Why a criminal ban? Analyzing the arguments against somatic cell nuclear transfer in the Canadian parliamentary debate

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) remains a controversial technique, one that has elicited a variety of regulatory responses throughout the world. On March 29, 2005, Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act came into force. This law prohibits a number of research activities, including SCNT. Given the pluralistic nature of Canadian society, the creation of this law stands as an interesting case study of the policy-making process and how and why a liberal democracy ends up making the relatively rare decision to use a statutory prohibition, backed by severe penalties, to stop a particular scientific activity. In this article, we provide a comprehensive and systematic legal analysis of the legislative process and parliamentary debates associated with the passage of this law.     

Unlawful Entry: Male Fears of Psychic Penetration

In this paper, it is argued that males as well as females have an early experience in relation to the nursing mother of being receptive to bodily and psychic penetration. Males tend to lose access to this experience and may come to fear penetration as a threat such that a masculine sense of self is felt to be dependent on an impermeable psychic boundary that is not to be penetrated. Instead, phallicism as a fortress of emotional self-sufficiency—which the author labels the citadel complex—becomes the matrix of a subjective sense of masculinity. The multiple and combined forces of bodily development, the establishment of gender identity, and the process of separation-individuation are examined for their role in this process.

A critique of the Lacanian concept of paternal law suggests that the “law of the father” can be interpreted as a law regulating penetration. Paternal law can be viewed as a code for the establishment of an impenetrable masculinity whereby entry into an adult male psyche becomes unthinkable, “unlawful.” An impermeable bodily and psychic boundary—the ability to penetrate without the ability to be penetrated—collapses a necessary dialectical tension that may affect men's experience of sex and of love and that may shape and limit their desire.     

The attitude toward mamzerim in Jewish society in late antiquity

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the attitude of the Jewish people to a marginal group in that society: mamzerim, from Biblical times to Late Antiquity. The social exclusion of mamzerim is already stated in Deutoronomy 23:3, though a reading of several later rabbinic and non-rabbinic sources suggests how this exclusion really took place. It is assumed that mamzerim were not accepted into the Qumram sect, just like handicapped persons, and they were not allowed to enter the Temple. According to rabbinic law a mamzer was excluded from society (as his parents' punishment), by the prohibition of marrying anyone of distinguished genealogy. However, there are sources that testify that prior to the crystallization of rabbinic law (in the second century c.e.) there were other ways of denying mamzerim access to society: they were prohibited from entering the Temple, they were not taught Torah, a mamzer's house and grave were painted white to point him out. According to a source in Toldot Yeshu, mamzerim were shaved bald so they were set apart from the community in many aspects of daily life. Analyzing the sources leads to an historical understanding of social exclusion as practiced in Jewish society in the past. It is argued that the `normative' rabbinic law testifies to a process of limiting the expulsion of mamzerim from society. It seems that this process reflects the new modes of life (especially after the destruction of the Temple), that the society had to face: a change in the family structure on the one hand, and relatively numerous mamzerim on the other hand. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Pakistan Federal Shariat Court's Collective Ijtihād on Gender Equality,Women's Rights and the Right to Family Life

This article argues on the basis of recent case law that the judges of the Pakistan Federal Shariat Court (FSC) have asserted their right to ijtihād and have indeed engaged in collective ijtihād. While in some areas, such as freedom of religion, Islamic law has been interpreted rigidly in a non-human-rights-friendly fashion in Pakistan, in some other areas, the flexibility and pluralism of Islamic law has been used to improve gender equality, women's rights and the right to family life. By using its constitutional powers, with its collective ijtihād, the FSC has been tackling the traditionally illiberal interpretation and application of Muslim laws in these areas. Regardless of the methodology and process of this ijtihādic endeavor, the output shows that the FSC has been either modifying the traditional ijtihāds or coming up with totally new ijtihāds to answer contemporary questions faced by Islamic law. The findings of the article once again challenge the views of scholars such as Schacht, Coulson and Chehata, who have argued that, by the fourth/tenth century, the essentials of Islamic legal doctrine were already fully formulated and that the doctrine remained fixed.     

