Hudson has formulated two local deterministic theses and argued that both are incompatible with freedom. We argue that Hudson has half the story right. Moreover, reflection on Hudson’s theses brings out an important point for debates about freedom generally: that instead of focusing on the notion of entailment, debates about freedom should focus on the notions of explanation and sourcehood. Hudson’s theses provide an excellent case study for why the latter notions ought to take precedence over the former in (...) debates about freedom. (shrink)

This paper asks whether geographically localised, or ‘hyperlocal’, uses of Twitter succeed in creating peer-to-peer neighbourhood networks or simply act as broadcast media at a reduced scale. Literature drawn from the smart cities discourse and from a UK research project into hyperlocal media, respectively, take on these two opposing interpretations. Evidence gathered in the case study presented here is consistent with the latter, and on this basis we criticise the notion that hyperlocal social media can be seen as a community (...) in itself. We demonstrate this by creating a network map of Twitter followers of a popular hyperlocal blog in Brockley, southeast London. We describe various attributes of this network including its average degree and clustering coefficient to suggest that a small and highly connected cluster of visible local entities such as businesses form a clique at the centre of this network, with individual residents following these but not one another. We then plot the locations of these entities and demonstrate that sub-communities in the network are formed due to close geographical proximity between smaller sets of businesses. These observations are illustrated with qualitative evidence from interviews with users who suggest instead that rather than being connected to one another they benefit from what has been described as ‘neighbourhood storytelling’. Despite the limitations of working with Twitter data, we propose that this multi-modal approach offers a valuable way to investigate the experience of using social media as a communication tool in urban neighbourhoods. (shrink)

Fire safety expertise was in great demand following the Grenfell Tower fire in London in June 2017. The government established a review of building regulations and an expert panel to inform its responses to Grenfell, and many other relevant organisations also formed their own expert panels. However, expert knowledge in fire safety is a highly contested domain, with knowledge claims based on differing sources. Fire fighters can claim expertise based on their experience of fighting fires, scientists and science-based engineers can (...) claim expertise from experimentation, and those who create and enact regulations can claim expertise in what can termed ’codespeak’—the language of regulation. Although distanced from fundamental empirical experience of fire, codespeak is powerful because of its relative clarity and certainty, and legal status. Building users also bring their own form of ‘local’ expertise—they have first-hand experience of the practicalities of the solutions wrought by the other experts. Policy-makers thus face many competing forms of expert advice on fire safety, and their ability to judge what is most relevant in any particular case rests on the existence of a sufficient range and depth of in-house government expertise. (shrink)

This study examines the socioeconomic and familial background of Irish Catholic priests born between 1867 and 1911. Previous research has hypothesized that lack of marriage opportunities may influence adoption of celibacy as part of a religious institution. The present study traced data from Irish seminary registries for 46 Catholic priests born in County Limerick, Ireland, using 1901 Irish Census returns and Land Valuation records. Priests were more likely to originate from landholding backgrounds, and with landholdings greater in size and wealth (...) than the local average. Priests were found to originate from families with more sons than the national average, but with similar numbers of daughters. These findings are discussed in relation to competition for resources and lineage survival strategies. (shrink)

Traditional debates, such as those regarding whether the universe is finite in spatial or temporal extent, exemplified, according to Kant, the inherent tendency of pure reason to lead us astray. Although various aspects of Kant’s arguments fail to find a footing in modern cosmology, Kant’s objections to the search for a complete objective description of the cosmos are related to three intertwined issues that are still of central importance: the applicability of universal laws, the status of distinctively cosmological (...) class='Hi'>laws, and the explanatory sufficiency of laws. We will advocate a broadly Kantian position on these three issues as part of a critical response to a prevalent strain of Leibnizian rationalism in contemporary cosmology. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the application of a particular conception of the rule of law to situations characterized by traditional local justice and legal pluralism. While in the twentieth century international rule‐of‐law programmes were directed almost exclusively at state legal system, they have recently begun to take into account traditional local justice, namely, those institutions which in many world regions represent the main form of effective justice. Starting with a review of the positive and negative aspects of traditional (...) local justice from a rule‐of‐law perspective, the paper underlines the widespread lack of protection of human rights, particularly of women’s rights. Discussing vertical rule‐of‐law functions in contexts of legal pluralism the paper stresses the advantages of an approach to the promotion of the rule of law based on mutual recognition and influence between different legal authorities and sources. It is argued that this “interactive” approach appears best suited to the complex frameworks of relations that characterize present‐day systems of deep legal pluralism. Finally, the paper underlines the correspondence between this approach and a conception of the rule of law as an ideal framework of plural interactions characterized by the limits imposed on the law by the law itself, and it discusses its advantages from the perspective of human rights and women’s rights promotion. (shrink)

