social or economic variety, and by its prevalence in lengthier constitutions and constitutions from outside the common law world, especially those of the Spanish-speaking world. Both dialects of rights talk are truly transnational, in the sense that they appear simultaneously in national, regional, and international legal instruments and transcend the distinction between domestic and international law. Their existence attests to the blurring of the boundary between constitutional law and international law. (shrink)

I compare the failure of counterfactual dependence as a criterion of event causation to the failure of stochastic dependence as a criterion of causal law. Counterexamples to the stochastic analysis arise from cases of Simpson's Paradox, and Nancy Cartwright has suggested a way of transforming the stochastic analysis into something that avoids these counterexample. There is an analogical relationship between cases of Simpson's Paradox and cases of causal overdetermination. I exploit this analogical relationship to motivate my own view about the (...) connection between counterfactuals and event causation. According to my view, counterfactuals and event causation are intimately connected by a principle which falls short of being an analysis but which, as I show, correctly handles not only overdetermination but common causes as well. (shrink)

In Key Concepts in Classical Social Theory individual entries introduce, explain and contextualize the key topics within classical social theory. Definitions, summaries and key words are developed throughout with careful cross-referencing, allowing students to move effortlessly between core ideas and themes. Each entry provides: • Clear definitions • Lucid accounts of key issues • Up-to-date suggestions for further reading • Informative cross-referencing Relevant, focused and accessible, this book will provide students with an indispensible guide to the central concepts (...) of classical social theory. (shrink)

In the year ending March 2020, an estimated 773,000 people in England and Wales were sexually assaulted. These types of crimes have lasting effects on victims’ mental health, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. There is a large body of literature which identifies several factors associated with the likelihood of the victim reporting a sexual assault to the police, and these differences may be due to rape myth stereotypes which perpetuate the belief that rape is only “real” under certain (...) conditions. Less is known, however, about the effect these rape myths and stereotypes have on the investigation process itself and the subsequent police outcomes assigned to sex offences. This study aimed to address this gap, providing a profile of all RASSO committed over a 3-year period in one English police force, the police outcomes of these offences, and whether any offences, suspect, or victim variables were associated with different outcomes, in particular the decision to charge or cases where victims decline to prosecute. In line with previous research, the majority of victims were female while the majority of suspects were male, and the most frequent victim–suspect relationship was acquaintance, followed by partner/ex-partner. Charge outcomes were more likely in SSOs and less in rape offences, more likely with stranger offences and less likely than offences committed by partners/ex-partners and relatives, and some non-white suspects were more likely to be charged than suspects of other ethnicities, including white suspects. Victim attrition was more likely in cases where the suspect was a partner or ex-partner and least likely where the suspect was a stranger, more likely in SSOs than in rape cases, and more likely when the victim ethnicity was “other”. Law enforcement should be aware of the potential biases, both relating to rape myths and stereotypes and to the biased treatment of victims and suspects based on demographic characteristics, and work to eliminate these to ensure a fairer and more effective RASSO investigative process. (shrink)

Sexual and reproductive health is a challenge worldwide, and much progress is needed to reach the relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals. This paper presents cross-sectional data collected in Sierra Leone on sexual and gender-based violence, family planning, child, early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation using an innovative method of measurement: situational judgment tests, as a subset of questions within a larger survey tool. For the SJTs, respondents saw hypothetical scenarios on these themes and had to indicate how (...) they would react. The objective is to give an impression of beliefs and norms on specific behaviors, which provide insights for social and behavior change interventions. Data was collected by enumerators traveling to villages randomly selected in six districts of the country. The sample is composed of 566 respondents. Results show that FGM in particular seem to be a priority topic, in comparison to the other topics for which the norms seem to be stronger against those practices. Age differences emerged and suggest priority groups to be targeted. In terms of validity of the measurement methods, situational judgment test answers correlated positively with other items in the survey, but the magnitude of the association is often small, and sometimes not significant. Thus, more studies are needed to further explore the validity of this measure by comparing against a reference value. Using SJTs could complement other data collection tools to perform community assessment, and orient the direction of the program in its planning phase. (shrink)

Statistical learning enables humans to involuntarily process and utilize different kinds of patterns from the environment. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying the simultaneous acquisition of multiple regularities from different perceptual modalities remain unclear. A novel multidimensional serial reaction time task was developed to test 40 participants’ ability to learn simple first‐order and complex second‐order relations between uni‐modal visual and cross‐modal audio‐visual stimuli. Using the difference in reaction times between sequenced and random stimuli as the index of domain‐general statistical learning, (...) a significant difference and dissociation of learning occurred between the initial and final learning phases. Furthermore, we used a negative and positive occurrence‐frequency‐and‐reaction‐time correlation to indicate implicit and explicit learning, respectively, and found that learning simple uni‐modal patterns involved an implicit‐to‐explicit segue, while acquiring complex cross‐modal patterns required an explicit‐to‐implicit segue, resulting in a X‐shape crossing of regularity learning. Thus, we propose an X‐way hypothesis to elucidate the dynamic interplay between the implicit and explicit systems at two distinct stages when acquiring various regularities in a multidimensional probability space. (shrink)

