The essay seeks to harness the diverse and innovative work to date of legal semiotics. It seeks to bring together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a preclusion to identifying fertile avenues for research.

The teaching of critical race, feminist, and queer theory generally, and of LGBT rights specifically, has developed into a discrete, contested, and politicised area of teaching in English law schools and beyond. While there is some academic discussion on the personal and political significance of ‘promoting LGBT rights’ within law schools, less considered is how ‘LGBT rights’ are shaped by the emotions of legal academics and how these emotions circumscribe what we imagine LGBT rights can and/or should mean in (...) law and critical legal study. To illustrate this dynamic, this paper uses critical race, feminist, and queer scholarship alongside work in the emerging field of Law and Emotion to articulate the ‘emotional grammar’ of teaching a Gender, Sexuality and Law unit at an English law school. Turning to autoethnography, I use my emotional experiences as a methodological tool to explore how emotions co-constitute the pedagogical, political, scholarly, and personal registers of LGBT rights as a descriptive, critical, and normative pursuit. In doing so, I use ‘emotional grammar’ as a novel way to map how emotions structure legal pedagogies invested in pursuing LGBT rights. Emotional grammar illustrates how emotions structure: (1) the articulation of LGBT rights as an object of study in law; (2) the pursuit of law to secure the rights of LGBT people; and (3) the shape of legal critique relating to LGBT rights. (shrink)

The field of computational law has increasingly moved into the focus of the scientific community, with recent research analysing its issues and risks. In this article, we seek to draw a structured and comprehensive list of societal issues that the deployment of automatically processable regulation could entail. We do this by systematically exploring attributes of the law that are being challenged through its encoding and by taking stock of what issues current projects in this field raise. This article adds to (...) the current literature not only by providing a needed framework to structure arising issues of computational law but also by bridging the gap between theoretical literature and practical implementation. Key findings of this article are: (1) The primary benefit (efficiency vs. accessibility) sought after when encoding law matters with respect to the issues such an endeavor triggers; (2) Specific characteristics of a project—project type, degree of mediation by computers, and potential for divergence of interests—each impact the overall number of societal issues arising from the implementation of automatically processable regulation. (shrink)

The rise of neurotechnologies, especially in combination with artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods for brain data analytics, has given rise to concerns around the protection of mental privacy, mental integrity and cognitive liberty – often framed as “neurorights” in ethical, legal, and policy discussions. Several states are now looking at including neurorights into their constitutional legal frameworks, and international institutions and organizations, such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe, are taking an active interest in developing international policy and (...) governance guidelines on this issue. However, in many discussions of neurorights the philosophical assumptions, ethical frames of reference and legal interpretation are either not made explicit or conflict with each other. The aim of this multidisciplinary work is to provide conceptual, ethical, and legal foundations that allow for facilitating a common minimalist conceptual understanding of mental privacy, mental integrity, and cognitive liberty to facilitate scholarly, legal, and policy discussions. (shrink)

More than 5 billion people in the world own a smartphone. More than half of these have been used to collect and process health-related data. As such, the existing volume of potentially exploitable health data is unprecedentedly large and growing rapidly. Mobile health applications (apps) on smartphones are some of the worst offenders and are increasingly being used for gathering and exchanging significant amounts of personal health data from the public. This data is often utilized for health research purposes and (...) for algorithm training. While there are advantages to utilizing this data for expanding health knowledge, there are associated risks for the users of these apps, such as privacy concerns and the protection of their data. Consequently, gaining a deeper comprehension of how apps collect and crowdsource data is crucial. To explore how apps are crowdsourcing data and to identify potential ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI), we conducted an examination of the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store in North America and Europe to identify apps that could potentially gather health data through crowdsourcing. Subsequently, we analyzed their privacy policies, terms of use, and other related documentation to gain insights into the utilization of users’ data and the possibility of repurposing it for research or algorithm training purposes. More specifically, we reviewed privacy policies to identify clauses pertaining to the following key categories: research, data sharing, privacy/confidentiality, commercialization, and return of findings. Based on the results of these app search, we developed an App Atlas that presents apps which crowdsource data for research or algorithm training. We identified 46 apps available in the European and Canadian markets that either openly crowdsource health data for research or algorithm training or retain the legal or technical capability to do so. This app search showed an overall lack of consistency and transparency in privacy policies that poses challenges to user comprehensibility, trust, and informed consent. A significant proportion of applications presented contradictions or exhibited considerable ambiguity. For instance, the vast majority of privacy policies in the App Atlas contain ambiguous or contradictory language regarding the sharing of users’ data with third parties. This raises a number of ethico-legal concerns which will require further academic and policy attention to ensure a balance between protecting individual interests and maximizing the scientific utility of crowdsourced data. This article represents a key first step in better understanding these concerns and bringing attention to this important issue. (shrink)

This timely work brings together a group of the nation's leading experts in genetics, medicine, history of science, health, law, philosophy of science, and medical ethics to assess the current state of modern human genetics, and to begin to chart the legal and ethical guidelines needed to prevent the misuse of human genetics from leading to the abuse of human beings. The six sections of the book, read together, map the social policy con tours of modern human genetics. The (...) first part describes the science of the Human Genome Project. The second addresses specific social policy implications, including the relevance of recombinant DNA history, the eugenics legacy, military applications, and issues of race and class in the context of genetic discrimination. Broader philosophical issues, including reductionism and determinism, the concept of disease, and using germline gene therapy to "improve" human beings are discussed in the third part. (shrink)

