bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Marital Violence: Issues in Conception, Assessment and Intervention
Authors: Weiss Robert L.
Published: July 2016

This paper discusses current issues in the literature on marital violence. Issues in three areas are discussed from a research and clinical perspective: conceptions of marital abuse, assessment of marital aggression and issues in treatment. Although there are specific cognitive-behavioural treatments reported in the literature, a position of caution is advocated here. Before intervening there are issues that the therapist should consider carefully. (1) Assessment must first answer whether conjoint marital therapy is appropriate at all. (2) Therapists must define their own position and estimate availability of supporting resources (e.g., legal, medical) when working with abuse. (3) Although all couples should be screened routinely for the nature and frequency of their aggressive patterns, neither the sensitivity nor specificity of currently available screens is yet established. Examples of current approaches to assessing spouse abuse are presented.
Behavioural Marital Therapy for Alcoholics: Effects on Communication Skills and Marital Satisfaction
Authors: Baker Michael P. , Blampied Neville M. , Haye Lynne
Published: July 2016

Four married couples were recruited from an outpatient alcohol counselling centre. Four husbands and one wife had recently received therapy for alcoholism and all but one was abstinent during the study. All scored as distressed on the Marital Adjustment Test. They participated in ten sessions of behavioural marital therapy emphasising positive reinforcement, communication, expression of feelings and problem solving. Problem solving discussions were audio-recorded at each session and analysed using a behaviour code. Measures of marital satisfaction, conflict and depression showed modest gains which were generally maintained at follow-up. Communication skills improved most with training, problem solving less so and feelings expression declined below baseline levels. These changes did not appear to be very durable. The non-abstinent client reduced his drinking to a level satisfactory to his wife during therapy. These findings support other recent work, draw attention to the need to find ways of promoting the maintenance and transfer of therapeutic changes and suggest that behavioural marital therapy may usefully be employed in outpatient alcohol counselling settings.
Multiple Skill Deficits in Depression
Authors: Heiby Elaine M.
Published: July 2016

This study involves the description of the presence or absence of several theoretically relevant skill deficits in 35 cases of depression. Until recently, most research and theory about depression has been based on the assumption that this is a homogeneous disorder with one determinant common to all incidences. Theories proposed by Beck (1967), Lewinsohn (1974), Seligman (Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale, 1978), and Rehm (1977) are examples of unitary theories. It is argued that a comprehensive account of depression must involve a multivariate theory such as that proposed by Staats and Heiby (1985). The case study involves a preliminary uncontrolled test of the hypothesis that there exist several skills deficits that may determine depression. The findings suggest support for the possibility that the following skill deficits deserve further investigation for their role in depression aetiology and treatment: logical errors including misattributions, poor self-control skills, poor social skills in terms of excessive aggression and deficit assertiveness, and inadequate hedonic capacity in terms of deficit positive interests and excessive negative interests (anhedonia). Suggestions for future research are offered.
Reducing Self-Injury in a Boy with Intellectual Disability Using Visual Screening, Toy Play Training and Contingent Social Interaction
Authors: Scott Shonagh , Glynn Ted , Ballard Keith
Published: July 2016

In this study a visual screening procedure and a forced arm training procedure were compared within an alternating treatments design in terms of their effects in reducing self-injury in an intellectually disabled boy. Visual screening was found to be clearly the superior procedure, producing a marked decrease in the rate of self-injury. Subsequent experimental phases combined visual screening first with toy play training and then with contingent social interaction. Further marked decreases in self-injury occurred, which remained in evidence at a four month follow-up. Generalisation data were obtained from both morning and afternoon sessions. Collateral behaviour change was monitored in both treatment and generalisation sessions, generally indicating increases in neutral behaviours and reductions in self-stimulatory behaviours accompanying reductions in self-injury. Implications of these results for examining the wider physical and social contexts in which self-injury occurs were noted.
The Role of Type A Behaviour Pattern in Chronic Headache
Authors: Hillhouse Joel J. , Blanchard Edward B. , Appelbaum Kenneth A. , Kirsch Cynthia
Published: July 2016

Chronic headache sufferers (N = 133) were assessed for Type A behaviour pattern using the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS). The Type A score frequency distribution for all headache subjects combined, and each headache type separately were examined. Median scores of the all subjects combined group fell into the indeterminate range of Type A scores, that is, neither Type A or Type B. This was also the case for migraine and tension sufferers. Mixed subject's scores fell into the range of scores usually classified as Type A. Forty-five percent of the mixed subjects fit the criteria for Type A behaviour pattern. Follow-up bivariate and multivariate analysis using J AS subscale scores as independent predictors and headache activity scores, from daily diaries, as dependent variables revealed only three correlations which approached significance. These results argue against a clear linear relationship between chronic headache and Type A behaviour pattern. There may be some utility in this construct when differentiated by headache type.
Heart Rate and Skin Conductance as Measures of Worrying
Authors: Dua Jagdish K. , King Debbie A.
Published: July 2016