Local health officials are called upon every day to implement the programs, enforce the regulations, and take the actions that protect the health of the citizens in their districts. These responsibilities and duties are created and regulated by a complex interplay of federal, state, and local law. Not only is an understanding of these laws necessary to carry out public health activities on a daily basis, but many public health scholars and practitioners also believe that the law (...) can be used as a tool to take proactive steps to improve public health. Unfortunately, many local public health officials do not have access to the legal assistance they need to address the various legal questions that confront them. This deficit makes it harder for them to meet their day-to-day responsibilities and makes it much more difficult for them to use the law proactively as a method to improve public health in their communities. In addition, many of the attorneys who provide legal support to public health departments do not have the time or resources to develop a thorough and up-to-date understanding of public health law. This paper examines the experience of a number of local health offices in obtaining legal advice and of attorneys who provide legal advice and assistance to local health departments and assesses different models for organizing and financing the provision of legal services to local public health officials. (shrink)

The single most influential and widely accepted objection against any form of dualism, the belief that human beings are both body and soul, is the objection that dualism violates conservation laws in physics. The conservation laws objection against dualism posits that body and soul interaction is at best mysterious, and at worst impossible. While this objection has been both influential from the time of its initial formulation until present, this paper occupies itself with arguing that this objection is (...) a fleeting one, and has successful answers from both scientific and philosophical perspectives. It is to this end that I provide three groups of responses to the conservation laws objection. First, I outline responses which take the ‘laws of nature’ as the proper entry point into the discussion. Secondly, I provide an analysis of those who argue that contemporary quantum physical data requires that the objection itself involves scientifically unjustified premises. Finally, I layout a philosophically oriented answer which argues that the objection is linguistically problematic since its demands on the dualist are categorically fallacious. From these groups of answers, I conclude that while the conservation laws objection has been arguably the most widely accepted objection against dualism, the objection is without philosophical justification. (shrink)

In the early days of HIV awareness, prior to universal precautions, as a local health officer, I was supervising an openly gay employee. The county executive asked me the HIV status of the employee and threatened my employment if I did not reveal it. I was reluctant to do so, believing it would be an invasion of the employee’s privacy. I contacted the county attorney who advised me that I could reveal the employee’s HIV status to the county executive (...) but he was not willing to put his guidance in writing. Ultimately, I spoke with the employee’s attorney and was given permission to reveal the employee’s HIV status. The experience, however, left a bad taste in my mouth. I felt the county attorney was acting politically in support of the county executive rather than doing what was legally appropriate. He certainly did not act as an advocate for the local health department! (shrink)

Mounting evidence documents the extraordinary toll on human health resulting from the consumption of unhealthy food products and physical inactivity. In response to America's growing obesity problem, local policymakers have been looking for legal strategies that can be adopted in their communities to encourage healthful behaviors. In order to provide practical tools to policymakers, this article examines four possible venues for local policy change to improve the health of a community: the school environment the built environment () community (...) facilities and the point of sale environment. Finally, the article examines the use of taxes or fees as a means of paying for nutrition policy work as well as potentially reducing the consumption of unhealthy products. This article illustrates that local laws and policies can be a valuable tool in changing a community's environment in order to improve nutritional options and increase opportunities for physical activity. (shrink)

This paper describes the automated classification of legal norms in German statutes with regard to their semantic type. We propose a semantic type taxonomy for norms in the German civil law domain consisting of nine different types focusing on functional aspects, such as Duties, Prohibitions, Permissions, etc. We performed four iterations in classifying legal norms with a rule-based approach using a manually labeled dataset, i.e., tenancy law, of the German Civil Code ). During this experiment the \ score continuously improved (...) from 0.52 to 0.78. In contrast, a machine learning based approach for the classification was implemented. A performance of \ was reached. Traditionally, machine learning classifiers lack of transparency with regard to their decisions. We extended our approach using so-called local linear approximations, which is a novel technique to analyze and inspect a trained classifier’s behavior. We can show that there are significant similarities of manually crafted knowledge, i.e., rules and pattern definitions, and the trained decision structures of machine learning approaches. (shrink)

