What is the relationship between impunity and economic and social rights? A substantiated expectation of impunity encourages the commission of acts that violate human rights. Using a logistic-multinomial regression model, we find that impunity affects per capita GDP, years of schooling, and life expectancy. An unexpected finding was that different civil and political rights systems, as diverse as those of Norway and Singapore, have similar impacts on both impunity and economic and social rights. Nonetheless, we need (...) to focus on holistic models that strive for protection of all human rights. (shrink)

Is there a duty to prosecute grave international crimes? Many have thought so, even if they recognize the obligation to be defeasible. However, the theoretical literature frequently leaves the grounds for such a duty inadequately specified, or unsystematically amalgamated, leaving it unclear which considerations should drive and shape processes of criminal accountability. Further, the circumstance leaves calls to end impunity vulnerable to skeptical worries concerning the risks and costs of punishing perpetrators. I argue that a qualified duty to prosecute (...) can be substantiated on the basis of a single class of reasons, though also that standard justifications of international criminal law (as currently conceived) are not up to the task. The account exploits the expressive dimension of punishment, but locates the central good of criminal accountability in its capacity to appropriately enable an agential stance on the part of subjects in transitional circumstances. It can legitimate, in a way to be specified, hope. The approach also displays the cynicism of an anti‐impunity ethos in the absence of a robust commitment to securing basic human rights in transitional circumstances. (shrink)

Republicans hold that freedom is non-domination rather than non-interference. This entails that any instance of interference that does not involve domination is not freedom-lessening. The case for thinking of freedom as non-domination proceeds mostly by way of a handful of highly compelling cases in which it seems intuitive to say of some person that he or she is unfree despite being in fact free from interference. In this essay, I call attention to a kind of case which directs attention to (...) what seems to me to be a highly counterintuitive element of the republican conception of freedom. (shrink)

This paper is a case study of the repression practised in Chile under the military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990. It outlines the psycho‐dynamic mechanisms of terror and of the struggle against it. It raises critically the issue of impunity (officially declared amnesty for human rights violations) and its consequences for the sense of justice in a process of transition to democracy. The educational implications of this precarious situation are discussed. The article shows that a well‐worked out system of (...) terror can destroy even the most elementary forms of respect for basic human rights. A full reconstitution of the social fabric is required, which is based on the practice of respect for human rights as a foundation for a democratic polity. (shrink)

International criminal law is dedicated to the battle against impunity. However, the concept of impunity lacks clarity. Providing that clarity also reveals challenges for the current state and future prospects of the project of ICL, which this article frames in cosmopolitan terms. The ‘impunity norm’ of ICL is generally presented in a deontic form. It holds that impunity for perpetrators of international crimes is a wrong so profound that states and international bodies have a pro tanto (...) duty to prosecute and punish perpetrators, a duty that cannot be overridden by considerations of cost, including the costs of infringing on the traditionally understood legal sovereignty of states. This deontic reading of the impunity norm is difficult to justify, a fact linked to the waning fortunes of ICL over the past several years. If ICL is to reverse this trend, the impunity norm’s strongly deontic reading should be replaced by a version derived from deliberative principles. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 32.3-4 (2002) 33-59 [Access article in PDF] Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC) Mahmood Mamdani The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa was the fruit of a political compromise whose terms both made possible the Commission and set the limits within which it would work. These limits, in turn, defined the space available (...) to the Commission to interpret its terms of reference and define its agenda. This paper takes the compromise legislation that set up the TRC as a historical given and focuses attention on the TRC's interpretation of its terms of reference.The TRC claimed to be different from its predecessors, whether in Latin America or Eastern Europe. It would practice neither impunity nor vengeance. It was therefore determined to avoid two pitfalls: on the one hand, reconciliation becoming an unprincipled embrace of political evil and, on the other hand, a pursuit of justice so relentless as to turn into revenge. To do so, the Commission was determined to address both "victims" and "perpetrators," not just one or the other.This double determination was first written into the interim constitution that paved the way for the legislation that set up the TRC. First, there would be no blanket amnesty. Amnesty would be conditional. It would not be a group amnesty. Every perpetrator would have to be identified individually, and would have to own up to his or her guilt—the truth—before receiving amnesty from legal prosecution. Second, any victim who is so acknowledged would give up the right to prosecute perpetrators in courts of law. Justice for the victim would thus not be criminal but restorative: acknowledgment would be followed by reparations. In sum, individual amnesty for the perpetrator, truth for the society, and acknowledgement and reparations for the victim—this was the pact built into the legislation that set up the TRC.Since the Act did not clearly define "victim," however, the definition of "perpetrator" was unclear as well. The task of defining "victim" and "perpetrator" was left to the Commission and was the single most important decision that determined the scope and depth of the Commission's work. Without a comprehensive acknowledgment of victims of apartheid, there would be only a limited identification of perpetrators and only a partial understanding of the legal regime that made possible the "crime against humanity." From this perspective, the paper identifies three key limitations in the Commission's Report.First, the TRC individualized the victims of apartheid. Though it acknowledged apartheid as a "crime against humanity" which targeted entire communities for ethnic and racial policing and cleansing, the Commission majority was reluctant to go beyond the formal acknowledgment. The Commission's analysis reduced apartheid from a relationship between the state and entire communities to one between the state and [End Page 33] individuals. Where entire communities were victims of gross violations of rights, the Commission acknowledged only individual victims. If the "crime against humanity" involved a targeting of entire communities for racial and ethnic cleansing and policing, individualizing the victim obliterated this particular—many would argue central—characteristic of apartheid. Limiting the definition of harm and remedy to individuals center-staged political activists as victims of apartheid, as indeed happened with the victim hearings. The consequence was to narrow the TRC perspective to a political reconciliation between state agents and political activists, individual members of a fractured political elite, rather than the "national unity and reconciliation" mandated by the legislation that set it up. To pursue its actual mandate, the TRC needed to broaden its perspective: to work for a social reconciliation between perpetrators and victims required that the relationship between the state and the entire South African people be addressed.Second, by focusing on individuals and obscuring the victimization of communities, the TRC was unable to highlight the bifurcated nature of apartheid as a form of power that governed natives differently from non-natives. If the apartheid state spoke the language of rights to... (shrink)