In his review of Bernard Williams' Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Hart eloquently formulated an apprehension that still haunts much of contemporary jurisprudence: if the moral 'I must' has to be 'seen as coming not from outside, but from what is most deeply inside us? the fear is that this will not be enough'. I argue that this fear is the byproduct of the dualist outlook within which Hart—and a significant part of contemporary legal theory—is confined: because of (...) his bald naturalist premise, Hart could not conceive of moral objectivity except in terms presupposing an order of Reason resolutely distinct from the 'natural' world. This paper seeks to debunk this dualist outlook by engaging with the kind of 'non-bald' naturalism advocated in different ways by both McDowell and Blackburn. In considering contemporary efforts to draw a middle way between ethical scepticism and metaphysical rationalism, the paper draws on the pragmatic elements emerging from the confrontation between Habermas and Rawls. (shrink)

In Legal Pragmatism, Michael Sullivan looks closely at the place of the individual and community in democratic society. After mapping out a brief history of American legal thinking regarding rights, from communitarianism to liberalism, Sullivan gives a rich and nuanced account of how pragmatism worked to resolve conflicts of self-interest and community well-being. Sullivan’s view of pragmatism provides a comprehensive framework for understanding democracy, as well as issues such as health care, education, gay marriage, and illegal immigration (...) that will determine its character in the future. Legal Pragmatism is a bold, carefully argued book that presents a unique understanding of contemporary society, law, and politics. (shrink)

Even though potential impacts of political and legal environments of business on ethical behavior of firms (EBOF) have been conceptually recognized, not much evidence (i.e., empirical work) has been produced to clarify their role. In this paper, using Bayesian causal maps (BCMs) methodology, relationships between legal and political environments of business and EBOF are investigated. The unique design of our study allows us to analyze these relationships based on the stages of development in 92 countries around the world. (...) The EBOF models structured through BCMs are used to explain how EBOF in a given country group are shaped by how managers perceive political, legislative, and protective environments of business in these countries. The results suggest that irregular payments and bribes are the most influential factors affecting managers’ perceptions of business ethics in relatively more advanced economies, whereas intellectual property protection is the most influential factor affecting managers’ perceptions of business ethics in less-advanced economies. The results also suggest that regardless of where the business is conducted in the world, judicial independence is the driving force behind managers’ perceptions of business ethics. In addition, the results of this study provide further support for scholars who argue that business ethics is likely to vary among countries based on their socio-economic factors. In addition to its managerial implications, the study provides directions for policy makers to improve the ethical conduct of businesses in their respective countries. (shrink)

Disciplinary issues -- Field studies -- Appendix: Theory of law : legal ethnography, or, the theoretical fruits of the inquiries into folkways. /// Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1995 to 2008 /// DISCIPLINARY ISSUES -- LAW AS CULTURE? [2002] 9–14 // TRENDS IN COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDIES [2002] 15–17 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES: ATTEMPTS AT CONCEPTUALISATION [1997] 19–28: 1. Legal Culture in a Cultural-anthropological Approach 19 / 2. Legal Culture in a Sociological Approach 21 (...) / 3. Timely Issues of Central and Eastern Europe 24 // COMPARATIVE LEGAL CULTURES? [2001] 29–48: 1. Legal Comparativism Challenged 29 / 2. Comparative Legal Cultures versus Comparative Law 34 / 3. Contrasting Fields 40 [a) The Historical Understanding of Socialist Law 42 / b) Convergence of Civil Law and Common Law 44] 4. Concluding Remarks 46 // THEATRUM LEGALE MUNDI: ON LEGAL SYSTEMS CLASSIFIED [2005] 49–75: 1. Preliminaries 49 / 2. Proposals 50 / 3. Impossible Taxonomy, or the Moment of Practicality in Legal Mapping 69 / 4. Diversity as a Fundamental Quality of Human Existence 74 // LEGAL TRADITIONS? IN SEARCH FOR FAMILIES AND CULTURES IN LAW [2004] 77–97: 1. Comparative Law and the Comparative Study of Legal Traditions 78 / 2. ‘System’, ‘Family’, ‘Culture’, and ‘Tradition’ in the Classification of Law 80 / 3. Different Traditions, Differing Ways of Thinking 85 / 4. Different Expectations, Differings Institutionalisations in Law 88 / 5. Different “Rationalities”, Differing “Logics” 92 / 6. Mentality in Foundation of the Law 94 / 7. Defining a Subject for Theoretical Research in Law 96 // SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD IN THE EUROPEAN IDENTITY OF LAW? [1995] 99–102 --- FIELD STUDIES -- MEETING POINTS BETWEEN THE TRADITIONS OF ENGLISH–AMERICAN COMMON LAW AND CONTINENTAL-FRENCH CIVIL LAW: DEVELOPMENTS AND EXPERIENCE OF POSTMODERNITY IN CANADA [2002] 105–130: I. Canadian Law in General 105 / II. Canadian Legal Developments in Particular [1. The Transformation of the Role of Precedents 112 / 2. The Transformation of Law-application into a Collective, Multicultural and Multifactorial Search for a Solution 116 / 3. Practical Trends of Dissolving the Law’s Positivity 120 / 4. New Prerogatives Acquired by Courts 125 {a) Unfolding the Statutory Provisons in Principles 126 / b) Constitutionalisation of Issues 127 / c) The Supreme Court as the Nation’s Supreme Moral Authority 129}] // MAN ELEVATING HIMSELF? DILEMMAS OF RATIONALITY IN OUR AGE [2000] 131–163: I. Reason and its Adventures 1. Progress and Advance Questioned 131 / 2. The Human Search for Safety Objectified 133 / 3. Knowledge Separated from Wisdom 135 / 4. Pure Intellectuality thereby Born 137 / II. The Will-Element Formalised in Law 5. Mere Voluntas in the Foundation of Legal Positivism 141 / 6. Formalism with Operations Fragmented 145 / III. The State of America Exemplified 7. “Slouching into Gomorrah” 147 / IV. Consequences 8. Utopianism-cum-Voluntarism 154 / 9. With Logic in Posterior Control of Human Formulations Only 159 / V. Perspectives 10. And a Final Resolution Dreamed about 161 // RULE OF LAW? MANIA OF LAW? ON THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN RATIONALITY AND ANARCHY IN AMERICA [2002] 165–180: {Transformation of American Law and Legal Mentality 165 / With Repercussions on the Underlying Ethos 168 / Legislation through Processualisation 170 / With Hyperrationalism Added 172 / Example: Finding Lost Property 172 / Practicalness Veiled by Verbal Magic 173 / Ending in Jurispathy 175 / Transubstantiating the Self-interest of the Legal Profession 178 / Post-modernity, Substituting for Primitiveness 178} // TRANSFERS OF LAW: A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS [2003] 181–207: 1. Terms 182 / 2. Technicality 190 / 3. Contrasts in Transfers of Law 200 {Contrasts 200 / Criticisms 202 / Alternatives205} 4. Conclusions 206 // THE DANGERS FOR THE SELF OF BEING SELF-CENTRED: ON STANDARDS AND VALUES [2002] 209–212 --- APPENDIX -- THEORY OF LAW – LEGAL ETHNOGRAPHY, OR THE THEORETICAL FRUITS OF THE INQUIRIES INTO FOLKWAYS [2008] 213–234 1. Encounters 213 / 2. Disciplines 218 / 3. The Lawyerly Interest 223 / 4. Law and/or Laws 226 / 5. Conclusion 233 --- Index of Subjects 235 / Index of Normative Materials 242 / Index 244 . (shrink)