Following the law because it’s the law: obedience,bootstrapping, and practical reason

Voluntarists in the early modern period speak of an agent’s following the law because she was ordered to do so or because it’s the law. Contemporary philosophers tend either to ignore or to dismiss the possibility of justified obedience of this sort – that is, they ignore or dismiss the possibility that something’s being the law could in itself constitute a good reason to act. In this paper, I suggest that this view isn’t taken seriously because of certain widespread beliefs about practical reason – in particular, it’s due to the belief that it’s impossible for reasons to be “bootstrapped” into existence. I argue, though, that a plausible account of practical reasoning should allow that reasons can be bootstrapped into existence, and so there’s no reason to be suspicious about the possibility of a person’s being justified in following the law because it’s the law. I end by suggesting that this conclusion opens up important new avenues of inquiry for philosophers working on topics related to legal obedience.     

Assessing the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome in egg donation: implications for human embryonic stem cell research

Stem cell research has important implications for medicine. The source of stem cells influences their therapeutic potential, with stem cells derived from early-stage embryos remaining the most versatile. Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), a source of embryonic stem cells, allows for understandings about disease development and, more importantly, the ability to yield embryonic stem cell lines that are genetically matched to the somatic cell donor. However, SCNT requires women to donate eggs, which involves injection of ovulation-inducing hormones and egg retrieval through laparoscopy or transvaginal needle aspiration. Risks from this procedure are fiercely debated, most notably risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS). This review examines risk of OHSS resulting from oocyte donation. We conclude that risk posed by OHSS in egg donation is not significant enough to warrant undue concern, and much of this can be eliminated when proper precautions are taken. This bears relevance to the future of stem cell research policymaking.     

What goes into a Paradigm? Some reflections on gender‐issue ‘differences’ between Sunni law schools,and the problematic of their historical attribution

Traditional Islamic law developed within a number of paradigmatic blueprints that were later ascribed to the ‘founders’ of ‘law schools’. This law was neither code‐driven ‘civil law’ in the sense of the Napoleonic code, nor was it ‘common law’ in the English and American sense. Speaking mainly in the language of traditions, medieval scholars formulated legal rules whose admissibility depended on communal consensus regarding their validity. Many of the rules remained imbedded in ‘examples’, Hadith‐reported case studies, and/or qur'anic exegesis, while the underlying principles formed part of the developing legal tradition. That they were not codified provided the latter with an inherent flexibility, enabling judges and jurisconsults not just to apply, but to develop the law. The following article is a study of a legal concept, tahlil marriage, and the ways in which the four extant Sunni law schools have dealt with this notion, including the development of legal categories that were brought to, and derived from, the concept in question.     

BETWEEN EXAMPLE AND DOCTRINE Contract Law and Common Morality

In Democracy and Tradition, Jeffrey Stout contends that American constitutional democracy constitutes a well‐functioning moral and political tradition that is not hostile to religion, although it does not depend on any specifically religious claims. I argue that Stout's contention is supported by a consideration of the great common law subject of contracts, as taught to first‐year law students across the United States. First, I demonstrate how contract law can fruitfully be understood as a MacIntyrean tradition. Second, I illustrate the moral richness of this tradition, and the mutually interpreting nature of rules and facts, by close attention to one particularly colorful case, Syester v. Banta. I conclude by suggesting that both religious and secular ethicists might find common law cases in general and contract law cases in particular to be a source of moral reflection that is substantively rich without being religiously divisive.     

AN ALGORITHMIC INFORMATION THEORY CHALLENGE TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN

William Dembski claims to have established a decision process to determine when highly unlikely events observed in the natural world are due to Intelligent Design. This article argues that, as no implementable randomness test is superior to a universal Martin‐Löf test, this test should be used to replace Dembski's decision process. Furthermore, Dembski's decision process is flawed, as natural explanations are eliminated before chance. Dembski also introduces a fourth law of thermodynamics, his “law of conservation of information,” to argue that information cannot increase by natural processes. However, this article, using algorithmic information theory, shows that this law is no more than the second law of thermodynamics. The article concludes that any discussions on the possibilities of design interventions in nature should be articulated in terms of the algorithmic information theory approach to randomness and its robust decision process.     

