In this first-ever history of contemporary liberal theory, Forrester shows how liberal egalitarianism--a set of ideas about justice, equality, obligation, and the state--became dominant, and traces its emergence from the political and ideological context of the postwar United States and Britain.d Britain.

Language is a collaborative act: To communicate successfully, speakers must generate utterances that are not only semantically valid but also sensitive to the knowledge state of the listener. Such sensitivity could reflect the use of an “embedded listener model,” where speakers choose utterances on the basis of an internal model of the listener's conceptual and linguistic knowledge. In this study, we ask whether parents’ spatial descriptions incorporate an embedded listener model that reflects their children's understanding of spatial relations and spatial (...) terms. Adults described the positions of targets in spatial arrays to their children or to the adult experimenter. Arrays were designed so that targets could not be identified unless spatial relationships within the array were encoded and described. Parents of 3–4-year-old children encoded relationships in ways that were well-matched to their children's level of spatial language. These encodings differed from those of the same relationships in speech to the adult experimenter. In contrast, parents of individuals with severe spatial impairments did not show clear evidence of sensitivity to their children's level of spatial language. The results provide evidence for an embedded listener model in the domain of spatial language and indicate conditions under which the ability to model listener knowledge may be more challenging. (shrink)

The multi-cultural nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late nineteenth century created much unrest among the many different ethnic groups within the Empire. As each group struggled against the other groups for more rights, dissolution threatened the Empire. The Hapsburg government under Franz Joseph used two different strategies in Austria and Hungary to keep the country united, and these strategies successfully kept the Empire together for half a century. After the Emperor’s death, opposing interests and separatism proved too powerful (...) without Franz Joseph’s uniting influence, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of leadership and promotion regulatory focus on employees’ willingness to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior . Building from a person–situation interactionist perspective, we investigate the interaction of leadership style and how leaders frame messages, as well as test a three-way interaction with promotion focus. Using an experimental design, we found that inspirational and charismatic transformational leaders elicited higher levels of UPB than transactional leaders when the leaders used loss framing, but (...) not gain framing. Furthermore, followers’ promotion regulatory focus moderated this relationship such that the effect held for followers with low promotion focus, but not for individuals with high promotion focus. Our findings extend the understanding of UPB, offer theoretical mechanisms to explain when this behavior occurs, and contribute to leadership theory and research on ethical decision making. (shrink)

Professional sport in the United States has widely adopted biometric technologies, dramatically expanding the monitoring of players’ biodata. These technologies have the potential to prevent injuries, improve performance, and extend athletes’ careers; they also risk compromising players’ privacy and autonomy, the confidentiality of their data, and their careers. The use of these technologies in professional sport and the consumer sector remains largely unregulated and unexamined. We seek to provide guidance for their adoption by examining five areas of concern: validity and (...) interpretation of data; increased surveillance and threats to privacy; risks to confidentiality and concerns regarding data security; conflicts of interest; and coercion. Our analysis uses professional sport as a case study; however, these concerns extend to other domains where their use is expanding, including the consumer sector, collegiate and high school sport, the military, and commercial sectors where monitori... (shrink)

The Peterloo Massacre was more than just a Manchester event. The attendees, on whom Manchester industry depended, came from a large spread of the wider textile regions. The large demonstrations that followed in the autumn of 1819, protesting against the actions of the authorities, were pan-regional and national. The reaction to Peterloo established the massacre as firmly part of the radical canon of martyrdom in the story of popular protest for democracy. This article argues for the significance of Peterloo in (...) fostering a sense of regional and northern identities in England. Demonstrators expressed an alternative patriotism to the anti-radical loyalism as defined by the authorities and other opponents of mass collective action. (shrink)

In May 2011, more than a decade after the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) abandoned sex testing, they devised new policies in response to the IAAF's treatment of Caster Semenya, the South African runner whose sex was challenged because of her spectacular win and powerful physique that fueled an international frenzy questioning her sex and legitimacy to compete as female. These policies claim that atypically high levels of endogenous testosterone in women (caused by (...) various medical conditions) create an unfair advantage and must be regulated. Against the backdrop of Semenya's case and the scientific and historical complexity of ?gender verification? in elite sports, we question the new policies on three grounds: (1) the underlying scientific assumptions; (2) the policymaking process; and (3) the potential to achieve fairness for female athletes. We find the policies in each of these domains significantly flawed and therefore argue they should be withdrawn. (shrink)

