Back to Basics: Human Rights and the Suffering Imperative

Anniversaries provide a conventionally appropriate opportunity to take stock and, where necessary, to remind ourselves of why we hold to the commitments we do. All too often the raison d?etre of any collective human venture can be lost amidst the sheer banality of daily doing what we do and pursuing the goals we have become accustomed to. The question we often forget to ask ourselves is the following: why should we care? Expressed more specifically, one may ask, why do you care about the human rights of others and why should others care about your human rights? Fear not, this short piece will not attempt to reinvent the wheel of human rights theory. Nor am I in a position to definitively settle enduring questions concerning the validity and veracity of the ultimate justifications offered in support of a commitment to human rights principles tout court. My motive is far more modest and intellectually circumspect; having said that, this piece is driven by a distinct ambition. In taking stock of current debates in human rights theory, I shall argue that we are in danger of losing sight of the ethical imperative of human suffering in our discussions about the form and content of human rights in the contemporary world. The cornerstone of human rights must be a concern for human suffering. This amounts to an ethical truism for human rights theorists but despite, perhaps even because of this, it has been obscured from view in much theoretical reflection upon human rights as an ethical, legal, political and, increasingly, cultural doctrine. This piece takes the reflexive opportunities afforded by the spirit of anniversary to re-focus attention upon the basis and strength of our motivations and invites a return to the ethical basics of a commitment to human rights. In so doing, I aim to make a theoretical case for an appreciation of what might be referred to as a pre-theoretical impulse and motive. If human rights are to realise the promise of establishing the conditions for a world far less beset by human suffering, then the doctrine must address us at a level that does not immediately succumb to the contingency of conceptual verbiage and political opportunism

Between God and Democracy

A review of: Understanding Human Rights Principles edited by Jeffrey Jowell and Jonathan Cooper. Portland, OR: Hart Publishers, 2001 201pp. and The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries, by Michael J. Perry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 162pp

Practicing Universality: the Inter-disciplinary Imperatives of Human Rights

A review of: Human Rights: Universality in Practice by Peter R. Baehr. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave, 2001. 178pp

Escaping the Cultural Context of Human Rights

A review of: The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom by Chandran Kukathas. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003. pp.29

New insights into the biomechanics of Legg-Calvé-Perthes’ disease: The role of epiphyseal skeletal immaturity in vascular obstruction

ObjectivesLegg–Calvé–Perthes’ disease (LCP) is an idiopathic osteonecrosis of the femoral head that is most common in children between four and eight years old. The factors that lead to the onset of LCP are still unclear; however, it is believed that interruption of the blood supply to the developing epiphysis is an important factor in the development of the condition.MethodsFinite element analysis modelling of the blood supply to the juvenile epiphysis was investigated to understand under which circumstances the blood vessels supplying the femoral epiphysis could become obstructed. The identification of these conditions is likely to be important in understanding the biomechanics of LCP.ResultsThe results support the hypothesis that vascular obstruction to the epiphysis may arise when there is delayed ossification and when articular cartilage has reduced stiffness under compression.ConclusionThe findings support the theory of vascular occlusion as being important in the pathophysiology of Perthes disease

Stops and Stares: Street Stops, Surveillance, and Race in the New Policing

The use of proactive tactics to disrupt criminal activities, such as Terry street stops and concentrated misdemeanor arrests, are essential to the “new policing.” This model applies complex metrics, strong management, and aggressive enforcement and surveillance to focus policing on high crime risk persons and places. The tactics endemic to the “new policing” gave rise in the 1990s to popular, legal, political and social science concerns about disparate treatment of minority groups in their everyday encounters with law enforcement. Empirical evidence showed that minorities were indeed stopped and arrested more frequently than similarly situated whites, even when controlling for local social and crime conditions. In this article, we examine racial disparities under a unique configuration of the street stop prong of the “new policing” – the inclusion of non-contact observations (or surveillances) in the field interrogation (or investigative stop) activity of Boston Police Department officers. We show that Boston Police officers focus significant portions of their field investigation activity in two areas: suspected and actual gang members, and the city’s high crime areas. Minority neighborhoods experience higher levels of field interrogation and surveillance activity net of crime and other social factors. Relative to white suspects, Black suspects are more likely to be observed, interrogated, and frisked or searched controlling for gang membership and prior arrest history. Moreover, relative to their black counterparts, white police officers conduct high numbers of field investigations and are more likely to frisk/search subjects of all races. We distinguish between preference-based and statistical discrimination by comparing stops by officer-suspect racial pairs. If officer activity is independent of officer race, we would infer that disproportionate stops of minorities reflect statistical discrimination. We show instead that officers seem more likely to investigate and frisk or search a minority suspect if officer and suspect race differ. We locate these results in the broader tensions of racial profiling that pose recurring social and constitutional concerns in the “new policing.”

An Analysis of Race and Ethnicity Patterns in Boston Police Department Field Interrogation, Observation, Frisk, and/or Search Reports

The report, authored by researchers from Columbia, Rutgers and the University of Massachusetts, analyzed 200,000+ encounters between BPD officers and civilians from 2007–2010. It is intended to provide a factual basis to assess the implementation of proactive policing in Boston and how it affects Boston's diverse neighborhoods. It found racial disparities in the Boston Police Department's stop-and-frisks that could not be explained by crime or other non-race factors. Blacks during that period were the subjects of 63.3% of police-civilian encounters, although less than a quarter of the city's population is Black.

The effect of boundary constraints on finite element modelling of the human pelvis

The use of finite element analysis (FEA) to investigate the biomechanics of anatomical systems critically relies on the specification of physiologically representative boundary conditions. The biomechanics of the pelvis has been the specific focus of a number of FEA studies previously, but it is also a key aspect in other investigations of, for example, the hip joint or new design of hip prostheses. In those studies, the pelvis has been modelled in a number of ways with a variety of boundary conditions, ranging from a model of the whole pelvic girdle including soft tissue attachments to a model of an isolated hemi-pelvis. The current study constructed a series of FEA models of the same human pelvis to investigate the sensitivity of the predicted stress distributions to the type of boundary conditions applied, in particular to represent the sacro-iliac joint and pubic symphysis. Varying the method of modelling the sacro-iliac joint did not produce significant variations in the stress distribution, however changes to the modelling of the pubic symphysis were observed to have a greater effect on the results. Over-constraint of the symphysis prevented the bending of the pelvis about the greater sciatic notch, and underestimated high stresses within the ilium. However, permitting medio-lateral translation to mimic widening of the pelvis addressed this problem. These findings underline the importance of applying the appropriate boundary conditions to FEA models, and provide guidance on suitable methods of constraining the pelvis when, for example, scan data has not captured the full pelvic girdle. The results also suggest a valid method for performing hemi-pelvic modelling of cadaveric or archaeological remains which are either damaged or incomplete