In discussions of state surveillance, the values of privacy and security are often set against one another, and people often ask whether privacy is more important than national security.2 I will argue that in one sense privacy is more important than national security. Just what more important means is its own question, though, so I will be more precise. I will argue that national security rationales cannot by themselves justify some kinds of encroachments on individual privacy (including some kinds that (...) the United States has conducted). Specifically, I turn my attention to a recent, well publicized, and recently amended statute (section 215 of the USA Patriot Act3), a surveillance program based on that statute (the National Security Agency’s bulk metadata collection program), and a recent change to that statute that addresses some of the public controversy surrounding the surveillance program (the USA Freedom Act).4 That process (a statute enabling surveillance, a program abiding by that statute, a public controversy, and a change in the law) looks like a paradigm case of law working as it should; but I am not so sure. While the program was plausibly legal, I will argue that it was morally and legally unjustifiable. Specifically, I will argue that the interpretations of section 215 that supported the program violate what Jeremy Waldron calls “legal archetypes,”5 and that changes to the law illustrate one of the central features of legal archetypes and violation of legal archetypes. The paper proceeds as follows: I begin in Part 1 by setting out what I call the “basic argument” in favor of surveillance programs. This is strictly a moral argument about the conditions under which surveillance in the service of national security can be justified. In Part 2, I turn to section 215 and the bulk metadata surveillance program based on that section. I will argue that the program was plausibly legal, though based on an aggressive, envelope-pushing interpretation of the statute. I conclude Part 2 by describing the USA Freedom Act, which amends section 215 in important ways. In Part 3, I change tack. Rather than offering an argument for the conditions under which surveillance is justified (as in Part 1), I use the discussion of the legal interpretations underlying the metadata program to describe a key ambiguity in the basic argument, and to explain a distinct concern in the program. Specifically that it undermines a legal archetype. Moreover, while the USA Freedom Act does not violate legal archetypes, and hence meets a condition for justifiability, it helps illustrate why the bulk metadata program did violate archetypes. (shrink)

The article addresses three theses on judgment in general and legal judgment in particular, starting from Peirce’s and Dewey’s claims about them. The first thesis, ontological, concerns the content of an act of judgment and says that judgment is about an object instantiating a property (not about a property instantiated by an object). The second, alethic, concerns the relation between judgment and truth and says that judgment is the attribution of a truth value to a proposition. The third, genetic, (...) deals with the moments of judgment claiming it is a process susceptible of being articulated in such moments. Its fundamental moments are 1) hypothesis, 2) inquiry, 3) result. The article claims that the three theses interconnect and hold for both judgment in general and legal judgment, given that the latter is a model of the former; so a complex conception of judgment is articulated, discussing also its relations with assertion and inference. (shrink)

Recent marketing theory uses the Jungian concept of the archetype to design strategies for the improvement of product selling. Mark and Pearson propose that archetypes such as the ruler, the hero, the outlaw, and the sage are useful in promoting a product. This article suggests that the concept of archetypes as well as myths such as the Prometheus myth and the myth of the expulsion from Paradise, when combined with the insights offered by Mark and Pearson, may help (...) in understanding the management of trials of dissent as well. The article presents seven motifs that recur in trials of dissent and shows how they form a part of the phenomenon of the political management of dissent: the demonization and otherization of defendants and their supporters; the tendency to employ the charge of conspiracy and thus target a group rather than a single individual; the bending of the laws of procedure; the utilization of previously-untested substantive charges; the appeal made by each side to an external principle or vision--typically, the government resorts to the law of necessity whereas the defense resorts to natural law or a vision of "true justice" ; focus on the judge as manipulator of laws; and the appellate court assuming the role of the ultimate sage, performing its task with balance and detachment. The appellate court may use softer rhetoric in an effort to minimize the damage to the appearance of legality. When it does so, the rule of law is reaffirmed as a concept that benefits all sides; there is thus unity in the commitment to the rule of law, not to patriotism or to identification with the government. In addition, an effort is made to reaffirm the maxim that the government is a government of law, not of men. (shrink)

