Fixing Financial Plumbing: Tax,Leaks and Base Erosion and Profit Shifting in Europe

Aggressive tax planning by multinational enterprises (MNEs) costs EU member states between €50-70 billion and €150-190 billion per annum through base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). This tax gap has been blamed on ‘unethical’ companies acting legally, but inappropriately. Action to curtail this behaviour has been made possible by the confluence of two powerful movements: a popular articulation of tax morality as it relates to MNEs and the high issue salience reached as a consequence of the financial crisis and austerity in Europe, an emerging discourse around tax morality, and the efforts of prominent whistleblowers. As a result, domestic governments have removed their ‘soft’ veto and facilitated supranational bodies in innovating on corporate taxation, helping to rebalance the technical and structural superiority of MNEs in the international tax system.     

What Executioners Can—and Cannot—Teach Us About the Death Penalty

Those who work with the condemned often come to reject the death penalty not only in individual cases, and not only on the ground that it is poorly implemented. They tend to conclude that the punishment is wrong. I argue that the perspective of the executioner helps illuminate the debate about whether to abolish capital punishment, and that indeed the perspective of those who work with the condemned raises the troubling possibility that support for the death penalty can survive only at a great remove. Jeffrie Murphy has also argued that the executioner’s perspective can be useful, but I contend that Murphy asks the wrong question. His essay considers whether an executioner may, under some circumstances, take pride in his work. The better question is whether anyone ought to be asked to do such work. On this latter question, the perspective of the executioner sheds important light. Like Murphy, I draw on works by and about Albert Pierrepoint, the “last hangman” of Britain. I also draw on the perspectives of numerous executioners, wardens, chaplains, and other death row personnel. I argue that their perspectives offer a powerful argument against the main rationale for the death penalty: retribution. If retribution is keyed to the offender’s character as well as his wrongful act, then post-conviction character ought to matter. The executioners’ accounts share a common theme: that death row inmates change over time and hold the potential for redemption.     

Social Media and E-professionalism in Child Welfare: Policy and Practice

The professional child welfare literature offers little guidance to child welfare managers and agency policy makers about the use of social media to search for or communicate with clients. Ethical social media use relies upon e-professionalism, defined as the professional identity established by workers through the way they utilize digital communications. This article offers considerations for standards of e-professionalism in child welfare policy and practice. Specific considerations are outlined for social media policy and practice scenarios are offered, which can be used to prompt agency discussions with child welfare workers.     

环境刑法的伦理基础探析

本文首先将人与自然的关系划分为本体论上的主体共享关系、实践论上的主客体关系以及价值论上的主体共享关系和主客体关系。以此为基础,在人与自然价值论关系层面笔者展开了对主张主客体关系的人类中心主义与主张主体共享关系的非人类中心主义环境伦理观的利弊分析。考虑到弱式人类中心主义对公众道德水准的合理要求与刑法道德底线定位之暗合、刑法对人的预设模式之要求以及刑法的可操作,本文将弱式人类中心主义确立为环境刑法的伦理基础。     

American Indian Tribes: ``Not as Belonging to But as Existing Within'

This article is an extended analysis of the historyand anomalies in the doctrine of American Indiantribal sovereignty. I explain that America gainedindependence, but took Indian land and colonized thetribes just as it had been colonized under theBritish. It asserted sovereignty for itself, butsubordinated the once independent tribes with aparadoxical semi-sovereign status as `dependentdomestic nations', all of this justified by the racialand cultural otherness of Indians. Using a Lacanianperspective, I show that America was founded on a`wound' or inconsistency at the heart of itsideological and constitutional order. In order torectify the inconsistencies that the initial `wound'produces, the law and political order havecontinuously had to adopt fictions (legal and racial). American law and policy has never been able to settlethe ambiguous doctrine of Indian sovereignty. As aresult, the law circles round and round in trying todefine it, and asserting and denying it, all in anunsuccessful attempt to make the constitutional orderwhole. It cannot succeed, however, since the ultimatesolution is an American sovereignty which, like God,admits of no limitation.     

水域污染的社会学解释——东村个案研究

本文选择太湖流域的东村进行田野调查 ,发现 ,传统社会水域保持清洁的原因是 :农业社会长期形成的生产、生活方式有利于圩田系统的生态平衡 ,并且 ,村落的社会规范及村民的道德意识也有效地约束了村民的水污染行动。 90年代以来 ,东村及其周围水域被迅速污染。水域污染问题主要不是科学技术问题 ,而是经济社会问题。利益主体力量的失衡、农村基层组织的行政化与村民自组织的消亡以及农村社区传统伦理规范的丧失是造成水域污染的主要原因。与市场经济体系相适应的法律制度建设是解决水污染问题的根本途径     

医学生公民意识与医德认知状况调查报告简

医德教育是医学教育的重要组成部分,在我国公民社会积极发育的大背景下,传统医德教育面临现代转型的课题。通过对医学生公民意识、医德及医患关系认知状况的调查,对医学院校医德教育进行评估,初步提出实现公民教育与医德教育有机契合,建构医德教育新模式的建议。     

论地方政府的环境伦理责任——以广西北部湾经济区为例

加强地方政府的环境伦理责任建设对于应对广西北部湾经济区的环境挑战,推进区域的可持续发展具有重要意义。政府的环境伦理责任主要包括:推进环境保护的法制建设和监督管理,引导环境产业的健康发展,培育民众的环境意识。当前一些地方政府的环境伦理责任建设尚存在诸多问题。要解决这些问题,必须强化政府的环境伦理责任,加强政府官员的环境伦理教育和制度建设,强化监督机制,引导政府官员树立正确的政绩观,提高他们的环境道德水平。     

Regulating ethics in financial services: Engaging industry to achieve regulatory objectives

This article addresses the issue of renewing a sense of vocation in finance. Drawing on experiences in the UK, Australia, and Ireland, three common law jurisdictions at various phases of developing “an ethical esprit de corps” to professionalize the banking industry, it argues that adopting some aspects of a profession, a “trajectory towards professionalization” of the banking industry, could serve, at least to some extent, to improve the industry-wide norms that influence firms' cultures and individual behaviors. It contends that professionalization could help to develop bankers with a professional, pro-social identity, in which there is a recognition of broader obligations to society, that exists independently of the profit-driven nature of banking and the hierarchy of their own firms. This analysis is informed by an integration of regulatory theory, which casts doubt on the utility of sanctions except as a last resort, behavioral science, which offers insights into how ethics and culture, not just law and markets, can constrain irresponsible behavior in the financial services sector, and criminological theory, which emphasizes that particular types of controls, including individual attachments to groups, build “stakes in conformity” which encourage law abiding and responsible behaviors.