bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
14 The Social Distribution of Sanctioned Harm
Authors: Green Maia
Published: May 2009

This chapter presents an anthropological take on the concept of chronic poverty. An anthropological approach places social construction at the centre of enquiry, considering how concepts come to inform the practice of those who are the subjects of study and the classificatory practices through which analysis is conducted. This reflexivity differentiates anthropology from other social sciences. Anthropological perspectives on the constitution of development categories not only provide a qualitative understanding of the social processes through which such classificatory systems come to have salience. In exposing how the social is constituted as a category of organization and analysis, anthropology sheds light on the delineations of the social in other social sciences and hence on the explanatory limits of what is represented as social analysis.
History and Definitions
Authors: Morgera Elisa
Published: May 2009

This chapter introduces the basic concepts and background references for the study. It illustrates the increasing attention of the international community at major global conferences to corporate environmental accountability and responsibility. Corporate accountability is initially circumscribed to the answerability of private companies to public expectations based on international environmental standards. This are the reasonable means to ensure the transparency and openness to all stakeholders of private companies' operations and decision-making, and to means to encourage the prevention of environmental harm or even a proactive contribution to the attainment of sustainable development by private companies. Corporate accountability is then differentiated from the idea of corporate responsibility, which focuses more on obligations or at least on result-oriented expectations for the conduct of the private sector and which seems still much more controversial at the intergovernmental level.
The UN and the OECD: Parallel or Convergent Paths?
Authors: Morgera Elisa
Published: May 2009

This chapter is based on an analysis and comparison of the instruments elaborated in the framework of the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation. It serves to assess whether a significant convergence in the choice of international environmental standards for private companies is occurring. Such assessment provides further historical and conceptual background to this research, in highlighting the different approaches adopted to ensure the responsible conduct of the private sector and the different processes and actors involved in the definition of these standards. Notwithstanding the different levels of international acceptance and the different approaches of these initiatives, the analysis of these instruments led to the identification of a striking convergence of selected international environmental standards for corporate accountability.
Standard-setting by International Financial Institutions
Authors: Morgera Elisa
Published: May 2009

This chapter offers an assessment of the international environmental standards utilized by international financial institutions to review private companies' projects eligibility for funding and to set conditions in loan agreements. It further explores the extent to which these standards are based on international environmental law, and the extent to which they are expected to be taken into account directly by private companies. The chapter focuses in particular on the most recent environmental Performance Standards launched in early 2006 by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which clearly defined the standards for the environmentally acceptable conduct of private companies in accordance with specific international environmental treaties and initiatives.
The Tools of International Financial Institutions: Conditions in Loan Agreements and Complaints Mechanisms
Authors: Morgera Elisa
Published: May 2009

This chapter analyses the environmental performance standards utilized by international financial institutions working with the private sector, with a view to suggest further means to strengthen their application and integration in contractual loan agreements. In addition, the role of international financial institutions' complaints mechanisms is also considered as avenue for victims of corporate environmental damage. Once again, the specific case of the International Finance Corporation is analysed in detail to formulate recommendations that may be of interest for other international financial institutions.
4 The Changing Face of Sodom, Part I: The Latin Tradition
Authors: Clark David
Published: May 2009

Chapters 4 and 5 constitute another pair of chapters, but this time the argument is that critics have been premature in finding evidence of same‐sex activity. Chapter 4 begins with a review of the biblical and patristic allusions to Sodom as a context for its study of medieval Continental and Anglo‐Latin interpretations of the narrative, discussing Bede, Aldhelm, Boniface, Alcuin, and Ælfric. It shows that religious writers in Latin associate Sodom with a range of sins, and not just same‐sex acts.
7 Heroic Desire? Male Relations inBeowulf,The Battle of Maldon, andThe Dream of the Rood
Authors: Clark David
Published: May 2009

Chapter 7 focuses on the construction of homosocial bonds, looking first at heroic male relations in Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon. It argues that the Beowulf‐poet here as in other matters remains ambivalent, but that the Maldon‐poet opposes what he sees as correct homosocial bonds to a cowardice stigmatized by associations with effeminacy and sexual passivity. It then contrasts the radical revaluation of masculinity and heroic passivity in The Dream of the Rood, paving the way for the later chapters' further analyses of vernacular religious texts which re‐envision gender roles and homosocial bonds.
9 Saintly Desire? Same‐Sex Relations in Ælfric's Lives of Saints
Authors: Clark David
Published: May 2009