A lemma science of mind: the potential of the Kegon (Flower Ornament) Sutra

The paper argues for a new perspective on the relationship between Buddhism and European psychology, or sciences of the mind, based in the Kegon Sutra, a text that emerged in the early stages of Mahayana Buddhism (3^rd ‐ 5^th century CE). The basis of European science is logos intellection, formalized by Aristotle as following three laws: the law of identity, the law of contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. Logic in the Buddhist tradition, by contrast, is based in lemma (meaning to understand as a whole not with language, but with intuition). Lemma‐based science born in the Buddhist tradition shows that rational perception is possible even without the three laws of logos. The Kegon Sutra, which explains what Buddha preached only a week after he attained enlightenment, is unified under the logic of lemma and can be seen as an effort to create a ‘lemma science of the mind’. The fundamental teaching of the Kegon Sutra is explored, and its principles are compared with primary process thinking and the unconscious as outlined by Freud and Jung. Jung's research of Eastern texts led him to create a science of the mind that went further than Freud: his concept of synchronicity is given by way of example and can be seen anew within the idea of a lemma‐based science.     

The patenting process,innovation, and size

This paper focuses on the U.S. patenting process and how large and small entity inventors respond to it. In particular, a framework of patenting process events and activities related to success is developed and evaluated empirically, with a factor analysis revealing similarities and differences in the priorities of the two groups. The results have implications for both the conduct of the new product process under the law and for review and examination of public policy regarding patents. He received his Ph.D. from Lehigh University. His research interests include intellectual capital, intellectual property, and competitive intelligence. He has published in Journal of Marketing Management, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing & Public Policy, and Industrial Marketing Management.     

Idealization and factualization in science

Summary This paper considers the method of idealization and factualization as the main method of all advanced empirical sciences. The procedure is as follows. Some idealizing conditions are assumed: the vanishing of factors (p _i=0) which never vanish in the real world. An idealization law is formulated — a law which is exactly (non-vacuously) fulfilled only in an ideal model, not in any real system. Then the idealizing assumptions are abrogated one by one-it is a process of gradual factualization, of the transition to the factual laws which are fulfilled in real systems. These laws may be directly applied and tested by experience.     

Semantics and Ideology During the Renaissance: Confessional Translations of the Greek Word ἐπίσκοπος

During the sixteenth century the disputes between Catholics and Protestants became the battleground to determine and shape authentic Christianity and the Church. Humanism played a key role in this process conditioned by cultural and theological diversity, justifying doctrinal positions and legitimizing the existence of respective institutions with an appeal to history. Translations from church historical sources illustrate how they often derived from theological preconceptions. Starting with the ‘episcopacy issue’ opened initially by Luther and Calvin inter al., this article analyzes the translations of the Greek word episkopos in the Magdeburg Centuries, Cesare Baronio's Ecclesiastical Annals, in contemporary vernacular versions of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, in J. C. Dietrich’s Lexicon and in some English Bibles. The material gathered and also compared with the position of the Council of Trent shows how these confessionally conditioned translations impacted on the scholarly world, and how they influenced church law with religio-political consequences, thereby having a striking significance.     

A Right to Understand Injustice: Epistemology and the “Right to the Truth” in International Human Rights Discourse

People's “right to truth” or their “right to know” about their government's human rights abuses is a growing consensus in human rights discourses and a fertile area of work in international and humanitarian law. In most discussions of this right to know the truth, it is commonly seen as requiring the state or international institutions to provide access to evidence of the violations. In this paper, I argue that such a right naturally has many epistemic aspects, and the tools of social epistemology can be helpful in elucidating what such a right entails. As a beginning for this project, I draw on those resources to argue that the right to know the truth is only meaningful if it includes a right to understand the abuses, and that such understanding can only come through the development of community epistemic capacities. Given this, I further argue that the state has a duty to support the development of these capacities, and that a critical place for beginning this process is in public schools.     

Good governance,law and social reality: Problematic relationships

This article examines the ways in which the linkage between good governance and economic development has originally developed as alegal discussion constrained by the constitution of the World Bank. This normative character of the linkage has subsequently shaped discussions about good governance. It is here argued that this tends to lead these discussions to focus on selective and normative aspects of the interrelations between economic, political and legal-administrative structures and institutions. While the role of law is increasingly acknowledged in more recent debates and policy statements, law tends to be approached from a normative economic or legal perspective that does not provide much insight into the social significance of law. Too little attention is given to anthropological or sociological approaches to legal pluralism in society. These factors combine to detract attention from the fact that governance issues in reality deal withbad rather than with good governance. Franz von Benda-Beckmann is professor in the department of Agrarian Law of the Agricultural University Wageningen and teaches on law and rural development in Third World states and anthropology of law. He holds a doctorate in law and aHabilitation in anthropology. His primary research interests are issues of property rights and social security in rural development, legal pluralism and legal anthropological theory. This is a revised version of a paper presented in the 1993 RAWOO (Advisory Council for Scientific Research in Development Problems) lecture series.     

