Following Rawls, many political liberals hold reasonableness in high regard. Reasonable citizens can disagree, however, and some may find their arguments routinely ignored in elections and legislatures. Should we be troubled by such failures of institutional responsiveness as a matter of justice? The author argues that the expectation of such failures would lead parties in an original position to favor certain classes of institutions over others: A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism together suggest a particular federal structure to a (...) republic of reasons. (shrink)
I evaluate the claim that modern urban regions are desirable sites for inclusive forms of democratic governance. Although certain features of city life do hold such promise, I argue that these same features coincide with exclusionary attitudes and activities that undermine democratic hopes. I then clarify the necessary conditions for more inclusive urban democracy, distinguishing my account from prominent criticisms of suburban culture and urban sprawl advanced by, among others, advocates of the new urbanism. I conclude with proposals for reform (...) that emphasize creative uses of existing and emerging technologies and institutions, and a more democratic conception of eminent domain authority. (shrink)
Liberal democracies encourage citizen participation and protect our freedoms, yet these regimes elect politicians and decide important issues with electoral and legislative systems that are less inclusive than other arrangements. Some citizens inevitably have more influence than others. Is this a problem? Yes, because similarly just but more inclusive systems are possible. Political theorists and philosophers should be arguing for particular institutional forms, with particular geographies, consistent with justice. -/- Les démocraties libérales encouragent la participation citoyenne et protègent nos libertés. (...) Pourtant, ces régimes élisent des politiciens et décident de problèmes importants via les systèmes électoral et législatif, qui sont moins inclusifs que d’autres arrangements. Certains citoyens ont inévitablement plus d’influence que d’autres. Est-ce un problème? Oui, parce que des systèmes similairement justes, mais plus inclusifs, sont possibles. Les théoriciens et philosophes politiques devraient ainsi plaider en faveur de formes institutionnelles particulières, aux géographies précises, en cohérence avec la justice. (shrink)
The global city is a contested site of economic innovation and cultural production, as well as profound inequalities of wealth and life chances. These cities, and large cities that aspire to ‘global’ status, are often the point of entry for new immigrants. Yet for political theorists (and indeed many scholars of global institutions), these critical sites of global influence and inequality have not been a significant focus of attention. This is curious. Theorists have wrestled with the nature and demands of (...) global justice, but have for the most part supposed that the debate is between statist and cosmopolitan formulations. Questions of redistribution, immigration, humanitarian obligations, coercion at borders, and territorial rights have correspondingly been cast as either the domain of sovereign territorial states, or of the nascent web of supranational institutions that might bind those states and peoples, morally and legally. Examining some of these issues and arguments through the lens of the global city casts them in a new and informative light, and buttresses an associative turn in thinking about global justice. (shrink)
G.A. Cohen argues that Rawlsian constructivism mistakenly conflates principles of justice with optimal rules of regulation, a confusion that arises out of how Rawls has us think about justice. I use the concepts/conceptions distinction to argue that while citizens may reasonably disagree about the substance and demands of justice, some principled convergence may be possible: we can agree upon regulative principles consistent with justice, as each of us understands it. Rawlian constructivism helps us find that principled convergence, and this too (...) is a conception of justice. (shrink)
In a recent article in Space & Polity, Nezar AlSayyad and Ananya Roy draw suggestive analogies between medieval urban forms and troubling contemporary realities, such as gated urban enclaves and impoverished squatter settlements. Invoking the medieval city as an analytical device, they show how several prevalent urban practices of citizenship are in tension with, and sometimes flatly contradict, liberal complacencies and democratic hopes. However, this article suggests that there is another story to be told, using some of the medieval cities (...) they invoke to critical ends. The narrative highlights the ways in which certain medieval spatial and civic forms might enrich liberal and democratic aspirations, helping us to re-imagine at least two core values of liberal democratic citizenship. (shrink)
This study investigates ethical decision-making by considering the differences in ethical judgments between undergraduate business and MBA students on selected ethical issues facing employees and managers of today's businesses. The study further investigates differences in ethical judgments between undergraduates and MBAs in terms of a perceived position as an employee or as a manager. The findings indicate that undergraduate students tend to be more ethical than MBA students and that both groups tend to be more ethical when they perceive themselves (...) as managers rather than employees. The authors discuss the implications for both business practitioners and educators. (shrink)
This paper considers a group of three fourteenth-century English horary quadrants with links to King Richard II and the highest nobility. Building on previous work by Silke Ackermann and John Cherry, it shows how this group of instruments can tell us much about the overlapping significances of medieval instruments—which might at the same time have practical purposes and political significance.