Resumo Giorgio Agamben tece a genealogia da “vida nua”, no percurso que vai do homo sacer ao Muselmann, do primeiro paradigma da política ocidental à fabricação do morto-vivo, em Auschwitz, como vida insacrificável e impunemente matável. Judith Butler segue argumento semelhante, ao desenvolver o conceito de “vida precária”, com o qual problematiza a separação entre vulnerabilidade universal e formas de produção da precariedade, a distinção entre vidas cujas perdas importam e as indignas de pranto e luto. A finalidade deste artigo (...) consiste em aproximar as concepções dos dois autores, sob a hipótese de que, em ambos, trata-se da fabricação de vidas matáveis, sobre as quais pesa a proibição do luto.Giorgio Agamben weaves the genealogy of “naked Life”, on the path that goes from Homo sacer to Muselmann, from the first paradigm of Western politics to the manufacture of the undead in Auschwitz, as an unexpendable and unpunishable killing life. Judith Butler follows similar argument in developing the concept of “precarious life”, with which problematizes the separation between universal vulnerability and forms of production of precariousness, the distinction between lives whose losses matter and the unworthy of weeping and Mourning. The purpose of this article is to approximate the conceptions of the two authors, under the assumption that in both it is the manufacture of killing lives, on which it weighs the prohibition of grief. (shrink)

An emerging consensus regards domestic amnesties for international crimes as generally inconsistent with international law. This legal consensus rests on a norm against impunity: the chief role of international criminal law, and of the fledgling International Criminal Court , is to end impunity for violators of the worst of criminal acts. But the anti-impunity norm, and the anti-amnesty consensus that has arisen from it, now face serious difficulties. The ICC's role in the ongoing conflict in Northern Uganda (...) illustrates the deadlock that has now emerged between countries wishing to retain the power to use domestic politics and criminal law as tools for negotiation with current or outgoing perpetrators, on the one side, and the ICC's determination to apply a consistent international anti-impunity norm, on the other. The paper argues that the anti-impunity norm itself is based on a narrowly retributivist conception of criminal justice. A broader norm for democratic accountability, by contrast, would continue to prefer prosecutions over amnesties in international law, less for the opportunity for deserved retribution for perpetrators than for the public enactment of the deliberative procedures associated with the rule of law.Keywords: amnesty; impunity; international law; international criminal court. (shrink)

Volume 30, Issue 6, September 2025, Page 784-785.

International criminal law is dedicated to the battle against impunity. However, the concept of impunity lacks clarity. Providing that clarity also reveals challenges for the current state and future prospects of the project of ICL, which this article frames in cosmopolitan terms. The ‘impunity norm’ of ICL is generally presented in a deontic form. It holds that impunity for perpetrators of international crimes is a wrong so profound that states and international bodies have a pro tanto (...) duty to prosecute and punish perpetrators, a duty that cannot be overridden by considerations of cost, including the costs of infringing on the traditionally understood legal sovereignty of states. This deontic reading of the impunity norm is difficult to justify, a fact linked to the waning fortunes of ICL over the past several years. If ICL is to reverse this trend, the impunity norm’s strongly deontic reading should be replaced by a version derived from deliberative principles. (shrink)

I argue that the idea of a freely embraced eternal destiny in hell is deeply incoherent and implies, quite apart from its incoherence, that we are free both to sin with impunity and to defeat God's justice forever.

_Elena Ruíz’s _Structural Violence: The Makings of Settler Colonial Impunity_ reconceptualizes structural violence as a dynamic, self-repairing system that sustains settler colonial domination. Drawing on anti-colonial, feminist and critical race and system theories, Ruíz argues that harm operates through recursive patterns that adapt to critique and regenerate via legal, cultural and epistemic mechanisms. By introducing concepts such as “impunitycraft” and “interpretive wealth,” the book explores how settler colonialism maintains racialized and gendered hierarchies while masking violence through cultural gaslighting and epistemic (...) capitalism. With this intervention, Ruíz engages with complex questions about the adaptation strategies of structural colonialism as a long-standing project rather than an episodic experience. _. (shrink)

