54,583 research outputs found

    From rights to prerogatives

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    Deontologists believe in two key exceptions to the duty to promote the good: restrictions forbid us from harming others, and prerogatives permit us not to harm ourselves. How are restrictions and prerogatives related? A promising answer is that they share a source in rights. I argue that prerogatives cannot be grounded in familiar kinds of rights, only in something much stranger: waivable rights against oneself

    The First Amendment and the End of the World

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    This paper deals with a serious question that is largely unaddressed by the U.S. or international legal systems: how should society deal with inherently, catastrophically dangerous information—information that, in the wrong hands, could lead to the destruction of a city, a continent, or, conceivably, the entire planet? Such information includes, but is not limited to, blueprints for nuclear weapons, as well as specific formulae for chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. The paper is not a critique of the existing statutes and regulations that various governments use to keep their secrets secret. Rather, it is a discussion of what to do when some such secrets are inevitably disclosed, or, more generally, how to deal with catastrophically dangerous information that is generated outside of governmental control. Addressing these issues is primarily a matter of policy, but policy with significant constitutional dimensions. Perhaps the most fundamental of those\ud dimensions is the question of whether a governmental restriction on receipt, dissemination, and even mere possession of information can be reconciled with the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment. Although existing authorities do not directly address the subject, what little authority there is suggests that reasonable restrictions upon the possession and dissemination of catastrophically dangerous information—even when that information is already within the public domain—can be implemented in a way that is consistent with the First Amendment. Given the growing urgency of the subject and the need for a comprehensive approach, I advocate a statutory solution in the United States that defines and limits access to catastrophically dangerous information, but which also limits governmental seizures and restrictions to only the most dangerous types of information, and which provides for a pre-seizure warrant requirement and expedited post-seizure judicial review. Given the global dimensions of the problem, I also advocate a corresponding international regime patterned upon the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968.\u

    Designing and Operating Safe and Secure Transit Systems: Assessing Current Practices in the United States and Abroad, MTI Report 04-05

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    Public transit systems around the world have for decades served as a principal venue for terrorist acts. Today, transit security is widely viewed as an important public policy issue and is a high priority at most large transit systems and at smaller systems operating in large metropolitan areas. Research on transit security in the United States has mushroomed since 9/11; this study is part of that new wave of research. This study contributes to our understanding of transit security by (1) reviewing and synthesizing nearly all previously published research on transit terrorism; (2) conducting detailed case studies of transit systems in London, Madrid, New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C.; (3) interviewing federal officials here in the United States responsible for overseeing transit security and transit industry representatives both here and abroad to learn about efforts to coordinate and finance transit security planning; and (4) surveying 113 of the largest transit operators in the United States. Our major findings include: (1) the threat of transit terrorism is probably not universal—most major attacks in the developed world have been on the largest systems in the largest cities; (2) this asymmetry of risk does not square with fiscal politics that seek to spread security funding among many jurisdictions; (3) transit managers are struggling to balance the costs and (uncertain) benefits of increased security against the costs and (certain) benefits of attracting passengers; (4) coordination and cooperation between security and transit agencies is improving, but far from complete; (5) enlisting passengers in surveillance has benefits, but fearful passengers may stop using public transit; (6) the role of crime prevention through environmental design in security planning is waxing; and (7) given the uncertain effectiveness of antitransit terrorism efforts, the most tangible benefits of increased attention to and spending on transit security may be a reduction in transit-related person and property crimes

    A \u3ci\u3eDr. Strangelove\u3c/i\u3e Situation : Nuclear Anxiety, Presidential Fallibility, and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment

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    This Article is a revisionist history of the ratification of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, which establishes procedures for remedying a vice presidential vacancy and for addressing presidential inability. During the Cold War, questions of presidential succession and the transfer of power in the case of inability were on the public’s mind and, in 1963, these questions became more urgent in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Traditional legal histories of the Amendment argue that President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was both the proximate and prime factor in the development of the Amendment, but they do not account for the pervasive nuclear anxiety inherent in American politics and culture at the time. Oral interviews of key actors, such as former Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, the Amendment’s architect, as well as examination of the Lyndon B. Johnson papers, the files of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, and other previously unexamined archives, offer new insight into the anxiety and thought processes of the President, Congress, and state legislators. With the ratification of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment on February 10, 1967, the nuclear anxiety of the era became ingrained in the Constitution itself. The framers of the Amendment adjusted America’s foundational document not as dictated by a momentary whim but by the exigencies of the times. With the goal of expanding the field of legal history by examining cultural and political factors, this Article argues that nuclear anxiety provides another important explanation for the incorporation of the Amendment

    The Cord Weekly (November 28, 1991)

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