The aim of the study was to determine if heart rate (HR) and skin conductance increase as a result of worrying and if the increase is greater in worriers than in non-worriers. Ten self-labelled worriers and 10 self-labelled non-worriers were individually interviewed, and a worrying event and a pleasant event were determined for each. The HR and skin resistance were then measured for all subjects when they were calm and quiet, when they imagined a worrying event, and when they imagined a pleasant event. There was no difference in the HR and skin conductance of worriers and non-worriers across the three conditions, namely, baseline, imagination of a worrying event and imagination of a pleasant event. Heart rate increased only as a result of worrying whereas the skin conductance increased both due to worrying and due to the imagination of the pleasant event. The results suggest that HR may be used as a measure of worrying.
School to Work Transition: Behavioural Counselling Approaches to the Problem of Finding Jobs for Unemployed Adolescents
Authors: Murphy Gregory C. , Athanasou James A.
Published: July 2016

Institutional responses to high rates of youth unemployment in Western industrialized nations have been marked by costly labour market programs, career education services and systems of skill formation. The success of these responses has not been easy to demonstrate, and such programs ignore the fact that in imperfect labour markets the essential activity that does seem to be strongly related to successful job acquisition for any individual is that of structured job finding. Job-finding clubs (which use behavioural techniques to develop high levels of skill in obtaining jobs) have been demonstrated, both in the United States and in Australia, to be capable of significantly increasing the rates of employment among participating club members. The effectiveness and utility of this behavioural approach is outlined.
Acceptability of a Visual Screening Procedure for Reducing Stereotypy in Mentally Retarded Children: Evaluation by New Zealand Institutional Staff
Authors: Mudford Oliver C.
Published: July 2016

The acceptability of three treatments for the maladaptive, but not injurious, repetitive stereotyped behaviour of a mentally retarded child was evaluated. Evaluation was conducted by questionnaires to two groups of staff (nurses and teachers) at two New Zealand institutions for mentally retarded people. A differential reinforcement procedure was found to be most acceptable. A visual screening procedure was judged as being more than moderately acceptable by nurses but less than moderately acceptable by teachers. When visual screening and reinforcement were combined in a treatment package and a rationale for so doing was provided, acceptability was increased significantly for both groups of staff. Teachers rated visual screening, when explicitly prescribed with differential reinforcement, as more than moderately acceptable. The implications of the finding of differential rating of acceptability across and within occupational groups was discussed.
Assertiveness in Men and Women Seeking Counselling and Not Seeking Counselling
Authors: Dua Jagdish K. , McNall Helen M.
Published: July 2016

Five groups of males and females (N = 65) were administered the Gambrill and Richey Assertion Inventory. These groups consisted of men and women who were not seeking professional counselling (Men-Control and Women-Control Groups), men and women who were visiting a Counselling Centre (Men-Counselling and Women-Counselling Groups) and women who were residents or ex-residents of a refuge in town (Women-Refuge Group). In general, women seeking counselling and women in the refuge group were less assertive than women who were not seeking counselling, and men who were either seeking counselling or not seeking counselling.
The Use of a Physical Restraint Procedure to Reduce a Severely Intellectually Disabled Child's Tantrums
Authors: Swerissen Hal , Carruthers Janine
Published: July 2016

A brief physical restraint procedure combined with differential reinforcement of incompatible behaviour was used to reduce the tantrum behaviour of a five-year-old severely intellectually disabled girl in a classroom setting. Daily frequency recording of tantrum behaviour demonstrated a marked reduction of tantrums in classroom settings following intervention which was maintained at followup. Staff also reported concomitant increases in the subject's participation in class activities. Spontaneous generalization of reductions in tantrum behaviour to non-programmed settings and staff was not found.
The Concept of the Political: A Key to Understanding Carl Schmitt's Constitutional Theory
Authors: Böckenförde Ernst-Wolfgang
Published: July 2016