This extensive work explores the changing world of religions, faiths and practices. It discusses a broad range of issues and phenomena that are related to religion, including nature, ethics, secularization, gender and identity. Broadening the context, it studies the interrelation between religion and other fields, including education, business, economics and law. The book presents a vast array of examples to illustrate the changes that have taken place and have led to a new world map of religions. Beginning with an introduction (...) of the concept of the "changing world religion map", the book first focuses on nature, ethics and the environment. It examines humankind's eternal search for the sacred, and discusses the emergence of "green" religion as a theme that cuts across many faiths. Next, the book turns to the theme of the pilgrimage, illustrated by many examples from all parts of the world. In its discussion of the interrelation between religion and education, it looks at the role of missionary movements. It explains the relationship between religion, business, economics and law by means of a discussion of legal and moral frameworks, and the financial and business issues of religious organizations. The next part of the book explores the many "new faces" that are part of the religious landscape and culture of the Global North (Europe, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, the U.S. and Canada) and the Global South (Latin America, Africa and Asia). It does so by looking at specific population movements, diasporas, and the impact of globalization. The volume next turns to secularization as both a phenomenon occurring in the Global religious North, and as an emerging and distinguishing feature in the metropolitan, cosmopolitan and gateway cities and regions in the Global South. The final part of the book explores the changing world of religion in regards to gender and identity issues, the political/religious nexus, and the new worlds associated with the virtual technologies and visual media. (shrink)

The border is one of the most urgent issues of our times. We tend to think of a border as a static line, but recent bordering techniques have broken away from the map, as governments have developed legal tools to limit the rights of migrants before and after they enter a country's territory. The consequent detachment of state power from any fixed geographical marker has created a new paradigm: the shifting border, an adjustable legal construct untethered in space. (...) This transformation upsets our assumptions about waning sovereignty, while also revealing the limits of the populist push toward border-fortification. At the same time, it presents a tremendous opportunity to rethink states' responsibilities to migrants. This book proposes a new, functional approach to human mobility and access to membership in a world where borders, like people, have the capacity to move. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 601-607, July 2022. Ayelet Shachar's The Shifting Border deploys a powerful map metaphor to support rethinking of borders and their functions. I interrogate this metaphor, developing some of the representational, constructive, and normative functions of maps, along with their connections to legal mechanisms for decoupling migration from territory. I survey three responses to the extra-territorialization of migration: a cynical response that rejects the possibility of migration justice, an abolitionist response (...) connected to open borders, and a revisionist response that advocates for widescale institutional reform. The revisionist response illuminates how Shachar's essay challenges us to reflect on what sorts of maps and accompanying social and political organizations would best support migrant justice. (shrink)

The Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) is a multilateral, multisectoral partnership comprised of more than 70 countries, international organizations, foundations, and businesses to strengthen global health security.