This article aims to delineate the underlying causality of gender violence, specifically the perseverance of rape as an institutional failure, in the particular spatio-temporality of France. The nonexistent levels of convictions for rape (0.6%), compared with the increase in reported rapes (a rape every 2.3 min, 1/2 women are survivors, 1/6 women entered sexuality through rape), forge a certain continuity with previous contexts in which rape was a crime against the honour of the family, rather than against the integrity of (...) the victim. Rape is actively shaped by intersecting forms of violence. It is institutionalised because the authorities’ response is first to induce such a failure of justice. The ‘morphogenetic régulation’ approach endows my reflection with meta-theoretical depth to observe how one can explain such systemic persistence. The findings call for urgent academic and policy attention in re-examining the entire training procedures for judicial officers. (shrink)

With its express intention ‘to put an end to impunity’, the International Criminal Court (ICC) faces a substantial challenge in the shape of conditional amnesties granted in future national truth commissions (TCs)—a challenge that invokes fundamental considerations of criminal justice ethics. In this article, I give an account of the challenge, and I consider a possible solution to it presented by Declan Roche. According to this solution the ICC-prosecutor should respect national amnesties and prosecute and punish only those perpetrators (...) who have refused to cooperate with the TC. I argue, however, that this compromise is untenable. As a general rule, if we justify the ICC on grounds of deterrence we should not accept conditional amnesties granted in national TCs. (shrink)

What can well-meaning people do about terror and genocide? The more we fight against systems of violence, the further we seem to sink into them. This book explores the lives and letters of ordinary and intellectual Germans who faced the ethical challenges of the Third Reich. Trained in history, literary criticism, philosophy, and theology, its four authors look at the role of myths, lies, non-conformity, irony, and modeling in cultivating a self. They explain how we might use these ordinary strategies (...) of selfhood to bear the burden of historical responsibility and be happy doing so.". (shrink)

Here we will go beyond the variety of violence to show its unity, common points and continuities. For although there are multiple forms of violence, they are interrelated: they define a continuum from trivial to extreme violence. Violence against oneself, things, living things such as plants and animals, other nations, the other, one’s fellow human beings, therefore the violence of society against its members, which returns to self-violence. Another continuum is its spiral development, with violence generating violence and pushing it (...) to grow. Violence can also be learned, we progress ever further in violence: in gangs, in armies, in society... Everyone is capable of violence, sometimes to a good advantage as in self-defence. Here it resides in necessity, that of survival, but in general it is impunity that allows and encourages it. In closed, totalitarian, universes: family, work, hospital, army, state... The proximity and distance between the perpetrator and the victim defines yet another continuity. We will discuss the various elements that contribute to its development. And paradoxically, to see that violence also serves to avoid violence. In this way, evacuating it, refusing it, is in fact feeding it, which makes today’s violence, which is an evolution of previous violence and which prepares and defines tomorrow’s violence. (shrink)

With their prospect for causing both novel and known forms of damage, harm and injury, the issue of responsibility has been a recurring theme in the debate concerning autonomous vehicles. Yet, the discussion of responsibility has obscured the finer details both between the underlying concepts of responsibility, and their application to the interaction between human beings and artificial decision-making entities. By developing meaningful distinctions and examining their ramifications, this article contributes to this debate by refining the underlying concepts that together (...) inform the idea of responsibility. Two different approaches are offered to the question of responsibility and autonomous vehicles: targeting and risk distribution. The article then introduces a thought experiment which situates autonomous vehicles within the context of crash optimisation impulses and coordinated or networked decision-making. It argues that guiding ethical frameworks overlook compound or aggregated effects which may arise, and which can lead to subtle forms of structural discrimination. Insofar as such effects remain unrecognised by the legal systems relied upon to remedy them, the potential for societal inequalities is increased and entrenched, situations of injustice and impunity may be unwittingly maintained. This second set of concerns may represent a hitherto overlooked type of responsibility gap arising from inadequate accountability processes capable of challenging systemic risk displacement. (shrink)

The prosecution of international crimes is a challenge both under international and domestic law. Taking the example of international criminal law (ICL) , the fullest realization of its objectives is influenced by many factors including; (a) the adoption of appropriate laws by states, (b) the adequacy of the ICL framework on definitions of crimes and principles of criminal responsibility, (c) the level of political control and involvement in decision making related to investigation, prosecution or extradition, (d) Problems with exclusion including (...) restrictions on the rights of victims with regard to the proceedings and to reparation, and (e) The application of provisions for amnesties and similar measures of impunity. -/- Over the years, the mandate of States under ICL has expanded. Key reforms under ICL and domestic laws have been led by the above mentioned concerns. The scope of state obligations, in particular, has been shaped by the standards adopted under the ICL framework including the "duty to prosecute" international crimes. The article discusses the normative significance of the "duty to prosecute". (shrink)

After almost two decades in power, R. T. Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have established authoritarian and Islamist governance in Turkey, which has adversely affected gender equality and women’s rights. So much so, that in 2009 the European Court of Human Rights acknowledged that there is a climate conducive to domestic violence in Turkey (Opuz v. Turkey). Despite Erdoğan withdrawing Turkey unconstitutionally from the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention), the (...) government cannot withdraw from the state’s duty to protect its citizens from the criminal acts of private individuals. By using international and regional organisations’ approaches to positive obligations and due diligence as a measure, the article addresses whether Turkey is fulfilling its duty of protecting women from the violent conduct of others. It is concluded that the government is failing in its positive obligations and instead, is reinforcing the climate through its discourse and practices that strengthen a national tolerance of violence against women and the national authorities’ reluctance to address it, thus allowing for impunity of its perpetrators. (shrink)