The focus of this paper is not on the person, but on theworkof Carl Schmitt, in particular the significance of Schmitt's concept of the political for an understanding of his legal and constitutional theory. Let me start with a short personal memory. When I was a third year law student, I read Carl Schmitt'sConstitutional Theory. I came across the formulations that the state is the political unity of a people and that the rule of law component in a constitution is an unpolitical component. I was puzzled by these two remarks. I had learned from Georg Jellinek that the state, from a sociological perspective, is a purposeful corporative unit and, from a legal perspective, represents a territorially based corporation. I had also gathered some knowledge about “organic” state theories, especially that of Otto von Gierke who considers the state an organism and a real corporative personality rather than a mere legal fiction. On the basis of these theories, I felt unable to understand Schmitt's point that the state is the political unity of a people, because in those theories the political aspect is largely missing. It was only later that, by reading and studying Carl Schmitt's essayThe Concept of the Political, I gradually learned to make sense of the above remarks. Thus I have discovered that that essay, and the understanding of the political elaborated in it, contains the key to understanding Carl Schmitt's constitutional theory in general. I would now like to explain this.
Law and Authority
Authors: Shiner Roger A.
Published: July 2016

The nature of authority has been much debated in legal and political philosophy, and the terminology is not stable. I shall begin by stipulating how I understand some of the key terms used in this paper1. I consider authority here as a property of laws and of legal systems. Authority must be distinguished primarily from power, efficacy, and validity. Authority is not the same as power. A person or institution may have the power to affect the way that people behave, but lack authority because he, she, or it is purely coercive. Authority is not the same thing as efficacy; efficacy simply means that there is conformity to the rules of the system, whether willing conformity or not. But it is possible for there to be conformity to the laws of a successful repressive system, and such a system would not have authority. Authority is not the same as validity. To be valid is to be pedigreed by the rule of recognition of the legal system. A legal rule may have that property, and yet lack authority because it is not a rule which there is any obligation to obey. If the law has authority, then the demands that the law makes of us are such that we ought to conform to them. Theorists sometimes distinguish between “legitimate authority” and “de facto authority”. It follows from the above that in my terminology “authority” means legitimate authority as that term has been typically understood, as authority which issues directives we have an obligation to obey. “Legitimate authority” is pleonastic.
Political World
Authors: Langille Brian
Published: July 2016

It is not transparently obvious why legal theorists are increasingly attracted to the ideas and methods of Ludwig Wittgenstein. After all, Wittgenstein’s writings are notoriously difficult and he said almost nothing, and certainly nothing sustained, about law. And why would self-proclaimed legal theorists be attracted to someone who was quite explicitly hostile to “theory”, who viewed philosophy as a sort of therapy, and who said, famously, “philosophy leaves everything as it is”? But a still more interesting question is, why has Wittgenstein received such curious and conflicting treatment at the hands of the critical legal theorists? On the one hand critical legal theory celebrates Wittgenstein’s work as a key to the dismantling of traditional jurisprudence, but on the other hand critical scholars bemoan his alleged debilitating endorsement of the status quo. It is this last question upon which this essay is focussed.
Wittgenstein and the Sceptical Fallacy
Authors: Smith Gene Anne
Published: July 2016

Legal theorists have become increasingly interested in whether or to what extent the later writings of Wittgenstein support scepticism about the possibility of rational objectivity or determinacy in legal reasoning and discourse. Some critical legal theorists have explicitly relied upon Wittgensteinian arguments to support arguments for radical scepticism. More recently, anti-sceptical theorists have argued that reliance by critical theorists upon Wittgensteinian arguments involves a serious misinterpretation. I shall in this essay add my voice to those already making this argument.
Feinberg on Rescue, Victims, and Rights
Authors: Conter David
Published: July 2016

Quite by accident, Scarlett is in imminent danger of losing life or limb. You know this, and can rescue her without any unreasonable cost, inconvenience, or danger to yourself. Yet you stand by idly, and she suffers accordingly. Assume that morally speaking, you failed to do your duty; you ought to have done your best to rescue her. Should there be a criminal law penalizing your omission?

Joel Feinberg imposes the following two constraints — which may be called “liberal” — on any answer to our question. First, if it is reasonable that there should be a criminal law requiring rescue, then whenever there is a morally wrong omission to rescue, there must be someone who is victim of that omission. There must be no victimless crimes. Secondly, all criminal law must protect individual moral rights. When law protects people who need to be rescued and when others can rescue them at no unreasonable inconvenience, cost, or danger, the imperilled people must have a moral right to be rescued. If so, what precisely is the moral right that comes into play? Who are the victims? Joel Feinberg offers answers to these questions, answers intended to support the view that it is indeed reasonable for there to be a criminal law penalizing omissions to rescue, where rescue would involve no unreasonable cost, inconvenience, or danger to the potential rescuer.
Should a Criminal Code Distinguish Between Justification and Excuse?
Authors: Gur-Arye Miriam
Published: July 2016

Criminal law defences may be classified as either “justification” or “excuse”. A justification negates the wrongfulness of the conduct. The following are considered justifications: law enforcement, self-defence and lesser evils. An excuse, on the other hand, negates only the culpability of the actor for wrongful conduct. Under special circumstances, such as extreme pressure, it is considered unfair to blame the actor for the violation of the norm. Insanity and duress are typical excuses.
Punishment, Feminism, and Political Identity: A Case Study in the Expressive Meaning of the Law
Authors: Hampton Jean
Published: July 2016