Jeremy Waldron argued that the government lawyers responsible for the ‘torture memos’ acted unprofessionally by undermining the prohibition on torture. He did so partly on the basis that that the torture prohibition represents a ‘legal archetype’ which cannot be undermined without doing considerable harm to large bodies of law. This paper argues that, however much intuitive appeal Waldron’s archetype-based analysis may have, its force is inherently limited. This is so for two reasons. First, the claim that the torture prohibition (...) is an archetype for non-brutality can only make a meaningful difference to the integrity of the legal order insofar as ‘brutality’ is understood widely. Waldron, though, reads ‘brutality’ in a narrow fashion. Second, and more importantly, the claim that archetypes are uniquely important to legal reasoning and the legal order is deeply problematic. (shrink)

This article discusses Lysias’ Against Eratosthenes as an ancient Athenian instance of the superior orders plea, a line of defence made notorious during the Nuremberg trials, which in turn became the cornerstone of modern war crime legislation. Whereas the pre-Nuremberg jurisdiction largely embraced the principle of superior responsibility, whereby a subordinate executing criminal orders was not to be held liable for them, the trials of the Nazi war criminals brought about a complete reversal of this doctrine. While remaining faithful to (...) the spirit of the Nuremberg jurisdiction, the subsequent legislative acts sought to further elaborate its underlying principle of absolute liability, in order to precisely determine the question of guilt and innocence. I argue that despite the close relationship between modern legal systems and Roman law, which fully embraced the doctrine of superior responsibility, it is in the juridical thought of ancient Athens that one finds the archetype of contemporary war crime legislation. (shrink)

In this article, we look at the contested role of in-house lawyers in regulated organisations in the financial sector. A recent Financial Conduct Authority consultation on whether to designate the head of legal of banks, insurance companies and other financial firms as ‘Senior Managers’ and the decision which flowed from it, reflected a flawed view of lawyers as a neutral technocracy of mere legal technicians; we show how the FCA’s decision is potentially damaging to the public interest and (...) failed to take into account that in-house lawyers are often important decision-makers and influencers within their organisations. We put the case for an alternative view; that in-house lawyers are professionals, with agency that requires them to act in accordance with ethical norms and means they should be made more accountable for their conduct. (shrink)

Cet article présente une approche étymologique des termes souvent confondus pour exprimer ce que sont la loi et les droits. Il tente de découvrir les situations archétypes et les relations qui paraissent avoir été les références originales des mots tels que “loi” et “droits”, “légal” et “juste”, aussi bien que d’autres mots qui sont indispensables lorsqu’on aborde le droit et la justice : “liberté”, “égalité”, “paix”, “autorité”, “société”, etc... Les concepts du juste et du légal peuvent être clairement distingués ; (...) ils semblent appartenir à des perspectives catégoriquement différentes sur l’aspect social de l’existence humaine.La distinction entre eux apporte un éclairage intéressant, non seulement sur la conception du droit par le juriste, mais également sur la vieille controverse concernant le droit naturel. A partir de cette analyse émerge une conception de l’ordre social distinctement libérale ainsi qu’une conception du droit naturel non-normative, dépourvue de toute connotation métaphysique ou théologique en référence à un “droit supérieur”. Les éléments dévoilés par l’analyse apportent un schéma cohérent du droit qui peut servir de base à une logique de la loi non déontique fondée sur les droits.This paper presents an etymological approach to the confusing language of law and rights. It attempts to uncover the archetypical situations and relationships that appear to have been the original referents of words such as ‘law’ and ‘rights’, ‘legal’ and ‘just’, as well as other words that are indispensable in discourses about law and justice: ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, ‘peace’, ‘authority’, ‘society’ and others. The concepts of the lawful and the legal can be clearly distinguished; they appear to belong to categorically different perspectives on the social aspect of human existence. The distinction between them sheds an interesting light, not only on the lawyer’s conception of law, but also on the old controversy over natural law. From the analysis there emerges a distinctly liberal conception of social order as well as a naturalistic, nonnormative conception of natural law, with no metaphysical or theological connotations of a “higher law”. The elements uncovered by the analysis provide a coherent scheme of law that can serve as the basis for a nondeontic, rights-based logic of law. (shrink)

The following categories can be found in the analysis of the prehistory of constitutionalism: the early constitutionalism, the ancient constitutionalism, the medieval or canonical constitutionalism. The usage of these categories raises the question: is constitutionalism the product of the Age of Enlightenment or is it an older phenomenon? The author of the article approaches this problem from another point of view: maybe the usage of the mentioned categories is an anachronism? In this case the elements taken form different contexts are (...) combined into a single unit typical to recent reality. This conjunction, when neither the single entirety nor the alterations of contexts are taken into consideration, distorts the understanding of the past, fits the past to the Procrustian bed straining it to the present standards. The existence of separate elements does not allow the consideration of the phenomenon as a whole. It also suits the category of constitutionalism. In author’s opinion, it is necessary to differentiate between: a) the prehistory of constitutionalism; b) the era of written constitutions as the legal acts of supreme power, the essence of which is expressed by the category of constitutionalism and which began in XVIII century. (shrink)

