Litigation cannot solve a public health crisis. But litigation can be an effective complementary tool to regulation by increasing the salience of a public health issue, eliciting closely guarded information to move public opinion, and prompting legislative action. From tobacco to opioids, litigants have successfully turned to courts for monetary relief, to initiate systemic change, and to hold industry accountable For years, litigators have been trying to push firearm suits into their own litigation moment. But litigation against the gun industry (...) poses special challenges. Not only has the regulatory regime failed to prevent a public safety hazard, Congress has consistently underfunded and understaffed the relevant regulatory actors. And in 2005 it legislatively immunized the gun industry from suit with the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. This paper surveys the field of litigation in response to gun violence, tracking the limited successes of victims and stakeholders suing the gun industry. We find that victories remain confined to individual actors and unlike high-impact public litigations in other areas, aggregate class actions and major public litigation led by state attorneys general are noticeably absent in the firearm context. (shrink)

Focusing on clothing and adornment (dress), this worldwide cross-cultural comparison asks why people in some societies appear to dress in uniform or standardized ways, whereas in other societies individuals display considerable variability in dress. The broader research question is why some societies have more within-group variation than others. Hypotheses are tested on 80 societies drawn from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS). The central hypotheses consider the impact of general societal tightness or looseness, degree of egalitarianism as well as other aspects (...) of societal complexity, and the role of resource stress on dress standardization. Exploratory methods identify four latent constructs of dress from newly coded variables, one latent construct for tightness/looseness, and one latent construct for resource stress. As expected, (1) increased societal tightness was positively related to increased standardization and rules regarding dress and (2) increased resource stress is generally related to more standardization of dress and rules regarding adornment. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, the predictors of tightness–looseness differ from the predictors of dress. Most importantly, resource stress negatively predicts tightness but positively predicts three of the latent dress constructs. The relationship between dress standardization and societal complexity may be curvilinear, with mid-range societies having more standardization. Although some of the theorized relationships are supported (including that standardization of dress is predicted by societal tightness and more resource stress), at the end of paper we discuss some puzzling findings, speculate about possible explanations, and suggest further lines of research. (shrink)

Abstract:This article interprets the abbé d’Aubignac’s 1715 Conjectures académiques, ou, Dissertation sur l’Iliade—the first text to posit the non-existence of Homer—in light of the Parisian literary underground of the mid-seventeenth century. It shows that the city’s nascent street culture influenced regimes of authorship and, ultimately, classical scholarship on Homer. In general, it argues for a history of scholarship in dialogue with the architecture of the cities where it took place.

Les deux projets de paix les plus célèbres publiés à l'époque de Louis XIV sont celui de William Penn, qui parut en anglais en 1693, et celui de l'abbé de Saint-Pierre, dont la version la plus connue fut publiée en plusieurs volumes datés de 1713 à 1716. Une traduction française anonyme du livre de Penn fut imprimée au plus tard en 1697 et connut une diffusion extrêmement restreinte. Nous pensons que l'abbé de Saint-Pierre a participé d'une façon ou (...) d'une autre à cette traduction et s'est amplement inspiré des idées de Penn pour son propre projet. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.4 (2002) 697-716 [Access article in PDF] "La Mère Humanité":Femininity in the Romantic Socialism of Pierre Leroux and the Abbé A.-L. Constant Naomi J. Andrews Humanity, my mother, since you have led me, by so many paths, to conceive this design, support me, inspire me, affirm me. —Pierre Leroux, "Invocation to my Muse." 1It was during the July Monarchy in France, in (...) the era immediately preceding the Revolution of 1848, that the ideology we call socialism became more than an abstraction held by isolated intellectuals and conspirators. 2 A series of individuals, loose-knit associations, and more formal écoles were active during the 1830s and 1840s, developing a varied agenda of social reform, economic cooperation, or association, mystical Christianity, and women's liberation. Roughly lumped under the pejorative rubric of utopian socialism, and perhaps more accurately called romantic socialism, this movement was ultimately unsuccessful in achieving its diverse goals, but contributed significantly to the political discourse of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 3Socialism at this stage of its development overlapped in many ways with republicanism, both being, to quote one historian of the latter, "an amalgam of responses to the Enlightenment, the 1789 Revoluation and above all economic [End Page 697] change." 4 Many early socialists were also republicans, and socialist ideas influenced the ideology articulated by republicans such as Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Auguste Blanqui. Louis Blanc, perhaps the best-known socialist of the decade surrounding the 1848 revolution, was and is known as a Jacobin socialist. 5From a certain perspective republicanism and socialism shared common origins and assumptions during the July Monarchy. Most socialists had come out of the political milieu of republicanism, whether through the carbonarist movement, opposition political clubs such as Droits de l'Homme and Les Amis du Peuple, or through the influential journalism trade of the Bourbon Restoration and early July Monarchy. Pierre Leroux, for one, had been a co-founder of the widely read journal le Globe, a bastion of liberalism, which he later turned over to the Saint-Simonians upon his conversion to their "church." 6 Although diverse in many ways, the left of this era did share certain core tenets, chief among them opposition to the Orleanist monarchy and, to varying degrees the belief in more democratic rule of the French nation.To say this, however, might erroneously imply a unity that was certainly not a feature of socialism during this period. In fact socialism, despite its near mystical devotion to ideas of unity, was anything but singular during its pre-Marxian phase. The spectrum of socialist thinkers and groups ranged widely. Standing closest to the republicans in their beliefs about politics and the revolutionary tradition were Jacobin socialists, most usually associated with Louis Blanc. Blanc and others articulated a social philosophy that sought "to unite two distinct ideologies: Jacobin democracy and co-operative socialism." 7 Thus Jacobin socialism combined republican political priorities and commitment to national political processes in general and to a centralized state in particular with attention to economic change, to reforming the distribution process along more equitable lines and to putting the situation of working people at the center of political change. In this goal Jacobin socialism reflected, as did other strains of socialism, the economic instability of the era and the emergence of an organized working class movement which followed the aborted revolution of 1830. 8At the other end of the spectrum one might put the Saint-Simonians and the Fourierist École Sociétaire. 9 Vehemently anti-republican, these groups shared [End Page 698] very little with the Jacobin socialists, other than a certain concern with the emerging working class, one of the few consistent features of early socialism. Unlike Jacobin socialists, these groups focused their theories of community at a very low level, having a strongly utopian component to their thinking. As a result, they tended to see national politics as irrelevant to the situation of ordinary people and even as a... (shrink)

