Deserved punishment

The essay contrasts the thesis that deserved punishment is punishment which, as deserved, is obligatory with the weaker thesis that it is punishment which, as deserved, is permissible. The author first outlines an account of the meaning of desert-claims which entails only the weaker thesis and then defends this account against criticisms levied in a recent article that it is ambiguous, cannot explain the moral significance of desert, justifies letting people profit from their crimes, and permits unequal treatment. The essay proceeds to a critique of George Sher's view of deserved punishment, faulting Sher for: (1) his reliance on an implausible understanding of benefits, (2) his inability to justify the punishment of crime-victims for their own crimes, and (3) the inadequacy of his defense of mercy. Finally, the author sketches a role-centered conception of morality within which it becomes clearer how deserved punishment can be justified as the victim's ties to the criminal, and the role-responsibilities derivative therefrom, are vitiated by the latter's misdeeds.     

Justice of Conjugal Divisions of Labor—You Can't Always Get What You Want

The new intramarital distributions of 190 young parents in their third month of first parenthood were studied in a multifaceted distributive and procedural justice framework. For a large majority, justice was an important dimension in their intramarital distributions of household labor, child care, leisure time, breadwinning. Justice ratings of various principles in general were more liberal than the reported practice, in women even more than in men. The practice reported was mainly traditional, with a gender-segregated distribution of labor. A pattern of marked consistencies and inconsistencies between the principles rated as just and factual practice emerged. Inconsistencies occurred more often in women than in men.     

What Liquidation Does For Secured Creditors, And What It Does For You

This article analyses the liquidation process, challenging the much repeated proposition that secured claimants 'stand outside' liquidation. It is argued that this proposition (i) is a product of a misunderstanding of the dual duality in the nature of liquidation proceedings, in that, in principle, they serve both public and private functions, and they further the interests of both secured and unsecured creditors; (ii) overlooks how secured creditors benefit from liquidation, and also how unsecured creditors have a real interest in the proper administration of their debtor's encumbered assets; (iii) mistakes the secured creditor's choice in usually being able to gain immunity from the liquidation process, for a compulsion to stand exiled from this process; (iv) is incorrect as a matter of history and practice; and (v) is rendered unsustainable by the statutory text. It concludes that secured creditors have never 'stood outside' liquidation, that liquidation is an important tool for the protection of their interests, and that it is right to require floating charge holders to pay their fair share of liquidation expenses.     

What You Should Know About Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) for Environmental Claims

The rapid evolution of legal and regulatory developments related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has already resulted in some high-dollar legal settlements and is expected to generate numerous environmental claims. Currently, most major PFAS sites are associated with the primary chemical production of select PFAS and the application of fire-fighting foams at airfields, refineries, fire training facilities and bulk fuel-storage facilities. In addition, PFAS are also used in the manufacture of consumer products designed to resist heat, stains, grease, water and reduce friction. Manufacturing facilities that produce these products may discharge PFAS to wastewater treatment plants, which are not designed to remove PFAS, and thus become dischargers also. The ultra-low detection limits and regulatory thresholds for PFAS, combined with the manufacturing and use of numerous PFAS-containing products, suggests the number of sites that require PFAS cleanup will increase in the coming years and decades. Therefore, understanding current capabilities and limitations of sampling, remediation, and forensics is critical to assessing PFAS-related environmental claims.     

What I Tell You Three Times is True: A Pragmatic Approach to Redundancy in Legal Information

This article looks to whether it is feasible to avoid the communicative blocks and barriers which citizens find when they deal with legal information. Although these blocks have been usually regarded to be inevitable (the 'inevitability' argument), the ICT revolution allows hope of some improvement by means of electronic information delivery. Until now, however, public electronic legal information systems have not succeeded in really easing or solving laymen's legal communication problems. This is because they are tightly attached to traditional legal visions that primarily focus on the electronic availability of legal documents and disregard the pragmatic element of legal information. The target of any model of public access to legal information should not just be availability, but comprehensibility. My major concern here is to show that the general theory of information, especially the notion of redundancy, may be both a fruitful tool to deal with these problems and also to overcome the presumed inevitability of communication blocks in the legal field. Inasmuch as the citizen's perspective is assumed, this article presents a pragmatic approach to legal information.     

