Against Life Without Parole

We have many good reasons to abolish life without parole sentences (LWOP, known in some countries as whole life sentences) and no good reasons not to. After reviewing the current state of LWOP sentences in the United States, I argue that the only rationale for punishment that can hope to justify them is retributivism. But even if retributivism is a sound principle, it in no way entails life without parole. One reason is that unless one believes, like Kant, that appropriate punishments must be carried out whatever the circumstances, we must acknowledge that other considerations are relevant to determining punishments. Furthermore, retributivism does not dictate particular punishments, and so the question remains which are reasonable and appropriate. Even retributivists, then, can reject life without parole. But showing why it’s wrong requires a positive case for abolition as well. I offer several reasons. First, shortening and tempering sentences need not trivialize the gravity of the crimes to which they respond, as some suggest, because the expressive meaning of sentences is malleable. Second, most if not all people are not fully culpable for their criminal acts, and we should mitigate their punishment accordingly. Third, abolishing life without parole—and indeed all life sentences—is likely to bring many benefits: to prisoners, their loved ones, the community in general, and to those who decide for abolition and who carry it out. Among these is the promotion of certain attitudes it is good for people to have—what, following Ryan Preston-Roedder, I call faith in humanity. Finally, there’s a certain pointlessness in continuing to punish a person who has undergone changes of character that distance him greatly from the person who committed the crime many decades earlier

Responsibility for Global Poverty

This paper has two aims. The first is to describe several sources of the moral responsibility to remedy or alleviate global poverty—reasons why an agent might have such a responsibility. The second is to consider what sorts of agents bear the responsibilities associated with each source—in particular, whether they are collective agents like states, societies, or corporations, on the one hand, or individual human beings on the other. We often talk about our responsibilities to the poorest people in the world, or what we owe them. So the question is who this we is. I shall argue that the answer depends on the source of the responsibility. Some responsibilities—one species of causal responsibilities—belong in the first instance to collectives, although they will also trickle down to at least some individuals within the collective. Other responsibilities—humanitarian responsibilities, and a different species of causal responsibilities—belong in the first instance to individuals, but can, I shall argue, “trickle up” to collectives of which individuals are members

<翻訳> 死刑および終身刑の廃止について

本講演は、2019 年3 月11 日に筑波大学東京キャンパスにて開催されたときのものであるが、原稿中のデータは、今回の翻訳掲載のために、2020 年1 月25 日時点での最新のものに更新して頂いている

Studying (Small) businesses with the Michigan Employment Security Commission longitudinal data base

This paper addresses the usefulness of a longitudinal data file constructed from records on employers from the Michigan Employment Security Commission. We describe the main features of the data file, which includes quarterly (and in some cases, monthly) data from the third quarter of 1978 through the first quarter of 1983, plus the fourth quarters of 1983–87. We then illustrate the uses of the data with two examples: (1) studying changes in the Michigan economy, in particular the early growth and survival of new units of different sizes; and (2) studying the behavior of wages and employment following changes in ownership.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43665/1/11187_2004_Article_BF00401623.pd

Cosmopolitan Sentiment: Politics, Charity, and Global Poverty

Duties to address global poverty face a motivation gap. We have good reasons for acting yet we do not, at least consistently. A ‘sentimental education’, featuring literature and journalism detailing the lives of distant others has been suggested as a promising means by which to close this gap (Nussbaum in Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, CUP, Cambridge, 2001; Rorty in Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, vol. 3, CUP, Cambridge, 1998). Although sympathetic to this project, I argue that it is too heavily wed to a charitable model of our duties to address global poverty—understood as requiring we sacrifice a certain portion of our income. However, political action, aimed at altering institutions at both a global and a local level is likely to be necessary in order to provide effective long-term solutions to poverty globally. To rectify this, the article develops an alternative dialogical account of sentimental education, suitable for motivating support for political action to address global poverty