Philosophy of Law

RésuméLe riz est fondamentalement un produit, une notion, et un droit garanti au Japon. Son approche est complexe, variée, étendue, tant du point de vue culturel, linguistique que juridique. Son rôle dépasse largement le cadre nutritionnel, quoique comme le blé en Europe, il reste un aliment essentiel dans l’art culinaire japonais, par tradition, par habitude et de par la loi. Si l’origine du riz est chinoise, après son introduction au IVème siècle av. JC, il est devenu un, ou même, le (...) symbole de la culture japonaise; cela se perçoit jusque dans la langue, qui lui accorde un statut particulier, singulier par rapport aux autres aliments. Ceci se retrouve même dans le droit japonais, ancien ou contemporain. (shrink)

RésuméCet article explore le rôle de la presse anglophone comme instrument de recolonisation linguistique, administrative et juridique pendant l’occupation de l’île de Singapour entre 1942 et 1945 par le pouvoir militaire japonais. Bien que le projet d’imposer la langue japonaise comme principal médium administratif et éducatif produisît des résultats limités, la langue fut employée largement comme symbole de recolonisation pour légitimiser et normaliser le nouveau régime en changeant les nomenclatures, les coutûmes et même le paysage visuel de la colonie, rebaptisée (...) Syonan. En revanche, l’association symbolique entre la langue anglaise et les adversaires anglo-saxons fit subordonnée à son utilité pratique pour contrôler et communiquer avec les Singapouriens, alors renommés les Syonanjin. Bien que son rôle fût strictement limité dans l’éducation, l’anglais fut conservé comme langue judiciaire et exploité pour propager les valeurs impériales japonaises. Le principal matériel empirique de l’analyse est le journal quotidien The Syonan Shimbun, publié en anglais tout au long de l’Occupation et constituant à la fois une trace et un véhicule de la politique linguistique et culturelle du colon nippon. Tenant compte non seulement du contenu propositionnel, incontestablement mobilisé au service du régime militaire, mais aussi de la mise en page et de la sélection discursive dans le journal, on peut recouvrer une politique linguistique qui cherchait un équilibre entre le pouvoir symbolique du japonais et le pouvoir pragmatique de l’anglais, augmenté par l’utilité de la langue malaise. (shrink)

Rendering equivalency in the translation of apologies is a perennial difficulty for court interpreters, especially given the likely involvement of cross-cultural differences with regard to remorse, since they may or may not imply admissions of guilt. This article discusses translations during the 2009 Japanese trial of an English-speaking defendant that appeared subtly to shift the defendant’s ‘non-apologies’ and ‘semi-apologies’ toward ‘apologies’. The difference between the expression “I felt bad” used by the defendant and the Japanese apologetic expression used by the (...) translator is explained with reference to the pragmatic notions of speech acts, presuppositions, and implicature. Such pragmatically inaccurate translations highlight the difficulty of the court interpreter’s job, and show that judges and attorneys should be sensitive to the judgement calls that interpreters inevitably make and to the possibility that the translations they receive may convey erroneous implications. (shrink)

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld was an American jurist who published a series of articles between 1909 and 1917 that were very important for 20th century analytical philosophy of right. In these articles, Hohfeld analyzed how jurists and judges alike use the word ‘right’ to speak of the rights of groups and individuals. Since he presented his articles, it has been commonplace among ‘hohfeldian specialists’ to distinguish rights into four groups: privileges, or claims, powers and immunities. This paper has four sections. In (...) section I, I present Hohfeld’s notion of privilege and point to a difficulty that has long been known by specialists, namely, that there are actually two significantly different legal relations that this notion is supposed to cover. In section II, I analyze and criticize the way (Wenar 2005) proposes we should define these two legal relations. In section III, I do the same with suggestion proposed by (Moritz 1960, 1073). In section IV, I present my own suggestion about how we should understand them. (shrink)