A conventional wisdom about the progress of physics holds that successive theories wholly encompass the domains of their predecessors through a process that is often called reduction. While certain influential accounts of inter-theory reduction in physics take reduction to require a single "global" derivation of one theory's laws from those of another, I show that global reductions are not available in all cases where the conventional wisdom requires reduction to hold. However, I argue that a weaker "local" form (...) of reduction, which defines reduction between theories in terms of a more fundamental notion of reduction between models of a single fixed system, is available in such cases and moreover suffices to uphold the conventional wisdom. To illustrate the sort of fixed-system, inter-model reduction that grounds inter-theoretic reduction on this picture, I specialize to a particular class of cases in which both models are dynamical systems. I show that reduction in these cases is underwritten by a mathematical relationship that follows the broad prescriptions of Nagel/Schaffner reduction, and support this claim with several examples. Moreover, I show that this broadly Nagelian analysis of inter-model reduction encompasses several cases that are sometimes cited as instances of the "physicist's" limit-based notion of reduction. (shrink)

By most measures, the impact of international human rights law ratification in the Arab Gulf region primarily in the 1990s and 2000s has been minimal. Scholars have found little evidence of correlation between ratification of the core human rights conventions with the minimal improvements in human rights practice in the region. Ratification of most human rights instruments Arab Gulf states in recent decades has, however, offered new cases from which to explore the impact of international human rights law in countries (...) where human rights monitors find protections to be most limited. Using the case of Kuwait’s ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, this article examines the impact of ratification in 1994 on discourses on discrimination against women in national press on human rights in the country. Through analysis of reporting in national newspaper Al-Anba, the article identifies how ratification has shaped the language used in national press reporting on women’s rights to increasingly reference the convention and frame rights violations in the language of “discrimination.” In tracing these connections between the convention and related content in local press, the article identifies new avenue to explore the “impact” of human rights treaty ratification, even when formal changes in laws and policies so far have been limited. (shrink)

The observed Taiwanese neonatal professionals' more conservative attitudes than their worldwide colleagues towards end-of-life (EOL) decision making may stem from cultural attitudes toward death in children and concerns about medicolegal liability. Healthcare practice is rooted in local culture and laws; however that should be adjusted to patients' best interests. Improving Taiwanese neonatal professionals' knowledge and competence in EOL care may minimize ethical dilemmas, allow appropriate EOL care decision making, avoid infants' suffering, and ease parents' bereavement grief.

Background:Reducing the incidence and negative consequences of concussion among youth athletes is a public health priority. In 2010, Massachusetts passed legislation aimed at addressing the issue of concussions in school athletics. We sought to understand local-level implementation decisions of the Massachusetts concussion law.Methods:A qualitative multiple-case study approach was utilized. Semi-structured interviews with school-employed actors associated with the law's implementation were used for analysis. Interview data were subjected to a conventional content analysis.Results:A total of 19 participants from 5 schools were (...) interviewed. Schools were purposefully selected from communities varying in socioeconomic status and population. Participants included 5 athletic directors, 5 coaches, 4 athletic trainers, 4 school nurses, and 1 health and wellness coordinator. Eight themes emerged regarding specific ways schools have implemented the law. Six themes emerged regarding factors influencing implementation.Conclusions:All cases employ neurocognitive testing as a means to assess concussions, place decision-making authority in athletic trainers' hands, and use a 30-minute online video to disseminate concussion education. Employing athletic trainers could pose challenges to school districts with limited financial capacity, as financial assistance from the state is not provided under the law. The validity of neurocognitive testing and the effectiveness of online concussion training need further study. Cooperation from student athletes, their parents, and physicians is necessary for full implementation of the law. (shrink)

How best to realize international human rights law in practice has proved a vexing problem. The challenge is compounded in the USA, which has not ratified several treaties including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The Cities for CEDAW movement addresses this deficit by encouraging cities to endorse and implement CEDAW norms. In doing so, it seeks to catalyze a local boomerang effect, whereby progressive political momentum at the local level generates internal (...) pressure from below to improve gender equity outcomes across the country and eventually, at the national level. In this article, we trace the diffusion of Cities for CEDAW activism with attention to the case of Cincinnati and analyze its implications for advancing women’s rights principles. We argue that while Cities for CEDAW has potential to enhance respect for women’s rights in local jurisdictions, its impact on national policy remains limited. (shrink)