The ninth chapter moves into Old English prose literature to study the interaction of different constructions of homosocial desire in Ælfric's Lives of Saints, where same‐sex relations are depicted as simultaneously natural and unnatural. Intense male loyalty inextricably fused with Christian faith is held up as an ideal in the Life of the Forty Soldiers, in contrast to male‐female sexuality which is repudiated. However, there are signs of authorial anxiety over the homosocial intimacy described in the martial saints' lives. A conversion model based on homosocial community in other Lives coexists with the threat of same‐sex desire, and this dynamic is compared to ways in which the eponymous transvestite protagonist of Æfric's Life of Eugenia reflects anxieties about gender and same‐sex intimacy in monastic contexts.
Republicanism and Crime
Authors: Dagger Richard
Published: May 2009

This chapter looks to the republican tradition of political thought for guidance in unravelling the problems that surround the analysis and practice of criminal law. It argues that republicanism can help us to understand what ‘the public’ is, how an action may wrong it, and why some of those wrongs should be designated crimes. It shows how a republican theory of criminal law draws on elements of the three neo-republican approaches: Pettit's (and Braithwaite's) emphasis on dominion, Huigens' emphasis on virtue, and Marshall's and Duff's emphasis on crimes as ‘shared wrongs’. These help explain the public stake in preserving some sense of community or solidarity where the law is concerned.
Tough on Punishment: Criminal Justice, Deliberation, and Legal Alienation
Authors: Gargarella Roberto
Published: May 2009

The literature on criminal justice in the last few years has been enriched by different studies connecting a concern with deliberative democracy with republican and egalitarian intuitions. This chapter takes that regulative ideal into account in order to reflect on certain real-life situations related to the application of criminal law in radically unequal societies, which suffer from high rates of criminality and ‘tough’ public responses to crime. The chapter is organized as follows. First, it describes the normative view, making some connections between criminal justice, a republican political philosophy, and a specific democratic theory, namely deliberative democracy. Second, it contrasts this normative theory with other alternative views, which also emphasize the importance of connecting (or re-connecting, or strengthening the connection between) criminal justice and democracy. Finally, this normative theory is used to reflect upon situations where the democratic legitimacy of the norms is heavily contested.
Ubi Ius, Ibi Civitas: A Republican Account of the International Community
Authors: Besson Samantha
Published: May 2009

The notion of international community is en vogue and pervades international law. Curiously, there are no shared understandings, however, among international lawyers about what this community is or should be. Without a clear conception of the nature, boundaries, and constituency of the community or communities concerned by international law-making and of the ways to link their interests and decisions back to national political communities, efforts made to institutionalize global democracy, or at least to develop mechanisms of international accountability are seriously hindered.Based on republican premises, this chapter argues that the international community should be conceived as a community of both States and individuals and constructed as multilevel, multilateral, and pluralistic. It refines the controversial criterion of inclusion in the international political community and addresses the vexed question of the responsibility for inclusion.
The ‘défense républicaine’: Some Remarks about the Specificity of French Republicanism
Authors: Spitz Jean-Fabien
Published: May 2009

This chapter argues that, as a political regime fighting for its consolidation, the French republic — in the immediate aftermath of one of the deepest crises it went through, (the Dreyfus case) — tried to articulate a political philosophy of its own that clearly distanced itself from authoritarian and illiberal features. This political philosophy stresses that modern freedom requires some material and social equality as a precondition and, in this aspect, it has an undeniable republican flavour. But the main point is that it also tries to demonstrate that such a combination of civil freedom and equality in material conditions is the kind of social and political regulation which is required by industrializing modern societies, so that the republic is clearly a proposition for the future and a form of open society, not a ‘closed community’ marred with archaism and nostalgia for tradition, brotherhood, and narrow patriotism.
French Republicanism and the European Union
Authors: Lacroix Justine , Magnette Paul
Published: May 2009

This chapter analyses the development of a French substantial body of thought, which questions and challenges the underlying foundations of the European project. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section demonstrates that contemporary criticism against the European integration process develops a line of thought first outlined in France in the late 1970s on the theme of the ‘dissolving effect’ of human rights. The second section shows that European construction is seen by these authors as the advanced stage of a more global process of political dilution. The final section contrasts this strand of thought with the so-called ‘cosmopolitan’ approach to the European integration process. The cosmopolitan school of thought does not conceive European law as the end of politics but rather as a privileged vector furthering the promotion of the republican idea within and without Nation States.
Introduction
Authors: Tansey Oisín
Published: May 2009