The psychological literature now differentiates between two types of psychopath:successful (with little or no criminal record) and unsuccessful (with a criminal record). Recent research indicates that earlier findings of reduced autonomic activity, reduced prefrontal grey matter, and compromised executive activity may only be true of unsuccessful psychopaths. In contrast, successful psychopaths actually show autonomic and executive function that exceeds that of normals, while having no difference in prefrontal volume from normals. We argue that many successful psychopaths are legally responsible for (...) their actions, as they have the executive capacity to choose not to harm (and thus are legally rational). However, many unsuccessful psychopaths have a lack of executive function that should at least partially excuse them from criminal culpability. Although a successful psychopath's increased executive function may occur in conflict with, rather than in consonance with their increased autonomic activity - producing a cognitive style characterized by self deception and articulate-sounding, but unsound reasoning - they may be capable of recognizing and correcting their lack of autonomic data, and thus can be held responsible. (shrink)

In light of recent interest among political theorists in the idea of political realism, Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear has come to be associated with anti-Rawlsian thought. This paper seeks to show that, on the contrary, Shklar’s specific formulation of political realism, unlike more recent variations, was not motivated by a critique of Rawls. This paper will address three concerns: first, it will show what exactly Shklar’s initial realism was responding to; second, it will consider the implications of this realism (...) for thinking about liberal democracies; third, it will attempt, briefly, in light of this, to make sense of her relationship with Rawls and, in turn, through a comparison with Bernard Williams’s thought, her relationship to anti-Rawlsian political realism. (shrink)

There are legitimate worries about gaps between scientific evidence of brain states and function (for example, as evidenced by fMRI data) and legal criteria for determining criminal culpability. In this paper I argue that behavioral evidence of capacity, motive and intent appears easier for judges and juries to use for purposes of determining criminal liability because such evidence triggers the application of commonsense psychological (CSP) concepts that guide and structure criminal responsibility. In contrast, scientific evidence of neurological processes and function (...) – such as evidence that the defendant has a large brain tumor – will not generally lead a judge or jury to directly infer anything that is relevant to the legal determination of criminal culpability . (Vincent 2008) In these cases, an expert witness will be required to indicate to the fact-finder what this evidence means with regard to mental capacity; and then another inference will have to be made from this possible lack of capacity to the legal criteria for guilt, cast in CSP terms.<br><br>To reliably link evidence of brain function and structure and assessment of criminal responsibility, we need to re-conceptualize the mental capacities necessary for responsibility, particularly those that are recognized as missing or compromised by the doctrines of “legal capacity” (Hart 1968) and “diminished capacity.” I argue that formulating these capacities as executive functions within the brain can provide this link. I further claim that it would be extremely useful to consider evidence of executive function as related to the diminished capacity doctrine at sentencing. This is because it is primarily at this stage in criminal proceedings where the use of the diminished capacity doctrine is most prevalent, as evidenced by the recent Supreme Court cases of Atkins v. Virginia (536 U.S. 304 (2002)) and Roper v. Simmons (543 U.S. 551 (2005)).<br>. (shrink)

Agricultural industries in developed countries may need to consider transformative change if they are to respond effectively to contemporary challenges, including a changing climate. In this paper we apply a resilience lens to analyze a deliberate attempt by Australian governments to restructure the dairy industry, and then utilize this analysis to assess the usefulness of resilience thinking for contemporary agricultural transformations. Our analysis draws on findings from a case study of market deregulation in the subtropical dairy industry. Semi-structured interviews were (...) conducted with dairy producers, their service providers, and industry and government staff. We found the adaptive cycle concept contributed to understanding how deregulation changed industry structures and working practices, how those changes led to feedbacks within the production system and supply chain, and how the industry following deregulation has experienced periods of stability and instability. Regime shifts were associated with an increase in demand for human capital, a degradation of cognitive social capital and a reduction in farm income. Findings identified that were not readily explained by the resilience thinking conceptual framework include a producer’s ability to anticipate and make choices and the change in social and power relationships in the industry. (shrink)

