The Democratic Standard Of Care In Tort Law

Social life is inherently risky. Who should bear the costs of accidental harm? That issue has been traditionally addressed in tort legal doctrine under the concept of breach of the negligence standard of care. Trial courts provide juries with instructions that, put roughly, direct the jury to decide whether the defendant’s conduct fell below what a reasonably prudent person would have done if in the defendant’s circumstances. Without further judicial direction on that issue, the jury effectively has excessive discretion in rendering a verdict. Such discretion, opens the door for at least two kinds of potential injustice. Juries could treat like cases differently, and juries can easily ignore or fail to give due consideration to a society’s diverse, irreconcilable, and competing conceptions of the good as to what constitutes reasonable prudence. To mitigate such, I have created “democratic standard theory.” I claim that a theory based on the overarching moral and political commitments of the Kantian tradition can only specify what constitutes negligent breach if it incorporates, as facts, the actual values of the individuals subject to the risk at issue. Since individuals’ comprehensive conceptions of the good conflict, majority rule, constrained by constitutional essentials, should determine what constitutes breach of the negligence standard of care. Thus, in each dispute over negligence in tort, democratic standard theory sets the stakes of negligent risk, especially the costs of accidental harm, in accordance with the values of as many as possible of the individuals locally affected by the particular kind of act at issue

Judicious Imprisonment

Starting August 21, 2018, Americans incarcerated across the United States have been striking back — non-violently. Inmates with jobs are protesting slave-like wages through worker strikes and sit-ins. Inmates also call for an end to racial disparities and an increase in rehabilitation programs. Even more surprisingly, many inmates have begun hunger strikes. Inmates are protesting the numerous ills of prisons: overcrowding, inadequate health care, abysmal mental health care contributing to inmate suicide, violence, disenfranchisement of inmates, and more. While recent reforms have slightly decreased mass incarceration, the current White House administration could likely reverse this trend. President Donald Trump’s and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s statements and policies that call for increased mandatory sentences, cracking down on illegal immigrants, and aggressively enforcing drug laws might be the iron fist that breaks the back of an already collapsing criminal justice system. Many, including judges currently sitting on the bench, believe that numerous unjust laws and their unjust penalties have brought the United States penal system to this breaking point. To those Americans outside of prison that think they will never be jailed, Tenth Circuit Court Judge Alex Kozinski warns them, “You’re (probably) a federal criminal.” Due to the proliferation of criminal laws, the criminal “justice” system subjects virtually all Americans to the possibility of imprisonment for conduct that does not even come close to meriting imprisonment. Amid this chaos, a deep and fundamental question brews: Can the state justifiably coerce an individual to comply with its unjust laws? Even if the penalties for breaking unjust laws are life in prison or death? If not, then society’s stability is threatened. This article negotiates a middle position. The government is justified in enforcing unjust laws only if these laws are democratically enacted and are almost-just. How much almost-just is depends on the kind of law at issue. Thus, lawmakers, prosecutors, and judges need to carefully distinguish crimes that directly affect only oneself, crimes that are violent, crimes that are primarily monetary-based, regulatory crimes, and others. To implement reforms, this article proposes new affirmative defenses for crimes, enhanced prosecutorial discretion, and more robust judicial review as viable mechanisms to invalidate laws and penalties that are not almost-just

Annual Radiological Environmental Monitoring Program Report for the Fort St. Vrain Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation

This report presents the results of the 2001 Radiological Environmental Monitoring Program conducted in accordance with 10 CFR 72.44 for the Fort St. Vrain Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation. A description of the facility and the monitoring program is provided. The results of monitoring the predominant radiation exposure pathway, direct and scattered radiation exposure, indicate the facility operation has not contributed to any increase in the estimated maximum potential dose commitment to the general public

The NASA-UC Eta-Earth Program: III. A Super-Earth orbiting HD 97658 and a Neptune-mass planet orbiting Gl 785