This paper is about human rights and policing in Bangladesh, with special focus on the role of National Human Rights Commission. The protection and promotion of human rights in Bangladesh has become difficult as the law enforcement agencies, particularly the police and the Rapid Action Battalion, are involved in human rights violations. An overall culture of impunity for human rights violations exists in Bangladesh. The National Human Rights Commission appears to have failed to break the culture of impunity (...) in Bangladeshi politics. This paper explains the reasons why the National Human Rights Commission in Bangladesh largely fails to make the political system in particular law enforcement agencies accountable. (shrink)

Since anonymous agents can spread misinformation with impunity, many people advocate for greater accountability for internet speech. This paper provides a veritistic argument that accountability mechanisms can cause significant epistemic problems for internet encyclopedias and social media communities. I show that accountability mechanisms can undermine both the dissemination of true beliefs and the detection of error. Drawing on social psychology and behavioral economics, I suggest alternative mechanisms for increasing the trustworthiness of internet communication.

We have been oversold on the base rate fallacy in probabilistic judgment from an empirical, normative, and methodological standpoint. At the empirical level, a thorough examination of the base rate literature (including the famous lawyer–engineer problem) does not support the conventional wisdom that people routinely ignore base rates. Quite the contrary, the literature shows that base rates are almost always used and that their degree of use depends on task structure and representation. Specifically, base rates play a relatively larger role (...) in tasks where base rates are implicitly learned or can be represented in frequentist terms. Base rates are also used more when they are reliable and relatively more diagnostic than available individuating information. At the normative level, the base rate fallacy should be rejected because few tasks map unambiguously into the narrow framework that is held up as the standard of good decision making. Mechanical applications of Bayes's theorem to identify performance errors are inappropriate when (1) key assumptions of the model are either unchecked or grossly violated, and (2) no attempt is made to identify the decision maker's goals, values, and task assumptions. Methodologically, the current approach is criticized for its failure to consider how the ambiguous, unreliable, and unstable base rates of the real world are and should be used. Where decision makers' assumptions and goals vary, and where performance criteria are complex, the traditional Bayesian standard is insufficient. Even where predictive accuracy is the goal in commonly defined problems, there may be situations (e.g., informationally redundant environments) in which base rates can be ignored with impunity. A more ecologically valid research program is called for. This program should emphasize the development of prescriptive theory in rich, realistic decision environments. (shrink)

Here, I defend the view that there is no sensible way to pin a truth-maker objection on presentism. First, I suggest that if we adopt truth-maker maximalism then the presentist can requisition appropriate ontological resources with impunity. Second, if we deny maximalism, then the presentist can sensibly restrict the truth-maker principle in order to avoid the demand for truth-makers for talk about the non-present.

Enduring social inequalities in settler colonial societies are not an accident. They are produced and maintained by the self-repairing structural features and dynastic character of systemic racism and its intersecting oppressions. Using methods from diverse anticolonial liberation movements and systems theory, Structural Violence theorizes the existence of adaptive and self-replicating historical formations that underwrite cultures of violence in settler colonial societies. Corresponding epistemic forces tied to profit and wealth accumulation for beneficiary groups often go untracked. The account offered here argues (...) that these epistemic forces play a central role in producing and maintaining massive health inequalities and the maldistribution of disease burdens―including those associated with sexual violence―for marginalized populations. It upends the widespread view that structural racism can be dismantled without addressing gendered violence. It also advocates for a theory of change rooted in reparative action and models of structural competency that respond to the built-in design of structural violence and the ecosystems of impunity that allow it to thrive. (shrink)

Romantic relationships between professors and students, between employers and employees, and between other partners at different points on an institutional hierarchy are widely regarded as morally troubling. Popular explanations as to why have appealed variously to violations of institutional duties, to the impossibility of sexual consent within such relationships, and to the vices of the more powerful partner. I advance an alternative explanation. Romantic relationships, I argue, are already hazardous in their own right. We are distinctively exposed to and dependent (...) on our partners, which gives them the ability to interfere with us in significant ways. This makes romantic relationships ripe for what republicans call “domination”—a situation in which one person is vulnerable to the arbitrary interference of another. Romantic partners can avoid this objectionable condition by achieving a rough equality of power, which will prevent either partner from interfering with impunity. However, significant asymmetries of institutional power make this balancing act harder to achieve and, therefore, make domination harder to avoid. Extending the theory of freedom as non-domination in this way, therefore, not only helps solve a tricky ethical puzzle but also demonstrates the surprising capacity of republican theory to illuminate personal relationships. (shrink)

We all know what water is, and we often take it for granted. But the spectre of a worldwide water crisis suggests that there might be something fundamentally wrong with the way we think about water. Jamie Linton dives into the history of water as an abstract concept, stripped of its environmental, social, and cultural contexts. Reduced to a scientific abstraction – to mere H20 – this concept has given modern society licence to dam, divert, and manipulate water with apparent (...) impunity. Part of the solution to the water crisis involves reinvesting water with social content, thus altering the way we see water. An original take on a deceptively complex issue, What Is Water? offers a fresh approach to a fundamental problem. (shrink)

A growing number of medical professionals claim a right of conscience, a right to refuse to perform any professional duty they deem immoral—and to do so with impunity. We argue that professionals do not have the unqualified right of conscience. At most they have a highly qualified right. We focus on the claims of pharmacists, since they are the professionals most commonly claiming this right.

