Ten myths about character, virtue and virtue education – plus three well-founded misgivings

Initiatives to cultivate character and virtue in moral education at school continue to provoke sceptical responses. Most of those echo familiar misgivings about the notions of character, virtue and education in virtue – as unclear, redundant, old-fashioned, religious, paternalistic, anti-democratic, conservative, individualistic, relative and situation dependent. I expose those misgivings as ‘myths’, while at the same time acknowledging three better-founded historical, methodological and practical concerns about the notions in question

Children’s Rights and a Capabilities Approach: The Question of Special Priority

The latter part of the twentieth century saw the near-universal recognition of the idea of children’s rights as human rights. At the same time, the conceptual basis for such rights remains largely under-theorized. Part of the aim of this Article is to draw on the insights of the “capabilities approach” developed by Martha Nussbaum in philosophy, and Amartya Sen in economics, in order to provide a fuller theoretical justification of this kind. In addition, this Article investigates the degree to which it will be justifiable, under such an approach, for international human rights law or national constitutions, to give special priority to children’s rights. It begins this task by first considering, and rejecting, potential justifications for such special priority based on the need to ensure the future self-reliance of children as adults and ideas about the special “innocence” of children; and, then, by developing two affirmative justifications for such special priority, based on the special vulnerability of children, and the special cost-effectiveness of protecting children’s rights. This Article also explores the degree to which these principles may provide a starting point for thinking about more general trade-offs between different rights claims, or claimants, under a capabilities approach

Unreported Sexual Assault

I. Introduction II. Rewarding Potential Accusers: A Proposed Means of Reducing Sexual Assaults on Campus III. Implementing a Reward System IV. Dealing with Objections to the Plan V. False Claims and Protection for the Accused VI. Conclusion I. Introduction Unreported criminal behavior is troubling for a variety of reasons, including the likelihood that it reduces the law’s ability to deter wrongdoing. This is especially unfortunate in the case of sexual assault and other wrongs where the wrongdoers are often repeat offenders who will harm others until apprehended. In many cases, these assaults take place over many years so it is especially easy to see why early reporting could prevent many subsequent harms. One approach to the problem of wrongdoers who are difficult to apprehend, and thus apparently undeterred by tort and criminal law, is to alter the law’s approach, perhaps by focusing less on deterrence and more on education, or on separating populations from which offenders and victims are likely to be drawn. Another is to double down on deterrence by raising the penalty for those who are caught and convicted. The deterrence approach is difficult and often counterproductive where there is some doubt about culpability or where the factfinder and adjudicator have limited power, as in the case of wrongs committed on university campuses and in many workplaces. Our focus here is on sexual misdeeds on college campuses, but much of the analysis is easily applied to plagiarism and to various wrongs committed in the workplace. Some of the ideas offered here can be applied to crimes more generally, but it is useful to begin with wrongs that are judged by something less than a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard