Pakistan: the political economy of militarism

Ahmad Faruqui is an economist, who serves as a fellow with the American Institute of International Studies. He is the author of Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. Julian Schofield is an assistant professor in political science at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His research examines the effects of arms races, particularly in relation to South Asia.     

Parting the ivory curtain: understanding how universities support a diverse set of startups

Universities are widely recognized as a critical source of technological innovation and are heralded for the entrepreneurial ventures cultivated within their walls. To date, most research has focused on academic entrepreneurship—new ventures that spin out of academic laboratories. However, universities also give rise to startups that do not directly exploit knowledge generated within academic laboratories. Such firms—and the societal and economic benefits they create—are an important contribution of modern universities. We propose a framework for understanding the full scope of university entrepreneurship and its driving factors, with the goal of providing scholars, university administrators, and policymakers with insights regarding the resources required to foster entrepreneurship from within the ivory tower.     

Law and Morality at War

Through a critical engagement with Jeremy Waldron’s work, as well as the work of other writers, I offer an account of the relative scope of the morality of war, the laws of war, and war crimes. I propose an instrumentalist account of the laws of war, according to which the laws of war should help soldiers conform to the morality of war. The instrumentalist account supports Waldron’s conclusion that the laws of war justifiably prohibit attacks on civilians even if it turns out that some civilians lack a moral right not to be killed. Importantly, the instrumentalist account also offers what Waldron thinks impossible: a non-consequentialist defense of the failure of the laws of war to prohibit the killing of nonthreatening combatants. Finally, I argue that new war crimes can be broader than the morality of war as well as established laws of war and that many of the arguments for defining war crimes more narrowly than either the morality of war or the laws of war are unconvincing. In all of these ways, I hope to carry forward Waldron’s project of exploring the relationship between law and morality in war.     

Growth of Chrysomya megacephala (Fabricius) Maggots in a Morgue Cooler*

Abstract: In estimating the postmortem interval (PMI) using maggots obtained during autopsy, the forensic entomologist makes decisions regarding the effects of low‐temperature storage of the body on the insects. In this case report, a corpse was found in an abandoned house in the residential area of Bukit Mertajam, Penang, Malaysia. The maggots were found to be alive inside the mouth of the deceased although the corpse had been in the morgue cooler for 12 days. The maggots were reared and identified as Chrysomya megacephala (Fabricius). The emerged adult flies were kept as a stock colony, and the duration of development under the indoor fluctuating temperature regime was studied. The total duration of developmental process of this species was 9.5 ± 0.5 days, and the PMI estimated was 3.2 ± 0.6 days. This case report demonstrates the survival of Ch. megacephala maggots for 12 days and their growth inside the morgue cooler.     

Can we handle the truth? Legal fictions in the determination of death

Advances in life-saving technologies in the past few decades have challenged our traditional understandings of death. People can be maintained on life-support even after permanently losing the ability to breathe spontaneously and remaining unconscious and unable to interact meaningfully with others. In part because this group of people could help fulfill the growing need for organ donation, there has been a great deal of pressure on the way we determine death. The determination of death has been modified from the old way of understanding death as occurring when a person stops breathing, her heart stops beating, and she is cold to the touch. Today, physicians determine death by relying on a diagnosis of total brain failure or by waiting a short while after circulation stops. Evidence has emerged that the conceptual bases for these approaches to determining death are fundamentally flawed and depart substantially from our biological and common-sense understandings of death. We argue that the current approach to determining death consists of two different types of unacknowledged legal fictions. These legal fictions were developed for practices that are largely ethically legitimate but need to be reconciled with the law. However, the considerable debate over the determination of death in the medical and scientific literature has not informed the public of the fact that our current determinations of death do not adequately establish that a person has died. It seems unlikely that this information can remain hidden for long. Given the instability of the status quo and the difficulty of making the substantial legal changes required by complete transparency, we argue for a second-best policy solution of acknowledging the legal fictions involved in determining death. This move in the direction of greater transparency may someday result in allowing us to face squarely these issues and effect the legal changes necessary to permit ethically appropriate vital organ transplantation. Finally, this paper also provides the beginnings of a taxonomy of legal fictions, concluding that a more systematic theoretical treatment of legal fictions is warranted to understand their advantages and disadvantages across a variety of legal domains.     

Discharge in bankruptcy: a comparative analysis of law and practice between Malaysia,Singapore and the United Kingdom (UK) – What can we learn?

In common law jurisdictions such as Malaysia, United Kingdom and Singapore, bankruptcy law is the legal mechanism in situations where individuals fall into bankruptcy. In the UK, automatic discharge was introduced fifteen years ago. Yet, no equivalent concept of automatic discharge has been introduced in Singapore, while in Malaysia, although a new provision allowing for an automatic discharge of bankrupt was proposed in the new Bankruptcy (Amendment) Bill 2016, it has yet to come into force upon official announcement by the Malaysian authorities. This paper examines and compares the laws and practices of discharge of bankrupts in Malaysia, the UK and Singapore.