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Who is ultimately responsible for the harms that befall us? Corporations who make dangerous products, or the consumers who use them? The answer to this question has a profound impact on how personal injury lawyers screen products liability cases. In this chapter, I analyze results from an experimental vignette study in which 83 lawyers were asked to evaluate a hypothetical products liability case. Half of the lawyers practice in states considered to be difficult jurisdictions for the practice of personal injury law due to tort reform and conservative political climates (Texas and Colorado), while the other half work in states that have been relatively unaffected by tort reform and are considered to be more “plaintiff friendly” (Pennsylvania and Massachusetts). While lawyers in reform states and non-reform states were equally likely to accept the hypothetical case with which they were presented, they approached the case in different ways, used different theories, and made different arguments in order to justify their acceptance of the case. Lawyers in states with tort reform were most likely to accept the case when they focused on the issue of corporate social responsibility – that is, what the defendant did wrong, how they violated the rules, and how they could have prevented the injury in question. Lawyers in non-reform states, however, were most likely to accept the case when they believed that jurors would feel sorry for the injured child and not find their client at fault for the injury.

In a country where judicial institutions are known to be inefficient and where activists have traditionally not engaged in legal mobilization, what explains the emergence of NGO strategic litigation? The author argues that a change in the legal opportunity structure impacts how activists interact with the legal system. Comparing two states in Mexico, the author demonstrates that the introduction of private prosecution rights opened the door for activists to litigate femicide cases. The emergence of strategic litigation has helped improve compliance with international human rights law and has had a demonstration effect on how to use the law to press for accountability.

Litigation is part of the American policymaking playbook as diverse groups routinely turn to courts to pursue their agendas. All of this litigation raises questions about its consequences. This essay examines the literature on the political risks of litigation. It argues that this literature identifies four potential risks – crowd out, path dependence, backlash, and individualization – but offers less insight into the likelihood of these risks in practice. It ends by offering suggestions about how to advance our understanding of when litigation casts a negative political shadow in the current age of judicialization.

This paper explores the question of whether the identification of many wrongdoings in an organisation requires knowledge of the technical and operating mechanisms of that organisation. If such is the case, many ethical problems cannot be resolved by a generalist. They must be left to people with knowledge of that industry. In attempting to answer the question, the paper examines 11 different types of organisations. It then asks how the ethical issues in those organisations might be resolved. The organisations are veterinarians, pharmacies, media companies, engineering firms, doctors, general businesses, including two sub disciplines, marketing and accounting organisations, nursing institutions, political parties, scientific research organisations, legal firms and information technology companies. Each can be a small professional company, locally based, or a large organisation, possibly international. Each exhibits one or more ethical problems that are not easily resolved by accepted ethical theory. Accepted theory, as further defined in the text, is the mainline ethical theories that would be core components of most ethics texts or courses. The question arises then on how would ethics be taught if the ethical issues require specialised knowledge of that industry sector. After examining the 11 industries, the paper puts forth two views. One is that a number of wrongs can be identified in industries and organisations where the ethical problems are complex and difficult to resolve, and where the standard ethical theories are of little or no help. Resolving these issues requires action from the organisation, or from the industry association encompassing all companies within that sector. A further complication has developed in the near explosive growth in whistleblower protection systems. These systems, now introduced in close to 30 countries around the world, have their own lists of wrongdoings for which the whistleblower will receive administrative and legal support. These lists of wrongs are distinct from any moral theory One conclusion to be drawn is that new methods possibly need to be found for teaching the identification and resolution of ethical issues. A second is a consequence of the first – that the teacher of ethics in these courses has to be drawn from within the industry. Further questions then arise: One is whether this demand then requires that this industry specialist learn moral theory? A second is then how would generalist applied ethics causes be taught (in humanities departments for instance)? Alternate viewpoints on joint teaching by a moral specialist and an industry specialist have been put forward. The paper puts forward one possible approach for the industry courses – that the industry specialist has to present the course, with new methods and content, but that a theoretical content is taught by someone knowledgeable in ethical theory. For generalist courses, the moral theorist has to include a sufficiently wide sample of industry and organisational ethical issues to ensure that students are aware of the wide range of ethical concerns that can arise, as well as approaches to resolving them.

The purpose of this chapter is to describe a method for priority setting that can be used to identify options for disinvestment, and is also meant to serve as a tool for re-allocation of resources to achieve better outcomes with a given pot of resources.

This chapter draws on findings from the application of a priority setting and resource allocation framework known as Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis (PBMA). Case studies are used to illustrate key points around implementation including factors for success and guidelines for improving priority setting in practice.

PBMA has been applied in over 150 settings over the last 30 years. Purposes varied from focusing strictly on disinvestment to examining opportunities for re-allocation. Many organizations report continued use of the framework and decision makers typically express a desire to not revert to historical allocation or political negotiation in deciding on the funding for programs.

Practical implications of this body of work on priority setting abound in that there are significant opportunities to improve resource allocation practice including better engagement of staff, clinicians and public members, greater use of evidence in decision making and improving process transparency.

As healthcare resources are limited, particularly in predominantly publicly funded health systems, prudent use of resources is critical. Actually applying the appropriate tools to ensure that funding aligns with organizational and system objectives is paramount.

Although there is a large body of literature on priority setting particularly in countries like the United Kingdom and Canada, this chapter serves to highlight key messages specifically in the context of fiscal constraint and in relation to the concept of disinvestment or service reduction.

Purpose – This chapter examines the role of child health for the intergenerational transmission of human capital.

Methodology/approach – The chapter uses unique administrative data from German elementary school entrance examinations. The chapter considers child health conditions such as obesity, low birth weight, ear problems, eye problems, behavioral problems, asthma, and allergies. We control for socio-economic and demographic characteristics of children and their parents as well as for institutional factors such as duration of pre-school attendance.

Findings – We find that health conditions are more common among children of less-educated parents. We also find that health conditions have a substantially negative impact on school readiness, and the negative impact is considerably stronger for children of less-educated parents. In total, 55% of the school readiness gap can be attributed to health factors. Specifically, 19% of the gap can be attributed to differences in the prevalence of health conditions, and 36% of the gap can be attributed to differences in the severity of the impact. Thus, policies aimed at reducing disparities in child achievement should also focus on improving the health of disadvantaged children.

Originality – First, our study quantifies the extent to which the school readiness gap between parental education groups can be attributed to child health. Second, our data are of extraordinary quality, since they consist of a full sample of all children in one city and since they are collected during detailed examinations that were administered by government pediatricians.

Community perception of climate change is a factor in increasing local awareness of climate disaster risk. This encourages more disaster risk reduction actions by the communities themselves, and thus, provides a driver for sustainable community disaster risk management (DRM) initiatives. Using these hypotheses, this chapter assesses whether the communities’ climate change perceptions, awareness of climate hazardous risk, and subsequent actions on DRR enable local DRM capacity to reduce the increasing climate disaster risk. The study conducts household surveys with an original questionnaire in four communities in Cartago City, Costa Rica.