Dispositions,explanation, and behavior 1

According to the theory of dispositions here defended, to have a disposition is to have some (non‐dispositional) property that enters into a law of a certain form. The theory does not have the crucial difficulty of the singular material implication account of dispositions, but at the same time avoids the unfortunate notion of ‘reduction sentences’. It is further argued that no dispositional explanation is one of the covering‐law type; but the theory shows how, for any dispositional explanation! To construct a potential explanation of the covering‐law type. The theory can also be applied fruitfully to human behavior, especially with respect to the issues of reasons and causes and of’ rational’ explanation. The success of the applicability of this theory of dispositions is further evidence of its adequacy.     

WHAT IS IMMANENT IN JUDAISM? Transcending A Secular Age

This essay takes on the implicit claim in Taylor's A Secular Age, forecast in some of his earlier writings, that the desire for a meaningful life can never be satisfied in this life. As a result, A Secular Age is suffused with a tragic view of existence; its love of narratives of religious longing makes no sense otherwise. Yet there are other models of religion that lend meaning to existence, and in the majority of this essay, I take up one model that Taylor ignores in A Secular Age, namely that of a God who is immanent in social life throughout religious law. Turning to Maimonides's account of divine law in the Guide of the Perplexed, I argue that a vision of the divine law that is divine because of its effects in society, namely the promotion of human welfare, can mend the relations between varying kinds of believers and unbelievers in a way that Taylor thinks is impossible. A God who commands laws is a God who inaugurates an “anthropocentric shift” long before current understandings of secularization see it beginning.     

First–Person Plural Legislature: Political Reflexivity and Representation*

Abstract

In the Social Contract Rousseau gives what could be called a philosophical rule of recognition for law in Modernity: a law is law if and only if ‘the whole people rules over the whole people’. Thus, he defines self-legislation as, at bottom, collective intentional action. I will first map out the speech act structure [LEX] underlying self-legislation on this account. In particular, I argue for a first person plural counterpart of the reflexive structure inherent to intentions generally: the notion of a collective self. Then I take issue with Bratman's analysis of shared intentional activity in terms of mutuality, submitting that it misses out on the specifically political presupposition involved in ‘doing something together’. I will show why ‘mutuality’ requires representation of the unity of a polity, and how this representation can take form without either external authority or mutual responsiveness.     

Normativity II – Towards an Integral Perspective

Abstract

This is a follow-up article of Strauss 2011. In order to transcend the shortcomings present in the dialectical legacy regarding normativity, this article further explores key elements within the dialectical tradition focused on the basic motive of nature and freedom and the effect it had on modern social contract theories which aimed at reconstructing human society from its “atoms,” the individuals. The transition to an alternative approach commences with a discussion of the distinction between conditions and what is conditioned. It concerns a correlation found within all aspects of reality, namely that between the law side or norm side on the one hand and the factual side on the other. The basic assumption of this alternative view is found in the idea of ontic normativity which is rooted in a non-reductionist ontology. Against this broader background shortcomings in Kelsen’s theory of law are briefly traced to the dialectic of the causal and non-causal, before a positive characterization of the concept of a principle is given. It turned out that it is a compound basic concept in which terms from different modal aspects of reality are encapsulated at once. The recognition of ontic normativity therefore also enables a distinct methodology, the transcendental-empirical method, which makes it possible to distinguish between the pre-positive nature of a principle, as a universal and constant starting-point for human action, and the historically varying ways in which such a principle can be made valid, (enforced) through a competent organ disposing over an accountable will and capable to interpret the unique historical circumstances in which the principle has to be positivized (given a positive form or shape). The nature of modal norms is highlighted in terms of various examples, such as jural, historical, logical and aesthetic principles, with special reference to Derrida’s understanding of credit as economic trust or economic faith. In order to make this transcendental-empirical method understandable a more detailed account of the nature of modal aspects is given. The emphasis on ontic normativity also helps us to steer clear of conceptions of natural law, historicism and the shortcomings present in the idea of a social construction of the world. The guiding perspective flowing from this analysis is that modal norms can be articulated through an analysis of analogical structural moments on the law sides of the normative aspects. The last part of this article briefly introduces the distinction between modal and typical norms without entering into a discussion of the latter.