This book discusses how Plato, one the fiercest legal critics in ancient Greece, became – in the longue durée – its most influential legislator. Making use of a vast scholarly literature, and offering original readings of a number of dialogues, it argues that the need for legal critique and the desire for legal permanence set the long arc of Plato’s corpus—from the Apology to the Laws. Modern philosophers and legal historians have tended to overlook the fact (...) that Plato was the most prolific legislator in ancient Greece. In the pages of his Republic and Laws, he drafted more than 700 statutes. This is more legal material than can be credited to the archetypal Greek legislators—Lycurgus, Draco, and Solon. The status of Plato’s laws is unique, since he composed them for purely hypothetical cities. And remarkably, he introduced this new genre by writing hard-hitting critiques of the Greek ideal of the sovereignty of law. Writing in the milieu in which immutable divine law vied for the first time with volatile democratic law, Plato rejected both sources of law, and sought to derive his laws from what he called ‘political technique’. At the core of this technique is the question of how the idea of justice relates to legal and institutional change. Filled with sharp observations and bold claims, Platonic Legislations shows that it is possible to see Plato—and our own legal culture—in a new light “In this provocative, intelligent, and elegant work D. L. Dusenbury has posed crucial questions not only as regards Plato’s thought in the making, but also as regards our contemporaneity.”—Giorgio Camassa, University of Udine “There is a tension in Greek law, and in Greek legal thinking, between an understanding of law as unchangeable and authoritative, and a recognition that formal rules are often insufficient for the interpretation of reality, and need to be constantly revised to match it. Dusenbury’s book illuminates the sophistication of Plato’s legal thought in its engagement with this tension, and explores the potential of Plato’s reflection for modern legal theory.”—Mirko Canevaro, The University of Edinburgh. (shrink)

"Law week soccer competition: 16-19 May 2005." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (198), pp. 25.

Popular representations of third-world sex workers as sex slaves and vectors of HIV have spawned abolitionist legal reforms that are harmful and ineffective, and public health initiatives that provide only marginal protection of sex workers' rights. In this book, Prabha Kotiswaran asks how we might understand sex workers' demands that they be treated as workers. She contemplates questions of redistribution through law within the sex industry by examining the political economies and legal ethnographies of two archetypical urban sex (...) markets in India.Kotiswaran conducted in-depth fieldwork among sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata's largest red-light area, and Tirupati, a temple town in southern India. Providing new insights into the lives of these women--many of whom are demanding the respect and legal protection that other workers get--Kotiswaran builds a persuasive theoretical case for recognizing these women's sexual labor. Moving beyond standard feminist discourse on prostitution, she draws on a critical genealogy of materialist feminism for its sophisticated vocabulary of female reproductive and sexual labor, and uses a legal realist approach to show why criminalization cannot succeed amid the informal social networks and economic structures of sex markets. Based on this, Kotiswaran assesses the law's redistributive potential by analyzing the possible economic consequences of partial decriminalization, complete decriminalization, and legalization. She concludes with a theory of sex work from a postcolonial materialist feminist perspective. (shrink)

As an intellectual, economic, political and legal project, neoliberalism is not directed towards the rolling back of the state as an aim in itself. While its deregulatory tendencies, its commodification of public services and the undermining of systems of social welfare superficially suggest a generalised reduction in state power, it has been clear from the early 1980s that one of neoliberalism’s primary concerns has been the authoritarian reshaping of state power to engineer particular social outcomes, whether in criminal justice, (...) the disciplining of organised labour, the militarisation of national territory and migration, or the extension and deepening of regimes of austerity. This article introduces the recent work of Maurizio Lazzarato, who has argued that the asymmetrical creditor-debtor relationship is now the archetype of contemporary, neoliberal social relations. Ultimately, Lazzarato’s perspective tends to exaggerate the totalising powers of finance capital and leads him to endorse a form of political voluntarism, which fails to address the role of the neoliberal state as a site for forms of authoritarianism which are not solely generated by the debt relation. As a response, it will be suggested that aspects of Nicos Poulantzas’s concept of ‘authoritarian statism’ can be used to both strengthen our understanding of the authoritarian characteristics of the neoliberal state, and to imagine possibilities for resisting its expressions of power. (shrink)