Despite its place in the humanities, the career prospects and numbers of women in philosophy much more closely resemble those found in the sciences and engineering. This book collects a series of critical essays by female philosophers pursuing the question of why philosophy continues to be inhospitable to women and what can be done to change it. By examining the social and institutional conditions of contemporary academic philosophy in the Anglophone world as well as its methods, culture, and characteristic commitments, (...) the volume provides a case study in interpretation of one academic discipline in which women's progress seems to have stalled since initial gains made in the 1980s. Some contributors make use of concepts developed in other contexts to explain women's under-representation, including the effects of unconscious biases, stereotype threat, and micro-inequities. Other chapters draw on the resources of feminist philosophy to challenge everyday understandings of time, communication, authority and merit, as these shape effective but often unrecognized forms of discrimination and exclusion. Often it is assumed that women need to change to fit existing institutions. This book instead offers concrete reflections on the way in which philosophy needs to change, in order to accommodate and benefit from the important contribution women's full participation makes to the discipline. (shrink)

More than ever before it is clear that suicidology requires a serious re-thinking of its approach to understanding and responding to suicide. This is not simply because disciplines such as medicine...

To fight climate change, firms must adopt effective and feasible carbon management practices that promote collaboration within supply chains. Engaging suppliers and customers on carbon management reduces vulnerability to climate-related risks and increases resilience and adaptability in supply chains. Therefore, it is important to understand the motives and preconditions for pursuing supply chain engagement from companies that actively engage with supply chain members in carbon management. In this study, a relational view is applied to operationalize the supply chain engagement concept (...) to reflect the different levels of supplier and customer engagement. Based on a sample of 345 companies from the Carbon Disclosure Project’s supply chain program, the determinants of engagement were hypothesized and tested using multinomial and ordinal logistic estimation methods. The results indicate that companies that integrate climate change into their strategies and are involved in developing environmental public policy are driven by moral motives to engage their suppliers and customers in carbon management. All these factors make a stronger impact on supplier engagement than on customer engagement. Moreover, companies operating in greenhouse gas-intensive industries are driven by instrumental motives to engage their suppliers and customers because increasing greenhouse gas intensity positively influences engagement level. Company profitability appears to increase supplier engagement, but not customer engagement. Interestingly, operating in a country with stringent environmental regulations does not appear to influence supply chain engagement. By utilizing relational capabilities and collaboration, buyers can increase their suppliers’ engagement to disclose emissions, which ultimately will lead to better results in carbon management. (shrink)

A number of popular theories about trauma have suggested rhythm has potential as a mechanism for regulating arousal levels. However, there is very little literature examining this proposal from the perspective of the young people who might benefit. This action research project addresses this gap by collaborating with four groups of children in the out-of-home-care system to discover what they wanted from music therapists who brought a strong focus on rhythm-based activities. The four music therapy groups took place over a (...) 12 month period and each cycle of action and reflection led to adjustments in what activities were offered, as well as exploring different levels of structure and ways of building relationships in the groups. The initial group incorporated a strong emphasis on highly structured rhythm-based activities, but young people found the format difficult to engage with. The second cycle included more opportunities for creativity and self-direction within semi-structured activities which children reported enjoying, but too much freedom also became overwhelming at times. The two groups in the third cycle seemed to balance structure and responsiveness successfully but were also influenced by the introduction of individual sessions prior to group commencement, which was designed to contribute to safety and trust building. Final reflections on the role of rhythm in supporting young people who have had adverse experiences were centred around the ideas of co-regulation. This was qualitatively different to our expectations that practicing rhythm-based activities would lead to an expanded window of tolerance that resulted in less time being spent in either hypo-arousal or hyper-arousal. Instead of entraining to an external rhythm, young people felt safe when their rhythms were matched, even if they were irregular, out of time and unpredictable. The small moments of co-regulation resulted in pleasure, comfort, satisfaction and peace and these moments were highly valued by the young people, who described just wanting to be relaxed and happy. Although not as rhythm-specific as the literature might suggest, music making with trusted adults helped the young people in this study feel more content. (shrink)

