Public Reason Liberalism and Sex‐Neutral Marriage A Response to Francis J. Beckwith

This article responds to an article by Francis J. Beckwith that argued that the consistent application of generic liberal principles requires that same‐sex marriage not be recognised in civil law. This response demonstrates that Beckwith's article contains a series of interpretative and substantive flaws that render his argument unsuccessful. These relate to a misinterpretation of core liberal principles and a sidestepping of the matter of undue bias against same‐sex partners. In correcting these flaws I tentatively propose a Voltairean argument in favour of same‐sex civil marriage for those citizens with moral qualms about same‐sex relationships derived from their reasonable comprehensive doctrine.     

Automobile theft: Estimating the size of the criminal population

Animal abundance estimation procedures including a new method of Zelterman are applied in the criminological context of auto theft in the Australian Capital Territory. Using goodness-of-fit statistics and comparing the estimates with known clearance rates, it is estimated that during 1987 about 39% of offenders were charged with at least one count of auto theft. The results also indicate the extent of overrepresentation of juveniles in court statistics compared with their relative participation rate in auto theft.