Anglo-American general jurisprudence remains preoccupied with the relationship of legality to morality. This has especially been so in the re-reading of Lon Fuller’s theory of an implied morality in any law. More often than not, Fuller has been said to distinguish between the identity of a discrete rule and something called ‘morality’. In this reading of Fuller, however, insufficient attention to what is signified by ‘morality’. Such an implied morality has been understood in terms of deontological duties, the Good life, (...) naturalism, and subjectively posited values. Each of these interpretations has a shared common denominator: namely, the distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, ‘facts’ and ‘values’. Legality is said to be nested in an ‘is’ world. An ‘is’ cannot be derived from an ‘ought’. This essay aims to press this distinction further. Fuller, I intend to argue, does indeed accept the is/ought distinction as have his commentators. The associations of the ‘oughts’ with deontological duties, the Good life, naturalism and subjective values, however, have been misdirected. This has been so because Fuller presupposed that legality was a matter of a spatial structure. Non-law was situated outside the structure. If a legislator or judge considered matters outside the structure as if they were binding upon jurists and, for that matter, upon members of the legal structure, the law was not binding. The crucial incident of the structure was the boundary of the structure. Fuller’s structuralist theory of law offers the opportunity to better understand what he signified by ‘the internal morality of law’. I shall privilege several elements of his theory: the relation of legal units to a structure, the nature of a structure, the constituents of a structure (territorial space, its pillars and its matter); the forms of the legal structure; the centrifugal and centripetal structures, the structure and traditional theories of morality, the role of the legal official in a structure, and why the internal knowledge in the structure is binding. Fuller especially privileged two features of a legal structure. The one was the boundary of the structure. The second concerned the exteriority of the boundary. Both features presupposed a territorial sense view of legal knowledge. The legal mind analysed any social problem through the map of such a sense of legal space. By concentrating upon the discrete rule in isolation of the implied structural boundary to which the rule referred, commentators have attributed been misdirected in their analyses of Fuller’s theory of law and morality. My argument in this respect will proceed as follows. In order to clarify Fuller’s senses of the morality of law, I shall first outline what he means by a ‘structure’. Second, how is the structure related to legal knowledge? Third, what are the various forms of the structure? Fourth, is the structure centrifugal or centripetal? And finally, why is the structure binding? (shrink)

Legal precedent, professional‐society statements, and even many medical ethicists agree that some situations may call for a clinician to engage in an act of lying or nonlying deception of a patient or patient's family member. Still, the moral terrain of clinical deception is largely uncharted, and when it comes to practical guidance for clinicians, many might think that ethicists offer nothing more than the rule never to deceive. This guidance is insufficient to meet the real‐world demands of clinical practice, (...) and this article endeavors to articulate a framework to help clinicians better navigate the ethics of clinical deceit. The framework articulates four morally relevant dimensions of a potential deceptive act that should be examined to better determine the moral justification that might be required: the target of the act, the nature of the information, the nature of the act, and the context of the act. (shrink)

Humanitarian maps assembled using digital technology are indicative of transformations underway in how the world is made knowable, sensible, and actionable, including for international legal purposes. These transformations are exemplified by the Missing Maps Project (MMP), an initiative of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, a U.S.-registered non-profit, and three other non-governmental organisations operating internationally: American Red Cross; British Red Cross; and Médecins Sans Frontières. Projects such as the MMP make it harder for international lawyers to lay claim to, and seek (...) to imaginatively reorient, shared repositories of common sense. Meanwhile, international legal scholars continue to propagate ideas that the world may be reimagined with their help, largely without regard to such transformations. In lieu of imagination’s standard evocation to the end of enhancing critical agency in international legal writing, this article contends that the idiosyncratic notion of imagination advanced in the writings of Walter Benjamin may be better attuned to ongoing shifts in sense-making apparent in international humanitarian mapping. Walter Benjamin’s atypical rendering of imagination as a ‘purely receptive, uncreative’ force in a field of technological reproduction offers international legal scholars another way of thinking about agency and prospects for re-forming their field in the face of its burgeoning digitalisation. (shrink)

Firms increasingly deploy algorithmic pricing approaches to determine what to charge for their goods and services. Algorithmic pricing can discriminate prices both dynamically over time and personally depending on individual consumer information. Although legal, the ethicality of such approaches needs to be examined as often they trigger moral concerns and sometimes outrage. In this research paper, we provide an overview and discussion of the ethical challenges germane to algorithmic pricing. As a basis for our discussion, we perform a systematic (...) interpretative review of 315 related articles on dynamic and personalized pricing as well as pricing algorithms in general. We then use this review to define the term algorithmic pricing and map its key elements at the micro-, meso-, and macro levels from a business and marketing ethics perspective. Thus, we can identify morally ambivalent topics that call for deeper exploration by future research. (shrink)

The COVID-19 crisis illustrates the fragility of supply chains. Countries with excellent health systems struggled to ensure essential supplies of food, medicines, and personal protective equipment which were vital to a fast and effective response. Using geo-legality, which maps the constitutive relations between law and space, we argue that the failure of supply chains in many western countries during the crisis reveals a fundamental tension between their role as facilitators of care and caring, and the logistic logics by which they (...) operate. While supply chains link the intimate, domestic concerns of providing medical care with the globalised geographical concerns of moving goods across different jurisdictions at the right time, their contemporary organisation and regulation does not reflect the caring relations and public goods they are meant to support. Drawing on analysis of examples from Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this article argues that a reconfiguration of supply chains in accordance with feminist approaches that place care at the centre of supply chain operation and organisation will be important to amendments of both domestic and global health law. (shrink)