This introductory chapter sets out the theoretical and empirical context for the book and outlines the overall argument. It situates the book within two literatures — those relating to statebuilding and those relating to democratization — and highlights the ways in which the book will make a contribution to both. It sets out the core arguments of the book, and places the subject of book within its historical context, highlighting the history of international administration of territory. The chapter also outlines the methodological approach taken, which involves a comparison of three cases and the use of the process tracing method in each.
UNTAET in East Timor
Authors: Tansey Oisín
Published: May 2009

This chapter analyses the process of democratic regime-building in East Timor, concentrating in particular on the period of administration by UNTAET between 1999 and 2002. Using documentary and elite interview data, it traces the influence of the UN administration in East Timor and highlights the particular form of interaction between domestic and international actors. Although distinct tensions emerged between international and domestic actors, the transition process in East Timor entailed little serious political deadlock between international and domestic actors, and thus entailed limited imposition on the part of the international administrators. The parties combined to bring about a largely consensual and pacted political transition.
UNMIK in Kosovo
Authors: Tansey Oisín
Published: May 2009

Kosovo came under international administration in 1999 by a UN civilian mission, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). This chapter explores the ways in which the UNMIK mission has played a critical role in promoting and shaping democratization in Kosovo, and identifies the mechanisms of influence used by the international mission in a range of political arenas. It demonstrates that the mode of transition in Kosovo has entailed a combination of a joint international and domestic pact on the democratic project, as international and domestic actors have frequently worked together to guide political development. However, while UNMIK has worked closely with local actors on the political transition, it has also regularly felt the need to rely both on the use of conditionality and, at times, the imposition of political decisions against the wishes of domestic actors. Overshadowing all developments in Kosovo has been its complicated status issue, which continues to present obstacles to democratic consolidation.
Prosecuting Domestic Violence
Authors: Madden Dempsey Michelle
Published: May 2009

What should public prosecutors do when victims withdraw support for domestic violence prosecutions? This book defends the claim that (within the realm of justified/permissible action) prosecutors should respond effectively; which is to say that ceteris paribus domestic-violence prosecutors should respond as feminists. This claim is intended as a provocative formulation of the proposition that domestic violence prosecutors should act for reasons generated by the value of reconstituting their states (and communities) as less patriarchal. In defending this claim, the book first sets out a general theory of prosecutorial practical reasoning and then considers the prosecution of domestic-violence offences in particular. Along the way, it provides an original account of the nature of prosecutorial action, the values that can be realized through such action, and the relationship between these values and the practical reasoning of criminal prosecutors. Moreover, it provides analyses of two key concepts — domestic violence and patriarchy — and explains the relevance of the latter to a proper understanding of the former. Putting these insights to work in answering the question stated above, this book provides an account of what prosecutors would be justified in doing in such cases and what prosecutors should do in order to be effective as domestic violence prosecutors. Later chapters apply this general framework in addressing the rights and duties of domestic violence victims to participate in criminal prosecutions and responding to some general objections that might be raised against envisioning the role of domestic-violence-prosecutor-as-feminist.
Prosecutors: What They Are and What They Do
Authors: Madden Dempsey Michelle
Published: May 2009

This chapter outlines an account of prosecutors and prosecutorial action, providing a rough basis for understanding what we consider when we consider prosecutors and prosecution, by attempting to identify the rationally salient features of this role and practice. The account provided herein is grounded in the simple observation that whatever else they may be, prosecutors are people. Of course, however, prosecutors also stand in a particular type of legal role, and this role affects the moral reasons that apply to prosecutors qua prosecutors. From these starting points, this chapter attempts to explain and defend the following claims: (1) that prosecutors are people who act in the role of legal prosecutorial official on behalf of the state and (potentially) their communities; and (2) that prosecutorial actions are actions that prosecutors take qua prosecutors, consisting of both prosecutorial pursuit actions and prosecutorial non-pursuit actions.
Prosecutorial Action and Value
Authors: Madden Dempsey Michelle
Published: May 2009

This chapter identifies various ways in which prosecutorial actions might relate to value and elaborates five kinds of value that prosecutorial action may have: (1) consequential value, the value prosecutorial action may have in virtue of its actual or expected consequences, and four kinds of intrinsic value; (2) telic value, the value prosecutorial action may have insofar as it attempts to secure valuable consequences, even when those consequences are neither expected nor actually realized; (3) expressive value, the value prosecutorial action may have insofar as it denounces wrongdoing or exonerates the blameless; (4) retributive value, the value prosecutorial action may have insofar as it imposes suffering upon wrongdoers commensurate to their wrongdoing; and (5) constitutive value, the value prosecutorial actions may have insofar as they are constitutive of valuable character traits in the prosecutor's state and/or community.
Reasons for Prosecutors
Authors: Madden Dempsey Michelle
Published: May 2009

