Recommending the Most Encompassing Opposing and Endorsing Arguments in Debates

Arguments are essential objects in DirectDemocracyP2P, where they can occur both in association with signatures for petitions, or in association with other debated decisions, such as bug sorting by importance. The arguments of a signer on a given issue are grouped into one single justification, are classified by the type of signature (e.g., supporting or opposing), and can be subject to various types of threading. Given the available inputs, the two addressed problems are: (i) how to recommend the best justification, of a given type, to a new voter, (ii) how to recommend a compact list of justifications subsuming the majority of known arguments for (or against) an issue. We investigate solutions based on weighted bipartite graphs.Comment: 10 pages. This report was reviewed by a committee within Florida Tech during April 2014, and had been written in Summer 2013 by summarizing a set of emails exchanged during Spring 2013, concerning the DirectDemocracyP2P.net syste

Happy Spells? Constructing and Deconstructing a Private-Law Perspective on Subsidiarity

Syftet med denna studie är att belysa olika synsätt kring genus som finns bland tre arbetslag inom förskolans verksamhet, den syftar även till att lyfta fram olika arbetssätt kring genus som används. Metoderna som använts för att samla in empiri till studien var gruppintervjuer med tre arbetslag på tre olika förskolor från samma kommun i Sverige, samt även observationer på varje förskola. Det genomfördes fyra observationer på varje förskola under två samlingar, en fri lek och en hallsituation, detta för att ge en så bred och tydlig bild av pedagogernas förhållningssätt som möjligt. Resultatet var delvis varierande då pedagogerna delade samma synsätt på vad genus innebär men hade olika tankar kring vad eventuella skillnader mellan pojkar och flickor beror på. Arbetslagen hade delvis olika syn på hur arbetet bör bedrivas för att verksamheten ska vara en så gynnande miljö som möjligt för både flickor och pojkar. Både likheter och olikheter kring arbetssätt framkom alltså under intervjuer och observationer. Utifrån det begränsade antalet intervjuer och observationer som genomfördes så kan en slutsats dras kring att den syn på orsakerna till eventuella skillnader mellan könen sedan verkar påverka pedagogernas arbetssätt. En annan slutsats utifrån denna studie är att även om pedagogerna har teoretisk kunskap kring genus så krävs ändå dokumentation för att synliggöra och förändra det egna bemötandet av barnen

The French anti-racist movement and the 'Muslim Question'

First paragraph: It has been suggested that there may be less sympathy for the notion that Muslim minorities are subjected to racism by virtue of their real or perceived ‘Muslimness' than there is for Jewish minorities in Europe. Public anxiety over the ‘Muslim question' leads to hesitancy in naming this phenomenon as ‘anti-Muslim sentiment' or ‘Islamophobia' (Meer and Modood 2009). This situation is clearly in evidence in contemporary France where the ‘Muslim question' has split the anti-racist movement The split is symptomatic of a more general division within the French Left in relation to Islam and Muslims. It has coincided with a series of controversies and debates relating to Muslims in France that began emerging in the year 2000, foremost among them those relating to the adoption of the law on ‘secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools' (also known as the ‘Headscarf Law') in 2004. This was then followed by the ban on face covering in 2010 which aimed to stop Muslim women from wearing either the niqab or burqa in public

Theoretical foundations for human rights

This article explores an alternative to the established dichotomy between philosophical (natural law) accounts of human rights, characterized by a foundationalist tendency, and political (practice-based) accounts of human rights, which aspire to be non-foundationalist. I argue that in order to justify human rights practice, political accounts of human rights cannot do without the support of theoretical foundations, although not necessarily of the natural-law variety. As an alternative to natural-law metaphysics, a deflationary theory of human rights, based on a deflationary account of truth, is put forward. Starting from a distinction between ‘extreme’ and ‘moderate’ forms of deflationism, this article defends a constructivist theory of human rights grounded on the Humean notion of conventionalism. This innovative approach to human rights provides political conceptions of human rights with the foundations (or quasi-foundations) they need, but are currently lacking

Popular Constitutionalism and the Rule of Recognition: Whose Practices Ground U.S. Law?