Over almost a half-century, evidence law scholars and philosophers have contended with what have come to be called the “Proof Paradoxes.” In brief, the following sort of paradox arises: Factfinders in criminal and civil trials are charged with reaching a verdict if the evidence presented meets a particular standard of proof—beyond a reasonable doubt, in criminal cases, and preponderance of the evidence, in civil trials. It seems that purely statistical evidence can suffice for just such a level of certainty in (...) a variety of cases where our intuition is that it would nonetheless be wrong to convict the defendant, or find in favor of the plaintiff, on merely statistical evidence. So, we either have to convict with statistical evidence, in spite of an intuition that this is unsettling, or else explain what (dispositive) deficiency statistical evidence has. -/- Most scholars have tried to justify the resistance to relying on merely statistical evidence: by relying on epistemic deficiencies in this kind of evidence; by relying on court practice; and also by reference to the psychological literature. In fact, I argue, the epistemic deficiencies philosophers and legal scholars allege are suspect. And, I argue, while scholars often discuss unfairness to civil defendants, they ignore a long history of relying on statistical evidence in a variety of civil matters, including employment discrimination, toxic torts, and market share liability cases. Were the dominant arguments in the literature to prevail, it would extremely difficult for plaintiffs to recover in a variety of cases. -/- The various considerations I advance lead to the conclusion that when it comes to naked statistical evidence, philosophers and legal scholars who argue for its insufficiency have been caught with their pants down. (shrink)

According to common-sense morality, agents can become morally connected to the wrongdoing of others, such that they incur special obligations to prevent or rectify the wrongs committed by the primary wrongdoer. We argue that, under certain conditions, voluntary and unjustified observation of another agent’s degrading wrongdoing, or of the ‘product’ of their wrongdoing, can render an agent morally liable to bear costs for the sake of the victim of the primary wrong. We develop our account with particular reference to widespread (...) modern phenomena such as so-called ‘revenge porn’, ‘up-skirting’, and the online observation of sexual assault and murder. On our account, observation is not a sui generis basis of liability. Instead, observation grounds liability in virtue of manifesting three, more general, grounds of liability. First, observation can compound a primary wrong, making that wrong more harmful for the victim. Second, observation can constitute degrading treatment of the victim. Third, in certain cases observation can enable primary wrongdoing. We conclude by discussing the conditions under which observing degrading wrongs might be morally justified. (shrink)

This article develops a liberal theory of cultural rights that must be guaranteed by just legal and political institutions. People form their own individual conceptions of the good in the cultural space constructed by the political societies they inhabit. This article argues that only rarely do individuals develop views of what is valuable that diverge more than slightly from the conceptions of the good widely circulating in their societies. In order for everyone to have an equal opportunity to autonomously form (...) their own independent conception of the good, rather than merely following others, culture must be democratically controlled. Equal respect for members of a liberal democracy requires that all citizens have roughly equal opportunities to do things like make movies, publish novels, and exhibit paintings. This article contends that the contemporary American legal order fails to guarantee that all citi. (shrink)

I comment on two analyses of the Simonshaven case: one by Prakken (2019), based on arguments, and the other by van Koppen and Mackor (2019), based on scenarios (or stories, narratives). I argue that both analyses lack a clear account of proof beyond a reasonable doubt because they lack a clear account of the notion of plausibility. To illustrate this point, I focus on the defense argument during the appeal trial and show that both analyses face difficulties in modeling key (...) features of this argument. (shrink)

In this paper I will analyse the conception of human rights, considering, in particular, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Human rights, following the common-sense approach, are of course a sacred element for each individual and a necessary premise for an ethics that points to human flourishing. Here, the concept of human rights concerning the subject’s beliefs and the context in which the subject acts will be analysed. At the centre of this paper, there will be an analysis of (...) the universality of human rights. In particular, I will take in consideration the position of J. Maritain, who found in praxis – and who was aware of the horrible totalitarianisms of the twentieth century – the common ground for a definition of human rights. I will also consider, therefore, the objections addressed to the definition of human rights, and the Cairo Declaration, which stands in evident contrast with the 1948 Declaration. Furthermore, I will focus on different backgrounds of the declarations and their attempt at universality. The government of a society is responsible for the co-existence of its citizens and for the respect and protection of each individual. In this sense, civil ethics has to be based on human dignity and human rights. (shrink)

