Sovereign States in the Greenhouse: Does Jurisdiction Speak against Consumption- Based Emissions Accounting?

The paper investigates the significance of jurisdiction for the choice of accounting method of greenhouse gases. Making use of the distinction between retrospective and prospective responsibility, it assesses three different arguments from jurisdiction against consumption-based emissions accounting. It argues that one of these arguments, the effectiveness argument, provides a strong potential reason against consumptionbased emissions accounting. To the extent jurisdictional control is needed to reduce some emissions, and production-based accounting incentivizes states to reduce these emissions, there is a reason of environmental effectiveness for sticking with production-based accounting.

NATURE AND FORMS OF REALIZATION OF LEGAL LIABILITY

The article focuses on the research of one of the fundamental institutions of law – legal liability, the role and importance of which in the current period of formation of the rule of law in Latvia is constantly increasing. However, many issues of legal liability are still under discussion. In recent years the problem of liability mainly out of legal problem, turned into a problem of interdisciplinary nature. The generic notion, in relation to legal liability, is social responsibility. The evolution of views on the nature of legal liability has resulted in the emergence of the concept of positive legal liability. The initial methodological premise of the research of legal liability is to address to the issue of social responsibility, since the general characteristics and forms of realization inherent in social responsibility, inevitably find their expression both: in legal responsibility and its individual types. Traditionally, legal liability is limited by its interpretation as liability for the past, i.e. negative liability. At the same time, attention is drawn to the diversity of views and interpretations of supporters of this approach. However, in recent decades, there has been a growing body of research on positive (prospective) responsibility, whose proponents are also diverse. Moreover, in science it is suggested, that responsibility can be extremely positive, along with which, the protection of violated subjective rights and interests protected by law, is provided by measures of state coercion. http://dx.doi.org/10.17770/acj.v4i85.4015 Legal liability is considered in the article as an holistic phenomenon, dialectical unity of responsibility for past actions (retrospective responsibility) and responsibility for present and future behavior (positive, prospective responsibility), which develops and is implemented in a voluntary or compulsory form in regulatory legal relations. Legal liability is characterized by a number of specific features. Among them: (1) legal liability is based on legal norms, that give it certainty and general compulsion; (2) state guarantee; (3) provision of state coercion or persuasion; (4) legal liability as a necessary consequence has the approval or conviction, encouragement or punishment; (5) legal liability is implemented in the procedural form, provided for by law; (6) essentially, legal liability is a uniform, but it is exercised in two different forms. The theories and concepts of legal liability, presented in the scientific literature were critically analyzed in the article and on this basis its concept is being formulated, the specific features inherent in legal liability are being identified, its unity and the presence of various forms of implementation are being alleged.

Responsibility

This chapter analyses the role of relationship responsibility in the law of divorce and parenthood, using a framework that distinguishes historical and prospective responsibility. The former is concerned with attributing blame, the latter with defining roles. For divorce, it argues there are strong reasons why the legal process should not seek to assess blame for marital breakdown. Prospective responsibility is recognized through property and financial allocations after divorce. The grounds for allocating responsibility to specified adults towards children are also examined, including in cases of surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology. It concludes that while people have a responsibility to comply with the law, a fuller sense of responsibility will sometimes demand that people refrain from enforcing their legal rights, or act beyond their legal duties, out of recognition of ‘the other’ and the interests of the community.

Freedom of Movement and Emigration Pressures: A Defence of Immigration Fees

The article addresses the prospective responsibility of states to protect citizens from emigration pressures. After establishing the moral weight of the interest in staying, the article proceeds to explain why the interest to stay is comparatively more resistant to restrictions than the interest in exercising freedom of movement across borders. On this basis, the argument is then advanced that immigration fees can be charged on (well-off) immigrants as a means to protect economically vulnerable residents in recipient countries from emigration pressures. The argument that I will advance is in at least one sense non-consequentialist: it accounts for the need for immigration fees without relying on (problematic) assumptions about the consequences of immigration. Furthermore, the argument is also realistic in so far as it accepts that states have the right to restrict immigration.

