We have the power of choice over nuclear weapons. But we do not feel our power. Instead, we feel their power. They are larger than life. They loom over us, seemingly beyond our control, shrouded in myth and dark mystery. Because of their power and our feeling that nuclear weapons are unique, we believe that these weapons require a special set of moral rules, specially tuned to the separate world where nuclear weapons dwell.

Today, the nuclear regime is widely perceived to be in crisis. While part of this crisis has to do with direct challenges to the regime posed by the illicit nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, from the perspective of much of the developing world, the issues facing the nonproliferation regime are overwhelmingly about the justice and fairness of the regime's norms, rules, and procedures. Indeed, it is difficult to identify a security regime today where equity issues are more central to debates about its future than the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Of the three regimes for controlling weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, and nuclear), it is in the nuclear regime that issues of justice and fairness appear most critical to long-term sustainability and viability.

A global ethic for the twenty-first century will be different from that of the twentieth century. While themes of normative and political continuity will exist, humankind's main moral challenges have changed. Between the two centuries lie the end of the cold war, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the global financial crisis, and the double transformation of the structure of power in world politics and the norms of sovereignty and intervention. Nuclear weapons will remain high on the agenda of a global ethic, but they will not hold as dominant a place as they did in the past century. This essay, focused on the continuing moral challenge of nuclear weapons, recalls the intellectual and moral lessons of the last century and identifies three leading issues in nuclear ethics today: post–cold war challenges to nonproliferation and deterrence, the new challenges posed by the terrorist threat, and recent proposals for Going to Zero.

For more than four decades the twin goals of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament have been an almost unchallenged objective of the “international community.” Like drought prevention, or bans on the use of child soldiers, nonproliferation remains a mostly uncontroversial, largely universalistic initiative to which few object. The proponents of nonproliferation are fond of stressing that the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has more signatories than any other arms control treaty. Who would not want to prevent more states from obtaining nuclear weapons? And who, for that matter, would oppose the ideal of a world free of such weapons?

L'héritage francophone américain qui a survécu à la traversée du 21ème siècle se retrouve essentiellement en Louisiane et en Nouvelle-Angleterre. Cet article propose une description de la communauté francophone de la Nouvelle-Angleterre et d'une enquête sur le terrain au cours de laquelle chaque état a révélé un profil communautaire original. Le corpus audio recueilli en 2011 est composé d'entrevues en français et en anglais auprès de locuteurs franco-américains originaires des six états qui composent la Nouvelle-Angleterre. Ce nouveau corpus nous permettra de comparer l'état du français en Louisiane et en Nouvelle-Angleterre et de révéler des caractéristiques similaires.

EU law is teeming with framework norms – ‘laws in progress’. They provide little clarity for those to whom they apply, engendering rule-making in networks to assist those charged with implementing and applying laws at the national level. Taking as its specific focus the particular process through which the concept of an ‘article’ was constructed and constituted in a set of negotiations around the EU Chemicals Regulation, REACH, this article shows that networks not only make framework norms operational but also transform them in the process. The fact that networks have an important role in laying out what the law says throws the effectiveness of traditional forms of accountability in doubt. In particular, judicial control is in need of rethinking in order to accommodate norms that change and the networks that change them. This article suggests looking at the connections between internal peer control and externally operating judicial control as a way to keep up with the progress of laws in progress.

The development of modern water supply systems has varied widely in terms of speed, paths and results, and each supply system has been strongly conditioned by its spatial, socio-economic and cultural context. Barcelona provides a useful illustration of how such a modern system came into being in a particularly dynamic southern European setting. Despite being Spain's leading industrial centre, the driving force behind the introduction of its new water supply system did not come from an industrial imperative but rather from the city's expansion plan, approved in 1859, which gave rise to a proliferation of private initiatives. Later, decisive changes around the turn of the twentieth century led to a concentration of water companies, sewer renewal projects and the entry of water into the domestic sphere, and the extension of the water supply to people's homes. The development of a modern water supply system in Barcelona, however, required a period of a hundred years – from 1867, when the first steam-powered pumping station was built, to 1967, when the water from the Ter River transfer reached the city, allowing new consumption patterns to spread rapidly.

Because transnational environmental crime (TEC) can result in the demise of an environmental resource or irreversible damage to the environment and has implications for national and global security, its prevention is a critical issue. Deterrence through law enforcement can go only a limited distance towards preventing TEC. However, there is a huge potential for third parties to be active participants, alongside governmental authorities, in crafting and implementing strategies for TEC prevention. This article explores the ways in which states can catalyze third parties – non-state, non-offending actors – to contribute their own capacities towards the pursuit of preventive outcomes. It draws together concepts and theories from policing studies, criminology and regulatory studies to highlight changing relationships between the state and non-state actors with respect to crime control, and applies them to TEC. Examples and illustrations used in the article relate mainly to efforts to combat the illegal wildlife trade. The article concludes that a more systematic approach to TEC prevention involving third parties is needed, and that this requires dedicated strategic analysis and planning on the part of states, working individually and together.