The law within each legal system is a function of the practices of some social group. In short, law is a kind of socially grounded norm. H.L.A Hart famously developed this view in his book, The Concept of Law, by arguing that law derives from a social rule, the so-called “rule of recognition.” But the proposition that social facts play a foundational role in producing law is a point of consensus for all modern jurisprudents in the Anglo-American tradition: not just Hart and his followers in the positivist school, most prominently Joseph Raz and Jules Coleman, but also the anti-positivist Ronald Dworkin, who argues that law necessarily synthesizes moral considerations with social facts. But which group’s practices ground each legal system? In particular, which group’s practices undergird U.S. law? Positivists since Hart have universally pointed to either officials or judges as the “recognitional community” (my term): the group such that its rules, conventions, cooperative activities, or practices in some other sense are the social facts from which the law of a given legal system derives. So Hart and all other positivists would identify either U.S. officials or U.S. judges as the recognitional community for U.S. law. This Article grapples with the tension between the positivist’s official- or judge-centered account of the recognitional community and the “popular constitutionalism” now so widely defended by constitutional scholars such as Larry Kramer, Robert Post, Reva Siegel, Mark Tushnet, Jeremy Waldron, and many others. Surely the popular constitutionalist would want to claim that U.S. citizens, not judges or officials, are the recognitional community for U.S. law. I term this position “deep popular constitutionalism.” Indeed, it turns out that Dworkin’s account of law, in its ambition to generate associative moral obligations for the citizenry as a whole, implies deep popular constitutionalism. Here there is a disagreement, hitherto unnoticed, between Dworkin and the positivists. My solution to this disagreement – to the debate between deep popular constitutionalists and deep official or judicial supremacists -- is to dissolve it by providing a group-relative account of law. Social norms, such as norms of dress or eating, are clearly group-relative. A particular dressing or eating behavior may be socially appropriate relative to one group’s norms, yet socially inappropriate relative to another’s. This Article extends the group-relative view from social norms to law itself, with a particular focus on U.S. law and constitutionalism. Part I surveys the jurisprudential literature. It shows how Hart and successor positivists identify the rule of recognition as a social practice engaged in by officials or some subset of officials (judges), rather than citizens generally, and argues that Dworkin by contrast sees the citizenry as a whole as his recognitional community. Parts II and III defend a group-relative account of law. Part II argues, with reference to the U.S. experience, that multiple groups can simultaneously instantiate the kind of social fact that undergirds law, be it a convention, a social norm, a “shared cooperative activity” (SCA), or something else. At many points in U.S. constitutional history, multiple official or citizen groups, defined along departmental, partisan, regional, state-federal, religious, or other lines, have accepted competing rules of recognition for U.S. law. Part III argues that “law” functions, primarily, as either an explanatory or a normative construct, and that insisting on a single recognitional community for each legal system would be arbitrary, both for explanatory purposes and for normative purposes. Part IV considers the many implications of the group-relative account for U.S. constitutional theory – in particular, for popular constitutionalism

Hyperactive around the world? The history of ADHD in global perspective

A recent study has claimed that the global rate of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is 5.29%. Any variation in such rates in specific studies, argue the authors, was due to methodological problems, rather than differences in the actual distribution of ADHD. Such reports strengthen the flawed notion that ADHD is a universal and essential disorder, found in all human populations across time and place. While it is true that the concept of ADHD has spread from the USA, where it emerged during the late 1950s, to most corners of the globe, such superficial pronouncements mask profound differences in how ADHD has been interpreted in different countries and regions. In this paper, I compare ADHD's emergence in Canada, the UK, Scandinavia, China and India, arguing that, while ADHD can be considered a global phenomenon, behavioural and educational imperfections remain very much a product of local historical, cultural and political factors

Guidelines for a Pluralist Society: Could Rawls Help with Struggles Over Identity