Obesity is widely recognized as a preventable cause of death and disease. Reducing obesity among adults and children has become a national health goal in the United States. As one approach to the obesity epidemic, public health practitioners and others have asserted the need to provide consumers with information about the foods they eat. Some state and local governments across the United States have introduced menu labeling bills and regulations that require restaurants to post information, such as calorie content, (...) for foods offered on their menus or menu boards. A major dilemma is whether state and local menu labeling laws are preempted by the federal Nutrition Labeling and Education Act . While few courts have addressed this issue, ongoing litigation in New York City provides an early glimpse of judicial interpretation in this area. This article explores these preemption issues, arguing that appropriately written and implemented menu labeling laws should not be preempted by the NLEA. We offer guidance for states and localities that wish to develop and implement menu labeling laws. (shrink)

For Humean atomists, cosmic contents supervene on a spatiotemporal mosaic of modally insulated, freely recombinable local qualities. One piecemeal subspecies of Humean atomism promises more than global supervenience—somehow or other—on a separable base; it constrains how exactly elemental inputs yield everything else. Roughly, the distribution of basic local qualities across elements in one part of our cosmos metaphysically suffices for the complete local physical state of that part: anything sharing this part’s basic elemental decoration should share its (...) more complete contents, regardless of what may be happening elsewhere. On a non-piecemeal alternative, derivative contents can be recognizably local to, or manifest within, one part of our cosmos while reflecting some more global elemental base. To develop this alternative, non-piecemeal Humeans can borrow inspiration from some critics of Humean supervenience, who already distinguish a broader notion of locality from strict Humean intrinsicality. (shrink)

Addresses the relationship between the nation-state and non-state law, considering how they can coexist and transform each other.

It is commonly understood that in its focus on rights and obligations law is centrally concerned with organising responsibility. In defining how obligations are created, in contract or property law, say, or imposed, as in tort, public, or criminal law, law and legal institutions are usually seen as society’s key mode of asserting and defining the content and scope of responsibilities. This book takes the converse view: legal institutions are centrally involved in organising irresponsibility. Particularly with respect to the production (...) of large-scale harms – including extensive human rights violations, forms of colonialism, or environmental or nuclear devastation – and in opposition to conventional understandings of responsibility in law, morality and politics, the book provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which legal institutions – their practices, concepts, and categories – themselves operate as much to deflect responsibility for harms suffered as they do to acknowledge them. Drawing on a series of case studies from local, national, and global concerns the book analyses how law facilitates dispersals and disavowals of responsibility, and it shows how it does so in consistent and patterned ways. In assessing how this ‘organised irresponsibility’ operates, and what its consequences are for both legal analysis and society generally, a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of law’s methods, operation, and consequences is required. At stake is nothing less than a fundamental re-assessment of the role of modern law in the production and legitimation of human suffering. This innovative and interdisciplinary book provides a sustained challenge to conventional thinking about law and legal institutions. It will be of major interest to those working in law, political and legal theory, sociology and moral philosophy. (shrink)

