Reparations for Police Killings

After a fatal police shooting in the United States, it is typical for city and police officials to view the family of the deceased through the lens of the law. If the family files a lawsuit, the city and police department consider it their legal right to defend themselves and to treat the plaintiffs as adversaries. However, reparations and the concept of “reparative justice” allow authorities to frame police killings in moral rather than legal terms. When a police officer kills a person who was not liable to this outcome, officials should offer monetary reparations, an apology, and other redress measures to the victim’s family. To make this argument, the article presents a philosophical account of non-liability hailing from self-defense theory, centering the distinction between reasonableness and liability. Reparations provide a non-adversarial alternative to civil litigation after a non-liable person has been killed by a police officer. In cases where the officer nevertheless acted reasonably, “institutional agent-regret” rather than moral responsibility grounds the argument for reparations. Throughout the article, it is argued that there are distinct racial wrongs both when police kill a non-liable black person and when family members of a black victim are treated poorly by officials in the civil litigation process

State-Sponsored Injustice: The Case of Eugenic Sterilization

In analytic political philosophy, it is common to view state-sponsored injustice as the work of a corporate agent. But as I argue, structural injustice theory provides grounds for reassessing the agential approach, producing new insights into state-sponsored injustice. Using the case of eugenic sterilization in the United States, this article proposes a structurally-sensitive conception of state-sponsored injustice with six components: authorization, protection, systemization, execution, enablement, and norm- and belief-influence. Iris Marion Young’s models of responsibility for agential and structural injustice, and the place of state-sponsored injustice with respect to these models, are also discussed

The path to timely completion : supply- and demand-side analyses of time to bachelor's degree completion

textTime to degree is a key factor in institutional productivity and managing the costs of college for students and families. While there is a robust body of empirical and theoretical work addressing baccalaureate degree completion and persistence, much less is known about the factors that affect time to degree. Most importantly, the institutional factors associated with time to degree have been largely unexamined, with a primary focus on the characteristics of students who delay graduation. As a result, it is unclear if students or institutions should be the target of policy interventions. This dissertation is comprised of three quantitative studies that examine supply- and demand-side factors that contribute to timely—or not so timely—completion using statewide longitudinal student-level data from Texas. The first study uses a discrete-time hazard model to analyze a rich set of institutional and student factors that influence the choice between on-time graduation, late graduation, dropout, and ongoing enrollment. The second explores the impact of student transfer on time to degree and one possible mechanism for delay using propensity score matching analysis. The third examines excess credit accumulation, specifically how the number of credits an institution requires for graduation affects student course-taking behavior using fixed effects analysis. Results suggest time to degree is a complex phenomenon and both student and institutional factors are significantly associated with time to degree. Student transfer and credit requirements are associated with excess credit accumulation and longer times to degree. Supply side policy strategies targeting institutional resources, transfer, and graduation credits are promising, although there is evidence that strategies aimed at improving efficiency can be in tension with strategies that improve equity in higher education and degree completion.Public Polic

Defensive killing by police: analyzing uncertain threat scenarios

In the United States, police use of force experts often maintain that controversial police shootings where an unarmed person’s hand gesture was interpreted as their “going for a gun” are justifiable. If an officer waits to confirm that a weapon is indeed being pulled from a jacket pocket or waistband, it may be too late to defend against a lethal attack. This article examines police policy norms for self-defense against “uncertain threats” in three contexts: (1) known in-progress violent crimes, (2) interactions with civilians behaving non-aggressively, and (3) interactions with civilians behaving aggressively. It is argued that the context of a known in-progress violent crime gives rise to threat probability-, fairness-, and lesser evil-based reasons for a norm permitting police officers to use lethal force. However, in the contexts of civilians behaving non-aggressively and civilians behaving aggressively, such a norm is not justifiable. In the former case, I introduce two conditions, the Justification condition and the Valuing Civilian Lives condition, which I argue are not presently met. In the latter case, these two conditions again not met; aggression may moreover be excused or justified due to background injustices around race and the criminal justice system