The 1948 Declaration of Human Rights demanded a collaboration among exponents from around the world. Embodying many different cultural perspectives, it was driven by a like-minded belief in the importance of finding common principles that would be essential for the very survival of civilization. Although an arduous and extensive process, the result was a much sought-after and collective endeavor that would be referenced for decades to come. Motivated by the seventieth anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and (...) enriched by the contributions of eminent scholars, this volume aims to be a reflection on human rights and their universality. The underlying question is whether or not, after seventy years, this document can be considered universal, or better yet, how to define the concept of “universality.” We live in an age in which this notion seems to be guided not so much by the values that the subject intrinsically perceives as good, but rather by the demands of the subject. Universality is thus no longer deduced by something that is objectively given, within the shared praxis. Conversely, what seems to have to be universal is what we want to be valid for everyone. This volume will be of interest to those currently engaged in research or studying in a variety of fields including Philosophy, Politics and Law. (shrink)

Tommie Shelby’s Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform is a powerful indictment of how the basic structure of American institutions fail the seriously disadvantaged. Though motivated by what we collectively owe “ghetto” citizens, when exploring criminal law, Shelby instinctively turns his attention to what duties, if any, the disadvantaged have to obey the criminal law. This paper argues that our persistent focus on the obligations of the disadvantaged is a mistake. Instead, we should examine the duties of the advantaged to (...) resist and repudiate the criminal law. First, because the systemic injustices of the criminal law secure unjust advantages for too many “ordinary” citizens, it renders their successes unjust spoils. Second, the criminal law chews through lives and communities in the ghetto in the name of the advantaged. Third, White citizens have a unique duty to reject the racist elements of the criminal justice system and repudiate its claims that the lives of racial minorities are worth less than their own. The paper then explores various ways that advantaged citizens can repudiate the criminal law in the service of greater equality. (shrink)

In this context, the UAE enacted federal law authorizing the UAE Cabinet to grant temporary licenses for testing innovations that use future technologies and its applications such as Artificial Intelligence. The law aims at providing a safe test environment for legislation that meet the technological revolution. This is done in collaboration with “Regulations Lab” that was set up in January 2019 in Dubai Future Foundation.

This paper explores the effect that conformity to the rule of law has on the ends which might legitimately be pursued within a legal system. The neat distinction between formal and substantive conceptions of the rule of law will be challenged: even apparently formal conceptions necessarily affect the content of law and necessarily entail the protection of certain fundamental rights. What remains of the formal/substantive dichotomy is, in fact, a distinction between conceptions of the rule of law which guarantee the (...) substantive justice of each and every law and those which entail some commitment to basic requirements of justice while nevertheless leaving room for unjust laws. Ultimately, the only significant distinction between competing theories of the rule of law concerns the nature of the connection between legality and justice, not whether there is any such connection at all. (shrink)

This paper argues that anti-discrimination rights are individual rights to be free from wrongful treatment and do not directly advance group-based interests or prohibit group-based harm. In light of this, a number of recurring accounts of the wrong of discrimination, particularly the wrong of indirect-discrimination, are unsustainable. Claims that indirect-discrimination is concerned with harm that is done to social groups or that laws prohibiting indirect-discrimination seek to reduce or eliminate advantage gaps between social groups must be rejected as inaccurate. While (...) principles of non-discrimination and principles of affirmative action often operate harmoniously to foster respect for the moral equality of persons, they each have a general affinity with distinct ethical traditions: deontology and teleology respectively. As such, we should conclude that indirect discrimination provisions are examples of formal and not substantive equality. Where rights to non-discrimination conflict with telic equality goals, U.K. law protects the rights of the individual. (shrink)

The principle of equality before the law is often characterized as procedural or formal in nature. Recent scholarship has offered a more nuanced representation of this critique, maintaining that the principle is procedural in nature but emphasizing its instrumental value. This paper challenges that characterization, arguing that equality before the law is best interpreted as a foundational constitutional principle which manifests substantive restrictions on the content of legal rules. Equality before the law, as an independent constitutional principle, should not be (...) confused with the broader value of equality, nor with the rule of law: it incorporates aspects of both, mandating that legal subjects, including legal officials, be treated as prima facie equals in the creation, interpretation, and application of the law. As such, it in an integral normative foundation for the common law constitutional order. Any analysis of the common law constitution must adequately account for and give proper recognition to this foundational constitutional principle. (shrink)

