Promises Schmomises

In this piece, I argue that promises need not be kept just because they were made. This is not to say, however, that unwise, unhappy, and unfortunate promises do not generate obligations. When broken promises will result either in wrongful gains to promisors or wrongful losses to promisees, obligations of corrective justice will demand that such promises be kept if their breach cannot be fully repaired. Thus, when a broken promise will constitute a deliberate loss transfer for personal gain, the duty not to exact unjust enrichment (a wrongful gain) will require a promisor either to honor her promise or craft a means of ensuring that the promisee’s impoverishment is not traded for her enrichment. And when a broken promise will constitute the culpable imposition of a reliance-based injury on a nonculpable promisee (a wrongful loss), the duty to make others whole when one has purposefully, knowingly, or recklessly injured them will require one either to keep one’s promise or to fashion a remedy for its breach that ensures that the promisee is left no worse off than he would be had the promise not been made. This account explicitly parts ways with normative powers theories of promising. It places no weight at all on the raw fact that a promise has been made. Instead, it locates the gravamen of a promissory violation in the harm that is caused to a promisee who nonculpably relies upon and changes her position in anticipation of the prediction about the promisor’s future conduct that is embedded in his promise. Absent any adverse reliance on the part of a promisee, there is nothing that gives rise to an obligation of performance or repair on the part of the promisor. But this account is also to be distinguished from utilitarian theories that take promises to be instruments of wealth maximization that properly give way whenever the reason for honoring them speaks in favor of violating them. On my account, the balance of reasons for action that determines the morality of performance includes deontological rights and duties, agent-relative permissions, and Hohfeldian liberties. As I shall argue, even if one rightly concludes that one has no duty either to keep a promise or to craft a remedy for its breach, one must nevertheless remember that virtue requires one to be or become the kind of person who often goes beyond the call of duty. But the fact that virtue often requires us to do what we have no duty to do should not cause us to confuse its conditions with the conditions of right and wrong action. We have a duty to keep promises or to otherwise protect the reliance interests that they generate only when failing to do so will lead either to our own unjust enrichment or to others’ unjust injury. And this means that we have a duty to keep promises in far fewer circumstances than is commonly believed.     

In remembrance of Robert D. Tollison

We discuss the mechanisms related to quadratic voting, from Vickrey’s counter-speculation mechanism and his second-price auction, through the family of Groves mechanisms and its most notable member, the Clarke mechanism, to the expected externality mechanism, Goeree and Zhang’s mechanism, the Groves–Ledyard mechanism, and the Hylland–Zeckhauser mechanism. We show that each mechanism that involves collective decisions has a quadratic aspect and that all of the mechanisms that we discuss are applications of the fundamental insight that for a process to be efficient, all parties involved must bear the marginal social costs of their actions.     

The Anti-Axial Age

Karl Jaspers famously characterized the period from the beginning of the eighth to the end of the third century before Christ as an “Axial Age” in which intellectual freedom and creativity blossomed as never before. This article argues that it was followed, five hundred years later, by an “Anti-Axial Age”, which devised a novel formula for intellectual and political repression. Its essence was the state’s capture of the millenial narrative, which had first been developed as religious doctrine within Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Involving the two great classical empires of Western Eurasia, Persia and Rome, and then empowering the expansion of Islam, the Anti-Axial Age left an ideological legacy that continues to haunt the contemporary world.     

我国当前司法环境下民事诉讼程序价值的保障力度与限度

普世意义的程序安定性必然有与特定适用范围相对应的“相对度”,而决定“相对度”的标准在于一国现有的法治环境和法治思维.决定我国当前对民事诉讼程序价值的保障力度与限度的法外因素是多元化的,应在充分认识现实国情的基础上,通过技术性调整,提升对程序性错误进行证明、认定、宣告与救济的力度,限制程序的循环进行、意思自治权的宽泛赋予和柔性程序制度的构建,同时对人为主观意识主导下技术调整无力的瓶颈问题持客观的认识态度并积极采取预防措施.     

心理干预视角下公安院校大学生阅读疗法探析——基于对贵州警察学院学生的调查

阅读疗法是以阅读材料为媒介,在阅读疗愈师的指导下,运用心理学原理,使读者在阅读的过程中经历认同、净化、领悟的心理历程,最终达到疗愈及自我成长的过程。阅读疗法作为心理学、医学、神经科学和图书馆学的交叉课题,已得到广泛的承认,在理论和实践研究上均有丰硕的成果。为更好地实施阅读疗法,以"大学生阅读调查问卷"实施调查与分析,了解公安院校大学生阅读和心理现状。公安院校可从以下几方面开展阅读疗法:选择合适的阅读材料,需要有阅读疗愈师的参与,建设适合公安院校大学生的阅读疗法书目,开展交互式阅读疗法。