Equality and Value-holism

In this paper, I consider a recent challenge to egalitarianism raised by Michael Huemer. Huemer?s challenge takes the form of a dilemma: egalitarians can either be atomists or holists about equality?s value. If they are atomists, then they must accept that equality in fact does not have intrinsic value; if they are holists, then their view will be inconsistent with an intuitively very plausible form of consequentialism. I show that this dilemma should not trouble egalitarians. Egalitarians can be holists about value and still embrace consequentialism

The Integrity of Religious Believers

According to Cécile Laborde, persons with religious commitments that are incidentally burdened by generally applicable laws should, under certain circumstances, be provided with an exemption from those laws. Labore’s justification for this view is that religious commitments are a type of commitment with which a person must comply if she is to maintain her integrity. I argue that Laborde´s account is insufficiently demanding in terms of the other-regarding attitudes it expects people to have before they can make claims to exemptions based on their integrity. The reason for this is that Laborde’s account rests on what I call a ‘non-moralised’ view of integrity. I raise some criticisms of this view and defend an alternative, ‘moralised’ view of integrity, according to which a religious person’s integrity depends on whether the practice she wishes to perform complies with certain moral constraints

Climate Justice and Historical Responsibility

Many agree that developed states must bear greater burdens in tacking climate change than developing states for two reasons: their greater historical responsibility for global warming and their greater wealth. People disagree, however, about the relative importance of these two reasons. This article develops an "institutional view" to address this issue, which consists of two claims. First, many past emissions of greenhouse gases that took place prior to the establishment of legitimate institutions of global climate governance do not give rise to climate related duties. Secondly, the absence of legitimate institutional global governance, more generally, undermines full rights to wealth on the part of developed states and thus removes an objection to their having to contribute more to tackling the challenges of climate change. The upshot is that, at present, climate duties should be allocated between states mainly on the basis of wealth rather than history

Ageing and equality under the law

El envejecimiento de la población genera presiones para la reforma social. Dado que las personas mayores de 60 años constituyen una proporción cada vez mayor de la población, surgen nuevos desafíos y oportunidades, por ejemplo, en el lugar de trabajo y en el ámbito de la atención, por nombrar solo dos contextos para la reforma social. Este artículo examina cómo la ley debería regular la reforma social en una sociedad que envejece. Más específicamente, examina cómo debe interpretarse desde un punto de vista normativo la prohibición legal de discriminación por edad presente en varias jurisdicciones. El artículo ante todo reivindica que deberíamos respaldar una interpretación estricta de la discriminación por edad. De acuerdo con esta interpretación, la discriminación por edad prohíbe solo las políticas y prácticas que muestran falta de respeto a las personas debido a su edad. Una interpretación más amplia de la discriminación por edad que prohíbe también las políticas y prácticas que tienen un impacto diferencial en los intereses de las personas debido a su edad es injustificada. Después de elaborar el caso contra la amplia interpretación de la discriminación por edad, el artículo explica la interpretación estrecha con más detalle al profundizar en el sentido relevante en el que las políticas y prácticas pueden no mostrar «falta de respeto » a las personas debido a su edad. A continuación, ilustra la relevancia práctica de la interpretación estricta de la prohibición de la discriminación por edad en el contexto de la jurisprudencia del Tribunal de Justicia de las Comunidades EuropeasThe ageing of a population creates pressure for social reform. As persons aged above 60 make up an increasing proportion of the population, new challenges and opportunities arise for example in the workplace and in the sphere of care, to name just two contexts for social reform. This article examines how the law should regulate social reform in an ageing society. More specifically, it examines how the legal prohibition on age-discrimination present in a number of jurisdictions should be interpreted from a normative point of view. The main claim of the article is that we should endorse a narrow construal the legal prohibition of age-discrimination. According to this construal the prohibition of age-discrimination prohibits only policies and practices that show disrespect for persons due to their age. A wider construal that prohibits also policies and practices that have a differential impact on the interests of persons because of their age is unjustified. After elaborating the case against the wide construal of age-discrimination, the article explains the narrow construal in more detail by elaborating on the relevant sense in which policies and practices may not show «disrespect» for persons due to their age. It then illustrates the practical relevance of the narrow construal of the prohibition against age-discrimination in the context of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justic

Children or Migrants as Public Goods?

Why, and to what extent, must taxpayers share the costs of raising children with parents? The most influential argument over this question has been the public goods argument: taxpayers must share costs with parents because and to the extent that child-rearing contributes towards public goods by helping to develop valuable human capital. However, political theorists have not examined the public goods argument in a context in which replacement migration is available: if replacement migration can provide valuable human capital more efficiently than child- rearing, can the public goods argument still justify a taxpayer obligation to share the costs of child-rearing? This article argues that there are importantly different versions of the public goods argument, and that on a plausible version of that argument, it can withstand the replacement migration challenge under most circumstances

Locke, natural law and civil peace: Reply to Tate

In this comment, I reply to two objections John Tate raises against my discussion of the trajectory of Locke's ideas on toleration (in an earlier article published in EJPT, ‘Locke’s Tracts and the Anarchy of the Religious Conscience’) Tate maintains that I misunderstand the role of natural law and civil peace in Locke's thought. I defend my interpretation of the role of natural law and show that Tate is mistaken in his claim that Locke's concern to preserve civil peace conflicted with his separate concern to protect individual rights

Allograft Selection for Transepiphyseal Tumor Resection Around the Knee Using Three-Dimensional Surface Registration

Transepiphyseal tumor resection is a common surgical procedure in patients with malignant bone tumors. The aim of this study is to develop and validate a computer-assisted method for selecting the most appropriate allograft from a cadaver bone bank. Fifty tibiae and femora were 3D reconstructed from computed tomography (CT) images. A transepiphyseal resection was applied to all of them in a virtual environment. A tool was developed and evaluated that compares each metaphyseal piece against all other bones in the data bank. This is done through a template matching process, where the template is extracted from the contralateral healthy bone of the same patient. The method was validated using surface distance metrics and statistical tests comparing it against manual methods. The developed algorithm was able to accurately detect the bone segment that best matches the patient's anatomy. The automatic method showed improvement over the manual counterpart. The proposed method also substantially reduced computation time when compared to state-of-the-art methods as well as the manual selection. Our findings suggest that the accuracy, robustness, and speed of the developed method are suitable for clinical trials and that it can be readily applied for preoperative allograft selectio