As part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay describes the humanitarian diplomacy of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by comparing it conceptually with other forms of advocacy and illustrating it with the ICRC's recent experience in the Yemen crisis. Humanitarian diplomacy is examined as one particular way of balancing legal norms, moral values, and national interests in the pursuit of greater respect for international humanitarian law (IHL) and (...) principled humanitarian action in armed conflicts. The essay looks back to ancient history for archetypal forms of humanitarian advocacy in various cultural traditions. It then describes humanitarian diplomacy's practice of discreet diplomacy and confidential dialogue with all parties to a conflict, and compares its relatively “quiet” approach with the “loud” approach of outrage activism focused on “naming and shaming,” which tends to be the norm today. The essay argues that there is an important and complementary place for the ICRC's style of humanitarian diplomacy alongside other forms of advocacy even in the face of criticism that the ICRC is sometimes publicly silent about what it knows of atrocities and avoids naming and shaming. (shrink)

Through users’ cross-system comparative experience engaging with the health systems in Taiwan and other countries, this article probes into their understandings and value judgments and specifically their reasonings for the ‘solidarity with whom?’ question in the health sector solidarity. With the cross-system comparison approach, the study adopted semi-structured interviews with 30 Taiwanese participants who have studied, lived or worked abroad and engaged with the health system in Canada, the USA or the UK. This approach offers the opportunity for one to (...) evaluate the health system in the home country from a relative viewpoint from the host country. The participants suggested that the boundary of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) should be as inclusive as possible, covering all legal residents in Taiwan regardless of their status, and that the citizens should share more financial responsibility. The ethical reasons for supporting the NHI include recognizing health sector solidarity among people, considering the coverage as a protection of the human right to health, humanitarian reasons and self-interest. Three archetypes of users emerged from the synthesis: Universalists, Rationalists and Republicans. The cross-system comparative experience makes the participants have more supportive attitudes toward the ideals of health sector solidarity. (shrink)

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. La philosophie de Platon se trouve ici interrogée sur la conception de l'alphabet, c'est-à-dire sur les éléments qui rendent possibles la lecture, l'écriture et l'énonciation de quelque pensée que ce soit. « Copyright Electre » Pages de (...) début Introduction Note bibliographique I - De l'écriture II - Une chimère d'écriture III - Le savoir des lettres IV - On n'entend pas la voix de Platon V - L'ame comme un livre VI - L'épaisseur du sémantique VII - L'orthotès, orthophonie, orthographe VIII - Redécouverte du phonétique IX - Stoicheïologie et définition X - La combinaison des genres et le concept d'élément XI - De la lecture XII - Le réceptacle Les archétypes et leur inscription ConclusionIndex nominum Index rerum Pages de fin. (shrink)

The identification of contemporary forms of slavery is often problematically demarcated by reference to transatlantic enslavement as the definitive archetype. Such an approach overlooks other historic slaveries and neglects the totality of the maangamizi—the African holocaust. This article addresses the problematics of positioning the transatlantic system as the paradigm and unpacks the constituent elements of de jure slavery to construct an understanding of slavery as a condition as well as a status. By identifying the core features of de jure chattel (...) slavery through time, this paper displaces the assumption that legal status is determinative, giving meaning to the concept of slavery in the contemporary world. (shrink)

The society depicted in the Icelandic family sagas has often been characterised as the archetype of a ‘feuding society’. The disputing strategies found in the sagas have therefore served as an argument that the prescriptions of the laws which curb revenge were irrelevant in socio-legal practice. This dominance of the feud as the actual ‘law’ crystallising in saga disputes is questioned through a close analysis of gender roles. While ‘classical’ sagas frequently apply the motif of the female whetter who (...) forces a male character to take action or lose his manly honour, thus stabilising the feuding mechanism, the contemporary sagas and non-canonical family sagas display a wide variety of male-female interaction in the negotiation of social resources and legal obligations. The systematic look at non-canonical passages reveals a discourse of counsel, in which gender roles are fluid and interchangeable. This fluidity reveals an implicit theory of ‘law’ in the sense of doing conflict which stresses the stabilising forces supporting written law opposed to the motif of the whetter, which comes to form a central element of the imagination of the Icelandic heroic age. (shrink)