This chapter reflects upon the issue of prosecutorial practical reason. This issue is approached somewhat indirectly, building upon the account of prosecutorial action and value developed in the two preceding chapters, and introducing a thesis regarding the relationship between action, value, and reason. According to this thesis (the normal correspondence thesis) if a person can realize a value through her action, then normally she will have a reason to act so as to realize that value. If the thesis is true, then the reasons that apply to prosecutorial action are potentially as numerous as the values that prosecutorial actions can realize. Further, this chapter introduces an important distinction between ‘reasons to do it yourself’ and ‘reasons to help someone else do it’, and explains why this distinction is key to understanding both the practical reasons that apply to prosecutors and the value of maintaining the prosecutorial role.
Patriarchy
Authors: Madden Dempsey Michelle
Published: May 2009

This chapter offers an account of patriarchy, understood here as a wrongful structural inequality against which feminism is concerned to act. By providing an account of what being patriarchal means, it seeks to illuminate by contrast what it means to be feminist, and thus to clarify the book's overarching thesis that ceteris paribus domestic-violence prosecutors should be feminists. After setting its discussion within the context of intersectionality discourse, the chapter proceeds to unpack the wrongness of patriarchy in terms of its tendency to limit systematically women's access to options that are critical to the success of their lives. This tendency is elaborated by way of a tripartite analysis in which it is claimed that patriarchy may consist in sex discrimination (denying valuable options to women based on misconceptions), sexism (denying valuable options based on a failure to value women), and/or misogyny (malicious securing disvalue for women).
Conclusion
Authors: Madden Dempsey Michelle
Published: May 2009

This concluding chapter addresses broad questions regarding the use of prosecution (and criminal law more generally) to address violence against women. Along the way, it addresses the critique that the criminal law is too ‘blunt an instrument’ to address problems such as domestic violence adequately, and the possibility that feminist prosecutorial action may spark a backlash. The claim defended throughout this book (and reinforced through the arguments of this chapter) is that we do not need to reject criminal prosecution as a viable part of the feminist struggle against domestic violence and patriarchy more generally. Rather, there is good reason to believe that feminist engagement with the criminal justice system is a potentially valuable path to the creation of a more feminist state, a more feminist community, and the end of domestic violence as we know it.
About Morality and the Nature of Law
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: May 2009

This chapter explores the connection between law and morality. It argues that the denial of necessary connections between law and morality cannot be sustained. However, many of the claims of specific necessary connections between law and morality made by legal theorists are mistaken. The chapter contends that while there are necessary connections between morality and how the law is, the more significant necessary connections relate to the evaluative perspective which informs our thinking of how the law ought to be, rather than how it is.
Incorporation by Law
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: May 2009

This chapter addresses the question of how the law can be incorporated within morality and how the existence of the law can impinge on our moral rights and duties — a question (or questions) which is a central aspect of the broad question of the relation between law and morality. It casts doubts on the incorporation thesis, that is, the view that moral principles can become part of the law of the land by incorporation.
Reasoning with Rules
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: May 2009

This chapter addresses the question: How can it be that rules are reasons when they do not point to a good in the action for which they are reason? This phenomenon is referred to as the opaqueness of rules. It focuses on one type of rule — rules which are man-made — and which require conduct unconditionally. It argues that what is true of them is true of other man-made rules, but may not be true of other reason-constituting rules.
Why Interpret?
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: May 2009

This chapter on legal interpretation considers the question: Why is interpretation central to legal practices? After all not all normative practices assign interpretation such a central role. In this regard the law contrasts with morality. The reason for the contrast has to do with the status of sources in the law. There are no ‘moral sources’, while legal sources are central to the law. It argues that legal interpretation is primarily the interpretation not of the law, but of its sources. To understand why interpretation is central to legal practices requires understanding the role of sources in the law: the reasons for having them, and hence also the ways in which they should be treated. The chapter shows how reflections about these topics connect with some traditional jurisprudential puzzles, such as the relations between law and morality.
Antithetical Arts
Authors: Kivy Peter
Published: May 2009

This book constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the literary interpretation of absolute music and musical formalism are laid out. In Part II, specific attempts to put literary interpretations on various works of the absolute music canon are examined and criticized. Finally, in Part III, the question is raised as to what the human significance of absolute music is, if it does not lie in its representational or narrative content. The answer is that, as yet, philosophy has no answer, and that the question should be considered an important one for philosophers of art to consider, and to try to answer without appeal to representational or narrative content.
Body and Soul
Authors: Kivy Peter
Published: May 2009