This article is about (1) the ancient (Aristotelian) emotional virtue of emulation, (2) some current character‐education inspired accounts of the use of role models in moral education and, most importantly, (3) the potential relevance of (1) for (2). The author argues that the strategy of role‐modelling, as explicated by the character‐education movement, is beset with three unsolved problems: an empirical problem of why this method is needed; a methodological problem of how students are to be inspired to emulation; and a (...) substantive moral problem of what precisely should be taught. While the first of these three problems may perhaps be overlooked with impunity, the second and third problems stand in urgent need of rectification if role‐modelling is to retain its moral and educational import. After exploring Aristotle's notion of emulation, the author suggests that this rich and nuanced notion may hold the key to the solution of both problems. Such Aristotelian solutions are then spelled out and defended. (shrink)

There is a word that has achieved something extraordinary in the modern world. It has conquered public discourse, institutional policy, legal frameworks, academic curricula, and cultural conversation — without ever being subjected to the rigorous philosophical examination that any idea of such influence demands. It sits above argument. It has made questioning it socially dangerous, professionally fatal, and morally stigmatised. It presents itself as the voice of equality while operating, in many of its contemporary forms, as the enforcement mechanism of (...) a new hierarchy. That word is feminism. And the extraordinary thing about its conquest is not that it happened. It is that it happened in societies that pride themselves on critical thinking, open debate, and the philosophical commitment to truth over comfort. This paper, conceived under the title The Sword That Forgot Its Shield: A Philosophical Inquiry Into How The Language Of Equality Became The Architecture Of Supremacy, argues three things simultaneously. First, that modern feminism has catastrophically abandoned the original and genuinely noble purpose from which it arose. Second, that the very name and structure of feminism contains a philosophical contradiction that made this abandonment inevitable from the beginning. And third — most originally and most importantly — that the true object of philosophical indictment is not feminism itself, but the systems of equality and justice that were so hollow, so performative, and so structurally dishonest that they created the conditions for feminism's weaponisation and have done nothing to correct it. The paper begins by establishing what feminism was. The first wave of feminist thought addressed genuine, documented, and systematic legal injustice. Women could not vote. Women could not own property independently. Women could not access higher education in most institutions. Women had no legal recourse against domestic violence. These were not philosophical abstractions. They were daily realities of systemic oppression, and the movement that fought against them deserves unqualified recognition as one of the most important social corrections in modern history. The second wave extended this correction into the workplace, into reproductive rights, into the legal recognition of domestic violence and sexual assault. Again — on its own terms, within its historical context — this was a legitimate and necessary extension of the original corrective project. The paper acknowledges this without reservation. To critique what feminism has become is not to deny what it once was. The sword was real. It was sharp. And it was needed. But the paper then traces with philosophical precision the moment at which correction became architecture — the moment at which a movement designed to achieve equality began instead to construct a permanent system of gender-based privilege, and to call that system equality. This transition did not happen suddenly. It happened gradually, through a series of philosophical steps that each seemed reasonable in isolation and became collectively catastrophic in combination. The paper then introduces its most original conceptual contribution: the concept of the Phantom Feminist. The Phantom Feminist is not a woman who believes in equality. She is a specific and identifiable social actor who wears the language, symbols, and moral authority of feminism as a costume — using the movement's hard-won credibility as a personal instrument of power, convenience, and immunity from accountability. She invokes equality when it advantages her and abandons it the moment it does not. She is not fighting for women. She is fighting for herself, using women's rights as her weapon of choice. The paper examines four specific domains in which the Phantom Feminist and the culture she represents have inflicted measurable philosophical damage. First, the justice system: through the erosion of the presumption of innocence in cases involving gender accusations. Second, the attention paradox: the simultaneous condemnation of sexual objectification and the strategic deployment of sexual presentation as a tool of power. Third, the victimhood economy: the systematic conversion of suffering into social currency. Fourth, the silencing of women themselves: the reality that the movement claiming to represent all women has developed the most sophisticated machinery for silencing women who disagree with it. The paper then introduces the naming confession: the argument that equality has no gender, and that a movement named after one gender confesses by its very name that it is advocacy rather than equality. These are different things. Both can have legitimate purposes. But only one can honestly claim to be an equality movement. And it is not the one named after one gender. From this foundation the paper advances to its most important argument: that the true philosophical accusation belongs not to feminism but to the systems of equality and justice that failed first, failed worst, and continue to fail. If equality had been genuine from the beginning, feminism would not have needed to exist. If justice had been real, the Phantom Feminist would not operate with impunity. The movement is a symptom. The system is the disease. And the system — having created the problem — has rebranded itself as the solution, calling its performance of equality the practice of it. This paper introduces the concept of Cosmetic Equality: the practice by which institutions display the language and surface structures of equality while maintaining the substantive inequalities those structures claim to address. Cosmetic Equality is the architecture within which the Phantom operates. It is the reason false accusations carry no legal consequence. It is the reason male suffering is systematically underfunded and culturally dismissed. It is the reason a movement named after one gender is taught in universities as though it were a universal philosophy. The paper concludes not with solutions but with questions — directed at the system rather than at the movement. It asks the system to explain why it permits double standards in the name of equality. To explain why it protects accusation over evidence in the name of justice. To explain why it funds one gender's suffering and ignores the other's in the name of compassion. These are not the questions of someone who opposes equality. They are the questions of someone who takes equality seriously enough to demand that it mean something. The women who truly embody the purpose of feminism — who live with dignity, work with excellence, love with generosity, and command respect through the irreducible force of their character — have never needed to announce themselves. They simply lived. They did not need a movement to demand respect because they inhabited respect. They are the silent majority that the loudest voices claim to represent and most completely fail. This paper is written in recognition of them — and in the conviction that the greatest disservice done to their dignity has been done not by those who opposed feminism, but by those who weaponised it in their name. (shrink)

