In defence of cosmopolitanism

David Miller has objected to the cosmopolitan argument that it is arbitrary and hence unfair to treat individuals differently on account of things for which they are not responsible. Such a view seems to require, implausibly, that individuals be treated identically even where (unchosen) needs differ. The objection is, however, inapplicable where the focus of cosmopolitan concern is arbitrary disadvantage rather than arbitrary treatment. This 'unfair disadvantage argument' supports a form of global luck egalitarianism. Miller also objects that cosmopolitanism is unable to accommodate special obligations generated by national membership. Cosmopolitanism can, however, accommodate many special obligations to compatriots. Those which it cannot accommodate are only morally compelling if we assume what the objection claims to prove - that cosmopolitanism is mistaken. Cosmopolitanism construed as global luck egalitarianism is therefore able to withstand both of Miller's objections, and has significant independent appeal on account of the unfair disadvantage argument

The Professional Responsibility Case for Valid and Nondiscriminatory Bar Exams

Title VII protects against workplace discrimination in part through the scrutiny of employment tests whose results differ based on race, gender, or ethnicity. Such tests are said to have a disparate impact, and their use is illegal unless their validity can be established. Validity means that the test is job-related and measures what it purports to measure. Further, under Title VII, even a valid employment test with a disparate impact could be struck down if less discriminatory alternatives exist.Licensing tests, including bar exams, have been found to be outside these Title VII protections. But the nondiscrimination values that animate Title VII disparate impact analysis for employers apply just as fundamentally to attorney licensing through principles of professional responsibility and legal ethics.This Article examines the civil rights cases from the 1970s that established bar examiners’ immunity from Title VII. It then analyzes our professional duties of public protection, competence, and nondiscrimination that require valid, nondiscriminatory attorney licensing tests, suggesting that the Title VII framework be borrowed for this purpose. The Article then undertakes that scrutiny, presenting evidence of the disparate impact of bar exams and their unproven validity, and suggesting feasible, less discriminatory modifications and alternatives. In other words, core professional responsibilities require consideration and adoption of valid licensing mechanisms that can reduce any disparate impact in who we permit to enter our profession, and who we exclude

Production Liability

It is well known that many consumer goods are produced under dangerous working conditions. Employers that directly supervise the production of these goods evade enforcement. Activists and scholars have argued that we must hold the manufacturers and retailers that purchase goods made in sweatshops accountable. However, there has been little movement toward such accountability. Responsibility for the conditions under which goods are made—what I call “production liability”—entails assigning responsibility for workers to firms that do not directly employ them. Production liability, therefore, conflicts with deep intuitions about the boundaries of individual responsibility. This Article offers a moral and economic defense of production liability that is responsive to that challenge. The Article identifies the particular moral responsibility that manufacturers bear as a public form of complicity. It further considers the economic logic of assigning legal liability to such firms and the optimal form that liability should take. This Article makes the case that production liability can update our legal regime for employment in the way that products liability did for consumer law

Ranking Agents of Justice: When Should the Corporation Act?

Theorists have argued that under certain background conditions the commercial, for-profit corporation might bear responsibility to act to advance justice. However, other agents too may be responsible to take remedial action, especially when the state defaults. This raises the question of the sequence in which the agents should act. I develop a framework that offers guidance in determining when the corporation ought to intervene to advance justice. The existing literature typically identifies responsibility-bearers solely by their capacity to remedy an unjust situation which I believe to be too simplistic. I introduce two additional grounds for identifying responsibility-bearers, a role-based account and participation-based account and show that this pluralist approach delivers a better account of who bears responsibility to act and when to discharge this responsibility

The Profession of Law: Columbia Law School’s Use of Experiential Learning Techniques to Teach Professional Responsibility

Columbia Law School\u27s ethics course, The Profession of Law, is an interactive, experiential exploration of legal ethics. The course puts students in a role and asks them to deal, with issues that most of them are likely to encounter, and then the students are asked to reflect on what their role-playing performance has taught them about legal ethics

Beyond Training Prosecutors about their Disclosure Obligations: Can Prosecutors\u27 Offices Learn from their Lawyers\u27 Mistakes Symposium: New Perspectives on Brady and Other Disclosure Obligations: What Really Works

Prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers, judges, and legal academics from around the country recently met at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York to discuss prosecutors\u27 compliance with their disclosure obligations. The overarching question was how prosecutors\u27 offices could do a better job. To assist representatives of the legal profession in approaching this question from new directions, the Symposium organizers invited speakers from outside the legal profession to talk about the causes of error and methods used to reduce error in other contexts. One of the themes was that, outside the practice of law, individuals and institutions learn from their mistakes. This Article considers whether prosecutors\u27 offices can identify and learn from their lawyers\u27 disclosure mistakes

Accidental rightness

In this paper I argue that the disagreement between modern moral philosophers and (some) virtue ethicists about whether motive affects rightness is a result of conceptual disagreement, and that when they develop a theory of ‘right action,’ the two parties respond to two very different questions. Whereas virtue ethicists tend to use ‘right’ as interchangeable with ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’ and as implying moral praise, modern moral philosophers use it as roughly equivalent to ‘in accordance with moral obligation.’ One implication of this is that the possibility of an act being right by accident does not pose a problem for consequentialism or deontology. A further implication is that it reveals a shortcoming in virtue ethics, namely that it does not—yet needs to—present an account of moral obligation

Towards a successful international greenhouse gas emissions trading

The inclusion of emissions trading in the Kyoto Protocol reflects an important decision to address climate change issues through flexible market mechanisms. In this paper, we have addressed a number of policy issues that must be considered in designing and implementing an international greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading scheme. These include how much of a Party’s assigned amounts of GHG emissions can be traded internationally; emissions trading models; competitiveness concern in the allocation of emissions permits; banking and borrowing; accountability; emissions trading system enlargement; and bubbles. Although our focus has been exclusively on emissions trading, we have discussed its relationship with the clean development mechanism, joint implementation and bubbles wherever necessary. By providing some new insights, the paper aims to contribute to the design and operationlization of an international emissions trading scheme.Bubbles; carbon tax; clean development mechanism; emissions trading; greenhouse gases; international competitiveness; joint implementation; Kyoto Protocol