This is a pugnacious book, born of ancient controversy and attempting to return the debate to a time before the central jurisprudential questions were set by Hart and other legal positivists. Simmonds addresses those familiar with current analytical philosophy of law: those of us who know our Hart, Fuller, Dworkin, Raz, MacCormick and Kramer, and who perhaps need to have our attention drawn to Plato, Aristotle, Grotius, Hobbes and Kant. Presuming an informed readership, there is no bibliography, and it (...) incorporates ‘substantial extracts from four recent essays’ , but does not say what they are. Overall, his position is that law should be understood as an attempt to realize an archetype of law, an archetype which is a moral ideal. Those suspicious of moral ideals are not likely to find moral archetypes more philosophically acceptable. Yet, if Simmonds is right, we need them in jurisprudence.Simmonds is against the positivist split between …. (shrink)

Tackling food-related health conditions is becoming one of the most pressing issues in the policy agendas of western liberal democratic governments. In this article, I intend to illustrate what the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill would have said about legislation on unhealthy food and I focus especially on the arguments advanced by Mill in his classic essay On Liberty. Mill is normally considered as the archetype of liberal anti-paternalism and his ideas are often invoked by those who oppose state paternalism, (...) including those who reject legislation that restricts the consumption of unhealthy food. Furthermore, his views have been applied to related policy areas such as alcohol minimum pricing and genetically modified food. My analysis proceeds as follows. First, I show that Mill’s account warrants some restrictions on food advertising and justifies various forms of food labelling. Second, I assess whether and to what extent Mill’s ‘harm principle’ justifies social and legal non-paternalistic penalties against unhealthy eaters who are guilty of other-regarding harm. Finally, I show that Mill’s account warrants taxing unhealthy foods, thus restricting the freedom of both responsible and irresponsible eaters and de facto justifying what I call ‘secondary paternalism’. (shrink)

Herbert Hart and the positivists influenced by him have, according to Nigel Simmonds, deflected attention from the question that has always been at the heart of philosophical reflection on law. This question concerns the relationship between law and morality and how we should understand it. Simmonds argues that law and morality are necessarily related and seeks to explain their relationship by reference to an archetype that actually existing legal institutions approximate more or less adequately. He identifies this archetype as (...) providing the basis for an analysis of law that is free from metaphysics and universally applicable. This review article raises doubts concerning Simmonds’ claims to offer a metaphysics-free and universal analysis. It also offers an argument in support of the conclusion that he has failed to point up the complexity of the positivist tradition he criticizes. While Simmonds is vulnerable to these criticisms, he throws light on an egalitarian philosophy of government that informs legal institutions in the West and is relevant to positivist analyses of law. (shrink)