On September 8, 2015, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making to revise the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, widely known as the “Common Rule.” The NPRM proposes several changes to the current system, including a dramatic shift in the approach to secondary research using biospecimens and data. Under the current rules, it is relatively easy to use biospecimens and data for secondary research. This approach systematically facilitates secondary research with (...) biospecimens and data, maximizing the capacity for substantial public benefit. However, it has been criticized as insufficiently protective of the privacy and autonomy interests of biospecimen and data sources. Thus, the NPRM proposes a more restrictive regime, although more so for biospecimens than data. Both the status quo and the NPRM's proposal are critically flawed. (shrink)
Animal welfare science and ecology are both generally concerned with the lives of animals, however they differ in their objectives and scope; the former studies the welfare of animals considered ‘domestic’ and under the domain of humans, while the latter studies wild animals with respect to ecological processes. Each of these approaches addresses certain aspects of the lives of animals living in the world though neither, we argue, tells us important information about the welfare of wild animals. This paper argues (...) for the development of a new scientific discipline ‘welfare biology’ to address these issues and more, given the deficiencies of pre-existing life science disciplines to research the subject. Welfare biology is the study of the welfare of all living beings who have a welfare, with a value orientation toward promoting that welfare, regardless of the beings’ situation or relationship to humans and our activities. (shrink)
ABSTRACT Sexting has become a prominent part of adolescent culture. Under current laws, adolescents caught sexting are being arrested, facing child pornography charges, and having to register as sex offenders. State laws on child pornography and child abuse differ throughout the United States and conflict with federal laws, making the ethical obligations for psychologists unclear. The purpose of this article is to promote awareness about legal obligations regarding adolescent sexting, address the ethical dilemma that psychologists face when adolescent sexting is (...) disclosed during psychological treatment, and to provide implications and recommendations for psychologists. (shrink)
The aim of this paper is to analyze a fragment by Porphyry concerning Seleucid history and transmitted by Eusebius of Caesarea's Chronicon. A short introduction on this work will be followed by a defense of the authorship of the fragment as Porphyrian, and by a cautious suggestion to assign it to the Contra Christianos. In the last section, the fragment will be examined at length and its ideological background will be highlighted. In particular, the account of Seleucid kings' deaths shows (...) that Porphyry turned to sources favorable to that dynasty. A critical voice seems to raise only when the author recounts of Demetrius I and of his descendants. (shrink)
If stem cell-based therapies are developed, we will likely confront a difficult problem of justice: for biological reasons alone, the new therapies might benefit only a limited range of patients. In fact, they might benefit primarily white Americans, thereby exacerbating long-standing differences in health and health care.
The financial Crunch of 2008 was easily explained by both the left and right–too easily. Each insisted that events thoroughly confirmed its own long-held views and utterly refuted those of the opposed camp. This essay argues that there are indeed new lessons to be drawn from the Crunch, lessons that involve balancing the bounty of the Invisible Hand against perils of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Liberal moral imperatives are traced to variables of Personal Choice and External Cost that are typically in (...) tension with each other and thus generate needs for institutional reconstructions that change according to time and circumstance. Personal bankruptcy protection, limited liability corporations, and intellectual property are cited as examples. It is argued that the Crunch occurred because of failure adequately to balance these variables. Three paradoxes came to a head in 2008: Paradox of Efficient Markets; Paradox of Reduced Risk; Paradox of Hard-won Knowledge. The essay concludes with suggestions concerning specific lessons to be drawn from the Crunch and a corresponding list of lessons not to be drawn. (shrink)
Despite what one may be led to believe by breathless reports in the media, the acme of misery in America is not the woes, financial and otherwise, of Donald Trump and Michael Jackson. People lose their jobs, have their assets drained by reversals of fortune, suffer from illiteracy, malnutrition, lack of shelter, and other mishaps. The circumstances in which they find themselves are genuinely distressing. It would be an odd understanding indeed that failed to find these circumstances directly relevant to (...) what morality asks of us. If morality is to count for anything, then surely it must take notice of exigent need. This is not merely the deliverance of a late twentieth-century Western moral consciousness massaged by the blessings of comparative affluence and graced with a newfound awareness of social justice. All traditional ethical codes of which I am aware, sacred and secular, demand that one take the distress of one's neighbor as bearing on one's own activities. “Am I my brother's keeper?” is the question; the well-nigh universal answer is “ Yes .” The disposition to be moved by and respond to distress is the virtue of charity. (shrink)