Eduard Hanslick's ‘little book’ (as he called it), Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, has become, in recent years, a text celebre among those philosophers who began, not too long ago, to interest themselves in the special problems that music might present to their subject. Standing alone as the inaugural work in the history of musical formalism as a philosophical position, Hanslick's little book has received close scrutiny in recent years by a number of aestheticians. But viewed it the light of Wilhelm August Ambros's ‘answer’ another ‘little book’, entitled Der Grenzen der Musik und Poesie: Eine Studie zur Aesthetik der Tonkunst, provides a better idea of its philosophical significance. In light of Ambros's critique of Hanslick, this chapter explores what Hanslick had to say.
Action and Agency
Authors: Kivy Peter
Published: May 2009

This chapter begins by stating the ‘problem’ of absolute music: what it is in or about absolute music that gives what appears, at least, to be the same kind of deep satisfaction that the other arts, the arts with content, give. The problem thus being stated, the unenlightened one would then be ready to hear that a proposed solution to the problem of absolute music, popular both in philosophical and music-theoretical circles, is to deny that absolute music does indeed want for literary content. But here the unenlightened one becomes puzzled. So how can the appeal of absolute music be explained by appeal to its narrative content? If it has narrative content, then it isn't absolute music? The simplicity of this disguises an insight worth pursuing, which the chapter does.
Practical Intelligence and the Virtues
Authors: Russell Daniel C.
Published: May 2009

One of the most important developments in modern moral philosophy is the resurgence of interest in the virtues. This book explores two important hopes for such an approach to moral thought: that starting from the virtues should cast light on what makes an action right, and that notions like character, virtue, and vice should yield a plausible picture of human psychology. The book argues that the key to each of these hopes is an understanding of the cognitive and deliberative skills involved in the virtues. If right action is defined in terms of acting generously or kindly, then these virtues must involve skills for determining what the kind or generous thing to do would be on a given occasion. The book also argues that understanding virtuous action as the intelligent pursuit of virtuous goals yields a promising picture of the psychology of virtue. On the whole, this book develops an Aristotelian account of the virtue of practical intelligence or phronesis — an excellence of deliberating and making choices — and argues that phronesis is a necessary part of every virtue. This emphasis on the roots of the virtues in the practical intellect contrasts with ambivalence about the practical intellect in much recent work on the virtues. This book also examines issues like the unity of the virtues, responsibility for character, and “the virtuous person”.
The Enumeration Problem
Authors: Russell Daniel C.
Published: May 2009

This chapter articulates a problem that virtue ethicists and their critics alike have almost entirely ignored, but which if unresolved would jeopardize the very possibility of virtue ethics. This problem stems from the conjunction of a necessary feature of virtue ethics and a commonplace one. The necessary feature is that virtue ethics understands right actions and virtuous persons in terms of the virtues, in the plural; and the commonplace is that virtue ethicists tend to be so open-handed about what “the virtues” are that on many theories there will be infinitely many of them. If right action is action in accordance with the virtues, and a virtuous person a person who has the virtues, but virtue ethics tells us that the virtues are infinitely many, then virtue ethics cannot say what right action is action in accordance with, or what it would be to be a virtuous person. This problem is called here the “enumeration problem”.
Magnificence, Generosity, and Subordination
Authors: Russell Daniel C.
Published: May 2009

Aristotle's introduction of “magnificence” — a virtue concerned with large-scale public spending — into his list of virtues raises a question pertinent to the enumeration problem: given the lack of cardinality in Aristotle's list, what principle if any could be given for recognizing magnificence as a primitive virtue, without also paving the way for infinitely many other primitive virtues? This chapter argues that, in light of the enumeration problem, a better way to handle a virtue like magnificence is to make it subordinate to a cardinal virtue, such as generosity. Magnificence therefore presents a ready opportunity to apply the account of cardinality developed in Chapter 6, viz. that virtues are to be individuated in terms of their respective forms of responsiveness to reasons, and that if one virtue is subordinate to another, then they are responsive to reasons of the same kind. The chapter argues that magnificence is a virtue, that reasons of magnificence are of the same kind as reasons of generosity, and that magnificence is subordinate to generosity in the sense of being a “specialization” of generosity.
Phronesis and the Unity of the Virtues
Authors: Russell Daniel C.
Published: May 2009

The thesis that the virtues form a unity — in particular, that to have any virtue is to have them all — has struck many as hopelessly ambitious: isn't it obvious that people have some virtues and even the phronesis that goes with them, while nonetheless lacking other virtues? This chapter first considers whether the virtues conflict and whether the development of different virtues may be zero-sum, defending a negative answer in each case. It then defends the idea that what unifies the virtues is the phronesis they all share. Finally, it distinguishes between two interpretations of the unity thesis. The unity thesis is typically interpreted as holding that, for any agent, that agent can have phronesis only if that agent also has all the virtues. By contrast, the chapter interprets the unity thesis as holding that any theoretical model of phronesis must also be a model of all the virtues, and argues that, so interpreted, the unity thesis is true.
Responsibility for Character
Authors: Russell Daniel C.
Published: May 2009

Phronesis involves self-construction that is responsive to reasons, so the question arises whether and how far humans are capable of self-construction. This chapter considers that question with respect in particular to the possibility of being responsible for one's character. It begins by contrasting compatibilist and incompatibilist views of responsibility for character, and then rejects the common incompatibilist view that genuine responsibility is so-called “ultimate responsibility”. In particular, the chapter rejects the incompatibilist view that responsibility for character is necessarily backward-looking, i.e., responsibility for how one's character came to be formed. Rather, it argues that a certain forward-looking aspect of practical reasoning about one's character (called “critical distance”) is both necessary and sufficient for responsibility for one's character.
Correctively Unjust Enrichment
Authors: Weinrib Ernest J
Published: May 2009

Unjust enrichment, understood as a defective transfer of value, gives rise to liability that instantiates corrective justice. As a characteristic of things of value (whether of objects or of labour), the value of the thing is an entitlement of the owner of the thing. But (as Hegel explains) value also has a set of characteristics (it is quantitative, intrinsically relational, and independent of the particularity of the owner) that allow the law to treat it in abstraction from the thing of value. Thus, the law can recognize a claim involving an unjust transfer of value even though the defendant's right to the thing of value is not in question. A transfer of value (‘enrichment at another's expense’) occurs when one transfers a thing of value without the reciprocal receipt of a thing of equivalent value. The question then arises whether such a transfer is ‘unjust’, that is, whether circumstances are present that create an obligation to retransfer the value. This obligation arises if the transferor has given the value without donative intent and if the value has been accepted by the transferee as non-donatively given; the transferee cannot keep for free what was given and received non-gratuitously. Incontrovertible benefit and change of position affect acceptance as an obligation-creating condition, not enrichment as an aspect of transfer. Accordingly, an unjust enrichment situates the parties correlatively as transferor and transferee of what was not transferred gratuitously, thereby conforming to corrective justice. In accordance with Kant's conception of an in personam right as a right to the causality of another's will, the claimant's right is not to the value as such, but to having the value retransferred. This is the right to which the defendant's duty to make restitution is correlative.
Restitution's Realism
Authors: Dagan Hanoch
Published: May 2009

This chapter describes the foundations of (significant parts of) the American law of restitution. It argues that this body of law can, and therefore should, be read as a contextual application of our commitments to autonomy, utility, and community in various situations of benefit-based liability or benefit-based recovery. LER shows that, because different restitutionary doctrines involve differing categories of interpersonal relationships, they invoke different interpretations and different balances of these values. And yet, maybe unsurprisingly, LER also demonstrates, at least at a high level of generality, how these core liberal values serve (or should serve) as the normative underpinnings of the law of restitution in its entirety. Since LER's publication in 2004, a number of review essays and book reviews have appeared. Reviewers have suggested interesting insights and several intriguing critiques. This chapter appreciates these challenges, and has addressed them in order to rethink and, in some cases, defend some of LER's main propositions more successfully. Not all the points raised in these reviews have been covered and the chapter has not been able to do justice to all their subtleties. The discussion has been confined to several recurrent themes focusing on LER's jurisprudential premises. These premises are legal realist, at least according to the chapter's reconstruction of this school's lessons. Some of the critics argue that LER fails because it is too infused with realism; others complain that LER is not loyal enough to the realist legacy. The chapter discusses both sides. Before embarking in a dialogue with critics, however, it outlines an understanding of legal realism, it explains the ways in which LER is indeed an exercise in legal realism, and provides a summary of LER's analysis of the law of mistakes.
The Normative Foundations of Unjust Enrichment
Authors: Klimchuk Dennis
Published: May 2009

