Wollstonecraft's Philosophical Impact on Nineteenth-Century American Women's Rights Advocates

This article challenges the thesis that the publication of William Godwin's scandalous Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1798 minimized the philosophical impact of Mary Wollstonecraft's 1792 work the Rights of Woman in nineteenth-century American political thought. Instead, we demonstrate that leading nineteenth-century American women's rights advocates—Hannah Mather Crocker, Lucretia Mott, Sarah Grimké, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony—understood themselves to be in a critical, philosophical dialogue with the text of the Rights of Woman , and in some cases, the Memoirs , and defined their own, distinctive philosophies of sex equality partly within this context.     

Insurance for Good Losers and the Survival of Chile's Concertación

In the transition from military rule to democracy, the government of Augusto Pinochet bequeathed to Chile a unique electoral law by which all legislative seats are contested in two-member districts. A key implication of this rule is that in order to secure legislative majorities, coalitions have to put their strongest candidates in the most precarious electoral list positions. This generates a divergence of interests between coalitions and politicians. Chile's largest coalition, the Concertación, has resolved the dilemma by providing appointed posts to unsuccessful congressional candidates who accept personal political risk on the coalition's behalf. This study argues that this insurance system has provided the critical glue to hold the coalition together since Chile's transition to democracy in 1990. Recent changes in the electoral environment could threaten the Concertación's control over the appointed posts that have sustained this informal institution. This could jeopardize the Concertación's cohesion during the process of negotiating coalition candidate lists for the 2005 legislative elections.     

Recent developments in privacy legislation

In this article, Ruth Carey takes a critical look at recent privacy-of-personal-information legislation drafted in three Canadian provinces--Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia. The article begins with a historical overview of international legal instruments and other privacy guidelines, and the Canadian experience with privacy protection. It then critically analyzes the provincial initiatives in the context of the federal Personal Information Protection and and Electronic Documents Act and accepted privacy principles. The article goes on to highlight certain types of legislative provisions of particular interest to people with HIV/AIDS and those who advocate on their behalf. It concludes that the numerous legislative initiatives underway in Canada provide an opportunity to alter the public discourse around the virus, thereby improving the lives of people with HIV/AIDS.     

Ontario: people can now apply for forced HIV testing in certain situations

Ontario has finally issued a regulation to accompany its controversial "blood samples" legislation, passed in 2001. As a result, in certain circumstances, a person in Ontario can now seek an order to require another person to be tested for HIV, hepatitis B (HBV), and hepatitis C (HCV). However, the regulation contains a number of restrictions on the ability to apply for such an order.