According to Kwame Appiah, “the great liberal struggle” since the Enlightenment has concerned whether the state should treat citizens as self-directed individuals or acknowledge them in terms of social identities—ethnicity, culture, religion, or gender. Some thinkers, Appiah among them, have proposed solutions to this struggle and advocate for amending liberalism to include space for the recognition of difference. These “solutions” share at least one thing in common: critiques of John Rawls. However, Rawls seems to have a palatable answer to “the great liberal struggle,” though it seems he would frame it differently. Indeed, he acknowledges “the fact of pluralism,” as a permanent condition of our experience. In Part One I respond to three criticisms of Rawls’ ability to help with struggles over identity. I first explore Rawls’ understanding of a person in reference to Appiah’s discussion of the role of the state in “soul making,” inspired by J.S. Mill. Second, I consider Rawls’ understanding of “human nature” by responding to Will Kymlicka in considering among other things what Rawls’ “primary goods” might involve for cultural life. Finally, I will examine Rawls’ distinction between public political culture and the background culture in terms of the idea of public reason in response to Seyla Benhabib’s criticism that the distinction fails to elucidate guidelines in the face of many modern gender and familial issues. In Part Two, I offer two ways in which Rawls’ theory could be amended or extended in order to more adequately account for identity. First, Rawls’ theory could be amended to consider the role of comprehensive doctrines in the overlapping consensus. Second, Rawls’ theory could invite identity considerations into the political conception of primary goods

The labour party, Europe and consensus politics 1960. 1975

This thesis concerns the Labour Party and British European Policy. While Labour, historically, has had a pluralistic structure and has been prone to internal division, in Government the Party felt compelled by the external environment within which it was operating, to maintain the 'consensus’ view. It was able to do this because the post- war consensus was strong enough to cement it into the governmental process.(^1) Out of office, however. Labour opposed the same policies it had proposed in Government. By doing so the Party performed its constitutional role of opposition and was, more importantly, also able to maintain a semblance of Party unity. So before elections and while the Party is in power, the tendency is usually towards an ideological compromise around which the Party can unite, if only temporarily. In opposition, however, the ideological differences become more acute, there is more ideological debate and those on the extreme ends of either wing of the Party stand a better chance of influencing policy. Compromises made while in government may heighten ideological disputes once the Party loses an election, since a genuine compromise is almost impossible.(^2) Applying these insights to the seemingly perennial issue of Britain's relationship with Europe, our story is fundamentally about how Labour simultaneously dealt with the emerging consensus about Common Market membership in the 1960's and early 1970's, whilst also dealing with the abiding problem of party unity. In this thesis we examine how unity in the Labour Party was so difficult to achieve for the Party leadership during a period in which British governments were persistently confronted with the need to accommodate significant changes in Britain's global role

Progressive Era Conceptions of the Corporation and the Failure of the Federal Chartering Movement

Despite the economic integration of the several states and the broad regulatory authority of the federal government, the internal affairs of business corporations remain primarily governed by state law. The origins of this system are closely tied to the decentralized history of the United States, but the reasons for its continued persistence—in the face of significant federalization pressures—are not obvious. Indeed, federalization of corporate law was a major political goal during the Progressive Era, a period which witnessed significant expansion of federal involvement in the national economy. By examining the historical record of Progressive Era policy debates, this Article bridges the analytical gap between historical and corporate legal scholarship, bringing to light the specific reasons why a federal corporation law was never enacted. Drawing on primary source evidence, the conclusions of this Article are as follows. First, proponents of federal chartering were deeply divided in their attitudes toward corporations, some viewing them as a dangerous threat, others viewing them as central to economic progress. These divisions led to conflicting views on the very purpose of corporate regulation, making agreement on the content of a federal corporation act unlikely. Second, notwithstanding these divisions, many reformers viewed corporations as directly accountable to the public interest. Legislative proposals were therefore framed in terms of benefiting the public, and only secondarily addressed the shareholder interests that dominate corporate law today. Finally, it was the conflicted nature of the political support for federal chartering legislation—not any specific policy preference for maintaining corporate law federalism—that led to the persistence of state-based corporate law. Ultimately, the absence of federal corporate law was a product of historical circumstance, rather than any conscious determination of legal or economic policy