In the Spring of 1995,1 was asked to testify as an expert witness in a case in Canada that raised a number of different philosophical and jurisprudential issues. The case concerned whether prisoners sentenced to two years or more in a Canadian penitentiary had the right to vote. For many years, Canada has denied those incarcerated in its prisons voting rights (following the British practice of doing so), but after the enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, which grants each citizen of Canada the right to vote, that practice was challenged; in a series of court cases, prisoners maintained that denying them the right to vote during their incarceration amounted to denying them one of their basic constitutional rights as Canadian citizens.

One of the most important issues raised by this case was the nature of Canada’s political identity. The fact that the political identity of a state can be partly at stake in a law is, I believe, important and insufficiently recognized. A law can be not only a tool for the organization of the community (e.g., by promoting order, or coordination, or public wellbeing), but also a significant expressive force in that community, symbolizing the community’s sense of its values and (what I will call) its “political personality”. Indeed, for countries which are not culturally homogeneous and in which the unity of the community is primarily purchased through the principles of its polity, the expressive nature of certain laws can be essential in the creation, maintenance or revision of a unifying identity for that society; this is an identity that not only helps to hold the pluralist society together but also helps people to have a sense of themselves as members of that political community. I hope to argue that the controversy surrounding the issue of whether or not prisoners’ voting rights should be suspended reflects controversy about what kind of state Canada is and shows the ways in which law can be expressive.
Unspeakable Subjects, Impossible Rights: Sexuality, Integrity and Criminal Law
Authors: Lacey Nicola
Published: July 2016

As Michel Foucault famously observed, the Nineteenth Century’s construction of sexuality as an unspeakable subject paradoxically generated an extraordinary amount of talk about sex. This paper engages with another paradox in the same field: for my main thesis will be that the criminal law which purports to regulate sexual behaviour has, in an important sense, very little to do with sex at all.

Perhaps this rather startling aspect of my argument explains the difficulty which I had in writing the paper. It probably had more to do, however, with the fact that it was originally written as an inaugural lecture. I hope that you will bear with me if I begin by describing the history of the lecture—for this history is, I think, an integral part of the present paper’s argument.

Writing and delivering an inaugural lecture is, in my experience, a uniquely challenging process, which forces one to think in a particular way about the place one sees one’s work as having in and beyond the academy. For a woman, there is an added complication which probably (though subconsciously) informed the reference to ‘unspeakable subjects’ in my title. The delivery of a lecture is an authoritative activity culturally marked as masculine. This issue about, as it were, the sex of lecturing came home to me very forcefully when I asked a friend to read a draft of the lecture: a few pages into the text, she observed: ‘so far, the tone is more woman than professor….’ Having completed my higher education without once being taught by a woman, it perhaps wasn’t surprising that I was having trouble finding a feminine professorial voice. But my friend’s comment touched also on a deeper issue. This lies in the controversial philosophical and psychoanalytic literature which equates the feminine with a state of lack, abjection and silence. If a woman professor is in some sense ‘speaking as a man,’ and if, as a feminist and a woman, one wants to find an authentic voice and style, the inaugural lecture presents at once the forum in which one’s responsibility to do so is greatest, and that in which success is most elusive. I spoke, then, as a subject of the unspeakable sex, exercising the apparently impossible right of speaking on the unspeakable subject of sex.
Owning Outcomes: On Intervening Causes, Thin Skulls, and Fault-undifferentiated Crimes
Authors: Brudner Alan
Published: July 2016

In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel draws our attention to a feature of action that is revealed to us when we agents become aware of our freedom. At that point, he says, both the aims we project and the objects that realize them become ours.’ Of course, this “ours” does not denote a relation of property in any but a figurative sense. Our ideas, after all, cannot be owned, and the objects in which they are realized can as easily be events as things. If, for example, Bob decides to set fire to some trees in a forest and he accomplishes his purpose, then the burning of the trees may be said to “belong” to Bob, though no court will enforce his suit to prevent others from extinguishing the blaze. Clearly, the relation of belonging to which Hegel refers is one of imputation rather than property. Yet while imputation and property are distinct ideas, everyday language hints at an analogy between them. Not only do we use the same possessive pronoun to express both relations, but we also commonly speak of someone “owning up” to, or “disowning” the consequences of, a deed. Furthermore, just as in property discourse a factual relation of possession is said to generate a right (however qualified) to exclude others, so in moral discourse the factual relation of imputation is commonly thought to mark the boundaries of one’s legitimate accountability for one’s actions. Morally (if not always legally) speaking, I have a right to refuse blame for all outcomes of my action that do not belong to the action or that are not in any sense “mine”. Like property, it seems, the relation of imputation is a fortress for the self, rendering it morally invulnerable to all contingencies save those that reflect its own ends.
The Social Origins of Property
Authors: Singer Joseph William , Beermann Jack M.
Published: July 2016

It was easier to make a revolution than to write 600 to 800 laws to create a market economy.