The law-governed world-picture -- A remarkable idea about the way the universe is cosmos and compulsion -- The laws as the cosmic order : the best-system approach -- The three ways : no-laws, non-governing-laws, governing-laws -- Work that laws do in science -- An important difference between the laws of nature and the cosmic order -- The picture in four theses -- The strategy of this book -- The meta-theoretic conception of laws -- (...) The measurability approach to laws -- What comes where -- In defense of some received views -- Some assumptions that will be in play -- The laws are propositions -- The laws are true -- The logically contingent consequences of the laws are laws themselves -- At least some laws are metaphysically contingent -- The meta-theoretic conception of laws -- Laws of nature, laws of science, laws of theories -- The first-order conception versus the meta-theoretic conception -- What is a law of nature? -- Some examples of meta-theoretic accounts -- The virtues of the meta-theoretic conception -- Weighing the virtues and shortcomings of the meta-theoretic conception -- An epistemological argument for the meta-theoretic conception of laws -- The discoverability thesis, the governing thesis, and the first-order conception -- The main argument -- The objection from bad company -- The objection from inference to the best explanation -- The objection from bayesianism -- The objection from contextualist epistemology -- The objection from the threat of inductive skepticism -- Laws, governing, and counterfactuals -- Where we are now -- What would things have to be like in order for the laws of nature to govern the universe? -- Lawhood, inevitability, counterfactuals -- What is it for a proposition to be inevitably true? -- What is it for a whole class of propositions to be inevitably true? -- What is it for lawhood to confer inevitability? -- NP and supporting counterfactuals -- The worry about context-variability -- A solution and a look ahead -- When would the laws have been different? -- Where we are now -- The God cases -- Other counterexamples to NP -- A moral-theoretic counterexample to NP -- Scientific contexts and non-scientific contexts -- Scientific God cases? -- Lewisian non-backtracking counterexamples -- Where things stand now -- How could science show that the laws govern? -- Why the law-governed world-picture must include the science-says-so thesis -- What is extra-scientific? -- How can the science-says-so thesis be true? -- NP as a consequence of the presuppositions in any scientific context -- Np as true in all possible scientific contexts -- But how could it be so? -- Attack of the actual-factualists -- Measurement and counterfactuals -- Where we are now -- Measurements, reliability, counterfactuals -- A general principle that captures the relation between measurement and counterfactuals -- What we can learn about lawhood from what we have learned about the counterfactual commitments of science -- A first-order account of laws or a meta-theoretic account of laws? -- What methods are presupposed to be legitimate measurement procedures? -- Why we must adopt a meta-theoretic account of laws -- What lawhood is -- Where we are now -- The measurability account of laws -- Brief review of the case for the mal -- A note about hedged laws -- How plausible is the mal? -- What if we don't care about the law-governed world-picture? -- Newton's God and Laplace's demon -- Beyond humean and non-humean -- Two views of laws -- Humean supervenience and the meta-theoretic conception -- Alleged counterexamples to humean supervenience -- Governing and non-trivial necessity -- How the mal lets us have it all -- Humeanism? non-humeanism? -- What is the significance of the idea of the law-governed universe? -- Where in the world are the laws of nature? -- Appendix: The mal in action : a few examples -- Of scientific theories and their laws -- Newton's theory as a paradigm example -- Classical special-force laws -- Geometrical optics and one of its laws -- Local deterministic field theories. (shrink)

The laws of nature have come a long way since the time of Newton: quantum mechanics and relativity have given us good reasons to take seriously the possibility of laws which may be non-local, atemporal, ‘all-at-once,’ retrocausal, or in some other way not well-suited to the standard dynamical time evolution paradigm. Laws of this kind can be accommodated within a Humean approach to lawhood, but many extant non-Humean approaches face significant challenges when we try to apply (...) them to laws outside the time evolution picture. Thus for proponents of non-Humean approaches to lawhood there is a clear need for a novel non-Humean account which is capable of accommodating these sorts of laws. In this paper we propose such an account, characterizing lawhood in terms of constraints, which are understood as a form of modal structure. We demonstrate that our proposed realist account can indeed accommodate a large variety of laws outside the time evolution paradigm, and describe some possible applications to important philosophical problems. (shrink)

The field of “business for peace” recognizes the role that businesses can play in peacebuilding. However, like much of the discussion concerning business in conflict zones, it has prioritized the view of multinationals, often overlooking the role of indigenous local firms. The economic, social, and intergroup dynamics experienced by local businesses in conflict zones are understudied, with the current paper beginning by positioning micro- and small enterprises in the peacebuilding debate, then engaging with multidisciplinary works to understand how (...) they foster peace. Through a case study set in north Lebanon, we conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty-three MSE owners in one industry who operate across sectarian divisions and with recently displaced Syrian refugees. Our findings indicate that local business activity can simultaneously promote peace and foster conflict, with peacebuilding improved when intergroup differences are reduced within the operating environment. Furthermore, the importance of economic development was elevated for local businesses, suggesting that peace through mechanisms such as social development, the rule of law, and training, is only achieved if economic needs are alleviated through these measures. We conclude by citing how contextual factors in conflict zones can enhance intergroup differences, and how resolving such factors can promote peacebuilding, with further empirical work needed in this area. (shrink)

There is a long tradition of preferring local theories to ones that posit lawful or causal influence at a spacetime distance. In this paper, we argue against this preference. We argue that nonlocality is scientifically unobjectionable and that nonlocal theories can be known. Scientists can gather evidence for them and confirm them in much the same way that they do for local theories. We think these observations point to a deeper constraint on scientific theorizing and experimentation: the (quasi‐) (...) isolation of causal or lawful influence. We argue that this requirement ought to replace the locality desideratum in science. We then explore the possibility that the order of explanation has been reversed: perhaps it is isolatable influence that determines what counts as local in the first place. (shrink)

