When is state coercion for the provision of public goods justified? And how should the social surplus of public goods be distributed? Philosophers approach these questions by distinguishing between essential and discretionary public goods. This article explains the intractability of this distinction, and presents two upshots. First, if governments provide configurations of public goods that simultaneously serve essential and discretionary purposes, the scope for justifiable complaints by honest holdouts is narrower than commonly assumed. Second, however, claims to distributive fairness in the provision of public goods also turn out to be more complex to assess.

The Arctic region is commonly seen as a territory of international dialogue and cooperation. This perception is largely due to the science diplomacy efforts that are largely being contributed by universities, scientific centres, research teams and individual scholars. This paper discusses the Arctic science diplomacy initiatives proposed by Russia’s northernmost federal university. Of particular interest is the case of establishing in the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation of national biological monitoring network – the initiative supported by the government-funded mega-grant programme. Our analysis suggests that two pillars of science diplomacy – “science for diplomacy” and “diplomacy for science” – can be successfully combined within the framework of one project. Evidence is provided of the pursuit of national interests being not a limiting factor but rather a driver in the process of promoting diplomatic collaborations in science, serving as a third science diplomacy pillar. Significant progress towards ensuring peace and harmony in the Arctic and sustaining international dialogue on science-based responses to global challenges has been achieved through science diplomacy initiatives proposed by Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NArFU). The authors confirm that most effective tools for establishing good neighbourly relations in the Arctic and promoting international cooperation are offered by scientific discussion.

Private ‘bottom-up’ enforcement has been central to the efforts of the European Union (EU) to promote effective compliance with its ambitious environmental laws. This approach is strengthened by the EU's implementation of the Aarhus Convention, which aims to democratize environmental enforcement by conferring citizens and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) with legal rights of access to environmental information, rights of public participation, and rights of access to justice (the so-called ‘Aarhus mechanisms’). This article empirically assesses the extent to which the Aarhus mechanisms empower ENGOs to take an active role in the private enforcement of the EU Habitats and Birds Directives. Based on 75 surveys and 30 interviews with ENGOs from three Member States (France, Ireland, the Netherlands), we apply regulatory intermediary theory to show how European ENGOs play a vital role in intermediating between (i) EU Member States and their citizens, (ii) the EU and individual citizens, and even (iii) the EU and its Member States. We bring new empirical insights into the role of law as an enabler of regulatory intermediaries, and its potential as a tool for orchestrating regulatory intermediaries.

This essay takes a close look at Maura Dykstra's monograph Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine (Harvard Asia Center, 2022). It analyzes the book's multitude of problems, such as its flawed conception, numerous factual blunders, failure to engage existing scholarship, problematic choice of primary sources, and dubious citation practices. Most significantly, this essay aims to provide ample evidence to demonstrate how the book systematically misrepresents the majority of its primary sources to support an untenable thesis. It argues that the book's central claims are ungrounded in evidence.

The rising field of medical jurisprudence in common law from late eighteenth century has led to a rearrangement of authority and epistemic power between lay and expert witnesses, in favor of the latter. Although the law had long relied on testimony from members of the community to establish the legal fact of a person's sex, the legal procedure of fact-making started to rely instead on the opinions of doctors, surgeons, and medical practitioners. This article closely reads medical jurisprudence books, U.S. case law, and U.S. newspapers from the nineteenth century to describe this expansion of medical experts’ authority to establish the legal fact of sex in vague cases. The article describes the spread of medico-legal technics of sex classification in three arenas of U.S. law: the law of marriage and divorce, cross-dressing, and defamation. The practice of legal sex classification was thus absorbed into medical expertise, and the meaning of sex in the law transformed from a socio-physical construct to a medical one. The mid-nineteenth-century decline of medical jurisprudence subsequently pushed the practice of sex classification outside the realm of law and into the jurisdiction of the medical profession, thus leaving sex classification mainly to doctors.

This paper discusses two opposing views about the relation between artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence: on the one hand, a worry that heavy reliance on AI technologies might make people less intelligent and, on the other, a hope that AI technologies might serve as a form of cognitive enhancement. The worry relates to the notion that if we hand over too many intelligence-requiring tasks to AI technologies, we might end up with fewer opportunities to train our own intelligence. Concerning AI as a potential form of cognitive enhancement, the paper explores two possibilities: (1) AI as extending—and thereby enhancing—people’s minds, and (2) AI as enabling people to behave in artificially intelligent ways. That is, using AI technologies might enable people to behave as if they have been cognitively enhanced. The paper considers such enhancements both on the level of individuals and on the level of groups.

Luck egalitarianism is a responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice. Its application to health and healthcare is controversial. This article addresses a novel critique of luck egalitarianism, namely, that it wrongfully discriminates against those responsible for their health disadvantage when allocating scarce healthcare resources. The philosophical literature about discrimination offers two primary reasons for what makes discrimination wrong (when it is): harm and disrespect. These two approaches are employed to analyze whether luck egalitarian healthcare prioritization should be considered wrongful discrimination. Regarding harm, it is very plausible to consider the policies harmful but much less reasonable to consider those responsible for their health disadvantages a socially salient group. Drawing on the disrespect literature, where social salience is typically not required for something to be discrimination, the policies are a form of discrimination. They are, however, not disrespectful. The upshot of this first assessment of the discrimination objection to luck egalitarianism in health is, thus, that it fails.

Intelligence operations overwhelmingly focus on obtaining secrets (espionage) and the unauthorized disclosure of secrets by a public official in one political community to another (treason). It is generally understood that the principal responsibility of spies is to successfully procure secrets about the enemy. Yet, in this essay, I ask: Are spies and traitors ethically justified in using cyber operations not merely to acquire secrets (cyber espionage) but also to covertly manipulate or falsify information (cyber manipulation) to prevent atrocities? I suggest that using cyber manipulation operations to parry atrocities is pro tanto morally permissible and, on occasion, required.