Liberal equality: political not erinaceous

Ronald Dworkin’s Justice for Hedgehogs defends liberal political morality on the basis of a rich account of dignity as constitutive of living well. This article raises the Rawlsian concern that making political morality dependent on ethics threatens citizens’ political autonomy. Thereafter, it addresses whether the abandonment of (erinaceous) ethical foundations signals the demise of Dworkin’s liberalism and explores the possibility of laundering his conception so as to facilitate a marriage between the political philosophies of Rawls and Dworkin. The article finishes by rebutting some objections Dworkin raises against Rawls’s account of public reason

Law, Liberty and the Rule of Law (in a Constitutional Democracy)

In the hunt for a better--and more substantial--awareness of the “law,” The author intends to analyze the different notions related to the “rule of law” and to criticize the conceptions that equate it either to the sum of “law” and “rule” or to the formal assertion that “law rules,” regardless of its relationship to certain principles, including both “negative” and “positive” liberties. Instead, he pretends to scrutinize the principles of the “rule of law,” in general, and in a “constitutional democracy,” in particular, to conclude that the tendency to reduce the “democratic principle” to the “majority rule” (or “majority principle”), i.e. to whatever pleases the majority, as part of the “positive liberty,” is contrary both to the “negative liberty” and to the “rule of law” itself

Provisions Relating to IETF Documents

This document specifies a padding convention for use with the AES Key Wrap algorithm specified in RFC 3394. This convention eliminates the requirement that the length of the key to be wrapped be a multiple of 64 bits, allowing a key of any practical length to be wrapped. Status of This Memo This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright and License Notice Copyright (c) 2009 IETF Trust and the persons identified as th

Egalitarian justice and expected value

According to all-luck egalitarianism, the differential distributive effects of both brute luck, which defines the outcome of risks which are not deliberately taken, and option luck, which defines the outcome of deliberate gambles, are unjust. Exactly how to correct the effects of option luck is, however, a complex issue. This article argues that (a) option luck should be neutralized not just by correcting luck among gamblers, but among the community as a whole, because it would be unfair for gamblers as a group to be disadvantaged relative to non-gamblers by bad option luck; (b) individuals should receive the warranted expected results of their gambles, except insofar as individuals blamelessly lacked the ability to ascertain which expectations were warranted; and (c) where societal resources are insufficient to deliver expected results to gamblers, gamblers should receive a lesser distributive share which is in proportion to the expected results. Where all-luck egalitarianism is understood in this way, it allows risk-takers to impose externalities on non-risk-takers, which seems counterintuitive. This may, however, be an advantage as it provides a luck egalitarian rationale for assisting ‘negligent victims’

In defence of global egalitarianism

This essay argues that David Miller's criticisms of global egalitarianism do not undermine the view where it is stated in one of its stronger, luck egalitarian forms. The claim that global egalitarianism cannot specify a metric of justice which is broad enough to exclude spurious claims for redistribution, but precise enough to appropriately value different kinds of advantage, implicitly assumes that cultural understandings are the only legitimate way of identifying what counts as advantage. But that is an assumption always or almost always rejected by global egalitarianism. The claim that global egalitarianism demands either too little redistribution, leaving the unborn and dissenters burdened with their societies' imprudent choices, or too much redistribution, creating perverse incentives by punishing prudent decisions, only presents a problem for global luck egalitarianism on the assumption that nations can legitimately inherit assets from earlier generations – again, an assumption very much at odds with global egalitarian assumptions

Telling a trusted adult: Factors associated with the likelihood of disclosing child sexual abuse prior to and during a forensic interview

Background: Many child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors delay or withhold disclosure of their abuse, even when presenting for formal investigation interviews. Objective: This study examined factors that relate to the CSA disclosure process. Participants and Settings: Participants were CSA victims (N = 1,732) presenting to a Child Advocacy Center (CAC) for a forensic interview. Method: We tested a structural model to predict disclosure before and during a forensic interview using secondary data analysis. Results: Youth were less likely to disclose before a forensic interview if they witnessed domestic violence (β = -.233, p \u3c .05). Caregivers were less likely to believe the abuse allegation if the alleged perpetrator resided in the home β = -.386, p \u3c .05) and more likely to believe if the youth made a prior disclosure (β = .286, p \u3c .05). Youth were more likely to disclose during the forensic interview if they were older (β=.388, p \u3c .05), if the alleged perpetrator resided in their home (β=.209, p \u3c .05), if they disclosed prior (β=.254, p \u3c .05), and if their caregiver believed the allegation (β=.213, p \u3c . 05). The alleged perpetrator residing in the youth’s home (β=-0.082, p\u3c.05) and making a prior disclosure (β=0.060, p\u3c.05) were both indirectly associated with forensic interview disclosure through caregiver belief. Conclusions: Findings highlight the importance of the family context and caregiver belief in the disclosure process for youth involved in formal CSA investigations

Trouble in Paradise - A disabled person's right to the satisfaction of a self-defined need:Some conceptual and practical problems

This paper questions the usefulness of the rights-based approach to ameliorating the social situation of disabled people in Britain and advances two criticisms. First, that rights and self-de? ned needs have been under-theorised by disability theorists to the extent that they have insuf? ciently appreciated the problems that these approaches pose. The paper suggests that rights to appropriate resources to satisfy self-de? ned needs will generate vast numbers of competing rights claims and that the resulting tendency of rights to con? ict has been under-appreciated. Secondly, that there has been little consideration of how these con? icts might be reconciled. The ? rst two sections of the paper look at the concepts of ascribed and self-de? ned needs, respectively, whilst the ? nal one looks at some of the problems of the rights approach and some of the dif? culties of making self-de? ned need the basis of rights claims