This paper explicates the influential Confucian view that “people” and not “institutional rules” are the proper sources of good governance and social order, as well as some notable Confucian objections to this position. It takes Xunzi 荀子, Hu Hong 胡宏, and Zhu Xi 朱熹 as the primary representatives of the “virtue-centered” position, which holds that people’s good character and not institutional rules bear primary credit for successful governance. And it takes Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 as a major advocate for the “institutionalist” (...) position, which holds that institutional rules have some power to effect success independently of improvements in character. Historians have often called attention to this debate but left the major arguments and positions relatively unspecified. As I show, the Confucian virtue-centered view is best captured in two theses: first, that reforming people is far more demanding than reforming institutional rules; second, that once the rules have reached a certain threshold of viability, further improvements in those rules are unlikely to be effective on their own. Once we specify the theses in this way, we can catalogue the different respects and degrees to which the more virtue-centered political thinkers endorse virtue-centrism in governance. Zhu Xi, for example, turns out to endorse a stronger version of virtue-centrism than Hu Hong. I also use this account of the major theses to show that Huang Zongxi, who is sometimes regarded as historical Confucianism’s foremost institutionalist, has more complicated and mixed views about the power of institutional reform than scholars usually assume. (shrink)

Many oppose the use of profile evidence against defendants at trial, even when the statistical correlations are reliable and the jury is free from prejudice. The literature has struggled to justify this opposition. We argue that admitting profile evidence is objectionable because it violates what we call “equal protection”—that is, a right of innocent defendants not to be exposed to higher ex ante risks of mistaken conviction compared to other innocent defendants facing similar charges. We also show why admitting other (...) forms of evidence, such as eyewitness, trace, and motive evidence, does not violate equal protection. (shrink)

The video-recording of police interrogations of suspects has become widespread in criminal justice systems and is routinely regarded by legal professionals and lay people alike as a means of protecting the rights of suspects and reducing the likelihood of coerced or false confessions. This study, based on evidence from Japan and experiments conducted in Tokyo as well as cases and reinforced by studies from elsewhere, finds that the way visual images of suspects and their narratives are depicted on film can, (...) on the contrary, be misleading. Not only lay participants in trials, but also legal professionals, may be misled into accepting unreliable confessions. Indeed the very power of visual images to convince viewers calls for great caution in their use. Possible solutions include the use of independent expert witnesses to evaluate the reliability of visual recordings and the restriction of taped evidence to audio tracks. (shrink)

This paper revisits two Japanese trademark disputes, one from the 1980s and the other from the 1990s, using linguistic analysis to comment on and supplement the more legalistic deliberations that decided them. In a claim by White Horse Distillers against Toa Distiller’s use of a golden horse label and logo, the courts considered the perspective of the ordinary consumer in ruling that no confusion between the two products was likely. However, in settling Chanel Group’s claim against a small bar the (...) courts prioritised commercial interests over sociolinguistic perceptions in ruling against the bar’s use of the Chanel name and one somewhat similar to it. (shrink)

Esta breve introducción a la filosofía de la ciencia parte del hecho de que tanto la investigación científica como el razonamiento probatorio judicial tienen un carácter inductivo. En esa medida, comparten características esenciales que permiten que el derecho se nutra de muchas de las reflexiones de la filosofía de la ciencia. El capítulo se concentra en cuatro temas principales: los criterios de demarcación entre el conocimiento científico y la pseudociencia; el carácter derrotable de las conclusiones de la ciencia y el (...) derecho; la estructura corroborativa de la relación entre la evidencia y las hipótesis científicas y judiciales; y las teorías de la explicación tanto en el ámbito científico como en el judicial. (shrink)

This article is a contribution to a symposium on Kit Wellman’s intriguing monograph, Rights Forfeiture and Punishment. Primarily, the article grapples with Wellman’s claims regarding the moral permissibility of sadistic punishment. The metaphor of “philosophical languages” is employed throughout, to compare Wellman’s use of rights-forfeiture discourse to an approach that is grounded in practical-reasons discourse. This study in philosophical translation allows us to reassess and critique Wellman’s conclusions regarding the moral permissibility of sadistic punishment. On one level, the article is (...) an attempt to engage with Wellman’s book and rights-forfeiture based arguments on, and in, their own terms. Yet, the article is also an attempt to explain and defend a practical-reasons based approach to appraising moral permissibility. If the article succeeds, it both pays tribute to Wellman’s masterful rights-forfeiture arguments, while making the case that practical-reason arguments illuminate a wider range of salient considerations that we should wish to keep in view when considering the moral permissibility of sadistic punishments. (shrink)