Jiri Dienstbier, Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia (1990)

[I]t would be as absurd to argue that the distribution of property must never be modified by law as it would be to argue that the distribution of political power must never bechanged.

Morris Cohen (1927)

The takings clause of the United States Constitution requires government to pay compensation when private property is taken for public use. When government regulates, but does not physically seize, property, the Supreme Court of the United States has had trouble defining when individuals have been deprived of property rights so as to give them a right to compensation. The takings clause serves “to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens that, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.” To determine when a regulation amounts to a “taking” of property requiring compensation, the Court has rightly stated that the ultimate question is whether the burden of regulation has been unfairly placed on a small class of individuals rather than the public at large. To answer this question, the Court has identified a variety of factors to consider, including the character of the governmental action, (whether the regulation effects a permanent physical invasion, destroys a core property right, or is intended to prevent public harm), whether the regulation interferes with reasonable investment-backed expectations, and the extent of the diminution in value of the property (particularly whether the regulation deprives the owner of any economically viable use of the property).
The Properties of Culture and the Politics of Possessing Identity: Native Claims in the Cultural Appropriation Controversy
Authors: Coombe Rosemary J.
Published: July 2016

Between March 21,1992 and April 14,1992 Canadians witnessed a remarkable proliferation of controversy on the pages ofThe Globe and Mail. The issue was “cultural appropriation” or “appropriation of voice” in fictional and nonfictional writing. Articles, editorials, and letters to the editor considered the propriety of depicting a culture other than one’s own, telling “someone else’s story”, and whether it was possible to “steal the culture of another.” The debate was remarkable because of its emotional intensity, the absurdity of the analogies drawn in support of the respective arguments, and the inability of the protagonists to recognize each other’s terms of reference. Especially striking were the rhetorical tropes of possessive individualism adopted by all participants in the discussion.
Kant and Property Rights in Body Parts
Authors: Munzer Stephen R.
Published: July 2016

A “human being,” Kant writes, “is not entitled to sell his limbs for money, even if he were offered ten thousand thalers for a single finger” (LE 124). This arresting statement is part of a broader position of Kant’s according to which persons lack property rights in parts of their own bodies. One can find in his work at least three arguments in support of this position. One is an argument from human freedom. It is riddled with difficulties. The second is an argument from humanity and dignity. It has general appeal but does little to justify Kant’s verdict on some of his own examples. The last is an argument from self-respect. It has some force. Yet, unless one tempers the Kant of moral opinion with the Kant of moral theory, this argument sometimes delivers unacceptable answers to casuistical questions.
Revisionist Theories of Rights: An Unwelcome Defense
Authors: Harel Alon
Published: July 2016

Disputes over the scope of specific rights, e.g., over the right to free speech, the right to property, or the right to equality, often originate in differing assumptions concerning the reasons that justify the protection of these rights. Thus, those who believe that reasons of autonomy justify the right to free speech will identify the scope of this right differently from those who justify this protection through, say, appeal to the marketplace of ideas. Despite the diverse subject matter of these disputes, there is a uniform structure characterizing them. Some supporters of rights, call them “traditionalists,” locate the reasons that justify the protection of rights within individualistic concerns. Others, call them “revisionists,” deny this traditional claim and argue that rights can be partially or exclusively grounded in societal interests.

Traditionalism’ and ‘revisionism’ are terms stipulated to clarify the conceptual difference between two different understandings of rights. These understandings are often implicit in the way the term ‘rights’ is used in political or legal debates concerning the scope of particular rights. At other times, these implicit understandings of the term ‘rights’ are articulated more or less explicitly by moral or political philosophers investigating the nature of rights. Thus, when the terms ‘revisionist’ or ‘traditionalist’ are used in this article, they are used in two different ways. Sometimes, they denote implicit fundamental presuppositions about the nature of rights—presuppositions which underlie many of the contemporary debates over the scope of particular rights. At other times, they denote philosophical theories exploring systematically the nature of rights and the reasons underlying them.
Responsibility and the Young Person
Authors: Micucci Lisa
Published: July 2016

In 1993, two young boys were convicted for the murder of a two-year-old toddler, James Bulger. Both boys were ten years old when the murder was committed. Such a violent act raises the timeless question: At what age should a child be held fully responsible by a nation’s criminal justice system for criminal conduct? Serious crimes are being committed by young persons and the public seems to have the impression that such acts are being committed at an increasingly young age.