Walking the Line: The Legacy of the Lost Cause in Redefining Femininity at the Normal, 1909-1942

The students who attended the State Normal and Industrial School at Harrisonburg during the early period (1909 – 1942) used social organizations to echo, amplify, and rehearse Lost Cause hierarchies of class, gender, and race. The Lee and Lanier Literary Societies were the two elite groups on campus which provided spaces for the women to practice these societal norms. These groups created a system of gatekeeping that ensured exclusivity and elevated the social standing of those who were members. These organizations were spaces to rehearse refinement and to practice the white women’s own roles in society. Their understanding of their own social place in the order of the New South was critical to perpetuating the imagined gender ideals of the Old South. The women who attended the college were a part of a new generation in the South with an unprecedented potential outside of the private sphere. Yet they were raised in the shadow of the romanticized Old South. The women who attended the college were tasked with navigating this delicate balance between Old and New South. Lastly, the college was also a space that amplified white supremacy and perhaps this is still one of the most visible legacies of the early years. Reverence for Confederate leaders, iconography, and minstrel shows echoed white supremacy outside of the institution and played a foundational role as the women sought to understand their own identities as Southerners and Americans. The women crafted these identities through the practice and rehearsal of hierarchies of class, race, and gender. When they left the college there was no doubt what each of the women’s roles in society was as they had spent their years on campus rehearsing. The young women carried with them the weight of a false heritage of the Civil War as they walked the line between the Old and the New South

Will the Adoption of Science Standards Push Maine Schools Away from Authentic Science?

Maine is considering revision of rules that provide guidance to school districts about the science knowledge students are expected to have as they graduate from high school. Some science educators suggest adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) as a substantial component of the rules. In this paper, we argue that the NGSS are overly prescriptive and narrow and that a NGSS-based standard would push science instruction toward school science where outcomes are known in advance and away from authentic science where students explore questions that are useful to the community because answers are not yet known. Our experience has been that authentic science learning is more likely to re-engage students who have decided that science learning is for others, not for them. We seek to stimulate a deep, careful consideration of the consequences of moving toward standards based on the NGSS

U.S.-Korea economic relations

노트 : A publication of the Korea Economic Institute and the Korea Institute for International Economic Polic

Interlibrary service requests for locally and electronically available items: Patterns of use, users, and canceled requests

As the use of the Ohio State University Libraries interlibrary services has increased, there have been more requests to borrow items that are already available to patrons locally, often in electronic format. Patterns relating to why patrons could not find locally available materials were identified in the record of canceled interlibrary requests for calendar year 2007. These requests originated more frequently from certain academic departments, occurred more often for articles than books, and were most common for items published one to six years earlier. These requests were also associated with problematic OpenURL links to publisher or content provider Web pages.Publisher allows immediate open acces

A Uniform Domestic Partnership Act: Marrying Business Partnership and Family Law

For decades, Americans have argued about who may marry and what marriage actually means in legal, religious, and philosophical terms. For almost as long, two problems - the rising divorce rate and the poverty of some divorced children and their custodians - have fed concerns about the viability of marriage as an institution that promotes domestic stability and economic security. This Article explores the notion that domestic partnership based upon business partnership law would better serve more couples, their families, and society as a whole. It proposes a Uniform Domestic Partnership Act, loosely modeled after the UPA, as a substitute for marriage and recommends that marriage continue, without legal significance, under the exclusive control of religious institutions. By demonstrating that modern couples expect civil marriage to provide something different than couples did historically and by adapting business partnership law approaches to areas such as fiduciary duty, agency and transaction costs, and limited liability, this Article proposes a legal structure for domestic enterprises. Actually, it offers four new solutions: the Filial, the Enduring, the Caregiving, and the Provisional Domestic Partnerships