There are two principal accounts of the normative foundations of unjust enrichment. The first holds that the plaintiff's right to restitution for unjust enrichment is a claim in corrective justice. The second holds that the plaintiff's right vindicates a set of values to which our legal system is committed. This chapter unpacks what is at issue in the debate between these two accounts, and the chapter sets that debate in two contexts. The first is the main justificatory puzzle posed by the claim in unjust enrichment, which puzzle is brought into relief by asking whether the right to restitution for unjust enrichment is primary or secondary. The second context is a set of linked foundational issues in political philosophy and private law theory, issues that it is argued are engaged by the question: What justifies liability in unjust enrichment?
The Meaning of Loss and Enrichment
Authors: Edelman James
Published: May 2009

The chapter explores the nature and meaning of enrichment in the law of unjust enrichment. It seeks symmetry in several aspects of the law. First, enrichment or gain should be the mirror of loss. In the law of wrongdoing, a gain made at the moment of the infringement of a claimant's rights should be assessed in the same way as a loss incurred at the moment of infringement of a claimant's rights. Second, the same approach to the basic measure of enrichment, or gain, received should be taken in the law of wrongs as the approach taken to it in the law of unjust enrichment. The chapter explains that just as an immediate loss to the claimant is an undesired consequence, the value of which is objectively assessed, so too an immediate gain or enrichment transferred from the claimant is a desired consequence, the value of which is objectively assessed. Different functional considerations govern the award of subsequent losses and the disgorgement of subsequent profits, the latter of which is properly treated as a different remedy.
Unjust Enrichment and the Idea of Public Law
Authors: Mitchell Charles , Oliver Peter
Published: May 2009

This chapter considers Martin Loughlin's work on the nature of public law and its implications for claims to recover money paid as tax which is not due. Loughlin argues that most Anglo-American jurists misunderstand public law because they take it to be an autonomous and self-contained body of rules, when its distinctive character actually consists in its role within the political sphere as part of the apparatus of government. The chapter analyses some leading cases on the recovery of overpaid tax from a Loughlinite perspective, arguing that if such claims do not fall exclusively within the public law sphere, then they should at least be seen as hybrids, to be decided with an eye to public law considerations although they are framed as private law actions in unjust enrichment. The point is made that such hybrid claims undermine corrective justice explanations of the law of unjust enrichment because their resolution turns on considerations other than the vindication of the parties' equal status as self-determining actors. Finally, while some cases are shown to be pre-occupied with doctrinal rule-making, others are shown to be more overtly driven by the desire to manage disputes between State and taxpayer in a politically astute way.
Hub genes with positive feedbacks function as master switches in developmental gene regulatory networks
Authors: Seo Chang H. , Kim Jeong-Rae , Kim Man-Sun , Cho Kwang-Hyun
Published: May 2009

Motivation: Spatio-temporal regulation of gene expression is an indispensable characteristic in the development processes of all animals. ‘Master switches’, a central set of regulatory genes whose states (on/off or activated/deactivated) determine specific developmental fate or cell-fate specification, play a pivotal role for whole developmental processes. In this study on genome-wide integrative network analysis the underlying design principles of developmental gene regulatory networks are examined.

Results: We have found an intriguing design principle of developmental networks: hub nodes, genes with high connectivity, equipped with positive feedback loops are prone to function as master switches. This raises the important question of why the positive feedback loops are frequently found in these contexts. The master switches with positive feedback make the developmental signals more decisive and robust such that the overall developmental processes become more stable. This finding provides a new evolutionary insight: developmental networks might have been gradually evolved such that the master switches generate digital-like bistable signals by adopting neighboring positive feedback loops. We therefore propose that the combined presence of positive feedback loops and hub genes in regulatory networks can be used to predict plausible master switches.

Contact:  ckh@kaist.ac.kr

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Figure mining for biomedical research
Authors: Rodriguez-Esteban Raul , Iossifov Ivan
Published: May 2009

Motivation: Figures from biomedical articles contain valuable information difficult to reach without specialized tools. Currently, there is no search engine that can retrieve specific figure types.

Results: This study describes a retrieval method that takes advantage of principles in image understanding, text mining and optical character recognition (OCR) to retrieve figure types defined conceptually. A search engine was developed to retrieve tables and figure types to aid computational and experimental research.

