Search results

This paper compares two approaches to the moral justifications for killing in war: the forfeiture approach, which sees killing as justified when the victim has forfeited his or her right not to be killed, and the double-effect approach, which argues that even if intentional killing is absolutely prohibited, that killing can still be morally acceptable under certain conditions, most notably if it is not the intended, desired outcome of a person’s chosen action. The double-effect approach is considered out of fashion in contemporary military ethical literate. I argue that it warrants equal attention as an internally viable and coherent account of the morality of killing, and is preferable in at least one way: that it protects combatants from being necessarily culpable of killing merely by serving in active combat positions.

By defending an alternate framework to the forfeiture approach to killing which is most popular in today’s military ethical literature, I provide an opportunity for new and increased philosophical reflection and discourse on the ethics of killing, as well as new opportunity for defenders of double-effect to make a substantive contribution to the field. This paper demonstrates the internal consistency of arguments that seek to utilise DDE, including its relevance to individual self-defence and individual killing in war.

While genetically modified (GM) crops have provided tremendous agricultural productivity gains, many consumers oppose GM products and maintain they are unsafe. We use the case of GM sugar beets and their adoption by the US producers to examine the implications of GM technology on food security. A partial equilibrium framework is used to examine the implications of GM technology on food security. This analysis provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of GM adoption in one product (sugar beets) relative to non-GM adoption in a substitute product (sugarcane). This analysis examines the potential gains to food security through the adoption of biotechnology versus consumer fear of GM technology. Research and development (R&D) has potential implications not only through its impact on supply, but also on demand as well. This study shows that demand impacts can negate the supply-induced food security gains of R&D. Regulations such as mandatory labeling requirements can impact this outcome.

In the first decades of the nineteenth century to the first decade of the twentieth century, the US Federal and Supreme Courts heard several cases on the legal status of ships. During this period, Chief Justice John Marshall and Justice Joseph Story determined that a ship was a legal person that was capable to contract and could be punished for wrongdoing. Over the nineteenth century, Marshall and Story also heard appeals on the illegal slave trade and on the status of fugitive slaves crossing state lines, cases that raised questions as to whether enslaved peoples were persons or property. Although Marshall and Story did not discuss the ship and the slave together, in this chapter, the author asks what might be gained in doing so. Specifically, what might a reading of the ship and the slave as juridical figures reveal about the history of legal personhood? The genealogy of positive and negative legal personhood that the author begins to trace here draws inspiration and guidance from scholars writing critically of slavery. In different ways, this literature emphasises the significance of maritime worlds to conceptions of racial terror, freedom, and fugitivity. Building on these insights, the author reads the ship and the slave as central characters in the history of legal personhood, a reading that highlights the interconnections between maritime law and the laws of slavery and foregrounds the changing intensities of Anglo imperial power and racial and colonial violence in shaping the legal person.

This chapter appraised customary tenancy and Post COVID-19 agricultural development in Nigeria. In doing this, it discussed customary tenancy as an incident of customary tenure and the impact of Land Use Act 1978 in its evolutionary trend as a sustainable means of accessing land for long term agricultural business in Nigeria. The study made use of socio-legal research methodology involving doctrinal research method and an analysis of social context for information gathering. The primary source of law included the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as altered); the Land Use Act 1978 and related statutes as well as judicial precedents. The secondary sources included books, journal articles, conference proceedings, magazines, newspapers and the internet. The outcome of the study indicated that customary tenancy was a recognized method of accessing land for agriculture on long term basis among many ethnic groups in Nigeria, including but are not limited to Yoruba of Southwest and the Igbo of Southwest, Nigeria. That the method was predominantly used for agricultural purposes, and in agricultural communities. Third, that the Land Use Act 1978 did not stop the customary land practice, but rather recognized and encouraged its use through customary right of occupancy. Fourth, customary tenancy was found to have promoted access to land resources and reduction of tension and bitter acrimonies which could have been attendant to request for land resources in rural communities. It was recommended that efforts should be made by Governors who are trustees under the LUA to use their powers in the interest of the people and that reforms be undertaken to resolve latent contradictions in the Act. It was concluded that customary tenancy should be harnessed for sustainable Post COVID – 19 land use in Nigeria.