The devastating impact of the national opioid epidemic has given rise to hundreds of lawsuits. This article details the extremely broad range of legal claims, compares the opioid cases to other public health litigation efforts, including tobacco, and describes the special mechanism — a multidistrict litigation — through which more than 700 opioid-related cases have been consolidated thus far, with settlement almost certain to follow.

Aujourd’hui, à une époque où la sexualité est omniprésente et semble triomphante, et où ses rapports avec l’Église catholique romaine restent difficiles et parfois conflictuels, ce recueil de 120 lettres d’il y a deux générations à peine présente un immense intérêt. Elles ont été écrites principalement par des laïcs (107), hommes (55) et femmes (62), riches ou pauvres, cultivés ou non, de toutes les régions de France, mais généralement catholiques pratiquants (plusieurs communiaient quotidien...

By endowing technology with the attributes of autonomous agency, human beings are ethically sidelined. Individuals are relieved of responsibility. The suggestion of being in the grip of irresistible forces provides an excuse for rejecting responsibility for oneself and others, thus creating conditions for inappropriate or antisocial behavior. It also impedes the search for solutions to pressing social problems associated with applications of technology. Failure to assign and accept responsibility for decisions to deploy “conventional” technology will inevitably impede our ability to (...) deal with the social and ethical challenges of robotics. (shrink)

The next steps in health reform, like all such efforts before it, will have to engage the issue of American health care federalism – the relationship between the federal and state governments in the realm of health law and policy. Since its enactment in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has offered a robust example of modern federalism and revealed new complexities. This article recounts the findings of our five-year study of the federalist and nationalist features of ACA (...) implementation. Contrary to the claims of ACA opponents that the law marked a federal “takeover,” the ACA's governance structures have advanced rather than suppressed state power. But we also found that the advances in state power occurred seemingly independently of the statute's structural arrangements; that is, the ACA's nationalist and federalist features both enhanced state power over health policy. These findings raise questions about whether cherished American federalism values are unique to federalist structures; they also raise the question of what exactly health care federalism is for, and why we continue to design health policy with federalism front and center. It is not clear that enhanced state power has brought better health policy. If it has not, is federalism for its own sake worth the trade-off? (shrink)

This volume reaffirms the indispensable place of the arts in any coherent curriculum. The author hopes that the specific arguments formulated in the book will advance the conservationist post-Modernist aesthetic.

This paper closely examines Strauss’ conception of “Medieval Enlightenment”. It focuses on the central role that Arab philosophy has played in the development of Strauss’s thought and discusses the validity of the uses he makes of it. It also emphasizes the interest of Strauss’s analyses as regards Arab philosophy while drawing attention to the tensions they create. It claims that Strauss’ involvement in the quarrel between Ancients and Moderns aims at showing that medieval philosophy cannot be reduced simply to the (...) effort to reconcile philosophy and religion. The ideas of some Arab philosophers cropped up throughout Strauss’s philosophical development and determined his interpretation of Maimonides and Plato as well as his stance in opposition to the moderns. However Strauss’s idea of the “medieval Enlightenment” remains fundamentally ambiguous. Is that Enlightenment supposed to be an argument for the preservation of faith alongside reason or does it rather express a kind of atheism or disguised materialism? (shrink)