Belief in a Just World and Commitment to Long-Term Deserved Outcomes

We investigated whether people need to believe in a just world in part because such a belief helps people to work toward long-term goals and to do so in such a way that they are deserved. We assessed participants' long-term goal focus and also their commitment to deserving their outcomes (via a psychopathy scale). In a second session, participants were then exposed to a victim whose situation did or did not contradict a belief in a just world. When the victim's situation contradicted a belief in a just world, the greater the participants' tendency to focus on long-term outcomes, the more they blamed the victim for her misfortune; but this relation only occurred for participants with a strong commitment to deserving their outcomes (i.e., those low in psychopathy). The results are consistent with our argument that, given the function of the belief in a just world proposed in this article, people would have a greater need to preserve the belief (e.g., by blaming victims of injustice) the greater their investment in long-term and deserved outcomes.     

该当与危险:新型刑罚目的对量刑的影响

立基于再犯危险性预测的剥夺犯罪能力是由犯罪学派首先提出的刑罚理论,并广泛应用于保安处分之中,但是新近作为刑罚目的在量刑中的适用却引起了极大的争论。无论是类型化剥夺犯罪能力还是选择性剥夺犯罪能力,在一种有序列的、并合主义的量刑理论中,都可以找到立足之地,并发挥更加重要的作用,将有限的司法资源集中到最需要控制的危险犯罪类型和犯罪人之上,不但为"宽严相济的刑事政策"填补具体内容提供路径与方法,同时能够最大限度地为刑法赢得道德信誉。     

So You Love Me

This essay uses the work of Gilles Deleuze, in some detail, to argue for a new practice of criticism. Not in order to purify, refine, or generally redeem anything, but rather to encourage a focusing upon the production of fields of experience as an ethical event. As such, the piece re-problematizes what it means to raise questions, and demonstrates the underlying responsibility of doing so.     

Just 'Cause You're Smarter than Me Doesn't Give You a Right to Tell Me What to Do: Legitimate Authority and the Normal Justification Thesis

Joseph Raz's famous theory of authority is grounded in threeclaims about the nature and justification of authority. Accordingto the Preemption Thesis, authoritative directives purport toreplace the subject's judgments about what she should do. Accordingto the Dependence Thesis, authoritative directives should bebased on reasons that actually apply to the subjects of thedirective. According to the Normal Justification Thesis (NJT),authority is justified to the extent that subjects are morelikely to comply with right reason by following the authority'sdirectives than by following their own judgments about whatright reason requires.¹ In this article, I consider a number of ways in which NJT mightbe construed as a justification for authority. First, I evaluateNJT construed as a principle that would provide a practicaljustification for an individual to accept or recognize a particularperson or persons as a preemptive authority. Second, I evaluateNJT construed as a principle that describes the conditions underwhich a state or legal system is morally legitimate. I arguethat NJT is true under none of these interpretations.²     

致敬不平凡的你

《平凡英雄》MV发布仪式上,“你不是英雄’却心中存天平。你不是英雄,仍旧日夜兼程……”歌词缓缓流淌、娓娓道来,熟悉的身影从一帧帧画面、一段段旋律中走出,4分16秒,却仿佛是一段漫长而珍贵的故事被唤醒、重温和开启。你是我心中的一首歌北京丰台法院的王静还记得那个夜晚,电台主播用温和的声音讲述着人间烟火,手扶方向盘的她置身夜幕。     

你我皆凡人——写于洋澜湖畔的寂静春天

去年在中南财经政法大学讲环保法,读到蕾切尔的《寂静的春天》,没想到庚子年初,我们就与它见面了。参加疫情防控,整整两个月。头一个月来不及惊慌,一头扎进基层,包保六个村和社区,覆盖人口十万,没有精力和心情整理文字。第二个月主要下沉社区,工作逐渐规范有序,缓过神气能梳理一下,也就是星星点点的几个人几件事。     

山山而川景自远

人生海海,山山而川。辞旧迎新,年轻的同事如此感慨。摹《诗经》旧词而造新语,道尽的是流年旧岁的不易,道不尽的却是未来可能更多的艰辛与期许。这些年来,与太多太多青春的面孔相处,沧桑却不自知。蓦然回首时,自己已孑然出列。所幸,还有青春的他们,还能再伴青春度几载,再陪青春行一程,虽说不远,也算无憾。     

争议何在?出路何在?

媒体对<道路交通安全法>第76条(以下简称"第76条")的关注,很大层面上集中在生命权与路权孰重孰轻?强者与弱者谁是谁非的争执之上,但是,在我看来,像这样的思考路径和辩驳方法根本就不可能对第76条是否合理进行准确的评估.因为硬要抽象地、撇开具体个案地把彼此冲突的权利利益排出一个"客观价值秩序"(objective order of values),是很困难的,正如有的司机反驳道:"在快速道上行人突然横穿马路,司机为避让行人,很可能会与其他车辆碰撞,也会给司机带来生命威胁,这时司机不是强者而是弱者".