Generally, the age of criminal responsibility (or legal responsibility) refers to the age at which a person becomes subject to the full penalties provided by the criminal law and this age varies greatly from country to country. In the Bulger case, at the age of ten, both boys had reached the age of criminal responsibility in England. Yet in other countries, this would not have been the case. In Canada, for example, the young persons would not have been subject to the criminal law since the minimum age of legal responsibility is twelve years. Historically, young persons have been given special treatment under the criminal law. Under the doli incapax (incapable of committing a crime) standard, a child’s capacity to commit a crime was questioned when attempting to affix criminal responsibility. Some countries still adhere to this common law doli incapax rule. In the first section of this paper, I will outline both the historical and present diversity between countries in relation to the age of criminal responsibility, as well as the associated advantages and disadvantages of these various systems.
Coherentist Methodology is Morally Better Than Either its Proponents Or its Critics Think (But Still Not Good Enough)
Authors: Kress Ken
Published: July 2016

Those employing constructive interpretive methods and coherence theorists of law generally agree that the coherent reconstructed set of legal principles and norms must meet a high threshold of fit with legal doctrine and institutional practice. Critics of these methods and theories argue that the high threshold of fit they require lead law to be unacceptably conservative. But it is unclear why legal coherentist methods and constructive interpretation must fit legal doctrine to a high degree. The intuition is misplaced from coherence theories of truth and justified belief, where a high threshold of fit with some set of beliefs is necessary. An independent argument is needed for that claim in law. I am unaware of any persuasive independent arguments for a requirement of a high threshold of fit in coherence theories of law. If coherentist methods in law need not fit the settled law to as high a degree as either their proponents or critics think, then they are in theory, and potentially in practice, morally better than their critics urge. However, they are also in practice potentially morally worse than their advocates or critics think. As a first crude approximation, we might claim that judges with superior moral acumen who deploy coherentist methods will do justice more often than if they were more tightly constrained to fit the settled law. Regrettably, however, if the constraint of fit is lower than the conventional wisdom would have it, coherentist judges with poor moral judgment will more often produce unjust decisions. I will qualify this crude approximation later.
Terminating Wars and Establishing Global Governance
Authors: Orend Brian
Published: July 2016

When we think of recent armed conflicts, such as those in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia or Rwanda, we realize that one profound difficulty shared by them was how they ended. The process of war termination—of resolving successfully serious outbreaks of armed conflict between national groups—is fraught with fragility and complexity, featuring often competing claims of security and justice.

Only recently have we begun to understand how crucial the issue of war termination is, with regard not only to bringing particular conflicts to an end but also to mitigating further devastations in the future. Whereas past attention focused obsessively on the beginning of war, and/or on proper conduct during wartime, it is becoming clear that the ending of war deserves equal time with regard to critical analysis, historical application and the creative construction of proposals for amelioration. There are only a handful of works on this important and topical, yet neglected, issue.

This article proposes to contribute to the sparse literature by constructing a theory of war termination. The article will offer reasonable responses to questions of what constitutes justice, security and legality in the aftermath of war. The inquiry will proceed first by examining the status quo with regard to war termination, undertaking an examination of its few strengths and many weaknesses. Then, the account will fashion a more satisfactory set of laws to regulate state conduct during the immediate aftermath of a particular war. These universal and abstract norms, once constructed, will be applied to a recent and concrete case, namely, that of the lengthy termination process of the Persian Gulf War of 1991. The theory will next shift its attention away from short-term principles, regulating the endings of particular wars, towards those longer-term rules and institutional reforms required to transform the international system itself into one in which the incidence and destructiveness of war will be diminished. Before concluding, attention will be paid to defeating doubts about the laws forwarded as a plausible theory about securing justice and peace when wars end.
Property as Ontology: On Aboriginal and English Understandings of Ownership
Authors: Bryan Bradley
Published: July 2016

A critical knowledge of the evolution of the idea of property would embody, in some respects, the most remarkable portion of mental history of mankind.

– L.H. Morgan

Now you try and say what is involved in seeing something as something. It is not easy.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

In this paper I argue that a comparison of English and Aboriginal conceptions of property yields insight into the ontologically specific grounds that inform institutionalized socio-cultural practices like property. Where the foundations of English conceptions of property are highly rationalistic, Aboriginal conceptions eschew categorization and are indicative of a highly nuanced and different way of understanding the worldliness of a human being. As such, a comparison of such conceptions becomes not simply a comparison of ways of owning and possessing, but a cross-cultural comparison of ways of relating to the world at large for what are ostensibly economic purposes.