In this article, we examine disability and eugenics discourses and the ways they function in spaces where vulnerable persons have been historically excluded by the state and blamed for their own “immiseration.” We ask how queer theories of repudiation, abjection, and vulnerability lend insight into the ways that people with intellectual disabilities are discursively located outside normative discourses of home, care, and quality of life, and whether these discourses shifted to serve this vulnerable population when historically the very places in (...) question repudiated them, infringed on their human rights, and questioned their sexuality. To address these questions, we focus on the recent and impending closures of Virginia’s Training Centers, residential institutions for persons with intellectual disabilities now scheduled for staggered closures before 2020. (shrink)

There is considerable concern that climate change will displace many people in developing countries from their homes. This article examines whether developed countries are morally obligated to assist people displaced by climate change in developing countries. The article argues that there may not be a moral duty to assist climate change migrants as a category. Nonetheless, developed countries may have duties to assist vulnerable people elsewhere and may be obligated to assist climate change migrants along with other vulnerable people. In (...) addition, there likely is a duty to assist a particular subset of climate change migrants, specifically the citizens of small island countries existentially threatened by climate change. The article concludes by assessing the implications of its moral analysis for the focus of law and policy. Instead of developing new treaties to assist climate change migrants as a number of academics and practitioners have recently proposed, law and policy should be concerned with assisting migrants at risk generally, and/or the citizens of small island countries existentially threatened by climate change. (shrink)

In April 2018, the International Association of Athletics Federations released new regulations placing a ceiling on women athletes’ natural testosterone levels to “ensure fair and meaningful competition.” The regulations revise previous ones with the same intent. They require women with higher natural levels of testosterone and androgen sensitivity who compete in a set of “restricted” events to lower their testosterone levels to below a designated threshold. If they do not lower their testosterone, women may compete in the male category, in (...) an intersex category, at the national level, or in unrestricted events. Women may also challenge the regulation, whether or not they have lowered their testosterone, or quit sport. Irrespective of IAAF’s stated aims, the options forced by the new regulations are impossible choices. They violate dignity, threaten privacy, and mete out both suspicion and judgement on the sex and gender identity of the athletes regulated. (shrink)

An increasing recognition over the past five decades of the importance of patients’ autonomy and the right to be able to choose to limit medical treatment at the end of life has led to the development of a number of documents related to advance care planning, including the advance directive, medical power of attorney, and portable orders for life-sustaining treatment (POLST). While these documents are important aspects of advance care planning, without having goals-ofcare conversations, a specific plan, and necessary supports (...) to achieve these goals, the documents alone offer a false promise. Healthcare professionals must be trained on how to have indepth goals-of-care conversations with patients and their families, and effectively document the decisions. Advance care planning needs to be viewed as a process that must continue as the patient’s health status, social support system, and living environment change. Designating a healthcare representative who participates in goals-of-care conversations and can work with the healthcare team to make “just in time” decisions about care reduces the burden and stress on friends and family. In this article we discuss the strengths and limitations of advance directives, medical power of attorney forms, and POLST forms; propose concrete changes to optimize the effectiveness of each; and present a comprehensive approach to advance care planning that we hope will improve care for those nearing the end of life, and ensure that their wishes and goals to have or to limit treatment are more consistently honored. (shrink)

The paper distinguishes between weak and strong epistemic possibility and argues that the notion of strong epistemic possibility is the key to solving some of the most vexing puzzles about the semantics of epistemic modality.

Due to COVID-19, the fragile economy, travel restrictions, and generalized anxieties, the concept of antibodies as a “declaration of immunity” or “passport” is sweeping the world. Numerous scientific and ethical issues confound the concept of an antibody passport; nonetheless, antibodies can be seen as a potential currency to allow movement of people and resuscitation of global economics. Just as financial currency can be forged, so too is the potential for fraudulent antibody passports. This paper explores matters of science, ethics, and (...) identity theft, as well as the problems of bias and discrimination that could promulgate a world of pandemic “golden passports.”. (shrink)

This study is an analysis of surrogate-focused ethics consultations in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the general wards (Ward) of a large community hospital in Northern California. We identified the major themes of surrogate-focused ethics consultations to better understand the root cause of surrogate conflicts, and identified the similarities and differences between surrogate-based conflicts in the two settings. Consults requested because the surrogate had desires that conflicted with the physicians medical opinion of ‘best interest’, or cases involving surrogates not (...) upholding a patient’s known values reflected the root cause of the majority of surrogate conflicts (72.7% ICU, 83.3% Ward). (shrink)