In some contexts, this illiquidity of executive stock options is referred to as non-transferability. In others, the problem is cast in terms of the highly concentrated portfolios that managers hold, an implication of which is that managers could not trade the options to diversify. The notion of option liquidity usually conjures up images of trading pits at the Chicago Board Options Exchange or other exchanges. The existence of an active trading pit gives a powerful visual image of liquidity, but, as evidenced by the success of electronic options exchanges such as New York's International Securities Exchange and Frankfurt's EUREX, a trading pit is hardly a requirement for liquidity. The existence of a guaranteed market for standardized options as implied by options exchanges (whether pit-based or electronic) further gives a misleading appearance of high liquidity. There is also a very large market for customized over-the-counter options. It is a misconception to think that these options are not liquid when they are simply not standardized. If an investor can create a highly customized long position in an option, that investor should be able to create a highly customized short position in the same option at a later date before expiration. If both options are created through the same dealer, they will usually be treated as an offset, as they would if they were standardized options clearing through a clearinghouse. If the two transactions are not with the same dealer, they would both remain alive, but the market risks would offset. Only the credit risk, a factor we ignore in this paper, would remain. Hence, these seemingly illiquid options are, for all practical purposes, liquid.²

This chapter argues that the Americanisation of online policing has questionable impacts in Australian prosecutions involving drugs obtained and distributed through dark web cryptomarkets. The authors describe several Australian prosecutions of mid- and low-level dealers who have accessed drugs through the dark web and contrast these with the United States (US) case against the cryptomarket, AlphaBay. The discussion in this study emphasises how Australian police and courts view the relative weight of dark web activity associated with the domestic and transnational supply of illicit drugs that result in formal prosecutions. The authors suggest that large-scale forms of online and dark web police surveillance undertaken by US enforcement agencies reflect Ethan Nadelmann’s (Cops across borders: the internationalization of US criminal law enforcement, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993) thesis on the Americanisation of global policing through transnational communications networks. The authors then explain how key elements of transnational dark web drug supply appear to have a marginal bearing on criminal investigations into low- and mid-level traffickers in Australia, which rely on conventional surveillance tactics to identify clandestine mail pickups, physical distribution methods, and irregular money trails. However, the authors then illustrate how the Americanisation of online policing that targets high-level entrepreneurs and seeks to dismantle or eliminate dark web cryptomarkets has important implications on Australian reforms aimed at enhancing online surveillance powers to target a range of crimes that are often wrongly associated with illicit drug cryptomarkets. The authors conclude by demonstrating how intensive dark web surveillance has limited direct impact on routine drug policing in Australia, with dark web communications simply another medium for facilitating the physical detection of illicit transnational drug transactions.

Changing environments demand that police improve their effectiveness in reducing crime, while maintaining community confidence, support and legitimacy. How can police agencies encourage third parties to take responsibility for crime problems while avoiding inequitable outcomes?

The evidence for effective policing for crime reduction is examined, with a focus on third party policing. Potential adverse outcomes are discussed, and a normative framework is proposed.

Third party policing that is both effective and legitimacy enhancing is possible, if four key principles are observed. These are conducting a broad planning approach that includes consideration of the detriments as well as the benefits of strategies especially to vulnerable community members, clearly identified goals and the use of the least coercive means possible, clearly articulated policies and protocols, and institutional and individual accountability for strategy implementation and outcomes.

There is emerging evidence about the effectiveness of regulatory approaches to crime reduction, such as third party policing, but little attention has been paid to its potential for inequitable outcomes and impact on police legitimacy.

Collateral consequences (CCs) of criminal convictions such as disenfranchisement, occupational restrictions, exclusions from public housing, and loss of welfare benefits represent one of the salient yet hidden features of the contemporary American penal state. This chapter explores, from a comparative and historical perspective, the rise of the many indirect “regulatory” sanctions flowing from a conviction and discusses some of the unique challenges they pose for legal and policy reform. US jurisprudence and policies are contrasted with the more stringent approach adopted by European legal systems and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in safeguarding the often blurred line between criminal punishments and formally civil sanctions. The aim of this chapter is twofold: (1) to contribute to a better understanding of the overreliance of the US criminal justice systems on CCs as a device of social exclusion and control, and (2) to put forward constructive and viable reform proposals aimed at reinventing the role and operation of collateral restrictions flowing from criminal convictions.