On 27 March 2014, Loreal Tsingine, a 27-year-old Navajo woman was shot and killed by Austin Shipley, a white male police officer, also 27 years old, who said he was trying to apprehend her for a suspected shoplifting. Shipley was never charged, and the Department of Justice declined to investigate the Winslow police on the matter. This article explores Shipley’s killing of Loreal Tsingine and the police investigation of the shooting as quotidian events in settler colonial states. Police shootings of (...) Indigenous people and the legal response to police use of force (along with everyday settler violence) are a part of the racial terror that is a central part of settler colonialism. Both the shooting and the official narratives of it as a justifiable use of force reveal the psychic and material underpinnings of a settler state, a state that continually imagines and consolidates itself as a community of whites imperiled by Indians among others. White settler violence directed at those imagined as threats lives just beneath the surface of everyday settler life, and importantly, flows through institutions such as policing, embedding itself in everyday professional routines. The extractive relations that are the basis of settler colonialism require and produce white subjects for whom Indigenous lands and bodies are the resource for white identity; policing is one site where white men and women (as well as those aspiring to whiteness), can enact racial hierarchy on behalf of the colonial state with impunity. (shrink)

Care este statutul moral al copiilor? Ce înseamnă egalitatea morală dintre copii şi adulți? Care sunt constrângerile pe care le impune acceptarea acestei egalități în ceea ce priveşte felul în care pot fi tratați copiii în familie sau în societate? Cine are ce fel de responsabilitate pentru copii? În capitolul de față voi discuta astfel de întrebări. Voi analiza relația dintre copii, părinți şi stat, în dimensiunea ei practică (felul în care ne raportăm la copii), din punct de vedere legal (...) (constrângerile legale asupra felului în care ne raportăm la copii) şi din punct de vedere moral (cum ar trebui să ne raportăm la copii). Voi începe cu o scurtă incursiune în istoria relațiilor dintre copii, părinți, şi stat, atât din punct de vedere legal, cât şi filosofic. Voi prezenta conceptul de statut moral şi ideea de egalitate morală între copii şi adulți. Voi ilustra schimbările sociale şi legislative în ce priveşte acceptarea statutului moral al copiilor şi a egalității morale între copii şi adulți, folosind exemple din România şi Suedia. Voi examina dinamica dintre aspirațiile legale şi morale la care aderă România în ce priveşte statutul moral al copiilor şi normele sociale despre copii, copilărie, şi familie, care nu sunt întotdeauna în acord cu aceste aspirații. Voi urmări apoi schimbările care au avut loc în ultimele decenii în ce priveşte limitele responsabilității parentale. (shrink)

Imagine someone who deliberately provokes someone else into attacking him so that he can harm that person in defending himself against her attack and then claim “self-defense” when brought to court to defend himself for what he has done to her. Should he be allowed to use this defense, even though it’s clear that he has deliberately manipulated his attacker into attacking him precisely in order to be able to harm her with impunity (assuming he were allowed to use (...) the defense and thus escape legal penalties)? This question is the focal point in the paper that follows. I argue first that the case described above is indeed an instance of an “actio libera in causa,” albeit arguably one at the margins of this controversial class of cases. Then, using a view about the justification of self-defense that I have defended elsewhere, I show why I believe that, while the manipulator should not be deprived of the legal right to defend his self-defensive actions in such cases by claiming they were a legitimate matter of self-defense, there is good reason to enact laws that will allow him to be prosecuted, independently of his “self-defense” defense, for manipulating his attacker as he did, thus allowing him to harm her in self-defense and then defend his actions as purely a matter of “self-defense.”. (shrink)

This article considers two related and fundamental issues about morality in a virtual world. The first is whether the anonymity that is a feature of virtual worlds can shed light upon whether people are moral when they can act with impunity. The second issue is whether there are any moral obligations in a virtual world and if so what they might be. -/- Our reasons for being good are fundamental to understanding what it is that makes us moral or (...) indeed whether any of us truly are moral. Plato grapples with this problem in book two of The Republic where Socrates is challenged by his brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon. They argue that people are moral only because of the costs to them of being immoral; the external constraints of morality. -/- Glaucon asks us to imagine a magical ring that enables its wearers to become invisible and capable of acting anonymously. The ring is in some respects analogous to the possibilities created by online virtual worlds such as Second Life, so the dialogue is our entry point into considering morality within these worlds. These worlds are three dimensional user created environments where people control avatars and live virtual lives. As well as being an important social phenomenon, virtual worlds and what people chose to do in them can shed light on what people will do when they can act without fear of normal sanction. -/- This paper begins by explaining the traditional challenge to morality posed by Plato, relating this to conduct in virtual worlds. Then the paper will consider the following skeptical objection. A precondition of all moral requirements is the ability to act. There are no moral requirements in virtual worlds because they are virtual and it is impossible to act in a virtual world. Because avatars do not have real bodies and the persons controlling avatars are not truly embodied, it is impossible for people to truly act in a virtual world. We will show that it is possible to perform some actions and suggest a number of moral requirements that might plausibly be thought to result. Because avatars cannot feel physical pain or pleasure these moral requirements are interestingly different from those of real life. Hume’s arguments for why we should be moral apply to virtual worlds and we conclude by considering how this explains why morality exists in these environments. (shrink)