Prispevek predstavi sklop evholoških besedil na čast svetemu Hieronimu: od prvih omemb v Gelazijevem zakramentarju do prenovljenega rimskega misala Pavla vi. Orisan je potek kompozicije temeljnih zakramentarjev in misalov rimskega obreda, ki so vir, iz katerega se je bogato razširil obstoječ misal. Predstavljeni so vidiki, ki bi jih za zvest prenos misli, izraženih v latinski evhologiji, v drug jezik, lahko upoštevali. Razširjeni konteksti umeščenega besedila namreč v bogoslužju omogočajo liturgičnemu besedilu, da lahko postane učinkovit dogodek vere. Njihovo neupoštevanje pa učinkovitost (...) besedila omejuje. Zaradi pretežno filološke metode prevedeno evhološko besedilo uporabnika lahko doseže šele s katehezo, homilijo ali komentarjem. Tak pristop je neprimerljivo hitrejši in zaradi še neizdelanih študij za vsak posamezni formular se ohranja vtis, da je zahtevni proces inkulturacije rimskega obreda nujno potrebno centralno nadzorovati. Predstavljena so tudi obvezujoča navodila, s katerimi Cerkev že desetletja usmerja prevajanje in iz katerih postaja še bolj očitna teža in preroškost odločitev, ki jih je v korist vernikov naredila na drugem vatikanskem koncilu. (shrink)

Difficile tolérance est écrit par Yves-Charles Zarka avec la collaboration de Cynthia Fleury en vue d’étudier la question de la tolérance dans les sociétés occidentales et la place qu’occupent les communautés arabo-musulmanes au sein de ces sociétés. Les deux auteurs mettent l’accent sur l’incompatibilité entre les valeurs de l’Occident et celles de l’islam ; ils défendent l’idée de l’impossibilité de l’émergence de la tolérance dans la culture de l’islam et soulignent la nécessité de réagir face aux revendications communautaires, de plus (...) en plus menaçantes pour la République. Cet article commente et discute les principaux postulats, présupposés et exemples historiques mobilisés par les deux auteurs. Il attire l’attention sur les erreurs de lecture, les contresens et les déformations au prix desquels les auteurs soutiennent leur thèse sur l’absence de la tolérance en islam. (shrink)

RésuméL'objectif de ce travail est d'attirer l'attention sur l'existence d'une forte rationalité pratique dans l'œuvre d'Avempace, malgré la primauté accordée à la raison théorique, et à la quête d'un intelligible dénué de tout lien avec la matière et pris en lui-même comme la fin suprême de l'existence humaine. Les arguments servant à défendre cette idée mobilisent les analyses de la notion de “prudence” chez Avempace, ainsi que celle de “pensée droite”, fortement présente au niveau de la détermination de la conduite (...) que le philosophe doit adopter dans les cités injustes. L'élucidation de ces aspects permet, parallèlement, de prendre la mesure de la distance intellectuelle qui sépare Avempace des mystiques à la fois sur le plan éthico-politique et sur le plan onto-théologique. (shrink)

We applaud the spirit of MacNeilage's attempts to better explain the evolution and cortical control of speech by drawing on the vast literature in nonhuman primate neurobiology. However, he oversimplifies motor cortical fields and their known individual functions to such an extent that he undermines the value of his effort. In particular, MacNeilage has lumped together the functional characteristics across multiple mesial and lateral motor cortex fields, inadvertantly creating two hypothetical centers that simply may not exist.

Que reste-t-il du « printemps arabe » et que peut-on soutenir à propos de l’identité du processus révolutionnaire, après que la naissance du « califat » de Daech en 2014 a fait apparaître le problème théologico-politique comme l’un des principaux effets de ce processus, que les théories du complot ont fusé de toutes parts pour tenter d’expliquer les causes des malheurs qui ne cessent de s’abattre sur le monde arabe, et que l’implication de nombreuses parties, régionales et internationales, da...

RésuméL'objectif de ce travail est d'attirer l'attention sur l'existence d'une forte rationalité pratique dans l'œuvre d'Avempace, malgré la primauté accordée à la raison théorique, et à la quête d'un intelligible dénué de tout lien avec la matière et pris en lui-même comme la fin suprême de l'existence humaine. Les arguments servant à défendre cette idée mobilisent les analyses de la notion de “prudence” chez Avempace, ainsi que celle de “pensée droite”, fortement présente au niveau de la détermination de la conduite (...) que le philosophe doit adopter dans les cités injustes. L'élucidation de ces aspects permet, parallèlement, de prendre la mesure de la distance intellectuelle qui sépare Avempace des mystiques à la fois sur le plan éthico-politique et sur le plan onto-théologique. (shrink)