Worldwide, obesity has become a major cause of preventable death, disease, and disability. While the epidemic of obesity is a significant public health issue in many developed nations, the United States has the highest prevalence of obesity among adults and children internationally. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey estimates that over 60 percent of U.S. adults are overweight or obese. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “overweight” refers to adults whose body mass index, a number calculated (...) using weight and height measurements, is between 25 and 29.9. “Obese” refers to adults whose BMI is 30 or higher. Among American children and adolescents, approximately 17 percent are overweight. (shrink)

This groundbreaking work on logic by the brilliant 19th-century English mathematician George Boole remains influential to this day. Boole's major contribution was to demonstrate conclusively that the symbolic expressions of algebra could be adapted to convey the fundamental principles and operations of logic, which hitherto had been expressed only in words. Boole was thus the founder of today's science of symbolic logic. Summing up his innovative approach, Boole stated, "We ought no longer to associate Logic and Metaphysics, but Logic and (...) Mathematics." As the great English logician Augustus De Morgan later put it, in praise of Boole, his genius consisted in showing that "the symbolic processes of algebra, invented as tools of numerical calculation, should be competent to express every act of thought, and to furnish the grammar and dictionary of an all-containing system of logic." The Laws of Thought lays out this new system in detail and also explores a "calculus of probability." The story of Boole's life is as impressive as his work. Besides rudimentary lessons from his father and a few years at local schools, Boole was largely self-taught. Revealing his aptitude for many subjects at an early age, he began his career already at age 16 as a teacher at a village school. In his leisure time he tackled the daunting works of Newton, Laplace, and Lagrange on physics and mathematics. By the age of twenty-four he was submitting original papers to the Cambridge Mathematical Journal and at age twenty-nine he won a medal from the Royal Society for his contributions to mathematical analysis. He continued to so impress his contemporaries that five years later he was appointed professor of mathematics at Queens College, Cork in Ireland, even though he had no university degree. At his untimely death of forty-nine, Boole could never have guessed that his new symbolic logic would become essential in the next century for telephone switching and the design of computers. For this practical reason, as well as the sheer intellectual importance of his accomplishment, The Laws of Thought merits our attention today. (shrink)

One of the authors has recently propounded an SR model which shows, circumventing known no-go theorems, that an objective interpretation of quantum mechanics is possible. We consider here compound physical systems and show why the proofs of nonlocality of QM do not hold within the SR model, which is slightly simplified in this paper. We also discuss quantum measurement theory within this model, note that the objectification problem disappears since the measurement of any property simply reveals its unknown value, and (...) show that the projection postulate can be considered as an approximate law, valid FAPP. Finally, we provide an intuitive picture that justifies some unusual features of the SR model and proves its consistency. (shrink)

Local miracle compatibilists claim that we are sometimes able to do otherwise than we actually do, even if causal determinism obtains. When we can do otherwise, it will often be true that if we were to do otherwise, then an actual law of nature would not have been a law of nature. Nevertheless, it is a compatibilist principle that we cannot do anything that would be or cause an event that violates the laws of nature. Carl Ginet challenges (...) this nomological principle, arguing that it is not always capable of explaining our inability to do otherwise. In response to this challenge, I point out that this principle is part of a defense against the charge that local miracle compatibilists are committed to outlandish claims. Thus it is not surprising that the principle, by itself, will often fail to explain our inability to do otherwise. I then suggest that in many situations in which we are unable to do otherwise, this can be explained by the compatibilist’s analysis of ability, or his criteria for the truth of ability claims. Thus, the failure of his nomological principle to explain the falsity of certain ability claims is no strike against local miracle compatibilism. (shrink)