Los movimientos #MeToo de Hollywood, #YoSiTeCreo de España y #MiraComoNosPonemos de Argentina son el punto de partida de una transición promovida por el movimiento feminista. Esta transición está dirigida a una sociedad justa en la que las mujeres no sean víctimas de violación y acoso que, además, quedan impunes. La perpetración de los males que estos movimientos buscan eliminar ha sido posible hasta ahora, entre otras cosas, dado el déficit de credibilidad que afecta a las mujeres que denuncian tales delitos. (...) En este artículo, me centraré en el caso de la injusticia testimonial y trataré de responder la pregunta sobre qué requiere la transición de una sociedad con altos niveles de injusticia testimonial a una sociedad epistémicamente justa. Para hacerlo, en la Sección 1 trataré de especificar el tipo de mal que implica la injusticia testimonial. En la Sección 2 mostraré que la injusticia testimonial, como una especie de dominación estructural, consiste en una desviación del umbral de la justicia diferente de los dos tipos citados habitualmente. Por lo tanto, la dominación estructural constituye un tipo de injusticia diferente de la desviación del umbral de la justicia debido a la acción incorrecta de un agente o agencia y la desviación debido a factores arbitrarios como la lotería genética. Sin embargo, comparte similitudes con ambos tipos de desviaciones. En la Sección 3 analizaré las particularidades de la justicia de transición epistémica, explorando los puntos de conexión con otros casos de justicia de transición y tratando de especificar el tratamiento que debe recibirse en la transición, las expectativas de las víctimas de esta injusticia, sus beneficiarios y el resto. de la gente. En la Sección 4 presentaré algunas reformas institucionales que podrían implicar la transición a una sociedad con justicia testimonial. Estas reformas constituyen el siguiente paso en la transición promovida por el movimiento feminista. (shrink)

Business ethics is a relatively new topic of academic discussion in Latin America. Corruption and impunity came to be serious moral diseases in the region, probably as a result of a long period of dictatorship in most countries. Low ethical standards in the politics have had deep impact on individuals, organizations and economic systems. Excessive consumption, materialism and selfishness, in contrast with real poverty, have been responsible for a sloppiness in attitudes and principles in many Latin American countries. Even (...) though the majority of the population belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the lack of education has led people to a dichotomy: faith and business practices are often very distant from each other. Several isolated efforts have been done in order to enhance business ethics through education, publications and professional activities. The relationship business-academia has proved to be an excellent initiative for this objective, mainly in Mexico, Brazil and Peru. (shrink)

