On the Undecidability of Legal and Technological Regulation

Law and Critique - Generally, regulation is thought of as a constant that carries with it both a formative and conservative power, a power that standardises, demarcates and forms an order, through...     

Analysis of off-farm work decisions among smallholder farm households in Burkina Faso

This article investigates off-farm work decisions by smallholder farm households. Using data on 1,101 households from Burkina Faso, it demonstrates that in addition to the usual household socio-demographic characteristics, remittances, access to information and beneficiary of specific training affect off-farm work decisions, as well as rainfall factors and idiosyncratic health shocks. Community characteristics such as accessibility and number of inhabitants are also key factors. While suggesting that off-farm work is less likely to be undertaken for accumulation purposes, these results have important policy implications. In particular, policy measures should consider each segment as a separate entity.     

Three cheers for liberal modesty

ABSTRACT

Many liberals have been immodest in postulating that their own progressive, secular liberalism is the only one that can be justified in public reason. In Liberalism’s Religion, I articulate a more modest theory of liberalism and religion. While I personally endorse progressive secular liberalism, I argue that it is only one of the reasonable conceptions of liberal justice. This liberal modesty has profound, hitherto unnoticed implications for (i) the role of religious arguments in the public sphere, (ii) the legitimacy of religious establishment, and (iii) the justifiability of religious exemptions. In this article, I defend these three claims by providing replies to my critics.     

Fighting Corruption: The Peruvian Experience

In Peru the power system put in place by the former PresidentAlberto Fujimori created a network of illegality in which manycrimes were committed (e.g. various forms of human rights violations,including torture, murders, arms and drug trafficking and corruption).These offences were brought to light simultaneously by distinctbut intertwined investigations. In order to prosecute and punishthese crimes a special Anti-corruption System was established,which consisted of both special investigative authorities aswell as specialized anti-corruption courts. In addition, a specialsystem of Benefits for Effective Collaboration with the Prosecutionhas been put in place covering organized crime, as well as customand terrorist offences. In this respect, negotiated justiceconstitutes a very important instrument in the hands of thestate to fight organized crime. However, the prioritizationof the principles of expeditiousness and effectiveness, togetherwith very broad powers conferred on the prosecutors, impliesthe risk of undermining other equally important principles,such as the legality of evidence (legalidad de la prueba), respectfor the rights of the defence and the principle of equalitybefore the law. Finally, the author emphasizes the role thatcould be played by public international law to facilitate internationalcooperation for securing evidence and the arrest of accusedpersons, as well as to enable Peruvian authorities to identifyand seize the proceeds of crimes.     

Justice,Fairness, and World Ownership

It is a central tenet of most contemporarytheories of justice that the badly-off have aright to some of the resources of the well-off.In this paper, I take as my starting point twoprinciples of justice, to wit, the principle ofsufficiency, whereby individuals have a rightto the material resources they need in order tolead a decent life, and the principle ofautonomy, whereby once everybody has such alife, individuals should be allowed to pursuetheir conception of the good, and to enjoy thefruits of their labour in pursuit of suchconception. I also endorse the value offairness, whereby the right person orinstitution makes the decision as to whether tobring about justice.I show that justice and fairness can besatisfied only if we all enjoy a combination ofprivate and collective rights over the world.In making that case, I shall argue that the setof ownership rights I advocate differs fromreadily available conceptions of restrictedprivate ownership in two important respects.First, it is such that in some circumstances,two individuals or more can have control rightsover the same property at the same time, not,as is standardly the case in legal systems, bycontracting with one another (through gifts andjoint purchase), but simply on grounds ofjustice. Second, it allows that, if necessary,property-owners be expropriated from theirproperty without compensation.