Ethics, Rights, and White's Antitrust Skepticism

Mark White has developed a provocative skepticism about antitrust law. I first argue against three claims that are essential to his argument: the state may legitimately constrain or punish only conduct that violates someone’s rights, the market’s purpose is coordinating and maximizing individual autonomy, and property rights should be completely insulated from democratic deliberation. I then sketch a case that persons might have a right to a competitive market. If so, antitrust law does deal with conduct that violates rights. The main thread running throughout the article is that what counts as a legitimate exercise of property rights is dynamic, sensitive to various external conditions, and is the proper object of democratic deliberation

Sánchez Lopera, Alejandro. José Revueltas y Roberto Bolaño: Formas genéricas de la experiencia. Raleigh, NC: Editorial A Contracorriente, 2017. 276 pp.

Sánchez Lopera, Alejandro. José Revueltas y Roberto Bolaño: Formas genéricas de la experiencia. Raleigh, NC: Editorial A Contracorriente, 2017. 276 p p

Bioethics, Complementarity, and Corporate Criminal Liability

This article provides a brief introduction to some contemporary challenges found in the intersection of bioethics and international criminal law involving genetic privacy, organ trafficking, genetic engineering, and cloning. These challenges push us to re-evaluate the question of whether the international criminal law should hold corporations criminally liable. I argue that a minimalist and Strawsonian conception of corporate responsibility could be useful for deterring the wrongs outlined in first few sections and in answering compelling objections to corporate criminal liability

Responsibility, Authority, and the Community of Moral Agents in Domestic and International Criminal Law

Antony Duff argues that the criminal law’s characteristic function is to hold people responsible. It only has the authority to do this when the person who is called to account, and those who call her to account, share some prior relationship. In systems of domestic criminal law, this relationship is co-citizenship. The polity is the relevant community. In international criminal law, the relevant community is simply the moral community of humanity. I am sympathetic to his community-based analysis, but argue that the moral community must play a greater role in the domestic case and that the collection of individual political communities must play a greater role in the international case

Luck Egalitarianism, Responsibility, and Political Liberalism

Luck egalitarians argue that distributive justice should be understood in terms of our capacity to be responsible for our choices. Both proponents and critics assume that the theory must rely on a comprehensive conception of responsibility. I respond to luck egalitarianism’s critics by developing a political conception of responsibility that remains agnostic on the metaphysics of free choice. I construct this political conception by developing a novel reading of John Rawls’ distinction between the political and the comprehensive. A surprising consequence is that many responsibility-based objections to luck egalitarianism turn out to be objections to Rawls’ political liberalism as well

Molecular Evidence of Cryptic Hybridization in the Japanese Nezasa Bamboos (Pleioblastus section Nezasa)

The genus Pleioblastus is a complex group of Southeast Asian temperate bamboos with 7-21 species, depending on taxonomic authority. This study tests the hypothesis that taxonomic complexity in this group is due in part to hybridization and subsequent backcrossing in natural populations, resulting in a reticulate evolutionary history and a contemporary species assemblage that includes cryptic hybrids. This hypothesis is supported by recent research on the temperate bamboos that revealed intergeneric hybrids involving Pleioblastus and other genera of temperate bamboos (Triplett and Clark, 2021). The objective of the current study was to use data from Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) markers and a combination of tree-building and ancestry assignment analyses to test the hypothesis that Pleioblastus section Nezasa is a mix of parental and hybrid lineages. This research is valuable for understanding the evolutionary history of this important group of forest grasses, which in turn will inform the classification and nomenclature of the species. A better understanding of the group also has implications in conservation due to hybridization-induced extinction, since assessing species boundaries is a necessary first step to establish the need for potential conservation efforts. The data revealed 2-3 major lineages (Nezasa 1, Nezasa 2, and Nezasa 3) and cryptic hybrids within and among these lineages, thus supporting the hypothesis that hybridization had an important role in the evolution of Pleioblastus. This research provides a stepping-stone for resolving bamboo taxonomy, including the East Asian relatives of Arundinaria (including Pleioblastus sensu lato and Pseudosasa), and other hybrid swarm systems. The broader implications of this research for our understanding of plant evolution and species nomenclature are discussed in the context of grass phylogenetics and evolution

In situ analysis for intelligent control

We report a pilot study on in situ analysis of backscatter data for intelligent control of a scientific instrument on an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) carried out at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). The objective of the study is to investigate techniques which use machine intelligence to enable event-response scenarios. Specifically we analyse a set of techniques for automated sample acquisition in the water-column using an electro-mechanical "Gulper", designed at MBARI. This is a syringe-like sampling device, carried onboard an AUV. The techniques we use in this study are clustering algorithms, intended to identify the important distinguishing characteristics of bodies of points within a data sample. We demonstrate that the complementary features of two clustering approaches can offer robust identification of interesting features in the water-column, which, in turn, can support automatic event-response control in the use of the Gulper

Artificial intelligence liability: the rules are changing

The law has been relatively slow to regulate artificial intelligence, but the rules are evolving. An important question is whether an AI company can be held liable for malfunctioning AI. Ryan E. Long writes that a company’s liability for its AI depends on whether a defect was present upon the AI release and whether, in the EU at least, the application is “high-risk.