Perhaps more than most professions, law depends on a corpus of specialized terms of art that are familiar to the practitioners who use them regularly in legal contexts but less familiar to lay people. Apart from the importance of enhancing transparency and public access for a key domain, making legal terms understandable to non-professionals may be crucial when non-professionals are involved in legal processes, such as civil litigation. However, simplifying terms risks changing their meaning, while explaining them in plain language (...) entails the difficulty of assessing how much of the legal content lay people need or are prepared to know. An initial step to making legalese more understandable to non-lawyers is to evaluate what lay people actually understand by the terms they come across, and so this study compared the responses of lay participants when asked about key terms form the Japanese Civil Code with the definitions and explanations given by a legal expert. One of the key findings that emerged was that there is particular difficulty with terms that lay people have some understanding of because of their use in non-legal contexts. It will be argued that supplying some background in legal theory would help facilitate educating the public about the legal meaning of terms. (shrink)

While law and justice issues are well represented in the vast and diverse world of Japanese Manga, the medium’s predilection for fantasy tends to produce futuristic or overblown fiction far removed from everyday life. Fantastic treatments may also reflect relatively low awareness of legal matters in a society of low crime and litigation. One law and order institution that most people are familiar with, however, is the network of community police boxes that covers Japan, and this has spawned a gag-ridden (...) yet somewhat more realistic genre of justice-related comics. This article focuses on Ishikawa Chika’s KOBAN, whose humour revolves around the contrasting personalities and petty squabbles of two cops in their dealings with mundane police work. The characters, plots and conversations are visually supported by juxtaposing the weaponry and equipment of law enforcement with childlike facial features and cute mascots, thereby constructing the police box as a halfway house between local neighbourliness and state bureaucracy. (shrink)

This article highlights the growing mainstream preoccupation with law, lawyers and litigation on Japanese prime-time television. Specifically, the article focuses on the recent shift from the dramatic and serious in 1990s productions to the more comic in the 2000s and beyond. Linking the semiotics of humour, sociolegal studies and socio-semiotics more broadly, the article argues that an analysis of law-themed comic scenes and skits highlights Japanese society’s heightened interest in the law and yet an enduring social sense that the law, (...) especially legal resolution of conflict, is something incongruous and unrelated to people’s lived realities. Despite Ramseyer’s thesis that “rational” Japanese avoid the law because they bargain in its shadow, this article concludes that the Japanese draw on their emotional intelligence to accept the possibilities of the law for achieving social justice but acknowledge its limits for resolving satisfactorily everyday disputes. (shrink)

The motion picture The Last Jedi involves important decisions and actions taken by the protagonist of the original Star Wars trilogy, Luke Skywalker. It will be argued that Luke’s narrative in The Last Jedi can be explored through analysing new natural law thought. In particular it draws on Robert P. George’s discussion of the good to consider whether the opposition provided by Luke Skywalker can been seen as a successful form of opposition to restore public morality. The contrast between Skywalker’s (...) morality and the behaviour of the First Order will be established. It will be argued that the Skywalker narrative symbolises public morality against the politics of the First Order. It will be analysed whether Luke’s sacrifice in The Last Jedi can provide legal restraint to a militant invading force. This will further be shown to be helpful to legal philosophy in negotiating the boundaries over natural rights. As such, it will be shown that key features of George’s natural law reasoning can be usefully applied to examine Luke’s actions, and this will shed light upon concepts such as liberty, sacrifice and fear. Legal idealism in the form of natural law will provide further insight into the jurisprudence that pervades Luke’s narrative arch to demonstrate the film’s wider relevance. (shrink)