This paper argues for the adoption of pluralist pragmatism about concepts of law. The first part of the paper introduces the argument by reference to the debate over conceptual prescriptivism in the contemporary literature on the methodology of legal theory. The second part of the paper offers a method for recognising pluralism in traditions of jurisprudential inquiry: it does so on the basis of the use of modes of objectification that can be said to underwrite the construction of concepts (...) of law. A number of examples of such modes are offered, with the focus thereafter being on two such modes: on the one hand, the explanatory paradigm of reason; and on the other hand, the explanatory paradigm of cause. A map of traditions of jurisprudential inquiry is sketched on the basis of these two modes. The third part of the paper goes on to show how combining the prescriptive resources that follow from the two traditions of jurisprudential inquiry classified in such a manner makes our response to certain practical context more robust. The four practical contexts are: the exercise of judicial behaviour; the structure of international law; legal education; and, legal scholarship. It is only by adopting the pluralist pragmatism espoused by the ethics of legal theory that we can avoid theoretical insularity (the belief that any one theoretical picture is capable of corresponding truthfully to the world) and theoretical imperialism (the belief that any one theoretical picture can be used as a foundation for a prescriptive agenda). (shrink)

As individuals we often face complex issues about which we must weigh evidence and come to conclusions. Corporations also have to make decisions on the basis of strong and compelling arguments. Legal practitioners, compelled by arguments for or against a proposition and underpinned by the weight of evidence, are often required to make judgments that affect the lives of others. Medical doctors face similar decisions. Governments make purchasing decisions—for example, for expensive military equipment—or decisions in the areas of public (...) or foreign policy. These issues involve many arguments on all sides of difficult debates. These issues involve understanding the arguments of others and being able to make objections and provide rebuttals to objections. Students in universities deal with arguments all the time. A major purpose of a university education—regardless of subject matter—is to teach students how to read, understand, and respond to complex arguments. The ability to do this makes for highly employable, adaptable, and reflectively critical individuals. We often call the skill of marshaling arguments and assessing them “critical thinking.” All universities claim to instill the skill of critical thinking in their graduates and routinely note this in their advertising and promotional documents. This short paper outlines one way this skill can be taught. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the different ways the insights from complexity theory can be applied to law. Complexity theory - a variant of systems theory - views law as an emergent, complex, self-organising system comprised of an interactive network of actors and systems that operate with no overall guiding hand, giving rise to complex, collective behaviour in law communications and actions. Addressing such issues as the unpredictability of legal systems, the ability of legal systems to adapt to (...) changes in society, the importance of context, and the nature of law, the essays look to the implications of a complexity theory analysis for the study of public policy and administrative law, international law and human rights, regulatory practices in business and finance, and the practice of law and legal ethics. These are areas where law, which craves certainty, encounters unending, irresolvable complexity. This collection shows the many ways complexity theory thinking can reshape and clarify our understanding of the various problems relating to the theory and practice of law. (shrink)

This essay examines ‘The Mapping Journey Project’, an installation artwork by Bouchra Khalili. It consists of eight large video screens and headsets. In each video, a migrant draws a map of her/his journey to and in Europe and narrates her/his route. In collaboration with Khalili, I argue, these storyteller/draftspersons create a dissident cartography that superimposes their lived geography on the background of legal geography. Thus, ‘The Mapping Journey Project’ is a work of art that is also a (...) work of advocacy and provocation. Rather than advocating particular policies, however, it advocates in the sense of affirming the dignity of the subjects of the videos and their right to speak the truth of their lives. Moreover, it provokes by elucidating the moral stakes of the current political and economic order and by issuing a pointed demand for humane solutions. So long as vast global disparities of wealth and political power persist, it is no wonder that people who are excluded from the elite privilege of belonging to a prosperous society are burning the borders that protect this unjust regime. (shrink)

In understanding the implicative resonance of biotech applications research and development, it is necessary to apply the intricate consonance of bioethics studies like behaviourome studies in the form of mental mapping in diverse groups of society for trying to resolve moral issues such as IPR or biosafety. Social perception analysis being the subjective domain of bioethics and related biotechnological issues are the functional epitome in ensuring benevolent biotechnological entrepreneurship development. In this pursuit studies of social genomics can ascertain the (...) positive implications of functional genomics being one of the most important fragments of science of biotechnology. The development of guidelines should be culturally sensitive in the way ethical, social and legal aspects are considered. Having a map of human ideas will enable us to reflect more diversity of ideas into policy frameworks. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of the moral boundaries of organizations. We define an organization’s moral boundary to encompass all of the actions for which it could be held morally responsible. Our theory requires us to view organizations as subjects that act in the world, rather than as objects that are used as tools; that is, it requires us to focus on corporate moral agency. We present a process model for determining whether a given action lies within an organization’s moral (...) boundary, and we discuss how an organization’s moral boundary can be created, destroyed, or modified as a result of deliberate choices by human and organizational actors. Our article contributes to the literature by conceptualizing the distinction between organizations as subjects and organizations as objects, and so clarifying the distinction between legal and moral boundaries; by recentering the discussion of boundaries on organizational actions rather than on contingent institutional features; and by adding nuance to the assignment of moral responsibility in complex organizational networks and in situations where one corporate moral agent depends upon another for its existence. (shrink)