This paper argues that international development research should be submitted to the oversight of research ethics committees from the countries where data will be collected. This includes research conducted by individuals who may fall outside the jurisdictions of most ethics guidelines or policies, such as individuals contracted by non-governmental organizations. The argument is grounded in an understanding of social justice that recognizes that not seeking local ethics approval can be an affront to the decolonization movement, and may lead to (...) significant direct harms to participants. Local ethics oversight can help ensure projects appropriately take into consideration local laws, regulations, priorities and context. For example, a local research ethics committee may be in a better position than a foreign one to assess whether any given proposed project carries context-specific risks. In addition, submitting to a local research ethics committee is to acknowledge the legitimacy of local authorities, thereby taking a stance against the history of colonizing disempowerment. Local oversight is a mechanism to increase the accountability of researchers working abroad: if respect for local authority and tailoring to local context are to be upheld, there must be mechanisms to ensure that research that does not meet these requirements does not proceed. Objections based on the limited oversight capacity in some countries and on concerns related to the politicization of the review process are discussed. Finally, the roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders in the implementation of greater local ethics oversight are laid out. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the changes in the conceptual understanding of the institution of local self-government that has been taking place in the last three decades. The submission to the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the Draft Federal Law «On the general principles of the organization of local self-government in the unified system of public authority», which took place at the end of 2021, allows analyzing the trajectory of the development of the institute of (...) class='Hi'>local self-government in post-Soviet Russia from the point of view of a more global time and conceptual perspective. The purpose of this work is to identify the trajectory of the development of the conception of local self-government in RF. Research attention is focused on identifying the conception of local self-government formulated in official documents, a gradual change in the conceptual interpretation of this institution. It is shown that the main shiftin the conceptual understanding of local self-government occurs along the axis of institutional independence / institutional dependence of local self-government on state authorities. The development of the conceptual understanding of local self-government in post-Soviet Russia proceeds along the trajectory from a public concept (local self-government as an independent activity) to a state one (local self-government as a form of exercising power) and to a hyperstate one (local self-government as a link in a unified system of exercising authority). (shrink)

Bicycle helmets protect against head injury. Mandatory helmet laws likely increase their use. Although 21 states and Washington, DC have mandatory helmet laws for youth bicyclists, no U.S. state has a mandatory helmet law that applies to all ages; however, some localities have all-age helmet laws for bicyclists. This study abstracted local helmet laws applicable to all-ages to examine their elements.

In Re JB, a local authority, concerned with the risk the respondent posed to vulnerable women, successfully appealed against an order made in the Court of Protection that declared JB, an autistic man with impaired cognition, possessed capacity to consent to sexual relations. In this recent decision, the Court of Appeal has arguably reset the last 15 years of jurisprudence concerning P’s capacity to make decisions in regard to sexual relations. Previous case law focused on P’s ability to consent (...) to such relations, and whether P understood the information relevant to that decision. Notwithstanding the abundance of legal authority, including the recent appellate judgments of Hayden J in London Borough of Tower Hamlets v NB and AU [2019] EWCOP 27. and B v A Local Authority [2019] EWCA Civ 913. there was a lacuna in the existing law in relation to what information was relevant for the purposes of assessing the issue of capacity to consent to sexual relations. Judges have traditionally adopted a protectionist stance in understanding “the information relevant to the decision” under s3 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, with an emphasis on whether P understood the risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. However, the Court of Appeal in Re JB has broadened its interpretation of ‘relevant’ information to also include the ability to understand the importance of a partner’s consent to such relations. This is a welcome change to previous courts’ interpretations of the ‘nature’ of the sexual act, moving from an approach focused on the physical sexual mechanics to one which views the nature of sex as a mutually consensual engagement. However, a fundamental shift in how we view such cases is likely to have far-reaching consequences, particularly for local authorities and professionals seeking guidance in relation to their care planning. (shrink)

Mounting evidence documents the extraordinary toll on human health resulting from the consumption of unhealthy food products and physical inactivity. Diseases related to poor nutrition – such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some cancers – are among the leading causes of disability and death in the United States. Poor diet and lack of exercise come second only to tobacco use in actual causes of preventable death in this country. It is estimated that 6% of all adult health care, 7% (...) of Medicare, and 11% of Medicaid expenditures are attributable to obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the direct medical cost associated with physical inactivity was nearly $76.6 billion in 2000.In response to America's growing obesity problem, local policymakers have been looking for legal strategies to adopt in their communities to encourage healthful behaviors. Taking the lead from the successful tobacco control movement, nutrition advocates are seeking strategies to “denormalize” unhealthy behaviors, rather than pursuing education-based approaches that encourage individuals to change their own personal behavior. (shrink)

