This article utilizes a ‘rituals-ritualism’ framework to assess the perils and potentials of relying upon mandatory human rights due diligence (mHRDD) laws to regulate the behaviour of transnational corporations (TNCs). This framework offers a socio-legal perspective that seeks to show how law is both influenced by and influences the social context within which it operates, i.e., the socially embedded operation of law.1 It has been advanced as a useful rubric for assessing whether and how states comply with human rights treaties,2 but can be extended to an assessment of mHRDD laws. Ultimately, this article hypothesizes that the potential regulatory effectiveness of mHRDD laws hinges on the extent to which HRDD obligations are transformed into rituals akin to cultural norms. In the absence of such a transformation, ritualism in HRDD will only further entrench a problematic status quo that has allowed TNCs to externalize the human rights and environmental impacts of their activities.

Antinatalism assigns reproduction a negative value. There should be fewer or no births. Those who say that there should be fewer births have been called conditional antinatalists. A better name for their view would be selective pronatalism. Those who say that there should be no births face two challenges. They must define the scope of their no-birth policy. Does it apply only to human or sentient beings or can it also be extended to all organic life, perhaps even to machine consciousness? And whatever the scope, they have to justify the eventual extinction of humankind or other life forms, an inevitable consequence of unconditional antinatalism. Different axiologies and moral theories produce different responses to these challenges. It is argued that a two-value conflict-sensitive negative utilitarianism would produce a kind and reasonable justification for ending at least human and factory-animal reproduction. The conclusion is purely moral and supports only voluntary extinction for humankind.

This paper provides evidence that the inveterate way of assessing linguistic items’ degrees of analysability by calculating their derivation to base frequency ratios may obfuscate the difference between two meaning processing models: one based on the principle of compositionality and another on the principle of parsability. I propose to capture the difference between these models by estimating the ratio of two transitional probabilities for complex words: P (affix | base) and P (base | affix). When transitional probabilities are comparably low, each of the elements entering into combination is equally free to vary. The combination itself is judged by speakers to be semantically transparent, and its derivational element tends to be more linguistically productive. In contrast, multi-morphemic words that are characterised by greater discrepancies between transitional probabilities are similar to collocations in the sense that they also consist of a node (conditionally independent element) and a collocate (conditionally dependent element). Such linguistic expressions are also considered to be semantically complex but appear less transparent because the collocate’s meaning does not coincide with the meaning of the respective free element (even if it exists) and has to be parsed out from what is available.

This article explores the effects of naming and describing disability in law and medicine. Instead of focusing on substantive issues like medical treatment or legal rights, it will address questions which arise in relation to the use of language itself. When a label which is attached to a disability is associated with a negative meaning, this can have a profound effect on the individual concerned and can create stigma. Overly negative descriptions of disabilities can be misleading, not only for the individual, but also more broadly in society, if there are inaccurate perceptions about disability in the social context. This article will examine some relevant examples of terminology, where these issues arise. It will also suggest that the role of medicine and the law in naming and describing disability is particularly important because in these areas there is, perhaps more than anywhere else, a recognized source of authority for the choice of terminology. Labels and descriptions used in the medical and legal contexts can not only perpetuate existing stigmatization of disabled people, but can also contribute to creating stigma at its source, given that the words used in these contexts can constitute an exercise of power.

In 1960 Sir Solly Zuckerman proposed the idea of an interdisciplinary department of ‘environmental sciences’ (ENV) for the newly established University of East Anglia (UEA). Prior to this point, the concept of ‘environmental sciences’ was little known: since then, departments and degree courses have rapidly proliferated through universities and colleges around the globe. This paper draws on archival research to explore the conditions and contexts that led to the proposal of a new and interdisciplinary grouping of sciences by Zuckerman. It argues that the activities of Zuckerman and other scientists in Britain during the Second World War and in the post-war period helped to create fertile conditions for a new kind of scientific authority to emerge as a tool of governance and source of policy advice. In particular, the specific challenges of post-war Britain – as addressed through scientific advisers and civil servants – led to the ‘environment’ becoming both the subject of sustained scientific study and an object of concern.

Long-term contact with English has led to the presence in Guernésiais of a considerable number of lone English-origin lexical items (Jones, 2015). Although the presence of such items was being noted as far back as the nineteenth century, this is the first study to analyse and document them systematically. Using extensive original data, it examines these lexical items in relation to each part of speech and discusses their use in Guernésiais in the broader context of language contact. The study also considers whether, and how, lone English-origin lexical items become assimilated phonologically and morphosyntactically and whether frequency and motivation have a bearing on their usage.

We propose a methodology for normative evaluation when preferences are context-dependent. We offer a precise definition of context-dependence and formulate a normative criterion of self-determination, according to which one situation is better than another if individuals are aware of more potential contexts of a choice problem. We provide two interpretations of our normative approach: an extension of Sugden’s opportunity criterion and an application of Sen’s positional views in his theory of justice. Our proposition is consistent with Muldoon’s and Gaus’ approaches of public reason in social contract theory, which account for the diversity of perspectives in non-ideal worlds.

Provided we blame others accurately, is blaming them morally right even if we are guilty of similar wrongdoing ourselves? On the one hand, hypocrisy seems to render blame morally wrong, and unjustified; but on the other, even hypocritical blaming seems better than silence. I develop an account of the wrongness of hypocritical blaming which resolves this apparent dilemma. When holding others accountable for their moral failings, we ought to be willing to reason, together with them, about our own, similar failings. Hypocrisy undermines this process of mutual deliberation. Thus, even if better than silence, hypocritical blaming is second-best, and that is why it is wrong.

Forced choices between rescuing imperilled persons are subject to a presumption of equality. Unless we can point to a morally relevant difference between these persons' imperilments, each should get an equal chance of rescue. Sometimes, this presumption is overturned. For example, when one imperilled person has wrongfully caused the forced choice, most think that this person (rather than an innocent person) should bear the harm. The converse scenario, in which a forced choice resulted from the supererogatory action of one of the imperilled people, has received little attention in distributive ethics. I argue that, sometimes, we need not offer equal chances in these cases either. When the supererogatory act places the initially imperilled person under a reciprocal duty to bear risks for the supererogatory agent's sake in the forced choice, we may fulfil this duty for them if they are unable to do it themselves, by favouring the supererogatory agent.