Is there a major international crime that the general public has never heard of or even thought about? The answer to this question might be surprising—it is the illicit art trade. The purpose of this article is to analyse the criminal aspect of the global art trade with a special focus on the region of South East Asia. In the first part of the paper, which acts as a backdrop for the rest of the article, the author explains the history (...) and general issues regarding the trade of cultural artefacts, briefly explaining the stages in the illicit antiquities trade, with a special focus on the question of international law regulations, of which he provides a critical overview. The second and third parts of the paper are devoted to a more profound analysis of the antiquities journey from illicit to licit. In the second part of the paper the author provides a case study of the first part of the voyage of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Indian antiquities, i.e. from the source country to the port of first shipment, examining the places and the middlemen they pass on their way. The third part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of legal provisions regulating the art trade in Hong Kong—a global art hub—notably the ‘market overt exception’, which allows buyers in good faith to keep the illicitly obtained cultural objects in spite of any claims made by the previous owners. In the fourth part of the paper the author shows why restitution of looted antiquities is so difficult, analysing a number of successful and unsuccessful attempts. The concluding part of the paper is devoted to the author’s critical overview of the various attempts and suggestions on the curtailing of the illicit international art trade. In the coda the author provides a case study of the journey undertaken by Cambodian antiquities. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of the moral boundaries of organizations. We define an organization’s moral boundary to encompass all of the actions for which it could be held morally responsible. Our theory requires us to view organizations as subjects that act in the world, rather than as objects that are used as tools; that is, it requires us to focus on corporate moral agency. We present a process model for determining whether a given action lies within an organization’s moral (...) boundary, and we discuss how an organization’s moral boundary can be created, destroyed, or modified as a result of deliberate choices by human and organizational actors. Our article contributes to the literature by conceptualizing the distinction between organizations as subjects and organizations as objects, and so clarifying the distinction between legal and moral boundaries; by recentering the discussion of boundaries on organizational actions rather than on contingent institutional features; and by adding nuance to the assignment of moral responsibility in complex organizational networks and in situations where one corporate moral agent depends upon another for its existence. (shrink)

The UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) can, on the one hand, be considered vital for the global governance process—in the sense of urging international cooperation on the ethical, developmental, and standards aspects of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS). On the other hand, the CCW may also embody a global trend that does not augur well for international solidarity, namely the lack of credible and comprehensive collaboration to advance global objectives of peace and security. In 2022, a majority of (...) the 125 nations that belong to the CCW requested limits on a specific type of lethal autonomous weapons: “killer robots.” Yet, most of the major global powers—namely the United States, Russia, and China—opposed not only a ban on LAWS but also on any restrictions on the development of these weapons, not least because the United States, Russia, and China are actively developing this weapons technology. While there is currently much focus on the technological evolution of LAWS, less has been written about how ethical values can exert influence on a growing global consciousness around factors such as power, technology, human judgment, accountability, autonomy, dehumanization, and the use of force. This introduction lays the groundwork for dealing with these issues. It does so by showing that all these factors warrant a pluralist approach to the global governance of LAWS, based on multiple grounds, including the military, tech, law, and distinctive theoretical-ethical orientations; the rationale being to combine this expertise into a collection for publication. Reflecting the contributing authors’ firsthand experiences of the ethics surrounding the management of LAWS to address decisive and critical questions at an expert level, it provides a framing for the collection, showing that the use of international legal mechanisms like the CCW are crucial to considering both the potential and the limits of LAWS, as well as what it can contribute to areas such as international law, human rights, and national security. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Introduction Monster Mythology The Legal and Ethical Issues Raised by the Human Genome Project Strategies to Regulate Genetic Technology Where do we go from here? Acknowledgments.

Determinism is, roughly, the thesis that facts about the past and the laws of nature entail all truths. A venerable, age-old dilemma concerning responsibility distils to this: if either determinism is true or it is not true, we lack "responsibility-grounding" control. Either determinism is true or it is not true. So, we lack responsibility-grounding control. Deprived of such control, no one is ever morally responsible for anything. A number of the freshly-minted essays in this collection address aspects of this dilemma. (...) Responding to the horn that determinism undermines the freedom that responsibility (or moral obligation) requires, the freedom to do otherwise, some papers in this collection debate the merits of Frankfurt-style examples that purport to show that one can be responsible despite lacking alternatives. Responding to the horn that indeterminism implies luck or randomness, other papers discuss the strengths or shortcomings of libertarian free will or control. Also included in this collection are essays on the freedom requirements of moral obligation, forgiveness and free will, a "desert-free" conception of free will, and vicarious legal and moral responsibility. This chapter points to the importance of the topics discussed in the volume and interesting arguments worth noting. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the Hindmarsh and Wik cases stand as crucial case studies that evidence the ongoing production of terra nullius within contemporary Australian contexts. They bring into focus the critical importance the signifiers of property, capitalist ‘productivity’ and legality within the settler-colonial state. Alongside notions of ‘civility,’ discourses surrounding ‘economic productivity’ and ‘equality before the law’ are consistently mobilised in these cases to assert white sovereignty. In contradistinction to the discourses that construct Indigenous people’s relation to (...) land as a singular and affective ‘affinity,’ media, political and legal texts script white Australian land uses such as farming and mining as ‘productive’ and necessary for economic prosperity. They are posited with ‘monetary’ output and juridical standing in order to produce the narrative that the continent was lawfully ‘settled’ by ‘illustrious’ white Australians. Moreover, these signifiers ramify within colonial law. Following these cases, the state amended the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 and the Native Title Act 1993 respectively. They ensured the material construction of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge and the revocation of specific Indigenous land rights in order to sustain the settler-colonial state’s claims to sovereignty. (shrink)

No serious attempt to answer the question ‘What is hate speech?’ would be complete without an exploration of the outer limits of the concept(s). This book critically examines both the ordinary and legal concepts of hate speech, contrasting social media platform content policies with national and international laws. It also explores a range of controversial grey area examples of hate speech. Part I focuses on the ordinary concept and looks at hybrid attacks, selective attacks, reverse attacks, righteous attacks, indirect (...) attacks, identity attacks, existential denials, identity denials, identity miscategorisations, and identity appropriations. Part II concentrates on the legal concept. It considers how to distinguish between hate speech and hate crime and examines the precarious position of denialism laws in national and international law. Together the authors draw on conceptual analysis, doctrinal analysis, linguistic analysis, critical analysis, and diachronic analysis to map the new frontiers of the concepts of hate speech. (shrink)