En esta obra del profesor Caldera Ynfante, resultado de una ardua investigación científica y académica, se reafirma que la Guayana Esequiba es territorio venezolano basado en la tradición legal inalterada de sólidos títulos jurídicos e históricos que respaldan sus derechos soberanos adquiridos sobre el mismo y su área marina y submarina adyacente no delimitada, apoyados en laDoctrina Bolivariana acerca de la aplicación del principio uti possidetisiuris. Enfocado en elementos de la litigación estratégica, da opciones para la defensa jurídica de Venezuela (...) ante la demanda presentada por el gobierno de Guyana en CorteInternacional de Justicia (CIJ), calificada de improcedente porque la CIJ no tiene jurisdicción sobre Venezuela (ni sobre Guyana); Venezuela no ha dado su consentimiento libre y soberano para someterse al juicio, un requisito obligatorio para su validez; se le han conculcado garantías procesales básicas desconociéndole el derecho a la libre elección de medios de resolución de controversias, el derecho al juez natural, al debido proceso y a la defensa; se ha violado el Acuerdo de Ginebra de 1966 por parte de Guyana y la propia CIJ, bloqueando así la vía diplomática para un arreglo amigable y que Guyana, de manera engañosa, busca revivir la "validez" del Laudo Arbitral deParís de 1899, ya abrogado, abolido y sin efectos jurídicos por lasPartes mediante la ratificación voluntaria del vigente Acuerdo de Ginebra de1966. Se señala que el pleito judicial en la CIJ, tiene una causa y un objeto ilícito, basado en el soborno internacional ejecutado por la petrolera estadounidense ExxonMobil que ilegalmente ha pagado el proceso contra Venezuela a cambio de la explotación del bloque petrolero Stabroeck, ubicado en el área marina no delimitada, adyacente al territorio Esequibo venezolano, objeto de la controversia. Tan grave crimen, impune hasta el presente, contraviene el Derecho Internacional y la Ley de Prácticas Corruptas en el Extranjero (1977) que, por su relación con el pleito, no puede ser ignorado por la CIJ y deber ser investigado en Venezuela y en los EEUU (Departamento de Justicia y la Comisión de Bolsa y Valores -SEC-), porque la ExxonMobil y sus principales accionistas se cotizan en Bolsa, debiendo responder sus directivos en lo criminal y ellas en lo patrimonial por el daño causado al Estado y al pueblo venezolano. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 44, no. 1. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 197 Ashwini Tambe Reckoning with the Silences of #MeToo The past six months have been an important time for US feminism. For women’s studies professors, it’s been heartening to find the world outside our classrooms taking up conversations about sex and power that we’ve been having for decades. In this piece, I will reflect on three questions: What (...) is going on? Why is it happening now? And what forms of feminism have been overlooked in the coverage of the #MeToo movement? I spend the longest time on the third question, because I’m concerned about how #MeToo has advanced a version of public feminism that is, in some ways, out of step with currents in academic feminism. What’s going on? Although feminists have long championed public speak-outs for survivors of sexual violence—whether in Take Back the Night open mics since the 1980s or the workshops also called “MeToo” that Tarana Burke started in Alabama in 2007—the viral force of the hashtag #MeToo in mid-October 2017 took most people by surprise. Within the first twenty-four hours, it had been retweeted half a million times. According to Facebook, nearly 50 percent of US users are friends with someone who posted a message about experiences of assault or harassment. #MeToo was by no means just a US phenomenon: Facebook and Twitter feeds in various parts of the world, notably Sweden, India, and Japan, were rocked for days by this hashtag. Then came the slew of powerful cis-men, largely in the US 198 News and Views media and entertainment industries, who were forced to swiftly resign after allegations of sexual misconduct. This toppling continues and has expanded beyond the media to other industries where reputations matter: politics, music, architecture, and, somewhat belatedly, higher education. In an important way, the ground beneath us has shifted. #MeToo has tilted public sympathy in favor of survivors by changing the default response to belief, rather than suspicion; the hashtag has revealed how widespread sexual coercion is. Why Now? We need to theorize, on a cultural scale, why this movement against sexual harassment and violence in the United States has happened now rather than, say, three years ago, when Bill Cosby was accused by multiple women, or after Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, was deposed. #MeToo’s impact may seem sudden, but it is a part of a groundswell in women’s activism since the November 2016 elections. The Women’s March was the largest globally coordinated public gathering in history. The 3-million strong Facebook group Pantsuit Nation saw hundreds of thousands of posts about experiences of misogyny. Unprecedented numbers of women are running for US political office this year. The signature affective note running through this political moment is a fierce rage about the election of Donald Trump. Trump’s impunity, I suggest, serves as a trigger provoking the fury at the heart of #MeToo. There are many reasons to find fault with Trump, but it is distinctly galling that he faced no consequences after acknowledging being a sexual predator. For victims of sexual trauma, it is already painful to watch perpetrators roam free because of how high the burdens of proof are in legal cases. When a person such as Trump is grandly affirmed by an election, it retraumatizes victims. Right after the election, therapists and counseling centers were flooded with patients seeking help with processing past events. The ballast provided by women’s feverish organizing and the instant power of social media has facilitated a collective emboldening. Trump has made the comeuppance of all powerful men feel more urgent. But from the inception of #MeToo, I have also watched its racial and class politics with some wariness: whose pain was being centered, I wondered? A colleague recently asked aloud: is #MeToo a white women’s movement? Another wondered, is this a moral panic? These questions News and Views 199 underline the importance of feminist insights that are overlooked in dominant coverage of the movement. What’s Left Out? Critical race feminism offers important insights when exploring the question of whether this is a white... (shrink)

This paper focuses on segmenting digital movie and TV series pirates and on investigating the effectiveness of piracy-combatting measures i.e., legal and educational strategies, in light of these segments. To address these research objectives, two online studies were conducted. First, 1277 valid responses were gathered with an online survey. Four pirate segments were found based on differing combinations of attitude toward piracy, ethical evaluation of piracy and feelings of guilt. The anti-pirate, conflicted pirate, cavalier pirate, and die-hard pirate can be (...) placed on a continuum of increasing pirating frequency, subjective norm, pirating self-efficacy, habit, and decreasing in perceived harm, respectively. The segments also differ in deontological and teleological orientations. Second, in an experimental mixed design, we find that the educational strategy is more effective than the legal strategy in lowering pirating intentions for the conflicted and cavalier pirate. However, both strategies fail at lowering intentions of the die-hard pirate, although perceived harm and perceived impunity were significantly influenced. These findings offer a more profound understanding of pirate segments and how they react differently to piracy-combatting measures. As a result, better strategies can be developed to control digital piracy. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a neglected portion of Plato’s Gorgias from 506c to 513d during Socrates’s discussion with Callicles. I claim that Callicles adopts the view that virtue lies in self-preservation in this part of the dialogue. Such a position allows him to assert the value of rhetoric in civic life by appealing not to the goodness of acting unjustly with impunity, but to the badness of suffering unjustly without remedy. On this view, the benefits of the life of (...) rhetoric depend on the idea that virtue consists in the power to protect oneself from the predations of others. I argue that by challenging this understanding of virtue as self-preservation, Socrates both deprives Callicles of any remaining justification for the rhetorical life in the Gorgias and, at the same time, makes room for his own defense of the life of philosophy. (shrink)