Availability:  http://iossifovlab.cshl.edu/figurome

Contact:  raul.rodriguez-esteban@pfizer.com
Local solutions to manage the effects of global climate change on a marine ecosystem: a process guide for marine resource managers
Authors: Higgason Kelley D. , Brown Maria
Published: May 2009

Higgason, K. D., and Brown, M. 2009. Local solutions to manage the effects of global climate change on a marine ecosystem: a process guide for marine resource managers. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 1640–1646. The marine environment plays an important role in controlling the amount of CO2 that remains within the earth’s atmosphere, but it has not received as much attention as the terrestrial environment regarding climate-change effects, mitigation programmes, and action plans. Potential physical effects of climate change within the marine environment, including ocean acidification, changes in winds that drive upwelling and ocean circulation patterns, increasing global sea surface temperatures, and sea level rise, can result in dramatic changes within marine and coastal ecosystems. Often, marine resource managers feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of this issue and are therefore uncertain how to begin to take action. It may seem that they do not have the time, funding, or staff to take on a challenge as large as climate change, and fail to act as a result. Using NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary as a case study, this paper outlines the need to act now and presents an easy-to-use process guide, providing managers options to incorporate effectively the influences of climate change into management strategies, as well as mitigate these influences through community outreach and a reduction in workplace emissions.
A Risk Assessment Model for Importation of United States Milling Wheat Containing Tilletia contraversa
Authors: Peterson G. L. , Whitaker T. B. , Stefanski R. J. , Podleckis E. V. , Phillips J. G. , Wu J. S. , Martinez W. H.
Published: May 2009

Dwarf bunt of wheat, caused by the fungus Tilletia contraversa, is a pathogen historically limited in distribution by its very specific climatic requirements for establishment. In an effort to both address the need for adequate protection and eliminate unwarranted trade barriers, a number of countries have examined restrictions on importing milling wheat containing teliospores of T. contraversa. Pest risk analysis (PRA), under the guidelines of the World Trade Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization, has become an internationally accepted process for evaluating such issues. As a component of a dwarf bunt PRA, our objective was to develop a quantitative mathematical model to evaluate and communicate the potential risk of dwarf bunt establishment from the importation of U.S. milling wheat containing teliospores of T. contraversa. A T. contraversa–risk model (TCK-risk model) was developed using new data, historic literature, and industry statistics to estimate teliospore diversion from transport and milling processes, spore contamination levels, grain handling, and end-product usage. A climatic model was developed to identify potential regions where the environment was favorable for disease development. The likelihood of disease establishment and wheat yield loss was determined using the model to conduct Monte Carlo simulations of 100,000 wheat shipping-years. The model is dynamic in that individual components can be easily updated or modified in order to determine the effect of numerous scenarios (e.g., climate changes, shipping tonnage, contamination levels, mitigation strategies) on the probability of dwarf bunt establishment. TCK-risk model evaluation scenarios previously conducted for the People's Republic of China, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru are presented as examples.
Association of ‘Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum’ with Zebra Chip Disease of Potato Established by Graft and Psyllid Transmission, Electron Microscopy, and PCR
Authors: Secor G. A. , Rivera V. V. , Abad J. A. , Lee I.-M. , Clover G. R. G. , Liefting L. W. , Li X. , De Boer S. H.
Published: May 2009

A new disease of potatoes, tentatively named zebra chip (ZC) because of the intermittent dark and light symptom pattern in affected tubers which is enhanced by frying, was first found in Mexico in 1994 and in the southwestern United States in 2000. The disease can cause severe economic losses in all market classes of potatoes. The cause of ZC has been elusive, and only recently has been associated with ‘Candidatus Liberibacter’ sp. Field samples of potato plants were collected from several locations in the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala to determine transmission to potato and tomato by grafting of ZC-infected scions and psyllid feeding. The disease was successfully transmitted, through up to three generations, by sequential top- and side-grafting ZC-infection scions to several potato cultivars and to tomato. The disease was also successfully transmitted to potato and tomato plants in greenhouse experiments by potato psyllids collected from potato plants naturally affected with ZC. Transmission electron microscopic observation of ZC-affected tissues revealed the presence of bacteria-like organisms (BLOs) in the phloem of potato and tomato plants inoculated by grafting and psyllid feeding. The BLOs were morphologically similar in appearance to BLOs associated with other plant diseases. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplified 16S rDNA sequences from samples representing different geographic areas, including the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala, were almost identical to the 16S rDNA of ‘Ca. L. solanacearum’ previously reported from solanaceous plants in New Zealand and the United States. Two subclades were identified that differed in two single base-pair substitutions. New specific primers along with an innovative rapid PCR were developed. This test allows the detection of the bacteria in less than 90 min. These data confirm the association of ‘Ca. L. solanacearum’ with potatoes affected by ZC in the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala.