scholarly journals Biopolitics and the Enemy: On Law, Rights and Proper Subjects

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-403
Author(s):  
Jennifer Jane Hardes
Keyword(s):  
Human Subjects ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Right To Die ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The Law ◽  
Individual Human ◽  
Legal Right

This article examines the operation of “enmity” in right to die legal appeals. The article asks: (1) why does the law rely on articulations of enmity to rationalize its decisions and (2) what might this tell us about how biopolitics operates in the contemporary neoliberal moment? Drawing on the insight of Roberto Esposito the article makes three key points. First, it notes that biopolitics operating in the contemporary neoliberal moment is increasingly focused on closures around individual human subjects, or what Esposito calls mechanisms of “immunization.” Second, it notes that discourses of enmity are perpetuated through legal right to die appeals that shore up these immunity mechanisms, which can partly explain why right to die claims fail on appeal. Finally, it considers more affirmative ways forward in both theory and practice relating to legal right to die appeals.

Under the Law: Do students have a right to “equal extracurricular opportunity”?

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (8) ◽  
pp. 64-65
Author(s):  
Robert Kim
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Extracurricular Activities ◽  
Extracurricular Programs ◽  
The Law ◽  
School Finances ◽  
Legal Right

Robert Kim tackles the question of whether denying students access to extracurricular programs is lawful. Historically, courts have considered the presence or absence of extracurricular activities as a factor in determining whether a district has eliminated vestiges of segregation. Outside the desegregation context, however, courts have been reluctant to recognize a legal right to participate in extracurricular activities. Today, those hoping to define extracurriclar opportutines as a right may find avenues to puruse in case involving school finances and federal enforcement of civil rights statutes.

scholarly journals The Myth of Objectivity: Implicit Racial Bias and the Law (Part 2)

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Willem Hendrik Gravett
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Differential Treatment ◽  
Implicit Racial Bias ◽  
The Law

The centrality of race to our history and the substantial racial inequalities that continue to pervade society ensure that "race" remains an extraordinarily salient and meaningful social category.  Explicit racial prejudice, however, is only part of the problem.  Equally important - and likely more pervasive - is the phenomenon of implicit racial prejudice: the cognitive processes whereby, despite even our best intentions, the human mind automatically classifies information in racial categories and against disfavoured social groups. Empirical research shows convincingly that these biases against socially disfavoured groups are (i) pervasive; (ii) often diverge from consciously reported attitudes and beliefs; and (iii) influence consequential behaviour towards the subjects of these biases. The existence of implicit racial prejudices poses a challenge to legal theory and practice. From the standpoint of a legal system that seeks to forbid differential treatment based upon race or other protected traits, if people are in fact treated differently, and worse, because of their race or other protected trait, then the fundamental principle of anti-discrimination has been violated. It hardly matters that the source of the differential treatment is implicit rather than conscious bias. This article investigates the relevance of this research to the law by means of an empirical account of how implicit racial bias could affect the criminal trial trajectory in the areas of policing, prosecutorial discretion and judicial decision-making.  It is the author's hypothesis that this mostly American research also applies to South Africa. The empirical evidence of implicit biases in every country tested shows that people are systematically implicitly biased in favour of socially privileged groups. Even after 1994 South Africa – similar to the US – continues to be characterised by a pronounced social hierarchy in which Whites overwhelmingly have the highest social status. The author argues that the law should normatively take cognizance of this issue.  After all, the mere fact that we may not be aware of, much less consciously intend, race-contingent behaviour does not magically erase the harm. The article concludes by addressing the question of the appropriate response of the law and legal role players to the problem of implicit racial bias.

scholarly journals Learning to play the piano with the Supernumerary Robotic 3rd Thumb

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Shafti ◽  
Shlomi Haar ◽  
Renato Mio Zaldivar ◽  
Pierre Guilleminot ◽  
A. Aldo Faisal
Keyword(s):  
Motor Learning ◽  
Time Scales ◽  
Motor Coordination ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Musical Score ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Human Augmentation ◽  
Individual Motor ◽  
Individual Human