Physical activity and sedentary behaviour have been linked to the mental health of children and adolescents, yet the timing of behaviours may play a role in this relationship and clarifying this could inform interventions. We explored cross-sectional associations of PA and SED in varying time segments throughout the school day with the mental health of school-aged children and adolescents from rural Northeastern Ontario, Canada. A total of 161 students wore accelerometers for 8 days and completed a self-report survey. Mental (...) health was measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Accelerometer-measured SED, light PA, and moderate and vigorous PA were estimated in the time-segments before school, school time, after school, and evenings. Associations were tested with multilevel linear regressions while adjusting for confounding factors. Students spent 72.6 min in MVPA, 209.0 min in LPA, and 621.0 min in SED per day. Daily SED was associated with less conduct problems. Evening LPA was inversely associated with hyperactivity, while SED was associated with hyperactivity and with peer problems before school, and during school. No associations were observed for MVPA, emotional symptoms, or prosocial behaviour. In conclusion, displacing SED with LPA in some specific periods of the day may benefit the mental health of students; taking this into account could strengthen interventions. (shrink)

"End-Of-Law week drinkS @ ACT Magistrates Court: Friday 20 May 2005." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (198), pp. 24.

This paper explores St. Paul of the Cross's passion-centred spirituality as a context for avoiding the distortions of such spirituality and promoting proper praxis. These distortions are not the legacy of Paul of the Cross himself, but the fact that his contemplation of the passion was primarily performative and mystical, along with the lack of a systematic theology on the passion-death-and resurrection, there remains a context wherein distortions of passion-centred approaches can occur. The paper then presents some aspects (...) of Bernard Lonergan's thought on lex crucis and also from his Trinitarian work in order to provide a theological framework. This framework can help prevent the distortions of such a passion-centred spirituality and guide orthopraxis of passion-centred spiritualities. In the final section we explore some insights from Buddhism that are consonant with both Paul of the Cross's spirituality and Lonergan's law of the cross as fruits of the Spirit and seeds of the Word. (shrink)

The period from Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus is one of the richest in the history of Christian theology. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation aims to provide a thorough examination of the doctrine in this era, making explicit its philosophical and theological foundations. Medieval theologians believed that there were good reasons for supposing that Christ's human nature was an individual. In the light of this, Part 1 discusses how the various thinkers held that an individual nature could be united to (...) a divine person. Part 2 shows how one divine person could be incarnate without any other. Part 3 deals with questions of Christological predication, and Part 4 shows how an individual nature is to be distinguished from a person. The work begins with a full account of the metaphysics presupposed in the medieval accounts, and concludes with observations relating medieval accounts to modern Christology. (shrink)