Are the laws of nature real? Do they belong to the world or merely reflect the way we speak about it? And if they are real, what sort of entity are they? These questions have been intensely debated by philosophers. Modern cosmology, however, has given such questions a new twist by introducing a unique perspective on physical reality, the perspective which I shall call the cosmological point of view. In this perspective, the universe as a whole presents itself as (...) a single individual entity that undergoes a radical change with time. Laws of physics, on the other hand, have both local and global significance. They characterize how things behave locally. But they also characterize the entire universe. This suggests an interesting connection between the universe as a whole and what laws of physics hold in this universe. From the cosmological point of view, these two totalities, the laws of physics and the universe, may be related. But how exactly? Are the laws “inscribed” in the fabric of the universe or do they in some sense “precede” it in the order of being? If the latter, what is a “medium,” over and above the physical universe, in which physical laws are “written”? If the former, are they but a consequence of the universe’s very existence? And if so, how could the laws of physics survive the dramatic change the physical state of the universe underwent in the course of time? (shrink)

This article examines the criteria for determining when a local authority owes a duty of care at Common Law, concurrent with statutory obligations, in light of the decisions of the House of Lords in X (Minors) v Bedfordshire County Council and M (A Minor) v Newham Borough Council. The various policy arguments employed by their Lordships are analysed and located within current debate regarding the purpose and scope of the tort of negligence. It is argued that, in relevant circumstances, (...) English courts should have regard to the European Convention on Human Rights in order to conclude whether it is ‘just and reasonable’ to impose a duty of care. The cases under discussion raised issues under several Articles of the Convention (Article 6 and Article 8, in particular), and their impact upon the decision of the House of Lords, as well as the facts themselves, is assessed. (shrink)

Vaccine mandates played a critical role in the success of New York City’s COVID-19 response. By relying on evidence as a substantive basis for the mandates and adhering to procedural requirements and precedent, New York City leveraged its position and expertise as a local governmental authority to devise mandatory vaccine policies that withstood numerous legal challenges. New York City’s experience highlights the role of municipal government in mounting a meaningful public health response, and the strategies adopted by NYC may (...) provide a blueprint for municipalities around the world facing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the threat of future public health emergencies. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics is troubled by the problem of nonlocality inherent in the theory. In a series of papers we explore the possibility of an algebraic formulation of quantum mechanics based on local observables which would incorporate nonlocality when small distances are involved but would be separable at large distances. This paper reviews some of the basic ideas and theories developed recently. These include a unified localization scheme, the introduction of local comoving evolution, local comoving observables, and related (...) conservation laws. Technical considerations and mathematical jargon are kept to a minimum to avoid obscuring physical reasoning. (shrink)

Helen Beebee has recently argued that David Lewis’s account of compatibilism, so-called local miracle compatibilism, allows for the possibility that agents in deterministic worlds have the ability to break or cause the breaking of a law of nature. Because Lewis’s LMC allows for this consequence, Beebee claims that LMC is untenable and subsequently that Lewis’s criticism of van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument for incompatibilism is substantially weakened. I review Beebee’s argument against Lewis’s thesis and argue that Beebee has not refuted (...) LMC and concomitantly has not demonstrated that Lewis’s criticism of the Consequence Argument fails. (shrink)

Mechanisms have become much-discussed, yet there is still no consensus on how to characterise them. In this paper, we start with something everyone is agreed on – that mechanisms explain – and investigate what constraints this imposes on our metaphysics of mechanisms. We examine two widely shared premises about how to understand mechanistic explanation: (1) that mechanistic explanation offers a welcome alternative to traditional laws-based explanation and (2) that there are two senses of mechanistic explanation that we call ‘epistemic (...) explanation’ and ‘physical explanation’. We argue that mechanistic explanation requires that mechanisms are both real and local. We then go on to argue that real, local mechanisms require a broadly active metaphysics for mechanisms, such as a capacities metaphysics. (shrink)

A sensible code of right and wrong for public officials everywhere, this book explores what ethics and the public trust mean. It includes sample codes of ethics and examines ways to improve the ethical climate of government. Excerpted and adapted from a longer work, Ethics, Conflicts, and Offices: A Guide for Local Officials, which also covers conflict of interest and office-holding laws in North Carolina.

Refugee protection depends, minimally, on the identification of agents capable of discharging international obligations in this area of international law. Commonly discussed “agents of justice” include states, IOs, and NGOs. This article focuses on a different set of actors: subnational units (cities, states, and provinces in federal States) and the legal mechanisms they may use to discharge international obligations in the area of refugee protection. I advance three distinct theoretical models for understanding subnational units’ responsibilities vis-à-vis international law: (1) derived (...) delegated responsibilities; (2) derived back-up responsibilities; and (3) assumed responsibilities. I conclude by sketching some ways in which subnational units could play an even more salient role in the promotion of international law. (shrink)