United States statistics continue to indicate that the human donor heart pool does not and will not meet the great demand for hearts. For those patients unresponsive to maximal medical therapy (approximately 60,000 patients per year), cardiac transplantation is currently their best hope for increased survival. To address the need for additional end-stage congestive heart failure (CHF) therapy options, three medical device manufacturers have developed implantable left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) which act as a pump for hemodynamic support of the (...) patient’s diseased heart. Although LVADs have been shown to improve patient disease state prior to organ transplantation. LVADs do nothing to increase the pool of human donor hearts, and they negatively impact the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) waiting list by increasing the size of the waiting pool. This paper identifies and explores the ethical challenges presented by the use of LVADs as a bridging technology for heart transplant candidates. Although LVADs raise some ethical concerns, these concerns are outweighed by the proven medical efficacy of these devices. Thus, this technology should continue to be used and further developed. (shrink)

The resurgence of psychedelic research has brought with it unique ethical considerations, including the role of personal psychedelic experience among facilitators. Some have argued that personal ps...

ABSTRACTIn this article, I demonstrate how Louise Bourgeois used her artworks not only to better understand herself but also to cultivate a self capable of taking control of and reshaping the material of her past. Exploring her artworks in the context of Michel Foucault's understanding of technologies of the self, I both contribute to the appreciation of Bourgeois’ work and show how visual artworks can be used to understand, cultivate, and transform aspects of the self. Foucault's understanding of our subjectivity, (...) as formed and deployed by power tactics, suggests the need for the formation of new subjectivities as a tactic of resistance. While his view of subjectivity as contingently created allows for the possibility that it could be different, his understanding of the conditions of its creation in terms of power tactics seems to constrain the possibilities for alternative subjectivities. I argue that artworks can help us understand the contingency of our subjectivity and illustrate how something new can be created out of existing conditions, in ways that may disrupt those very conditions. Further, in addition to bringing us to an awareness of the possibility of creating new subjectivities, artworks can directly contribute to this process for both artists and audience members. Turning to Foucault's own understanding of Stoic writing practices as a means of knowing and controlling the self, I use Bourgeois’ work to illustrate how artworks can operate as technologies of the self, which work directly on the self, extending Foucault's understanding of the role of writing to consider the particular contribution that visual artworks can make. I explore how the visual form, sculptural medium, and materials of Louise Bourgeois’ works contribute to their operation as technologies of the self which can allow one to relate to oneself differently. (shrink)

Certain anaphoric forms are widely supposed to give rise to ‘de se’ interpretations. Castanteda (1966a/b, 1967) argues that intensive reflexive anaphors such as ‘he himself’ and ‘she herself’ act as devices for the indirect report of essentially ‘first person’ contents when they occur with singular antecedents. In this paper, I argue that first and third person pronouns that occur as anaphors on c-commanding quantified antecedents (so-called ‘bound variable pronouns’) also give rise to de se interpretations. I draw out a problem (...) that this observation raises for a well-accepted account according to which bound pronouns occur as featureless variables. I argue that the best way to account for de se interpretations of bound first and third person pronouns is to abandon the view that pronouns lack features when bound. I offer a new account of bound pronominal anaphora which assigns the features of pronouns a crucial role in deriving bound readings. (shrink)

_The Essential Framework: Classic Film and TV Essays_ Edited by Paul Willemen and Jim Pines London: Epigraph Publications, 1998 ISBN 1902458001 258 + vi pp.

