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

The Genetic Speciation of Archaeological Fish Bone: A Feasibility Study from Southeast Queensland

Current genetic methods enable highly specific identification of DNA from modern fish bone. The applicability of these methods to the identification of archaeological fish bone was investigated through a study of a sample from late Holocene southeast Queensland sites. The resultant overall success rate of 2% indicates that DNA analysis is, as yet, not feasible for identifying fish bone from any given site. Taphonomic issues influencing the potential of genetic identification methods are raised and discussed in light of this result

Lift-and-Round to Improve Weighted Completion Time on Unrelated Machines

We consider the problem of scheduling jobs on unrelated machines so as to minimize the sum of weighted completion times. Our main result is a $(3/2-c)$-approximation algorithm for some fixed $c>0$, improving upon the long-standing bound of 3/2 (independently due to Skutella, Journal of the ACM, 2001, and Sethuraman & Squillante, SODA, 1999). To do this, we first introduce a new lift-and-project based SDP relaxation for the problem. This is necessary as the previous convex programming relaxations have an integrality gap of $3/2$. Second, we give a new general bipartite-rounding procedure that produces an assignment with certain strong negative correlation properties.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure

The Social Components Model of Recovery from Addiction and Desistance from Crime

Recovery from addiction and desistance from crime are processes which are often experienced and supported in the same physical spaces, while recovery and desistance are also frequently experienced by the same people. Research so far has predominantly explored the two processes separately, however there are a number of social factors that have been identified separately by research as having the capacity to positively influence both processes. Examining the common social factors which shape these processes will strengthen the evidence base and better support people in practice. This thesis has synthesised existing evidence and theory on social factors, with three categories emerging from the two literatures: Relationships and social bonds; Social identity, group membership and social networks; and Social capital. Using a mixed methods approach, the thesis outlines a new ‘social component model of recovery and desistance’, based on two studies. The samples consist of recovery support group members, the first from social enterprise Jobs, Friends and Houses; and the second across three settings: Blackpool, Sheffield and Lincoln. The influence of the social components is explored with regards to their capacity to influence recovery and desistance from onset, in order to fully understand their change roles in consequential desistance and recovery. This research also examines the possibility of the existence of a radius of trust (Fukuyama, 2001) as something that emerges in group settings as a mechanism through which the social components are enhanced, producing beneficial effects for group members and their recovery/desistance. The results show the presence of each of the social components, and indicate that trajectories into addiction and offending were shaped by a lack of or damaging versions of the social components, and the consequent journey into recovery/desistance was shaped by each of the pro-social components, including a ‘lead component’ which was prioritised by the participant in order to progress their recovery/desistance. The radius of trust was identified in both studies as important to the social components model, acting to enhance each component (for example through strengthening relationships) and reduce perceptions of stigma. The radius of trust requires further examination from a community perspective for its potential to extend beyond the perimeters of the group and have positive effects on social cohesion in wider communities through promoting the accessibility and visibility of the pro-social components

Processing of affective faces varying in valence and intensity in shy adults: an event-related fMRI study

Recent behavioral and electrocortical studies have found that shy and socially anxious adults are hypersensitive to the processing of negative and ambiguous facial emotions. We attempted to extend these findings by examining the neural correlates of affective face processing in shy adults using an event-related fMRI design. We presented pairs of faces that varied in affective valence and intensity. The faces were morphed to alter the degree of intensity of the emotional expressive faces. Twenty-four (12 shy and 12 non-shy) young adult participants then made same/different judgments to these faces while in an MR scanner. We found that shy adults exhibited greater neural activation across a distinct range of brain regions to pairs of faces expressing negative emotions, moderate levels of emotional intensity, and emotional faces that were incongruent with one another. In contrast, non-shy individuals exhibited greater neural activation across a distinct range of brain regions to pairs of faces expressing positive emotions, low levels of emotional intensity, and emotional faces that were congruent with one another. Findings suggest that there are differences in neural responses between shy and non-shy adults when viewing affective faces that vary in valence, intensity, and discrepancy