AbstractWe wanted to study the ability of our brains and bodies to be augmented by supernumerary robot limbs, here extra fingers. We developed a mechanically highly functional supernumerary robotic 3rd thumb actuator, the SR3T, and interfaced it with human users enabling them to play the piano with 11 fingers. We devised a set of measurement protocols and behavioural “biomarkers”, the Human Augmentation Motor Coordination Assessment (HAMCA), which allowed us a priori to predict how well each individual human user could, after training, play the piano with a two-thumbs-hand. To evaluate augmented music playing ability we devised a simple musical score, as well as metrics for assessing the accuracy of playing the score. We evaluated the SR3T (supernumerary robotic 3rd thumb) on 12 human subjects including 6 naïve and 6 experienced piano players. We demonstrated that humans can learn to play the piano with a 6-fingered hand within one hour of training. For each subject we could predict individually, based solely on their HAMCA performance before training, how well they were able to perform with the extra robotic thumb, after training (training end-point performance). Our work demonstrates the feasibility of robotic human augmentation with supernumerary robotic limbs within short time scales. We show how linking the neuroscience of motor learning with dexterous robotics and human-robot interfacing can be used to inform a priori how far individual motor impaired patients or healthy manual workers could benefit from robotic augmentation solutions.

scholarly journals Theory and Practice of the Realization of the Right to Freedom of Religion: All-Ukrainian and Regional Contexts

2013 ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
Liudmyla O. Fylypovych
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right

The right to freedom of religion is enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine and the Law of Ukraine on Freedom of Conscience and religious organizations. Article 35 of the Constitution of Ukraine states that this right includes the freedom to profess any religion or not to profess any, to freely send individually or collectively religious ceremonies, to conduct religious activities.

National Report for Tanzania

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benhajj Shaaban Masoud
Keyword(s):  
Case Law ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
General Law ◽  
National Report ◽  
General Rules ◽  
Statutory Law ◽  
The Law

The law relating to the treatment of contracts in insolvency in Tanzania—as is true for the general law on insolvency in Tanzania—is neither well developed in theory and practice nor quite explicit in a number of aspects. The lack of extensive application of the law is due to lack of material circumstances in which the law could apply and systematically evolve and develop. Recently, the law has tended to develop through other laws that address specific matters that have implications for insolvency. The statutory law as it exists to date has some general rules that govern the treatment of contracts in insolvency, although the case law is almost non-existent.

The Cosmos and I

2020 ◽  
pp. 138-148
Author(s):  
Jonardon Ganeri
Keyword(s):  
Human Subjects ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Fernando Pessoa ◽  
Priority Monism ◽  
Common Variety ◽  
Chāndogya Upaniṣad ◽  
Individual Human

Could it be the case that all of us as individual human subjects stand to one another as Caeiro stands to Reis and Reis to Campos: just as they are the multiple heteronyms of one and the same subject, Fernando Pessoa, so too we are all heteronyms of one and the same subject, a single cosmic subject? There is a famous line in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad which might be interpreted as saying something of the sort—tat tvam asi: you are that, that single cosmic subject, brahman. For the eighth-century Vedāntic philosopher Śaṅkara, whose reading of the Upaniṣads would much later establish itself in the popular imagination, the similarity is further reinforced because he provides a context of phenomenological simulation similar to dreaming and imagining, namely, māyā, ‘cosmic illusion’. Let me call the view that individual human subjects are heteronyms of a single cosmic self ‘heteronymic cosmopsychism’. Heteronymic cosmopsychism is different from the comparatively more common variety of cosmopsychism according to which the grounding relation between the single cosmic self and the multiplicity of individual selves is mereological, not heteronymic. Heteronymic cosmopsychism agrees with priority monism in rejecting a monistic existence thesis, differing from it only as to the nature of the grounding relation, sidestepping the problems that bedevil priority cosmopsychism because its grounding relation is not one of decomposition.

19. The equitable liability of strangers to the trust

2021 ◽  
pp. 453-472
Author(s):  
Gary Watt
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Trust Property ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

Without assuming prior legal knowledge, books in the Directions series introduce and guide readers through key points of law and legal debate. Questions, diagrams and exercises help readers to engage fully with each subject and check their understanding as they progress. This chapter shows how a stranger to the trust may be threatened with personal equitable liability. It explains the rationale behind equitable liability for ‘knowing receipt’ of trust property, considers the distinction between ‘knowing receipt’ and ‘inconsistent dealing’, examines the nature of a stranger’s liability for dishonest assistance in (or procurement of) a breach of trust and looks at possible reforms of the law in this area. The chapter also discusses how liability of strangers differs from tracing, trusteeship de son tort, the four requirements for ‘dishonest assistance’ (existence of a trust, breach of the trust, assistance and dishonesty), the relationship between knowledge and dishonesty in cases of dishonest assistance and whether accessory liability should be a common law tort.

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