We report the discovery of planets orbiting two bright, nearby early K dwarf stars, HD 97658 and Gl 785. These planets were detected by Keplerian modelling of radial velocities measured with Keck-HIRES for the NASA-UC Eta-Earth Survey. HD 97658 b is a close-in super-Earth with minimum mass Msini = 8.2 +/- 1.2 M_Earth, orbital period P = 9.494 +/- 0.005 d, and an orbit that is consistent with circular. Gl 785 b is a Neptune-mass planet with Msini = 21.6 +/- 2.0 M_Earth, P = 74.39 +/- 0.12 d, and orbital eccentricity 0.30 +/- 0.09. Photometric observations with the T12 0.8 m automatic photometric telescope at Fairborn Observatory show that HD 97658 is photometrically constant at the radial velocity period to 0.09 mmag, supporting the existence of the planet.Comment: Submitted to ApJ, 7 pages, 6 figures, 5 table

Dialectics and difference: against Harvey's dialectical post-Marxism

David Harvey`s recent book, Justice, nature and the geography of difference (JNGD), engages with a central philosophical debate that continues to dominate human geography: the tension between the radical Marxist project of recent decades and the apparently disempowering relativism and `play of difference' of postmodern thought. In this book, Harvey continues to argue for a revised `post-Marxist' approach in human geography which remains based on Hegelian-Marxian principles of dialectical thought. This article develops a critique of that stance, drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I argue that dialectical thinking, as well as Harvey's version of `post-Marxism', has been undermined by the wide-ranging `post-' critique. I suggest that Harvey has failed to appreciate the full force of this critique and the implications it has for `post-Marxist' ontology and epistemology. I argue that `post-Marxism', along with much contemporary human geography, is constrained by an inflexible ontology which excessively prioritizes space in the theory produced, and which implements inflexible concepts. Instead, using the insights of several `post-' writers, I contend there is a need to develop an ontology of `context' leading to the production of `contextual theories'. Such theories utilize flexible concepts in a multilayered understanding of ontology and epistemology. I compare how an approach which produces a `contextual theory' might lead to more politically empowering theory than `post-Marxism' with reference to one of Harvey's case studies in JNGD

How to sequence 10,000 bacterial genomes and retain your sanity: an accessible, efficient and global approach

Non-typhoidal Salmonella(NTS)are typically associated with enterocolitis and linked to the industrialisation of food production. In recent years, NTS has been associated with invasive disease (iNTS disease) causing an estimated 77,000 deaths each year worldwide; 80% of mortality occurs in sub-Saharan Africa. New clades of S. Typhimurium and S. Enteritidis have been identified, which are characterised by genomic degradation, altered prophage repertoires and novel multidrug resistant plasmids. To understand how these clades are contributing to the burden and severity of iNTS disease, it is crucial to expand genome-based surveillance to cover more countries, and incorporate historical isolates to generate an evolutionary timeline of the development of iNTS. We developedand validateda robust and inexpensive method for large-scale collection and sequencing of bacterial genomes. The “10,000 Salmonella genomes” project established a worldwide research collaboration to generate information relevant to the epidemiology, drug resistance and virulence factors of Salmonellae using a whole-genome sequencing approach. By streamlining collection of isolates and developing an efficient logistics pipeline, we gathered 10,419 clinical and environmental isolates from collections in low and middle-income countries within six months. Genome sequences are now available for isolates from 51 countries/territories dating from 1949 to 2017, with ~80 % representing African and Latin-American datasets. Our method can be applied to other large sample collections that require maximisation of resources within a limited timeframe. Detailed genome analyses are in progress and it is hoped that the resulting data will contribute to public health control strategies in low and middle-income countries

An accessible, efficient and global approach for the large-scale sequencing of bacterial genomes

We have developed an efficient and inexpensive pipeline for streamlining large-scale collection and genome sequencing of bacterial isolates. Evaluation of this method involved a worldwide research collaboration focused on the model organism Salmonella enterica, the 10KSG consortium. Following the optimization of a logistics pipeline that involved shipping isolates as thermolysates in ambient conditions, the project assembled a diverse collection of 10,419 isolates from low- and middle-income countries. The genomes were sequenced using the LITE pipeline for library construction, with a total reagent cost of less than USD$10 per genome. Our method can be applied to other large bacterial collections to underpin global collaborations