There is a dire need today to create spaces in which people can make meaning of their existence in the world, abiding by cultural frameworks and practices that acknowledge and validate a meaningful existence for all. People are not just isolated individuals but are connected in diverse ways with other persons within our natural and social environment which is part of the whole universe. The African philosophy of uBuntu or humaneness is re-emerging for its timely relevance and potential as indispensable (...) in our quest for global citizenship, peace, and mutual understanding in securing sustainable human development in the broader ecosystem. Comparative educationists have the challenge to devise theoretical frameworks, epistemological and pedagogical constructs as well as pragmatic, useful and effective ways of promoting the virtues of compassion and recognition of our common humanity in eliminating the ills of domination and control that are guided by greed, hatred, jealousy, and intolerance. Comparative Education for Global Citizenship, Peace and Shared Living through Ubuntu paves the way for a better understanding of the critical importance of the collective search and endeavor towards achieving the virtues of nonviolence, peace, shared values of living together, global citizenship, improved quality of life for all and a better appreciation of the positive implications of interdependence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church by Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, and: Restorative Justice: Theories and Practices of Moral Imagination by Amy LevadDana ScopatzReview of Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church DARRIN W. SNYDER BELOUSEK Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012. 668 pp. $55.00Review of Restorative Justice: Theories and (...) Practices of Moral Imagination AMY LEVAD El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2012. 300 pp. $80.00In Atonement, Justice, and Peace and Restorative Justice, the authors advocate for a restorative conception of justice, which they oppose to the “normal” retributive concept. Amy Levad draws on Aristotle and the virtue ethics tradition to write about “moral imagination” and restorative justice. Darrin Belousek uses Thomas Kuhn’s language to write about a “paradigm shift” in our understanding of theological themes relevant to restorative justice. Both contrast the restorative imagination or paradigm with a retributive one, although Levad also contrasts restoration with rehabilitation. Levad limits her study to restorative justice as [End Page 214] practiced in the criminal justice system, while Belousek expands his work to consider the Bible, theology, and multiple issues in society and in the church.Levad begins her book by discussing Aristotle’s idea of justice as equity, which she points out requires more discernment from judicial decision makers than it requires the algorithmic application of laws. In order for them to enact justice as equity, she argues, decision makers need a “vivid and expansive” moral imagination. Toward this end, she brings together two traditions: Aristotelian virtue ethics and modern literature on moral imagination. At the heart of her work is an ethnographic study intended to determine whether there are practices of restorative justice that can foster such a vivid and expansive moral imagination. After observing and interviewing participants in restorative justice programs in Colorado, Levad examined the narratives, metaphors, and symbols they used in order to determine whether and how they demonstrated a distinctively restorative moral imagination. Because the scope of her study was limited, and because she had difficulty getting a wide spectrum of roles involved in restorative justice to participate in the study, Levad’s results are more suggestive than conclusive. She acknowledges that we cannot generalize from them; although she draws on research methods from sociology and criminology, her findings do not meet their standards of evidence. Thus, the book’s greatest value lies in the recommendations it makes for further study. Empirical studies of the effectiveness of restorative justice practices have tended to focus on either reducing recidivism or the satisfaction of participants with the process. Levad brings to the fore two questions that have so far not been explored in previous research. First, how do restorative justice practices affect the moral imagination? And second, what effect might those practices have on ethical discernment? Her book takes some hopeful initial steps in addressing those questions.Although Levad writes as a Christian ethicist, she did not explicitly incorporate theological reflection into her study of state-sponsored programs. Belousek, by contrast, takes on an explicitly theological project of evaluating how interpretations of the significance of the cross of Jesus interact with such things as support for capital punishment, just war, and market economics. Since Belousek’s book is wide-ranging, this review will concentrate on the task it has in common with Levad’s book: that of reconceptualizing justice.In a fashion parallel to Levad’s use of Aristotle’s notion of justice as equity, which sometimes departs from strict legal justice, Belousek cites Paul’s vision of God’s justice “irrespective of” or “apart from” the law (372). Belousek begins by linking penal-substitutionary atonement theory to capital punishment, just war, and exchange economy in a single “paradigm,” arguing that they are all under-girded by what he calls the “Retributive Principle” (28). He then challenges this paradigm’s appropriateness for Christianity on biblical and doctrinal grounds. After examining arguments in favor of penal-substitutionary atonement in detail—drawing on the works of J. I. Packer and Thomas Schreiner, among [End Page 215] others—he turns to the scriptures cited in support... (shrink)

Large data-intensive health research programmes benefit from collaboration amongst researchers who may be located in different institutions and international contexts. However, complexities in navigating privacy frameworks and data protection laws across various jurisdictions pose significant challenges to researchers seeking to share or transfer data outside of institutional boundaries. Research on the awareness of data protection and privacy laws amongst stakeholders is limited. Our qualitative study, drawn from a larger project in Singapore, revealed insights into stakeholders’ perceptions of the role of (...) law in cross-national health data research. Stakeholders in our study demonstrated a range of perceptions regarding the role of data protection law in governing the collection and transfer of health data for research. The main criticisms included inadequate legal protection to data and lack of uniformed data protection standards. Despite these criticisms, participants recognised the importance of data protection law in supporting cross-border data transfers and proposed measures to improve perceived limitations of existing laws. These measures include strengthening existing legal framework, establishing contractual agreements and imposing severe punishments for data misuse. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 38, Issue 1, pp 28 - 45 In his _Defensio fidei catholicae de satisfactione Christi adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem_ Grotius makes use of sources taken from Roman law. We discuss three examples and ask the question whether something may be said about the weight of the arguments Grotius has taken from Roman law, mainly the _Digest_. The first one relates to his belief that it is a matter of public interest that crimes do not remain unpunished and (...) he calls this argument even a trivial commonplace: _Hoc enim iudicare videtur trita sententia delicta puniri publice interest._ The second example is Grotius’s thesis that _si alio animo alius idem solvat, liberatio non contingit._ The third example is his thesis that _ex Romanorum legibus … poenae variantur pro conditione personarum_ which he also justifies with an impressive number of references. The conclusion is that Grotius uses these arguments, as if they were propositions suitable to function as part of the theological construction apt to rebut the views of Socinus, but for that purpose Grotius´s quotations are generally taken out of their original context and landed on a sort of Procrustean bed of his theological presuppositions. (shrink)

The nature and content of the thought of Duns Scotus (c. 1266-1308) remains largely unknown except by the expert. This book provides an accessible account of Scotus' theology, focusing both on what is distinctive in his thought, and on issues where his insights might prove to be of perennial value.