After Fukushima: The precautionary principle revisited

Etienne de Villiers, more than other theologians, elaborates on basic elements of a Christian ethics of responsibility. He distinguishes between retrospective and prospective responsibility. The prospective aspect attracted awareness after the nuclear accident in the Fukushima reactors on 11 March 2011. The question on how to respond in an ethically responsible manner to catastrophic risks was put back on the agenda. The article takes up this question and discusses the answer given in the international debate by the introduction of the �precautionary principle�. The principle is described with its background in the �heuristics of fear�, proposed by the philosopher Hans Jonas. Four criticisms are discussed in detail relating to the problems of scientific uncertainty, the burden of proof, the weight of damages and the perils of precaution. That leads to a reformulation of the precautionary principle as a concrete element within an ethics of responsibility.

Are Multinational Companies Responsible for Working Conditions in Their Supply Chains? From Intuition to Argument

Although many people seem to share the intuition that multinational companies (MNEs) carry a responsibility for the working conditions in their supply chains, the justification offered for this assumption is usually rather unclear. This article explores a promising strategy for grounding the relevant intuition and for rendering its content more precise. It applies the criteria of David Miller's connection theory of remedial responsibility to different forms of supply chain governance as characterized by the Global Value Chains (GVC) framework. The analysis suggests that the criteria for identifying MNEs as remedially responsible for bad working conditions in their direct suppliers are fulfilled in many cases, even though differentiations are required with regard to the different supply chain governance structures. MNEs thus have a duty to make sure currently bad working conditions in their suppliers are changed for the better. Moreover, since production in supply chains for structural reasons continuously generates remedial responsibility of MNEs for bad working conditions in their suppliers, it puts the prospective responsibility on them to make sure that their suppliers offer acceptable working conditions. Further, it is suggested that the remedial responsibility of MNEs might require them to make financial compensation to victims of bad working conditions and in grave cases initiate or support programs to mitigate disastrous effects suffered by them.

ARE THERE OBLIGATIONS WITHOUT RIGHTS?

In all command-obedience relations of asymmetric reciprocity, obligations or rather duties do not go normally with corresponding rights. There are no rights related to such relationships, at least not in the present understanding of the word “right”, since they are prerogatives. But there are obligations based on morals, if not on rights, also in relations of asymmetric reciprocity. Only in a relation of symmetric reciprocity do rights appear as foundations (archai) for claims, both in a positive, and in a negative sense. We have obligations to future generations, even responsibilities for living up to those obligations, but future generations cannot have rights. There is not, and cannot be, symmetric reciprocity between us and any future generation, in fact no reciprocity at all; there are obligations without corresponding rights.The cases of prospective responsibility, of being in charge, also implies obligations irrespective of the circumstance whether the parties towards whom we have obligations are the bearers of rights or not. Intergenerational justice does not presuppose extant rights whereas potential rights are just projections or metaphors with little relevance, for they are not binding.

Die morele verantwoordelikheid van internetdiensverskaffers: ‘n Christelik etiese perspektief

The article deals with the moral responsibility of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) concerning the distribution of information in the virtual world, seen from the perspective of Christian Ethics. A number of case studies are discussed to illustrate some of the typical problems of responsibility experienced in this regard and the inadequacy of international legislation regulating internet services is pointed out. To adequately deal with specifically the moral responsibility of ISPs contemporary shifts in the concept of responsibility as a result of the process of modernisation are discussed. It is argued that the moral responsibility of ISPs is at least equivalent to that of other distributors of information. Nonetheless the moral responsibility ascribed to ISPs on the basis of liberal values would be different from that ascribed on the basis of Christian values. Liberals would tend to underplay the moral responsibility of ISPs to control the flow of information on the internet, while Christians would tend to emphasise their prospective responsibility to bar harmful information from the internet. However, in contemporary liberal democracies only ISPs serving Christians can be expected to exercise the moral responsibility that is regarded as ideal from a Christian perspective. From all ISPs the exercise of an optimal moral responsibility can nonetheless be expected.