Addiction, Genetics, and Criminal Responsibility

In light of the abundance of studies focusing on the genetic contributions to addiction, Morse develops a meaningful background on the legal and scientific images of behavior, the disease concept of addiction, and the aspects of addiction for which a person may be held legally accountable

Biological Terrorism, Emerging Diseases, and National Security

Examines the extent to which bioterrorist attacks have proven or may prove difficult to distinguish from outbreaks of emerging diseases. Makes recommendations for how the U.S. could better prepare to meet the threat of biological terrorism

The Implications of Psychological Research Related to Unconscious Discrimination and Implicit Bias in Proving Intentional Discrimination

Building on the psychological research and publications indicating that much discrimination is unconscious and the result of implicit bias, this Article addresses the utility of laws that prohibit intentional discrimination in addressing this recently understood form of discrimination. More specifically, does unconscious discrimination violate a statute that prohibits intentional discrimination? The Article argues that the answer is yes.Unconscious discrimination is the result of stereotyping or categorization, a cognitive mechanism used by most people to simplify the task of perceiving, processing and retaining information about people. Absent a special effort to overcome this cognitive mechanism in making decisions about people, such decisions are frequently made on the basis of the category into which the decisionmaker places the person, rather than an individualized assessment. When a decisionmaker chooses to base decisions on the category into which an individual falls, rather than an individual assessment, the decisionmaker has made an intentional choice. Thus, the argument advanced here is that the intentional decision to discriminate is made when a decisionmaker chooses to use categories rather than an individual assessment, not at the precise point where a specific decision is made. Therefore, while a specific decision to hire or fire may not be the result of intentional discrimination at the point where the decision is made, it is, nevertheless, the product of intentional discrimination because at some point the decisionmaker decided to base decisions on categories rather than an individual assessment.The Article also discusses the common proof schemes for disparate treatment claims, including the direct method, the indirect method (McDonnell-Douglas) and mixed-motive. When the direct method is properly understood to include circumstantial evidence, it becomes the dominant method of establishing intentional discrimination. The key to proving intentional discrimination is showing that the decisionmaker engages in stereotyping and a likely way to establish this is through comments made by the decisionmaker, not necessarily in the context of the challenged decision. Once it is established that the decisionmaker engages in stereotyping and has a negative view of persons in the challenger\u27s protected group, the burden of persuasion should shift to the one whose decision is being challenged to establish an affirmative defense. What constitutes an affirmative defense, and the effect of such a defense, is explained in the Article.Understanding how discrimination works, will help guide organizations that want to eliminate all discrimination, including unconscious discrimination. Once discrimination is better understood, preventive measures can be tailored to addressing the problem

Indemnification and Advancement Through an Agency Lens

DeMott discusses the doctrines that define entitlements to indemnification. In the corporate context, indemnification is better grounded, as in the Model Business Corporation Act (MBCA), in the necessity of furnishing corporate directors with appropriate protection against personal risk. To be sure, as the MBCA\u27s official comments implicitly acknowledge, the position of officers, especially senior executive officers, does not fit neatly and exclusively into either an agent or a non-agent category for indemnification purposes

Practical Knowledge and Luminosity

Many philosophers hold that if an agent acts intentionally, she must know what she is doing. Although the scholarly consensus for many years was to reject the thesis in light of presumed counterexamples by Donald Davidson, several scholars have recently argued that attention to aspectual distinctions and the practical nature of this knowledge shows that these counterexamples fail. In this paper I defend a new objection against the thesis, one modelled after Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument. Since this argument relies on general principles about the nature of knowledge rather than on intuitions about fringe cases, the recent responses that have been given to defuse the force of Davidson’s objection are silent against it. Moreover, the argument suggests that even weaker theses connecting practical entities with knowledge are also false. Recent defenders of the thesis that there is a necessary connection between knowledge and intentional action are motivated by the insight that this connection is non-accidental. I close with a positive proposal to account for the non-accidentality of this link without appeal to necessary connections by drawing an extended analogy between practical and perceptual knowledge

Continuity in Morality and Law

According to an influential and intuitively appealing argument, morality is usually continuous, namely, a gradual change in one morally significant factor triggers a gradual change in another; the law should usually track morality; therefore, the law should often be continuous. This argument is illustrated by cases such as the following example: since the moral difference between a defensive action that is reasonable and one that is just short of being reasonable is small, the law should not impose a severe punishment when the action is almost reasonable and no punishment at all when the action is reasonable. In this Article, I consider two doubts regarding this argument. First, the premise that morality is continuous in such cases is incompatible with the common view that the moral status of actions is not continuous since there is an important difference between actions that are permissible and actions that are wrong— even if this difference is due to a difference that is very small, such as the one between an action whose consequences are the best and an action whose consequences are just slightly less good. This view extends also to the overall moral status of agents given the common assumption that it depends on the moral status of their actions. This is an important challenge that the Continuity Argument should confront. However, I argue that the best account of morality is more scalar than the common view in these respects. Therefore, I conclude that the first premise of the Continuity Argument is correct in this regard, although it is based on a minority view. The second doubt concerns the scope of the second premise: since there are reasons both in favor and against legal continuity, and the applicability and force of these reasons depend not only on various moral propositions but also on contingent non-moral facts, we often lack the evidence to determine the degree to which the law, at a certain place and time, should be continuous, and specifically that it should often be continuous

Blame, Communication, and Morally Responsible Agency

Many important theorists – e.g., Gary Watson and Stephen Darwall – characterize blame as a communicative entity and argue that this entails that morally responsible agency requires not just rational but moral competence. In this paper, I defend this argument from communication against three objections found in the literature. The first two reject the argument’s characterization of the reactive attitudes. The third urges that the argument is committed to a false claim