This article highlights the growing mainstream preoccupation with law, lawyers and litigation on Japanese prime-time television. Specifically, the article focuses on the recent shift from the dramatic and serious in 1990s productions to the more comic in the 2000s and beyond. Linking the semiotics of humour, sociolegal studies and socio-semiotics more broadly, the article argues that an analysis of law-themed comic scenes and skits highlights Japanese society’s heightened interest in the law and yet an enduring social sense that the law, (...) especially legal resolution of conflict, is something incongruous and unrelated to people’s lived realities. Despite Ramseyer’s thesis that “rational” Japanese avoid the law because they bargain in its shadow, this article concludes that the Japanese draw on their emotional intelligence to accept the possibilities of the law for achieving social justice but acknowledge its limits for resolving satisfactorily everyday disputes. (shrink)

Japan saw a sharp increase in the number of non-Japanese residents and migrants during the period of its high economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s. This impacted on how the justice system provides language assistance to non-Japanese speaking background parties in investigative interviews and courtroom proceedings. While the number of defendants who received interpreter assistance in Japanese criminal trials hit its peak in 2003, quality of legal interpreting is still a serious issue. In this article, we discuss how the (...) Japanese criminal justice system has approached issues in judicial interpreting in the last four decades by analysing how “court interpreting” and “court interpreters” have been represented in court decisions. By doing so, the paper aims to explore the judiciary’s ideologies about court interpreting and problematise these ideologies in looking towards improvement of language assistance in the Japanese legal system. (shrink)

Attempts to establish a quantitative framework for policy-making in the criminal justice system in recent decades have coalesced around the problem of the standard of proof and Kaplan’s influential 1968 paper. The central thread of work continues to use an equation he put forward while abandoning some of his foundational assumptions, an approach I call ‘Kaplanism’. Despite a growing awareness of deficiencies, elements of this school of thought, such as the parsing of concerns into the two categories of ‘error reduction’ (...) and ‘error distribution’, have entered the general jurisprudential discourse. Here I launch a methodological attack and claim to kill this approach. This allows me to refute Laudan and other ‘consequentialist’ approaches to the standard identified by Walen, Walen’s own approach and an important part of Stein’s underpinnings. The same tools allow me to also refute Laudan’s earlier m/n meta-epistemology, Lippke’s ‘adage’, Stewart’s formalisation of Dworkin, Dahlman’s Bayesian work and (at least in criminal law) Kaplow’s law and economics approach. I also refute Hamer’s ‘conventional rationale’ for the current standard, Lillquist’s approach to the same and what Epps reports as ‘the Blackstone principle’. The law is left with no epistemic basis for policies, which, I argue, leaves it struggling for public trust in the modern era. (shrink)

Attempts to establish a quantitative framework for thinking about the criminal justice system have been made at least since Kaplan’s influential 1968 article. Here I avoid the probabilistic approaches that Kaplan inspired and instead characterise the law’s underlying problem as one of measurement. I then exploit statistical techniques developed in recent years in other disciplines to evaluate systems that also face the challenge of ‘binary classification’ to solve it. This approach entails the mathematisation of the criminal justice system’s core epistemic (...) concern of distinguishing the guilty from the innocent with Van Rijsbergen’s F-measure and empirical measurements of effectiveness. Once one adopts the perspective of a sovereign, it yields a meta-meta-epistemology that allows traditional arguments like those that refer to Blackstone’s ratio to be made rigorous. This provides a clearer relationship between values and policies and, in a narrowly epistemic sense, a complete answer to questions of evidence and procedure. (shrink)

Lawyers across the globe routinely talk about what the ‘founding fathers’ or the ‘framers’ of their constitution (or a founding treaty) meant, expected, intended and so on. The point of this paper is that some of the founding fathers talk in legal contexts is confused, because it refers to people who did not make the constitution. I help to dispel the confusion through analysis of what does it mean to be an agent behind making a constitution as law – what (...) does it mean to be a constitution-maker. -/- This paper presents a general theory of legally authoritative agency in constitution-making, with a particular emphasis on group action. With the analytical toolkit in hand I consider the cases of Australia, Canada and the United States. I identify who was the constitution-maker there and I look at some possible ways of justifying legal uses of historical materials, which are unconnected to the constitution-maker. (shrink)

Reprint of a chapter first published in _African Philosophy and the Future of Africa_ (2017).