The article describes the representation of St. Augustine's spirit and theological-historical implications of the law, its positive impact on the legitimization of European identity. Theologian distinguishes three types of law: a temporary, natural and eternal law. The latter is an all-encompassing force that controls all the processes of creation. It is implemented through the story and disclosed in the cognitive capabilities of a person to understand its course. Person of the eternal law is also the Holy Letter. It directs the (...) faithful to the divine essence and enables the implementation of the covenants of Christ - to search for individual mutual society. Realization of the Divine precepts creates two social practices: the legalization of individual and corporate rights of the defense of honor and collective property, as well as claims libertalny principle of law. Natural law comes from the eternal law, and there is a perfect synthesis of normal human relationships and the general laws of nature. Its key provisions are security and the continuation of life of the human race. Precept of natural law is the pursuit of a free implementation of the transcendent and the immanent levels of human existence. And at the same time the desire of people to be a single entity - to reach a general agreement (concordia), the order of love with all the elements of social life. Klyuchnym for achieving concordia is understanding people in the language that gives everyone in the communication process with the "neighbors" to reveal their natural essence and develop common criteria for the fair. Temporary law is a combination of the laws of the state and social control in the form of folk traditions and customs. It forms a unique socio-politic about individual people and determines its development. For Augustine, the temporary law is conscious norm overseas social elements of individual and corporate desires that can destroy people reached concordia. However, Augustine's interpretation of the law did not eliminate the temporary rule of the eternal law in the soul of man - his conscience and the right of free solutions. The human soul is a divine archetype, and therefore the individual acquires the status of an autonomous artist eternal and natural law. Thus, the Augustinian doctrine of the law legitimizes the human right to self-affirmation, the autonomic harmonization of all three levels of law. This aspect of the teaching of St. Augustine become the basis for the approval of the European individualism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 297-327 [Access article in PDF] Liberal Irony A Program for Rhetoric James P. McDaniel [Figures] Seeing like a state Perhaps these famous yet simple pictures display not so much the virtuosity of photography or photographers as they statically represent fragments of Mahatma Gandhi's theosophical and political dynamism, his uncanny blend of calm and charisma, thought and play. The compositions are technically simple yet thematically (...) rich. The great leader being led by a boy, the public figure reflecting quietly in private over news reports: these modest representations key awareness of the place of overturning in Gandhi's thought, words, and deeds. A man who encouraged non-violent resistance (ahimsa) to British Imperialists, Gandhi submitted his body to great harshness (himsa). A witness to incredible atrocities committed against his people, Gandhi exhorted his followers to present their bodies before armed imperialist soldiers with full knowledge that they would be brutalized, many killed. Legally prohibited from doing so, Gandhi made salt. Exhausted and hungry, Gandhi walked hundreds of kilometers without rest and fasted for long stretches of time. Hated and feared, Gandhi loved. Perpetually reversing the "logic" of the world he knew, overturning its values to find and clarify truer values, insisting that choices be made between the received and the [End Page 297] promised, the "is" and the "ought," the actual and the possible, Gandhi was an ironist.Each picture can also be seen as an allegory, or taken together as an allegorical complex of mutually illuminating signs, and Gandhi as a political allegorist of human relations for early twentieth-century India and the globe. Allegory's signature inscriptions are everywhere about these simple photos. Personification of virtue, a stock technique of allegorical composition, abounds: Humility becomes Gandhi. Each photograph personifies humility uniquely: sparseness of setting, simplicity of garb, and other visual cues for self-abasement adorn the one; richness of natural setting, playfulness, childlikeness, and such ornament the other. Both images suggest the presence of the eternal in the temporal, but in different ways, another key fixture of allegorical design: Gandhi's stillness sitting near his spinning wheel, itself an image of eternal circuitousness, in the one, and his vigorous exertion against a vast, seemingly static, natural landscape, both "frozen" in time thanks to the technology of photography, in the other. Likewise, time's flow seems in a sense reversed in a manner that mirrors symmetrical ontological reversals: the older follows the younger, the man the boy, and the wise follow the inexperienced. Further allegorical decoding could be endeavored, for instance rearticulating the two texts on four tiers of signification: literal, figural, historical, and anagogical—the "four-level" allegorical hermeneutic initially developed for application to sacred texts and later ascendant as a critical method from the Middle Ages to some versions of poststructuralism in recent years (e.g., Fredric Jameson's Political Unconscious, Frederick Dolan's Allegories of America,Paul de Man's Allegories of Reading). Each tier reveals a unique dimension of discourse: its textual surface (literal), its embedded significations (figural), its reflexive display of placement in time and society (historical), and its alignment with archetypal or ultimate patterns of existence (anagogical).As two approaches to the same texts, irony and allegory are more complementary than exclusive. Neither renders the other invalid or uninteresting, nor do they deplete their common rhetorical resources, yet each features distinctive fixations. The first perspective fixates on a single strategy reflected in the texts and explores the ramifications of that strategy: dialectical reversal. The second fastens on and traverses across myriad textures and patterns of discursive technique displayed in the texts: allegorical personification (e.g., Gandhi as humility), temporality (e.g., fusing of public, private, and eternal time), paratactic association of images (i.e., interplay between visual signs not necessarily regulated by a single code [End Page 298] of meaning), and cosmic ornamentation (e.g., the spinning wheel that, by the way, is not spinning; like Gandhi, it is sitting still in a world of tumult, as if mirroring a moment of individual and universal arrest). Ironic strategizing and inventorying, in this light... (shrink)