Individuals care deeply about with whom they associate and on what terms. A liberty to avoid entanglement in the disfavored designs of others is counterposed by an entitlement not to be excluded from valued modes of activity. These interests generate not one but two freedoms of association, the former negative and the latter positive. Often they conflict. This essay begins by setting out several respects in which negative free association is crucial to a liberal order and then examines several pleas (...) for positive association, at least one of which is judged to be compelling. Because the two freedoms of association are in conspicuous tension, the essay concludes with strategies for reconciling their competing claims. (shrink)
Education as Freedom is a groundbreaking edited text that documents and reexamines African-American empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions to knowledge-making, teaching, and learning and American education from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century, a dynamic period of African-American educational thought and activism. Education as Freedom is a long awaited text that historicizes the current racial achievement gap as well as illuminates the myriad of African American voices and actions to define the purpose of education and to push the limits of (...) the democratic experiment in the United States. (shrink)
Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, the proportion of AIDS cases among women has continued to rise. Women constituted 23 percent of the AIDS cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1995, and 81 percent of these women were of childbearing age. It was not until 1991, however, that epidemiological studies of women were initiated. By comparison, the representation of HIV-infected women in clinical trials gradually has grown. Undoubtedly, a consequence of the increased numbers of (...) women in clinical and epidemiological research is the earlier identification of and more appropriate treatments for HIV-related syndromes when women present in the clinical setting. Despite this expanded focus on women, however, clear information to guide the treatment of HIV-infected women who are pregnant is still lagging behind. (shrink)
SummaryIntense, sustained nursing lengthens inter-birth intervals and is causally linked with low natural fertility. However, in traditional settings, the effects of such nursing on fertility are difficult to disentangle from those of nutrition. Results from an prospective, direct observational study of reproductive function in well-nourished Amele women who nurse intensively and persistently but who also have high fertility are here presented. Endocrine measures show that ovarian activity resumes by median 11·0 months postpartum. Median duration of postpartum amenorrhoea is 11·3 months, (...) time to next conception is 19·0 months, and the inter-birth interval is 28·0 months. Average life time fertility is 6·8. High fertility in Amele women is due both to refractoriness of reproductive function to suckling stimuli, and to maintenance of equivalent age-specific fertility rates across the reproductive life span. (shrink)
Contract is the dominant model for political philosophy's understanding of government grounded on the consent of the governed. However, there are at least five disabilities attached to classical social contract theory: the grounding contract never actually occurred; its provisions are vague and contestable; the stringency of the obligation thereby established is dubious; trans-generational consent is questionable; interpretive methods for giving effect to the contract are ill-specified. By contrast, the biblical story of the covenant Israel embraces at Sinai is shown to (...) be more adequately attentive to each of these five desiderata. The essay then focuses on the U.S. Constitution, arguing that in many ways it is more reflective of covenantal legitimating themes than those of social contract. The result is a promisingly different mode of understanding government by the consent of the governed. (shrink)
Critics fault rational choice theory for dubious assumptions and limited explanatory power. The aims of rational choice are, however, as much normative as explanatory, and I argue that an abiding concern of political thought—the wrong of exploitation—gives moral weight to some of the more substantive assumptions underlying many rational choice prescriptions.
Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, the proportion of AIDS cases among women has continued to rise. Women constituted 23 percent of the AIDS cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1995, and 81 percent of these women were of childbearing age. It was not until 1991, however, that epidemiological studies of women were initiated. By comparison, the representation of HIV-infected women in clinical trials gradually has grown. Undoubtedly, a consequence of the increased numbers of (...) women in clinical and epidemiological research is the earlier identification of and more appropriate treatments for HIV-related syndromes when women present in the clinical setting. Despite this expanded focus on women, however, clear information to guide the treatment of HIV-infected women who are pregnant is still lagging behind. (shrink)
Mis-readings are not necessarily detrimental, Slavoj Žižek has interestingly argued. In this article, we investigate a mis-reading by the hand of Žižek himself. José Saramago’s intriguing novel Seeing, that tells the story of the massive casting of blank ballots by the population and its political implications, has frequently been mentioned in some of Slavoj Žižek recent work. However, not once has Žižek offered his readers the correct message present in the plot of Seeing. But how do have to interpret this (...) non-detrimental misreading? After having proposed a brief summary of Seeing’s plot and the various versions offered of it by Žižek, this article attempts to demonstrate and explain why Slavoj Žižek could not have not mis-read Saramago’s novel. Žižek’s understanding of a ‘revolution’ does not allow him to fully understand Saramago’s blank ballot vote – it being a valid non-vote, a positive negative. The article concludes with an ‘appeal’ to fully understand the revolutionary (political) power of the blank ballot in times of the democratic relic we are living in. (shrink)