Recklessness involves unreasonable/unjustified risk-taking. The argument here is that recklessness in the criminal law is best understood as nevertheless containing an element of reasonableness. To be reckless, on this view, the defendant must reasonably believe that she is exposing others to a risk of harm. If the defendant’s belief about the risk being imposed by her conduct is unreasonable, she should not be considered reckless. This point is most important in relation to offences of endangerment where recklessness sets the outer (...) limits of criminal liability. (shrink)

Lo primero que debemos tener en cuenta es que cuando decimos que China dice esto o China hace eso, no estamos hablando del pueblo chino, sino de los sociópatas que controlan el PCC -- Partido Comunista Chino, es decir, los Siete Asesinos En Serie Seniláticos (SSSSK) de th e Comité Permanente del PCC o de los 25 miembros del Politburó, etc. -/- Los planes del PCC para la Tercera Guerra Mundial y la dominación total están muy claro en las publicaciones (...) y discursos del gobierno chino y este es el "sueño de China" de Xi Jinping. Es un sueño sólo para la pequeña minoría (tal vez unas pocas docenas a unos pocos cientos) que gobiernan China y una pesadilla para todos los demás (incluyendo 1.400 millones de chinos). Los 10 mil millones de dólares anuales les permiten a ellos o a sus marionetas poseer o controlar periódicos, revistas, canales de televisión y radio y colocar noticias falsas en la mayoría de los principales medios de comunicación de todo el día. Además, tienen un ejército (tal vez millones de personas) que troll todos los medios de comunicación colocando más propaganda y ahogando comentarios legítimos (el ejército de 50 centavos). -/- Además de despojar al tercer mundo de recursos, un gran impulso de la Iniciativa de Cinturón y Carretera sin peaje es la construcción de bases militares en todo el mundo. Están forzando al mundo libre a una carrera armamentista masiva de alta tecnología que hace que la guerra fría con la Unión Soviética parezca un picnic. -/- Aunque el SSSSK, y el resto de los militares del mundo, están gastando enormes sumas en hardware avanzado, es muy probable que WW3 (o los compromisos más pequeños que conducen a él) esté dominado por software. No está fuera de cuestión que el SSSSK, con probablemente más hackers (codificadores) trabajando para ellos entonces todo el resto del mundo combinado, ganará futuras guerras con un conflicto físico mínimo, sólo por paralizar a sus enemigos a través de la red. Sin satélites, sin teléfonos, sin comunicaciones, sin transacciones financieras, sin red eléctrica, sin internet, sin armas avanzadas, sin vehículos, trenes, barcos o aviones. -/- Sólo hay dos caminos principales para eliminar el PCC, liberar a 1.400 millones de prisioneros chinos y poner fin a la marcha lunática a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. La pacífica es lanzar una guerra comercial total para devastar la economía china hasta que los militares se cansen y arranquen el PCC. -/- Una alternativa al cierre de la economía de China es una guerra limitada, como una huelga dirigida por decir 50 drones termobáricos en el 20o Congreso del PCC, cuando todos los miembros principales están en un solo lugar, pero eso no tendrá lugar hasta 2022 por lo que uno podría ir a la sesión plenaria anual. Se informaría a los chinos, como ocurrió el ataque, de que debían deponer las armas y prepararse para celebrar una elección democrática o ser arrojados a la edad de piedra. La otra alternativa es un ataque nuclear total. La confrontación militar es inevitable dado el curso actual del PCC. Es probable que suceda sobre las islas en el Mar de China Meridional o Taiwán dentro de unas pocas décadas, pero a medida que establecen bases militares en todo el mundo podría suceder en cualquier lugar (ver Tigre Agachado, etc.). Los conflictos futuros tendrán aspectos difíciles y blandos con los objetivos declarados del PCC para enfatizar la ciberguerra mediante la piratería y paralización de los sistemas de control de todas las comunicaciones militares e industriales, equipos, centrales eléctricas, satélites, Internet, bancos, y cualquier dispositivo o vehículo conectado a la red. Las SS están lanzando lentamente una gama mundial de submarinos de superficie y submarinas tripulados y autónomos o drones capaces de lanzar armas convencionales o nucleares que pueden estar latentes a la espera de una señal de China o incluso buscando la firma de buques o aviones estadounidenses. Mientras destruyen nuestros satélites, eliminando así la comunicación entre los EE.UU. y nuestras fuerzas en todo el mundo, utilizarán los suyos, junto con los drones para atacar y destruir nuestras fuerzas navales actualmente superiores. Por supuesto, todo esto se hace cada vez más automáticamente por la IA. -/- Con mucho, el mayor aliado del PCC es el Partido Demócrata de los Estados Unidos. La opción es detener al PCC ahora o observar cómo extienden la prisión china por todo el mundo. -/- Por supuesto, la vigilancia universal y la digitalización de nuestras vidas es inevitable en todas partes. Cualquiera que no lo crea está profundamente fuera de contacto. -/- Por supuesto, son los optomistas los que esperan que los sociópatas chinos gobiernen el mundo, mientras que los pesimistas (que se ven a sí mismos como realistas) esperan que la sociopatía de IA (o como yo la llamo, es decir, la estupidez artificial o la sociósima artificial) tomen el control, tal vez para 2030 Los interesados en más detalles sobre el camino lunático de la sociedad moderna pueden consultar mis otras obras como Suicidio por democracia y obituario para América y el mundo 2019 y Delirios Utópicos Suicidas en el Siglo 21 -La filosofía, la naturaleza humana y el colapso de la civilización : Artículos y reseñas 2006-2019 5ª edicion (2019) -/- . (shrink)