The text questions the idea of transgenderism, or more specifically, the positioning of the androgynous paradigm that is ecological , as a possible Utopian projection into the future; as a radical NO to the present that still has not, regardless of whether we like it or not, fulfilled the possibility of legal and political status for all forms of life.Naturally enough, apart from an interpretation of the androgyne as the archetype of the unity of oppossing energies , I also (...) take into account Kari Weil’s interpretation of the androgyne,according to whose unmasking the androgyne also figures as the misogynous ideal, a construct of the patriarchal ideosphere. Or, as Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar have proposed – the alternative term gynandrous , since the very structure of the lexeme androgyny reflects the power of the male symbolic vision over the female view of the Universe.Considering the circumstances in Croatia, transgenderism is perceived in the text as an ignored state of affairs, since intersexuals are not categorised in the »Statute on the Structure and Method of Work of the Expert Opinion Component in Implementing Rights from Social Welfare and Other Rights According to Specific Regulations«, which simply means that they have no specific rights under the present social welfare system.By way of the identity of the androgyne as a third gender, which unifies the categories of masculinity and femininity, or, more specifically, by the ecological androgynous paradigm, I consider the attempt to delete the dichotomy of neglected Nature versus culture, as explicated, for example,by the feminist biologist Lynda Birke, and the attempt to achieve a bioethical encounter between the human animal and the ‘nonhuman’ animal, which I define conditionally with the term transspeciesism, which covers the ethical negation of speciesism.Namely, within the framework of eco/feminist theory, the socio-cultural anthropologist Barbara Noske was one of the first to put forward the question of the human relation towards other animals, demanding the establishment of an anthropology of animals, since – even now – only an anthropology of humans exists in relation to animals. (shrink)

Land-based climate mitigation schemes such as REDD+ imply the creation of ‘rights to carbon’ for actions that enhance carbon sinks. In many cases, the legal and normative foundations of such rights are unclear. This article focuses on special rights on the basis of improvement. Considering improvement in relation to carbon sinks requires asking what it means to ‘improve’ an environmental resource. Our answer departs in two significant respects from the standard conception of improvement, namely by reconceiving action in relation (...) to ecosystem services, and accordingly, making the case for a counterfactual baseline to be used to compare an improved and unimproved state. Our modifications potentially allow for a variety of agents to claim special carbon rights on the basis of beneficial interactions with land-based carbon sinks. We give three archetypical examples of agents who may claim pro tanto special rights to carbon based on their interaction with carbon sinks. (shrink)

In ethics and political philosophy, the concepts of equity, equality, need satisfaction, and justice are significant for the fulfilment of underlying requirements of human rights, and the attainment of peace in societies. Studies show these as potential frames for defining processes, distributing resources, sharing responsibilities, allocating rewards, demonstrating respect and dispensing with unequal treatments. Justice, as the ideal that impels us to impartially adjudicate between competent claims, is linked to equality. But as the moral force that propels actions for needs’ (...) satisfaction, it is linked to equity. Hence, equality and equity are two elements of the theory of justice: both are grounded on the principles of distributive justice. This ‘common grounding’ apparently obfuscates their distinctive features, and over time, has elicited their equiparation. This essay highlights the archetypal frames of the notions of equity and equality as indispensable principles of social justice. It identifies the skewed distribution of resources in Nigeria as arising from a legal framework that removes the power of personal/group autonomy from the people. The essay notes the misleading tendency in the insulated use of equality for justice, and accepts the primacy of distributive justice amongst rival pathways to national cohesive living. (shrink)

This is a pugnacious book, born of ancient controversy and attempting to return the debate to a time before the central jurisprudential questions were set by Hart and other legal positivists. Simmonds addresses those familiar with current analytical philosophy of law: those of us who know our Hart, Fuller, Dworkin, Raz, MacCormick and Kramer, and who perhaps need to have our attention drawn to Plato, Aristotle, Grotius, Hobbes and Kant. Presuming an informed readership, there is no bibliography, and it (...) incorporates ‘substantial extracts from four recent essays’, but does not say what they are. Overall, his position is that law should be understood as an attempt to realize an archetype of law, an archetype which is a moral ideal. Those suspicious of moral ideals are not likely to find moral archetypes more philosophically acceptable. Yet, if Simmonds is right, we need them in jurisprudence.Simmonds is against the positivist split between …. (shrink)

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s anti-war speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” is a noteworthy example of deliberation by dissent from the margins. Attention is given to the formation of his moral argument from similitude, its foundation in metaphor and archetypal imagery, and how it shifted perspective to enable the introduction of alternative lines of argument. King’s argumentation, as it worked rhetorically toward making the war debatable, exhibited key features of deliberative dissent, including catachresis, contingency, perspective, and incommensurability.