To argue this is to assume that there is much more going on within culture that is determinative of ways of being than to simply assume that all cultures share universal cultural traits. In this paper I therefore discuss some of the philosophical foundations that underlie Western conceptions of the human’s relation to the world as embodied in principles of property law, as well as looking at the philosophical significance of that view. I also look at the way various Aboriginal peoples in Canada understand their own relationship to the world-at-large as it is expressed in what they understand as the property regimes of their society.
Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?
Authors: Kramer Matthew H.
Published: July 2016

This essay maintains that the question in its title is really three sets of questions: a conceptual inquiry, a moral/political inquiry, and an empirical inquiry. After devoting some attention to the relevant conceptual issues, the essay ponders in detail the moral/political issues. It suggests some answers to the germane moral/political questions, and it takes pains to distinguish those questions from other lines of inquiry with which they might be confused. Although only animals and dead people are mentioned in the title, the essay also considers whether infants, comatose people, lunatics, future generations, groups, trees, and natural phenomena such as rivers should be classified as potential holders of legal rights.
Social Meaning, Compliance Conditions, and Law’s Claim to Authority
Authors: Edmundson William A.
Published: July 2016

Political authorities claim to be able to impose moral duties on citizens by the mere expedient of legislating. This claim is problematic -- in fact, among theorists, it is widely denied that political authorities have such powers. I argue that the legitimacy of political authority is not contingent upon the truth of its claim to be able to impose moral duties by mere legislation. Such claims are better seen as exercises of semiotic techniques to alter social meanings. These alterations serve to facilitate desirable social change that may not have been antecedently obligatory because of the nonfulfillment of a compliance condition, which normally attaches to any "fair-play" duty. Where political authority uses the semiotic technique of announcing a legal -- and by implication moral -- duty, thereby altering social meaning as a means of bringing about the satisfaction of a compliance condition, it makes a claim whose literal falsehood (if false it be) does not derogate from the authority’s legitimacy.
Between Neutrality and Perfectionism
Authors: Cohen-Almagor Raphael
Published: July 2016

It has been argued that the difference between liberal states and theocratic, communist or fascist states is not that the liberal states promote different ideals of the good, but that they promote none. Unlike illiberal states, which regard it as a primary function of the state to prescribe the moral character of society, liberal states shun such attempts and allow freedom to citizens to develop their own conceptions.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the notions of “conception of the good” and “neutrality” and to suggest a perspective which provides a middle ground between strict perfectionism, on the one hand, and complete neutrality, on the other. This perspective would allow plurality and diversity without resorting to absolute neutrality. It would involve some form of perfectionism without resorting to coercion. I will assert that liberal states do resort to some forms of perfectionism in conducting their policies. I will further argue that the policy they should adhere to is one of impartiality rather than one of neutrality.
The Problem of Collective Moral Rights
Authors: Corlett J. Angelo
Published: July 2016

Despite the neglect by political liberals in the distant and recent past to take collective rights seriously, the problem of collective rights is beginning to capture the attention of an increasing number of philosophers. This new concern for collective rights seems to be “the result of a recent interest in the value of communities.” I shall clarify and assess some of the chief categories of collective moral rights talk and proffer some criteria of adequacy for a philosophical analysis of collective moral rights. Finally, I set forth and defend an analysis of justified collective moral rights.
Kronman on Contract: A Study in the Relation Between Substance and Procedure in Normative and Legal Theory
Authors: Dare Tim
Published: July 2016

Anthony Kronman’s 1980 article “Contract Law and Distributive Justice” has become something of a classic in the philosophy of private law. Kronman argued that any theory of contract which relied upon voluntariness was necessarily concerned with distributive justice, since voluntariness was itself a distributive notion. The argument targeted libertarian accounts of contract. Given the distributive nature of voluntariness, the claim went, libertarians could not give an adequate account of contract without violating their own injunction against appeal to the “fair division of wealth among the members of society”(472). It is easy to see why Kronman’s article attracted so much attention. The idea that voluntariness isnotdistributive is central not just to libertarianism but to liberalism generally. Kronman’s critique, though targeting a not terribly common species of liberalism, threatens the genus itself.
Some Confusions Concerning Collective Rights
Authors: Hartney Michael
Published: July 2016

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in considering collectivities to be moral agents and holders of collective rights. Peter French and others have argued that corporations are agents and bear moral responsibility for their actions. Virginia Held makes similar claims about nations. She also believes that we have “obligations to humanity collectively, to bring about its continued existence, and perhaps also to such lesser groups within it as our fellow nationals or conceivably the ethnic group to which we belong or the family or clan of which we are a member” and that in some of these cases—humanity, nations—the obligation correlates with a collective right. Perhaps, the area where claims of collective rights have aroused the greatest interest is that of the alleged rights of minority groups within some larger political unit. Thus, in recent political debate in Canada, collective rights have been ascribed or invoked in relation to Quebec and to aboriginal peoples. It is with this last group of alleged collective rights that I will be particularly concerned in this paper.
Sexuality, Authenticity, and Modernity
Authors: Green Leslie
Published: July 2016

