Mistake of Law and Culpability

When does a defendant not deserve punishment because he is unaware that his conduct breaches a penal statute? Retributivists must radically rethink their answer to this question to do justice to our moral intuitions. I suggest that modest progress on this topic can be made by modeling our approach to ignorance of law on our familiar approach to ignorance of fact. We need to distinguish different levels of culpability in given mistakes and to differentiate what such mistakes may be about. I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach with special attention to how to contrast offenses from defenses. The alternative I tend to favor probably should not be implemented in existing penal codes. As a result, we are likely to remain dissatisfied with the decisions made by our criminal justice system about the exculpatory effect of ignorance of law.     

Social welfare and decision-making in the public sector†

Abstract. This paper is an examination of the important issue of measuring social welfare. The first part of the paper shows that the traditional quantitative methods of socio-economic evaluation may give society misleading answers about the impact of public policy and achievement of social objectives. Social indicators as an approach to policy evaluation are discussed in the second section and their relation to the Economic Council of Canada's ‘goal indicators’ is examined. The paper concludes with a brief comment on how social indicators may complement existing traditional socio-economic measures. Sommaire. L'auteur de cette communication examine l'importante question de la mesure du bien-être social. Dans la première partie, il indique que les méthodes quantitative traditionnelles de l'évaluation socio-économique peuvent induire la société en erreur, quant à l'effet de la politique publique et la réalisation de ses objectifs sociaux. Il examine dans la deuxième partie les indicateurs sociaux en tant que moyen d'évaluation des politiques et leurs rapports avec les ‘indicateurs d'objectifs’ du Conseil économique du Canada. Il conclut en indiquant brièement comment les indicateurs sociaux peuvent complèter les mesures socio-économiques traditionnelles.     

Rent-seeking with non-identical sharing rules: An equilibrium rescued

Nitzan's (1991) analysis of differential sharing rules in a collective rent-seeking setting is reconsidered. Two groups, each with more than one member, are presumed to use different linear combinations of two sharing rules, one based on an equal-division of the prize, and the other on each member's relative effort. We show that an equilibrium always exists for this type of game, and then characterize the equilibrium. Our result is contrary to Nitzan's claims that (a) in the general case an equilibrium often does not exist, and (b) an equilibrium never exists when the groups use the polar extreme rules.     

Australia's treaty activity in the Asia-Pacific: a sub-regional trends analysis

This paper investigates Australian treaty making with neighboringcountries in the Asia-Pacific. Patterns of Australian treatymaking with South East Asian countries are markedly differentto those with South West Pacific countries and the differenceis continuing to deepen. Treaties with the former are primarilybilateral and commercially oriented, whereas those with thelatter are plurilateral and oriented to natural resources managementand development. There is a major gap in Australian subregionaltreaty activity for natural resources management in South EastAsian countries. A coalescence of issues in the law enforcementand security categories is occurring and the new direction inAustralian regional treaty making for both subregions is tostrengthen capacity to enforce the rule of law in national legalsystems. Commercial treaty making remains and is likely to continueto be the strongest area of treaty activity. Received for publication November 4, 2006. Accepted for publication April 5, 2007.     

Knowing When to Salute

Due to a strong “Can Do” spirit and a well-engrained, albeit simplistic, notion of civilian control over the military, senior military leaders are disinclined to publicly share their disagreement with emerging national security policy. Many senior officers mistakenly believe that there are no alternatives other than just silently executing, resigning, or retiring when confronted with bad policy formulation. There are, however, options available to senior uniformed leaders when confronted with policy formulation that they, in their professional opinion, believe is flawed. Depending on the degree to which the civilian authorities are receptive to military advice and the magnitude of the threat to national security involved in the policy, senior military leaders can choose among many alternatives to widen the policy debate.