Epistemic Responsibility and Criminal Negligence

Criminal Law and Philosophy - We seem to be responsible for our beliefs in a distinctively epistemic way. We often hold each other to account for the beliefs that we hold. We do this by criticising...     

Establishment of state religion and requirements for public office

SUMMARY

There is a significant body of work on the broad question of the relationship between a positive affirmation of religion and the state. Scholars largely agree that a close relationship between religion and the state influences both political processes and state structures although the nature and extent of the impact and its direction remains an open question. While engaging this topic, the article deviates from the standard approach by looking not to the religious makeup of a country's citizens but to a country's constitution. The result is that countries fall into one of three categories based on a state's orientation toward state-established religion: first, countries that affirm establishment; second, countries that forbid establishment; and lastly, countries that are silent on the issue. Utilizing a dataset of all 186 of the world's written constitutions to analyze the variation in the requirements for office of each of these three groups, the following hypotheses are posed: First, constitutional requirements affirm political culture and as such, one can expect similar types of requirement use within each of the three populations above. Second, there should be variance in requirement use across the three populations. Lastly, the greater the difference between political cultures, the greater the difference between requirements used. Our findings largely affirm the hypotheses with some interesting nuances. For example, countries with state-established religions tend to require adherence to religious standards but have few additional requirements. Countries that forbid establishment use a set of requirements that serve to frustrate a government official's effort to consolidate political power. Tentatively, this suggests a relationship between the nature of requirements used for public office and authoritarian tendencies. This finding warrants further research.     

Siting the Death Penalty Internationally

We examine sources of variation in possession and use of the death penalty using data drawn from 193 nations in order to test theories of punishment. We find the death penalty to be rooted in a country's legal and political systems, and to be influenced by its religious traditions. A country's level of economic development, its educational attainment, and its religious composition shape its political institutions and practices, indirectly affecting its use of the death penalty. The article concludes by discussing likely future trends.     

Political Dimensions of the Israeli Settlements Issue: Historic Opportunities and Challenges

There is a danger inherent in devoting a panel to a discussion of the political aspects of the Israeli settlements issue: in attempting to discuss everything, we could have ended up talking about nothing because many practitioners and scholars view the settlements as primarily a political project. The multidisciplinary nature of this conference reflected our belief that the settlement issue is deeper and wider than "simply politics." Yet, we were not free from the challenge of focusing a panel on the political aspects of the settlements in a way that makes a real contribution.     

Health insurance without provider influence: the limits of cost containment

In our previous paper, we showed that market forces can play a significant role in controlling health care costs and that a considerable amount of cost containment effort was pursued by third-party insurers in Oregon in the 1930s and 1940s. Although physicians were able to thwart this cost-control effort, a 1986 Supreme Court decision, FTC v. Indiana Federation of Dentists, found that a boycott of insurers by dentists violated Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. Further investigation of recent developments, including the recent Wickline v. California decision, indicates that the primary barriers to cost containment today are not obstructive tactics by providers or provider-controlled health insurance plans. Rather, the primary barriers are increases in the development and diffusion of new technology and society's apparent preference for paying for new tests and procedures regardless of economic efficiency.