In his Journals for 26 December 1921, André Gide wrote:

The borrowed truths are the ones to which one clings most tenaciously, and all the more so since they remain foreign to our intimate self. It takes much more precaution to deliver one's own message, much more boldness and prudence, than to sign up with and add one's voice to an already existing party .... I believed that it is above all to oneself that it is important to remain faithful.

This celebration of fidelity to oneself gives voice to a central theme of modern consciousness: the search for authenticity. The idea that there is an ‘intimate self’ whose needs cannot be fulfilled by following ‘borrowed truths’ is a familiar modern notion and one that contrasts sharply with traditional outlooks. In many pre-modern societies value was believed to be less responsive to the individual: gods, natures, or history were the sort of things that inscribed value on states of affairs, and thus on our lives. Living well was not, therefore, a matter of being true to ourselves, but being true to our creators, natures, or traditions. Moral truths were precisely those things that were borrowed; that was what made them true
Property and Ideology
Authors: Robertson Michael
Published: July 2016

My contention in this paper is that many of our commonly accepted ideas about property are defective. But these deficiencies are not just simple, surface mistakes that could be cleared up easily. They stem from a flawed conceptual framework used in making sense of and justifying property relationships. I also contend that this flawed conceptual framework maintains property relationships that are unjust. These property relationships produce an unequal distribution of wealth, status, and power, as well as reduced opportunities for autonomy and self-development. This is unjust because, I believe, no satisfactory justification has been given for this inequality. Exposing some weaknesses of this conceptual framework is thus a step in promoting more egalitarian property relationships.
Risking One’s Life: ‘Soft Paternalism’ and Feinberg’s Account of Legal Liberalism
Authors: Hunt Ian
Published: July 2016

In his The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law: Harm To Self, one volume in what is arguably the most impressive and thorough statement of liberal political philosophy to date, Joel Feinberg claims that there is a problem of reconciling the reasonableness of our concern for people who endanger themselves with our repugnance for paternalism:

preventable personal harm (setback interest) is universally thought to be a great evil, and... such harm is no less harmful when self-caused... If society can substantially diminish the net amount of harm to interests from all sources, that would be a great social gain. If that prospect provides the moral basis underlying the harm to others principle, why should it not have application as well to self-caused harm and thus support equally the principle of legal paternalism?... On the other hand, we are challenged to reconcile, somehow, our legitimate concern with diminishing overall harm with the threatened proliferation of criminal prohibitions enforcing a “Spartan like regime” of imposed prudence
Derrida on Law and Justice: Borrowing (Illicitly?) From Plato and Kant
Authors: Litowitz Douglas
Published: July 2016

In 1989, Jacques Derrida was the keynote speaker at a Cardozo Law School symposium entitled “Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice.” Derrida’s speech was entitled “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’” (hereinafter, “Force of Law”). As the title of the symposium indicated, the conference was organized to address, and perhaps quell, the widely-held impression that deconstruction lacks a coherent conception of justice. Derrida’s lecture is a bold response to those critics who have charged deconstruction with political nihilism, irrationalism, and conservatism. Surprisingly, in “Force of Law,” Derrida comes very close to setting up a full-scale theory of justice and an accompanying account of law. And because Derrida’s recent work affirms the account of justice set forth in “Force of Law,” his lecture merits a close reading.
How to Read Hobbes? A Reply to Matthew Kramer
Authors: Toddington Stuart
Published: July 2016

I want to say something about Hobbes by way of a response to Matthew Kramer in his article, “The Missing Terms of the Hobbesian Social Contract”. Briefly, Kramer argues that Hobbes’ idea of the social contract is incoherent in that the linguistic and experiential conditions and capacities which could give rise to such a contract are such that an effective contract would already have to be in place. This reductio ad absurdum of Hobbes’ argument has some illuminating consequences: one is that this apparently fatal attack on the coherence of the Hobbesian contract should disturb us enough to reconsider the way in which we read Hobbes and other Social Contract theorists, rather than simply accepting the ad hominem force of Kramer’s interpretation of Hobbes.
Gender Performance, Sexual Subjects and International Law
Authors: Cossman Brenda
Published: July 2016

In international law the understanding of gender and its relationship to sex remains fairly traditional. In this essay, I explore the subversive possibilities of feminist criticism of this story for international law.