Name der Zeitschrift: Journal of Ancient History Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 280-303.

This paper addresses a famous objection against David Lewis’s Best System Analysis (BSA) of laws of nature. The objection—anticipated and discussed by Lewis (1994)—focuses on the standards of simplicity and strength being (in part) a matter of psychology. Lewis’s answer to the objection relies on his metaphysics of natural properties and its ability to single out the robustly best system, a system that is expected to come out far ahead of its rivals under any standard of simplicity and strength. The (...) main task of this paper is to argue that Lewis’s reply to the objection in terms of nature being kind to us does not succeed, if nature’s kindness is understood in terms of the naturalness of the properties composing the Humean mosaic. For epistemic access to natural properties is downstream to any previous identification of the best system. A possible Lewisian rejoinder in terms of a cross-world Humean mosaic of natural properties is considered and rebutted. The paper concludes by suggesting that Lewis could instead avail himself of a better answer to the objection, if the standards of simplicity and strength were reinterpreted along perspectivalist lines. (shrink)

It is increasingly clear that law and its enforcement in Victorian Britain were quite effective in tackling formative industrial problems concerning pollution and broader threats to nature. What is unclear is the political philosophy, if any, underlying this historic achievement. A prevalent view is that early ‘environmental’ law lacked any philosophical underpinning. The article revisits this issue with reference to Dicey’s analysis of 19th century ‘law-making public opinion’. Dicey identified three broad streams of seminal opinion that, he argued, shaped laws (...) as the century unfolded. The early part of the century was dominated by ‘Old Toryism’, including the romantic conservatism associated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This then gave ground to ‘Benthamism’ which in turn ceded dominance to ‘collectivism’. Whilst Dicey ignored laws relating to the environment, I argue that this is not because these presented a particular difficulty for his thesis. Indeed, all three seams of ‘law-making opinion’ converged around the legal protection of nature to offer a rich and diverse philosophical foundation for environmental law. (shrink)

Contrary to a common assumption, I argue that there is full agreement between East and West on the issue of the relation between the divine essence and the divine persons. I defend this claim by using the understanding of universals found in D. M. Armstrong to cast light on the theories. Taking Gregory of Nyssa and John of Damascus as representatives of the Eastern tradition, I show that this tradition sees the divine essence as a numerically singular object that is (...) wholly present in each divine person. The Eastern tradition explicitly sees this object as a universal. The Western tradition – exemplified in Augustine and Aquinas – likewise sees the divine essence as a numerically singular object that is wholly present in each divine person. But this tradition customarily denies that such an object could be a universal, on the merely philosophical grounds that universals are divided amongst the particulars that share them, and thus cannot be numerically one. Having shown the fundamental consonance of the two traditions, I argue by way of conclusion that differences between social and non–social theories of the Trinity depend entirely on the nature and extent of the features that are supposed to distinguish the persons from each other. (shrink)

Duns Scotus, along with Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham, was one of the three most talented and influential of the medieval schoolmen, and a highly original thinker. This book examines the central concepts in his physics, including matter, space, time, and unity.

This paper concerns Kierkegaard's notion of a teleological suspension of the ethical, which is presented by his pseudonym Johannes de Silentio in Fear and Trembling in connection with the biblical narrative of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. Against prevailing readings, I argue that Abraham's suspension of the ethical does not consist in his violating the ethical in order to satisfy a higher normative requirement. Rather, it consists in his preparedness to violate an overriding ethical norm, even where he does not believe (...) that there is some competing requirement that such a violation will satisfy - indeed, even where he believes that he has no reason to commit the violation and conclusive reason not to. Abraham's faith, as expressed in the teleological suspension, consists not in his willingness to obey God or his recognition that God's authority overrides that of the ethical; it consists in his trustful confidence that what seems certain - that he will have committed a monstrous wrong - will not obtain, a confidence that is best understood as a practical orientation toward the world rather than a propositional attitude such as a belief. I argue that this way of interpreting the teleological suspension makes the sections in which that phenomenon is discussed cohere better with the text's earlier sections than standard readings, and shows Kierkegaard's conception of faith to be more radical and more interesting than is commonly supposed. (shrink)