Does neo-Rawlsian political philosophy offer an adequate account of the social conditions of capitalism? In this paper, I present two arguments for thinking that it does not. First, I develop a historicist critique of liberal egalitarianism, arguing that it provides a vision of social reality that is intimately connected to the historical and ideological constellation that I call postwar liberalism, and as such cannot account for social reality since the neoliberal revolutions of the late twentieth century. Second, I explore arguments (...) in Marxist and critical social theory that cast liberal egalitarianism as partial, on account of its inadequate portrait of capitalist society. In surveying responses to these critiques, I argue that merely extending liberal egalitarianism into new domains to account for how contemporary circumstances have changed since the mid-twentieth century cannot address the problem of its partial view of the social world. Taking seriously the insights of critical social theory and the study of capitalism should lead to a challenge to liberal egalitarianism, not an extension of it. (shrink)

One day soon it may be possible to replace a failing heart, liver, or kidney with a long-lasting mechanical replacement or perhaps even with a 3-D printed version based on the patient's own tissue. Such artificial organs could make transplant waiting lists and immunosuppression a thing of the past. Supposing that this happens, what will the ongoing care of people with these implants involve? In particular, how will the need to maintain the functioning of artificial organs over an extended period (...) affect patients and their doctors and the responsibilities of those who manufacture such devices? Drawing on lessons from the history of the cardiac pacemaker, this article offers an initial survey of the ethical issues posed by the need to maintain and service artificial organs. We briefly outline the nature and history of cardiac pacemakers, with a particular focus on the need for technical support, maintenance, and replacement of these devices. Drawing on the existing medical literature and on our conversations and correspondence with cardiologists, regulators, and manufacturers, we describe five sources of ethical issues associated with pacemaker maintenance: the location of the devices inside the human body, such that maintenance generates surgical risks; the complexity of the devices, which increases the risk of harms to patients as well as introducing potential injustices in access to treatment; the role of software—particularly software that can be remotely accessed—in the functioning of the devices, which generates privacy and security issues; the impact of continual development and improvement of the device; and the influence of commercial interests in the context of a medical device market in which there are several competing products. Finally, we offer some initial suggestions as to how these questions should be answered. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Both Nietzsche and Freud believe that our conscious experiences and actions are shaped by the activity of unconscious drives. Despite the significant differences in their understanding of drives and the obstacles faced uncovering them, there is sufficient common ground in their view of drives as multiple, contingent, and historically formed, to compare their methods of investigating them. For Nietzsche, solitude is essential to any project of self-knowledge, while Freud transplants the process of uncovering the activity of the drives from (...) the loneliness of a metaphorical desert to the therapeutic relationship in the consulting room, relying on the effects of transference between analyst and analysand. If drives are relational, then understanding their activity seems to require exploring them in the context of relationships. These relationships, however, may constrain the process of investigation. By contrasting the methods of Freud and Nietzsche, I highlight dangers present in both approaches. Such awareness allows us to find ways to mitigate the inevitable bias that their methods introduce. I conclude that the limitations of a purely solitary or dialogical approach to self-knowledge point to the need to employ both solitude and dialogue to explore our drives, combining a capacity for solitude with a capacity to engage. (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to reply to the thoughtful comments made on our book, Responsible Brains, by a stellar group of scholars. Our reply focuses on two topics discussed in the commenting papers: first, the issue of responsibility for negligent behavior; and second, the broad claim that facts about brain function are normatively inert. In response to worries that our theory lacks normative implications, we will concentrate on an area where our theory has clear relevance to law and legal (...) policy: juvenile responsibility. (shrink)

Background Medical boards and fitness-to-practice committees aim to ensure that medical students and physicians have “good moral character” and are not impaired in their practice of medicine. Method Presented here is an ethical analysis of stalking behavior by physicians and medical students, with focus on the case of Teleka Patrick, MD (a psychiatry resident practicing medicine while under a restraining order due to her alleged stalking behavior). Conclusions While a restraining order is not generally considered a criminal conviction, stalking behavior (...) is clearly unprofessional and a marker of inappropriate character and fitness, yet the reporting obligations for such matters are complex. Medical schools and training programs that fail to assess, record, and report matters of moral conduct such as this potentially allow impaired students to graduate and enter the work force (unless a robust licensing process identifies them). Patrick’s case should be a wake-up call for medical schools and medical boards to better integrate the professionalism domain into their operations. Further, the professionalism of students and doctors need to be integrated into the legal domain, so that those who are unfit to practice are, in fact, prevented from doing so. Guidance for integration is provided. (shrink)