Anglo-American private law has been a far more complex phenomenon than is usually recognized. Attempts to reduce it to a single explanatory principle, or to a precisely classified or categorized map, scheme, or diagram, are likely to distort the past by omitting or marginalizing material inconsistent with proposed principles or schemes. Many legal issues cannot be allocated exclusively to one category. Often several concepts have worked concurrently and cumulatively, so that competing explanations and categories are not so much alternatives, (...) of which only one can be correct, as different dimensions of a complex phenomenon, of which several may be simultaneously valid and necessary. This study will be of importance to those interested in property, tort, contract, unjust enrichment, legal reasoning, legal method, the history of the common law, and the relation between legal theory and legal history. (shrink)

By considering the death of the disability activist Engracia Figueroa as the consequence of her wheelchair being damaged by an airline, this article asks whether law could accommodate a definition of legal personhood that encompasses the possibility of bodies augmented by prosthetics, technology, and mobility aids. The use of mobility aids by disabled people and the role of prosthetic penises in so-called ‘gender fraud’ cases offer two useful provocations to consider the ways in which legal personhood, if defined (...) as largely mapping on to an ideal, normative body, is becoming an increasingly inadequate legal concept in the modern age. Drawing on the work of Donna Haraway and the figure of the cyborg, this article argues that a more protean, flexible, and fluctuating understanding of legal personhood would offer both a more accurate and utopian conception of the body in law than the current essentialist approach found in a number of legal areas and particularly in English criminal law. (shrink)

This paper explores the intersections between national identity and the production of medical/population genomics in Mexico. The ongoing efforts to construct a Haplotype Map of Mexican genetic diversity offers a unique opportunity to illustrate and analyze the exchange between the historic-political narratives of nationalism, and the material culture of genomic science. Haplotypes are central actants in the search for medically significant SNP’s (single nucleotide polymorphisms), as well as powerful entities involved in the delimitation of ancestry, temporality and variability ( www.hapmap.org (...) ). By following the circulation of Haplotypes, light is shed on the alignments and discordances between socio-historical and bio-molecular mappings. The analysis is centred on the comparison between the genomic construction of time and ethnicity in the laboratory (through participant observation), and on the public mobilisation of a “Mexican Genome” and its wider political implications. Even though both: the scientific practice and the public discourse on medical/population genomics are traversed by notions of “admixture”, there are important distinctions to be made. In the public realm, the nationalist post-revolutionary ideas of Jose Vasconcelos, as expressed in his Cosmic Race ( 1925 ), still hold sway in the social imaginary. In contrast, admixture is treated as a complex, relative and probabilistic notion in laboratory practices. I argue that the relation between medical/population genomics and national identity is better understood as a process of re-articulation (Fullwiley Social Studies of Science 38:695, 2008 ), rather than coproduction (Reardon 2005 ) of social and natural orders. The evolving process of re-articulation conceals the novelty of medical/population genomics, aligning scientific facts in order to fit the temporal and ethnic grids of “Mestizaje”. But it is precisely the social and political work, that matches the emerging field of population genomics to the pre-existing projects of national identity, what is most revealing in order to understand the multiple and even subtle ways in which population genomics challenges the historical and identitarian frames of a “Mestizo” nation. (shrink)

This article discusses the issue of migration from various vantage points: political, economic, linguistic, legal, philosophical, and ethical. It is shown that although migration touches upon many areas of human life, it is in reality a straightforward issue. It is basically about human beings in search for a more dignified life. The author critiques the operative dualisms that characterize the migration debate, in doing so undermining the dehumanizing thinking that gives birth to such rhetoric, and suggests an approach to (...) the issue that fosters a transformation rooted in authentic human and spiritual development. (shrink)

Klein, Renate The practice of surrogacy in Australia has been controversial since its beginning in the late 1980s. In 1988, the famous 'Kirkman case' in the state of Victoria put surrogacy on the national map. This was a two-sisters surrogacy - Linda and Maggie Kirkman and the resulting baby Alice - in which power differences between the two women were extraordinarily stark: Maggie was the glamorous and well spoken woman of the world; Linda who carried the baby, was the demure (...) school teacher in child-like frocks and pig tails. Their IVF doctor applauded altruistic surrogacy. He called it 'gestational surrogacy' and proclaimed that if the so-called surrogate mother didn't use her own eggs, thus wasn't the baby's 'genetic' mother, no attachment would ensue! This statement is haunting us to this day. It is patently absurd: as a baby grows in a woman's body over the nine months of the pregnancy, it is hard to see why the 24/7 presence of the baby inside her body, its growth, its interaction with her would be any different whether s/he has the mother's genes! (shrink)

This paper constitutes a critical exploration of the functional features underpinning the unconscious of institutional attachment—namely an attachment which is understood in terms of the subject-infant’s love for his institutional parent-power holder, and the indefinite need for a subject to remain within its infantile condition under the parenthood of the State. We venture beyond the Paternal metaphor and move towards the neglected metaphor of the Mother, so focal in the individual process of identification, assumption of language and the permanent attachment (...) to the space of prohibition and Law. A new position in Language is defined. To understand how the psychic space of the infant is artfully subjugated in the making of the Western culture and domination of the Western system of legal interpretation, an enquiry into the legal emblematic history of representations is necessary to map the process through which the subject learns its legal self and relationship with otherness through what Pierre Legendre coined as the Occidental Mirror and the triangular logic of reflexivity. A final enquiry interrogates the way the legal institution places itself in the position of the specular image that captivates the subject-infant within a procreated legal order, a law-giving and law abiding life starting from the laws of the familial structure reinforced by the role of the parents and by analogy, by the State assuming that role in the institutional life of the ad infinitum infant. (shrink)

