On Naturalizing Jurisprudence: Some Comments on Brian Leiter’s View of What Jurisprudence Should Become

In a series of powerful and challenging articles emerging since the mid-1990s, Brian Leiter has argued that certain theoretical strains in contemporary legal philosophy are ‘epistemologically bankrupt’, in virtue of their reliance on misguided argumentative devices: analysing concepts, such as the concepts of law and of authority; and doing so by appealing to intuitions regarding the correct way to understand the concepts in question. In response to this state of affairs, Leiter advocates that jurisprudence ought to attempt to catch-up with ‘naturalistic’ developments which have influenced the direction of other branches of philosophy – such as epistemology, philosophy of mind, and moral philosophy – in the last few decades. This article offers a critical analysis of some of Leiter’s proposals for what Jurisprudence should become, in light of his views on the relevance of naturalism for this discipline.     

Examining a Strategy for Improving Candidate Perceptions of Test Fairness

Candidate perceptions of test fairness have significant consequences for organizations. However, little attention has been directed toward interventions that may promote favorable reactions, despite recognition that the identification of such management practices is important. The current study investigated a strategy designed to improve candidate reactions—field vetting of items. This strategy involves comprehensive test item review sessions with a variety of applied subject matter experts. The extent to which the field vetting process resulted in more favorable reactions among police officers vying for promotion was investigated using a naturally-occurring quasi-experimental design. Results showed support for the field vetting process to improve reactions to high-stakes tests.     

State borders as defining lines of justice: why the right to exclude cannot be justified

This paper seeks to answer the question of what we, according to justice, owe to immigrants. The answer to this normative question is extracted by providing an analysis of Michael Blake’s jurisdictional theory presented in Immigration, Jurisdiction, and Exclusion and elaborated upon in other articles in which he argues for states’ right to exclude immigrants based on states’ jurisdictional nature. I regard this theory as unjustified since it rests on a weak basis, which is further problematised by weighing the moral claims of residents above those of immigrants. In this way, my criticism serves to provide argumentative support in a negative manner for weighing the moral claims of immigrants on an equal footing with those of residents.     

License plate reader (LPR) police patrols in crime hot spots: an experimental evaluation in two adjacent jurisdictions

Objectives  

This randomized controlled experiment tests whether license plate readers (LPR) deter crime generally, and automobile crime more specifically in crime hot spots. The limited intervention tested here reflects one current likely use of LPR at the time of this publication.     

Configuration in the flesh: challenges in publicly promoted clusters

In this article, we study how the configuration of a publicly promoted clusters policy??the Global Clusters policy initiated by the Walloon Government in Belgium??influenced the behaviors of R&D practitioners. At first, we explored the background of the Global Cluster policy in an effort to make the program configuration visible. This first step was conducted through the gathering and analysis of data from official documents as well as publications, conference speeches and workshops produced by policy makers, evaluators and their academic collaborators. Then, we observed the transmission of the six resulting features from the policy level to the project level: we studied their appropriation by R&D practitioners in ??Mirage??, an R&D project associated to the mechanical engineering Global Cluster. As a result, we show that the particularities of Walloon Global Clusters make them a powerful instrument to enhance collateral assets while facing potential lock-in. We finally consider the way these Global Clusters should evolve to favor the exploitation of the emerged outcomes while exploring future opportunities. A good balance between exploitation and exploration as well as adequate networking and clustering instruments to support both objectives appear necessary to ensure sustainability and growth of the involved actors.