By analysing three works of fiction set in Havana, Fresa y Chocolate by Tomas Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabi, Retour à Ithaque by Laurent Cantet and Viva by Paddy Breathnach, we propose to study the Cuban capital as a sick body, as an architecturally, economically, politically and socially dilapidated organism. Its citizens struggle to survive, lacking basic necessities and trapped under a claustrophobic political and social surveillance, which the film directors convey through the use of a variety of aesthetic (...) devices. There is a form of symbiosis between Havana and its inhabitants. The characters are confined in a labyrinth of alleys, stairs and narrow corridors, enveloped in a nocturnal atmosphere. The constricted arteries through which they move show that the body of Havana lacks oxygen. Its inhabitants need to find spaces to breathe and to express their authentic selves, to regenerate. This space is to be found behind Havana’s façades, behind its closed doors and even on a roof-top terrace. These private spaces reveal the dual nature of the city and its people, and constitute pockets of liberty as well as places of catharsis. The external façade presents a socially acceptable figure while covering and protecting the authentic self. The private spaces provide the physical and mental oxygen that the soul of Havana needs to survive. It is here that individual liberties flourish, allowing rights to be asserted, and art to be both preserved and created. The premise of a spiritual transformation begins to take form. (shrink)

Mark Dsouza’s new book, Rationale-Based Defences in Criminal Law, aims to shed new light on the question of how to conceptualize justifications and excuses as defenses against criminal liability. His offers an alternative to the common account on which justifications negate the wrongness of acts whereas excuses negate only the actor’s blameworthiness but not the act’s wrongness. Instead, Dsouza contends that the justification–excuse distinction is entirely a matter of the quality of the defendant’s reasoning. His account of justifications is generally (...) compelling, although his accounts of excuses and of the moral norms underlying the criminal law are less persuasive. Overall, however, Dsouza successfully establishes his quality-of-reasoning view as a viable competitor theory of justifications and excuses. (shrink)

Tommie Shelby argues that social injustice undermines the moral standing states would have, were they just, to condemn criminal wrongdoers. He makes a good argument, but he does not go far enough to reject the blaming function of punishment. Shelby’s argument from “impure dissent,” in particular, helps to demonstrate the limits of blame in criminal justice.

Legal anti-positivism is widely believed to be a general theory of law that generates far too many false negatives. If anti-positivism is true, certain rules bearing all the hallmarks of legality are not in fact legal. This impression, fostered by both positivists and anti-positivists, stems from an overly narrow conception of the kinds of moral facts that ground legal facts: roughly, facts about what is morally optimific—morally best or morally justified or morally obligatory given our social practices. A less restrictive (...) view of the kinds of moral properties that ground legality results in a form of anti-positivism that can accommodate any legal rule consistent with positivism, including the alleged counterexamples. I articulate an ‘inclusive’ form of anti-positivism that is not just invulnerable to extensional challenge from the positivist. It is the only account that withstands extensional objections, while incorporating, on purely conceptual grounds, a large part of the content of morality into law. (shrink)