It seems to be commonly understood that sometimes a family lawyer’s advocacy can go too far; however, absent disciplinary proceedings or a claim in negligence, it is not always easy to identify exactly what line a lawyer has crossed. A lawyer’s role, properly understood, is to pursue their client’s interests within the bounds of legality. In this paper, I examine the positivist conception of the bounds of legality in the context of family law. My examination includes consideration of adversarial and (...) non-adversarial advocacy, how much resolve a lawyer can properly use as an advocate, and the means of a lawyer’s craft – both substantive and procedural tactics. In doing so, I provide a theoretical mapping of the bounds of legality, demonstrating that they are insufficient in family law. My aim is to provide the theoretical tools to help inform change to family law, and the law and professional rules governing lawyers. (shrink)

This paper argues that concepts of legality in legal theory can be profitably understood as being underwritten by modes of spatio-temporal objectification. In the first part of the paper, a scheme of such modes is provided, and a map of jurisprudential inquiries is thereby offered. In the second part of the paper, two concepts of legality - underwritten by two different modes of spatio-temporal objectification - are analysed. The analysis shows how both concepts of legality lead to different sets (...) of prescriptive resources as to the evaluation and design of legal systems. Finally, it is argued that the response of legal theory to practical challenges within the public sphere cannot afford to be based on any one concept of legality. Rather, we need to be pluralists about concepts of legality, recognising the limitations of any one such concept - represented, in this paper, by way of spatio-temporal objectification that underwrites those concepts. A crisis in legal theory cannot be claimed on the basis of any alleged lack of correspondence between any one concept of legality and reality. On the contrary, a crisis will ensue to the extent that legal theory becomes dominated by theoretical imperialism, namely, by the belief that any one concept of legality is capable of capturing the world as it is, and, therefore, also capable of standing as a foundation for a prescriptive agenda. The vice of theoretical imperialism induces anxiety over the identity of a discipline, and leads to a quelling of the very theoretical diversity that is required for an ethical response to the specific complexity of the public sphere. (shrink)

This explores what responsible business practice within the context of Malaysia, an Eastern collective society, diverging from the Western individualistic society where most Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) research originates. A bottom-up approach was adopted, incorporating different stakeholder perspectives of a case-study firm, widely acknowledged for its CSR programs. Concept mapping method was selected because it is a structural conceptualization method designed to organize and represent ideas from an identified group adding structure to disorganized and subjective ideas. By using concept (...) mapping all the various perspectives and ideas were brought together to create a single conceptualization. The findings from the concept mapping present 101 statements which produced seven clusters; Products & Services, Community Oriented, Stakeholder & Business Value, Employee Oriented, Legal & Ethical Responsibilities, Environmental & Social Oriented, and Philanthropic Oriented. These clusters covered the whole conceptual domain of Corporate Citizenship and demonstrated multiple CSR theories, including corporate sustainability, stakeholder concept, and shared value, were apparent, while also uncovering some unique aspects from the normative stakeholder perspective. The implications of this study suggest that while some aspects of globally institutionalized CSR are generically accepted, there are contextually specific aspects which need to be considered as these may contradict or conflict with the “global” standards. (shrink)

Medical councils increasingly require graduates to understand law and to practise medicine mindful of the legal rules. In the UK a revised curriculum for medical law and ethics has been published. However, coverage of law in medical education remains variable and doubts exist about how far students acquire legal knowledge and skills in its implementation. This survey of students in two UK medical schools measured their law learning and their confidence in using this knowledge. Concept maps and a (...) self-audit questionnaire were used to capture students' understanding and perceptions of this knowledge domain and self-assessments of their legal knowledge and skills. A large sample was achieved across first, second and final year students. Students agree that a sound understanding of law is essential to being a good doctor. Their perceptions of law are generally positive but the interface between the legal rules and codes of medical ethics creates difficulty. In some areas students offer relatively confident self-assessments of their legal knowledge and skills for practising law. However, levels of confidence in other areas of their law learning raise doubts about the degree to which they can advocate for and protect their patients. Conclusions are drawn about the effectiveness of students' law learning and recommendations made for further research. (shrink)

Under which conditions, if any, is it morally permissible for states to grant non-citizen residents (‘denizens’) different political, socio-economic, and cultural rights than citizens? What, if anything, could justify legal rights-differentiations along the lines of citizenship? This special issue scrutinizes these politically increasingly salient questions from a wide range of perspectives, drawing on recent literature in the ethics of migration, citizenship, multiculturalism, and refuge, as well as on normative theories of law, territory, and settler colonialism. In this introduction to (...) the volume, I sketch a conceptual map of the emerging debate on justice for denizens, making explicit some underlying theoretical assumptions common to each of the three key domains of legal rights-differentiations (political, socio-economic, and cultural rights). I distinguish the question of what is owed to denizens as a matter of justice, from that of what justice permits and requires in respect to denizens generally. And I outline four models, implicit in the literature, for theorizing the moral rights different types of denizens have and lack – to help determine which forms of unequal treatment wrong them. I conclude by providing brief summaries of the seven contributing articles, pinpointing them on my conceptual map. (shrink)