Common Law Approaches to the Relationship Between Law and Morality

How are general relations of law and morality typically conceived in an environment of Anglo-saxon common law? This paper considers some classical common law methods and traditions as these have confronted and been overlaid with modern ideas of legal positivism. While classical common law treated a community and its morality as the cultural foundation of law, legal positivism's analytical separation of law and morals, allied with liberal approaches to legal regulation, have made the relationship of legal and moral principles more complex and contested. Using ideas from Durkheim's and Weber's sociology, I argue that the traditional common law emphasis on an inductive, empirical treatment of moral practices has continuing merit, but in contemporary conditions the vague idea of community embedded in classical common law thought must be replaced with a much more precise conceptualisation of coexisting communities, whose moral bonds are diverse and require a corresponding diversity of forms of legal recognition or protection.     

Civil Ethics and the Validity of Law

This paper aims to clarify the nature and contents of 'civil ethics' and the source of the binding force of its obligations. This ethics should provide the criteria for evaluating the moral validity of social, legal and morally valid law. The article starts with observing that in morally pluralist Western societies civil ethics already exists, and has gradually started to play the role of guiding the law. It is argued that civil ethics should not be conceived as 'civic morals' which is in fact rather 'state ethics', nor as 'public ethics' which is said to reach its perfection when it becomes law, nor as ethics applicable primarily to the basic structure of a society (political liberalism), but instead as a citizens' ethics. Subsequently the paper attempts to show what the contents of this ethics are, and which ethical theory would be able to ground its obligations.     

Scientia Iuris - An Unsolved Philosophical Problem

Legal dogmatics in Continental European law (scientia iuris, Rechtswissenschaft) consists of professional legal writings whose task is to systematize and interpret valid law. Legal dogmatics pursues knowledge of the existing law, yet in many cases it leads to a change of the law. Among general theories of legal dogmatics, one may mention the theories of negligence, intent, adequate causation and ownership. The theories produce principles and they also produce defeasible rules. By means of production of general and defeasible theories, legal dogmatics aims at obtaining a system of law that is both internally coherent and harmonized with its background in morality and (political) philosophy. Legal dogmatics is necessary in the context of constitutional constraints on the majority rule. Only if the courts act on the basis of Reason they can be a legitimate counterpart of the majority rule. And Reason cannot be exhausted by particular decision making. It also needs a more abstract deliberation, given by expert jurists. However, legal dogmatics has been a target of several kinds of criticism: empirical, morally-political, epistemological, logical, and ontological. The position taken in this article is to answer such criticism by mutually adjusting philosophy and the practices of the law.     

Do Internet‐Based Support Interventions Change Perceptions of Social Support?: An Experimental Trial of Approaches for Supporting Diabetes Self‐Management

Internet-based support groups are a rapidly growing segment of mutual aid programs for individuals with chronic illnesses and other challenges. Previous studies have informed us about the content of online exchanges between support group members, but we know little about the ability of these interventions to change participants' perceptions of support. A randomized trial of 160 adult Type 2 diabetes patients provided novice Internet users with computers and Internet access to 1 of 4 conditions: (a) diabetes information only, (b) a personal self-management coach, (c) a social support intervention, or (d) a personal self-management coach and the support intervention. After 3 months, individuals in the 2 support conditions reported significant increases in support on a diabetes-specific support measure and a general support scale. Participants' age was significantly related to change in social support, but intervention effects were still significant after accounting for this relationship. This report is a critical first step in evaluating the long-term effects of Internet-based support for diabetes self-management. The discussion identifies directions for future research.     

Factors contributing to the survival of self-help groups

Despite the growing utilization of self-help groups, there have been only a handful of studies that have examined the factors that contribute to their survival. The purpose of this study was to explore the factors that contribute to self-help group survival by examining their relationship with external sources (i.e., national and local self-help organizations, professionals) and group organizational characteristics (i.e., leadership diversification, recruitment, attendance at group meetings). Representatives from 245 active and 94 recently disbanded self-help groups were included in the analysis. Results indicated that the primary factors that discriminated between active and disbanded groups were the number of new people to attend a meeting, average group meeting attendance, length of existence, leadership diversification, outreach to potential group members, and support from national and local organizations. Results are discussed in terms of what national self-help organizations, self-help clearinghouses, and others who interact with self-help groups can do to empower and support them.     

The institutionalization of community interventions in Chile: characteristics and contradictions

A critical analysis of the consequences of successive institutionalization of community intervention in Chile is presented. This analysis is based on research of current community interventions in Chile, whose results are compared with Chilean community practice from previous historical periods. Chilean community intervention was formerly practiced out of governmental institutions and universities and was sustained primarily by foreign agencies and ecclesiastical institutions. Nowadays, with the return to democracy, the vast majority of community intervention programs are financed, partially or totally, by means of governmental resources. This institutionalization of community interventions has had consequences worthy of critical analysis: an increase in the number and stability of intervention programs; and also negative consequences for intervention goals, definition of target groups, and intervention practices. Dilemmas, such as assistance vs. promotion or adaptation vs. social change, have arisen. These dilemmas show the contradictions of a Community Psychology, which has left behind the position of institutional marginality to form part of Chilean society's normal psychosocial care. They also show the need for a paradigm shift from a critical view of the social world to a constructionist one.     

Opinion on directive 98/44/EC on the legal protection of biotechnical inventions,and its implementation in Sweden

The following statement is the formal opinion by the Swedish National Council on Medical Ethics concerning the implementation of Directive 98/44/EC of the European Parliament concerning legal protection of biotechnical inventions, and the implications and implementation of this Directive in Sweden.     

Thinking about the Needy, Justice, and International Organizations

This article has three main parts, Section 2 considers the nature and extent to which individuals who are well-off have a moral obligation to aid the worlds needy. Drawing on a pluralistic approach to morality, which includes consequentialist, virtue-based, and deontological elements, it is contended that most who are well-off should do much more than they do to aid the needy, and that they are open to serious moral criticism if they simply ignore the needy. Part one also focuses on the United States, and illustrates both how incredibly wealthy the U.S. is and some of the spending habits of its citizens; however, its considerations apply to the well-off generally. Section 3 considers whether justice provides reasons for helping the needy. Noting that justice in an extremely complex notion, it discusses numerous considerations relevant to justices scope and implications, including an extended Rawlsian conception of justice, an absolute conception, a comparative conception, the distinction between natural and social justice, and various elements of common-sense morality. Section 2 also distinguishes between agent-relative justice-based reasons, which are relevant to whether we act justly, and agent-neutral justice-based reasons, which are relevant to whether we have reasons of justicefor acting. Correspondingly, it argues that even if one can ignore the needy without acting unjustly, as philosophers like Robert Nozick and Jan Narveson contend, there may be powerful reasons of justicefor addressing their plight. Section 4 briefly address the responsibilities of international organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO). Drawing on Section 2, it is suggested that in addition to standard reasons to act justlytowards needy members of the worlds community, there will be reasons of justicefor such organizations to aid the needy in both present, and future, generations. The article concludes by contending that the well-off in countries like the U.S. have reason to view international organizations like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO as their agents, and to seek to insure that they alleviate misfortunes amongst the worlds needy.     

Global Inequality and International Institutions

This article considers the links between international institutions and global economic justice: how international institutions might be morally important; how they have changed; and at what those changes imply for justice. The institutional structure of international society has evolved in ways that help to undercut the arguments of those who take a restrictionist position towards global economic justice. There is now a denser and more integrated network of shared institutions and practices within which social expectations of global justice and injustice have become more securely established. But, at the same time, our major international social institutions continue to constitute a deformed political order. This combination of density and deformity shapes how we should think about international justice in general and has important implications for the scope, character, and modalities of global economic justice. Having laid out a view of normative development and where it leads, the article then examines why international distributive justice remains so marginal to current practice.     

Bailing and jailing the fast and frugal way

Legal decisions such as the decision to bail upon adjourning a case have major consequences for both defendants and society. In the English system, magistrates, most of whom are lay people, are afforded considerable discretion and must work under constraints such as time pressure. Judgment analysis of the bail decision making policies of 81 magistrates from 44 courts throughout England and Wales revealed intra‐ and inter‐magistrate inconsistency in bail decisions, discrepancies between stated and elicited cue use, and high levels of post‐decisional confidence. Furthermore, magistrates' policies were better described and predicted by a fast and frugal model characterized by noncompensatory cue use, than by either of two compensatory integration models. The fast and frugal model portrays a picture of bail decision making that conflicts with the ideal practice as defined by the due process model of justice. We discuss the implications of these findings for judgment and decision making research and criminal justice policy. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.