The first ethicists of the 1970s paved the way for the three most familiar models of clinical ethics consultation: (1) a single consultant, (2) a member of a hospital ethics committee, and (3) a member of a subcommittee of a hospital ethics committee. Within the single consultant model there are (A) the lone ethicist (a member of hospital staff, working alone when consulting) and (B) the independent ethicist (a freelance, external consultant, working alone). This article discusses the structure and opportunities (...) offered by the freelance, independent ethicist model, and provides guidance for those who employ freelance, independent ethicists, as well as guidance for ethicists who are considering adopting this practice model. (shrink)

_In _Challenging the One Best System_, a team of leading education scholars offers a rich comparative analysis of the set of urban education governance reforms collectively known as the “portfolio management model.”_ They investigate the degree to which this model—a system of schools operating under different types of governance and with different degrees of autonomy—challenges the standard structure of district governance famously characterized by David Tyack as “the one best system.” The authors examine the design and enactment of the portfolio (...) management model in three major cities: New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Denver. They identify the five interlocking mechanisms at the core of the model—planning and oversight, choice, autonomy, human capital, and school supports—and show how these are implemented differently in each city. Using rich qualitative data from extensive interviews, the authors trace the internal tensions and tradeoffs that characterize these systems and highlight the influence of historical and contextual factors as well. Most importantly, they question whether the portfolio management model represents a fundamental restructuring of education governance or more incremental change, and whether it points in the direction of meaningful improvement in school practices. Drawing on a rigorous, multimethod study, _Challenging the One Best System_ represents a significant contribution to our understanding of system-level change in education. (shrink)

Surgical innovation promises improvements in healthcare, but it also raises ethical issues including risks of harm to patients, conflicts of interest and increased injustice in access to health care. In this article, we focus on risks of injustice, and use a case study of robotic prostatectomy to identify features of surgical innovation that risk introducing or exacerbating injustices. Interpreting justice as encompassing matters of both efficiency and equity, we first examine questions relating to government decisions about whether to publicly fund (...) access to innovative treatments. Here the case of robotic prostatectomy exemplifies the difficulty of accommodating healthcare priorities such as improving the health of marginalized groups. It also illustrates challenges with estimating the likely long-term costs and benefits of a new intervention, the difficulty of comparing outcomes of an innovative treatment to those of established treatments, and the further complexity associated with patient and surgeon preferences. Once the decision has been made to fund a new procedure, separate issues of justice arise at the level of providing care to individual patients. Here, the case of robotic prostatectomy exemplifies how features of surgical innovation, such as surgeon learning curves and the need for an adequate volume of cases at a treatment centre, can exacerbate injustices associated with treatment cost and the logistics of travelling for treatment. Drawing on our analysis, we conclude by making a number of recommendations for the just introduction of surgical innovations. (shrink)

Forward-looking aims tend to play a much less significant role than retribution in justifying criminal punishment, especially in common law systems. In this paper I attempt to reinvigorate the idea that there are important forward-looking justifications for criminal law and punishment by looking to social theories of responsibility. I argue that the criminal law may be justified at the institutional level because it is a part of larger responsibility practices that have the effect of bolstering our reasons-responsiveness by making us (...) sensitive to the potential reactive attitudes of a larger societal audience. I further claim that forward-looking effects may justify criminal law institutions even if retribution is the primary aim of assigning punishments to specific offenders. (shrink)

Current interpretations of the political theory of Judith Shklar focus to a disabling extent on her short, late article (1989); commentators take this late essay as representative of her work as a whole and thus characterize her as an anti-totalitarian, Cold War liberal. Other interpretations situate her political thought alongside followers of John Rawls and liberal political philosophy. Challenging the centrality of fear in Shklar's thought, this essay examines her writings on utopian and normative thought, the role of history in (...) political thinking and her notions of ordinary cruelty and injustice. In particular, it shifts emphasis away from an exclusive focus on her late writings in order to consider works published throughout her long career at Harvard University, from 1950 until her death in 1992. By surveying the range of Shklar's critical standpoints and concerns, it suggests that postwar American liberalism was not as monolithic as many interpreters have assumed. Through an examination of her attitudes towards her forebears and contemporaries, it shows why the dominant interpretations of Shklarmigrare flawed. In fact, Shklar moved restlessly between these two categories, and drew from each tradition. By thinking about both hope and memory, she bridged the gap between two distinct strands of postwar American liberalism. (shrink)