Environmental conflicts, environmental justice and valuation

In this article some historical and contemporary environmental conflicts are described. The international environmental liability of mining corporations is discussed. Comparisons are made with conflicts in the United States and in South Africa which fall under the rubric of the Environmental Justice movement. Such conflicts are fought out in many languages, and the economic valuation of damages is only one of such languages. Who has the power to impose particular languages of valuation? Who rules over the ways and means of simplifying complexity, deciding that some points of view are out of order? Who has power to determine which is the bottom-line in an environmental discussion?

Assessment of current anglo-saxon proposals about criminal justice and the justification of legal punishment: Moore, Duff and Finnis on retribution, and the challenging compatibility with the up-and-coming Restorative Justice

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Longer-term impacts of mentoring, educational services, and incentives to learn: evidence from a randomized trial in the United States

This paper is the first to use a randomized trial in the US to analyze the short- and long-term educational and employment impacts of an afterschool program that offered disadvantaged high-school youth: mentoring, educational services, and financial rewards with the objective to improve high-school graduation and postsecondary schooling enrollment. The short-term hefty beneficial average impacts quickly faded away. Heterogeneity matters. While encouraging results are found for younger youth, and when the program is implemented in relatively small communities of 9th graders; detrimental longlived outcomes are found for males, and when case managers are partially compensated by incentive payments and students receive more regular reminders of incentives.

Mentoring, educational services, and economic incentives longer-term evidence on risky behaviors from a randomized trial

This paper is the first to use a randomized trial in the US to analyze the short- and long- term impacts of an afterschool program that offered disadvantaged high-school youth: mentoring, educational services, and financial rewards to attend program activities, complete high-school and enroll in post-secondary education on youths' engagement in risky behaviors, such as substance abuse, criminal activity, and teenage childbearing. Outcomes were measured at three different points in time, when youths were in their late-teens, and when they were in their early- and their latetwenties. Overall the program was unsuccessful at reducing risky behaviors. Heterogeneity matters in that perverse effects are concentrated among certain subgroups, such as males, older youths, and youths from sites where youths received higher amount of stipends. We claim that this evidence is consistent with different models of youths' behavioral response to economic incentives. In addition, beneficial effects found in those sites in which QOP youths represented a large fraction of the entering class of 9th graders provides hope for these type of programs when operated in small communities and supports the hypothesis of peer effects.

The Cooperation on Justice and Home Affairs and the Enlargement of the European Union

This working – paper will be focused on three key issues: • How will affect the enlargement to the Justice and Home Affairs Cooperation. Especially, the absortion of Schenguen Agreements and the overall JHA by the candidate countries. • The enlargement impact over the European Immigraton Policy and the specific policies carried out by the EU Member States. The main question is the free movement of persons safeguard, in order to protect external borders of European Union. • An analysis of September, 11 attacks against U.S.A might be necessary to understand the future changes on JHA policy.

Cosmopolitan justice and minority rights: the case of minority nations (or Kant again, but different)

Global Justice has usually been understood to mean institutional and social justice (political and redistributive issues on a global scale). In contrast, issues involving different national and cultural identities, are usually marginal in reflections on global justice. This occurs despite the fact that human rights include political social and cultural rights. This paper links a conception of global justice, moral cosmopolitanism, with plurinational democracies. After giving a brief description of moral cosmopolitanism I go on to analyse notions of cosmopolitanism and patriotism in Kant's work and the political significance that the notion of "unsocial sociability" and the "Ideas of Pure Reason" of Kant's first Critique have for cosmopolitanism. Finally, I analyse the relationship between cosmopolitanism and minority nations based on the preceding sections. I postulate the need for a moral and institutional refinement of democracies and international society that is better able to accommodate national pluralism than has so far been achieved by traditional liberal constitutionalism and cosmopolitanism

Standardized enforcement: Access to justice vs contractual innovation

We model the different ways in which precedents and contract standardization shapethe development of markets and the law. In a setup where more resourceful parties candistort contract enforcement to their advantage, we find that the introduction of astandard contract reduces enforcement distortions relative to precedents, exerting twoeffects: i) it statically expands the volume of trade, but ii) it crowds out the use ofinnovative contracts, hindering contractual innovation. We shed light on the largescale commercial codification occurred in the 19th century in many countries (evenCommon Law ones) during a period of booming commerce and long distance trade.

On the justice of voting systems

What are the best voting systems in terms of utilitarianism? Or in terms of maximin, or maximax? We study these questions for the case of three alternatives and a class of structurally equivalent voting rules. We show that plurality, arguably the most widely used voting system, performs very poorly in terms of remarkable ideals of justice, such as utilitarianism or maximin, and yet is optimal in terms of maximax. Utilitarianism is bestapproached by a voting system converging to the Borda count, while the best way to achieve maximin is by means of a voting system converging to negative voting. We study the robustness of our results across different social cultures, measures of performance, and population sizes.

Internet e-ethics in confrontation with an activists' agenda: Yahoo! on trial

A prolonged confrontation between Yahoo! Inc. and French anti-racismactivists who ask for the removal of Nazi items from auction sitesas well as restricted access to neo-Nazis sites is analyzed. We presentthe case and its development up to the decision of Yahoo! Inc. to removethe items from yahoo.com following a French court s verdict against thefirm. Using a business ethics approach, we distinguish the legal,technical, philosophical and managerial issues involved in the case andtheir management by Yahoo! We conclude on the difficulty of governingrelations with society from corporate and legal affairs departments atthe headquarters level, and on the clash of two visions over theregulation of social freedom.

Intergenerational justice when future worlds are uncertain

Let there be a positive (exogenous) probability that, at each date, the human species will disappear.We postulate an Ethical Observer (EO) who maximizes intertemporal welfare under thisuncertainty, with expected-utility preferences. Various social welfare criteria entail alternativevon Neumann- Morgenstern utility functions for the EO: utilitarian, Rawlsian, and an extensionof the latter that corrects for the size of population. Our analysis covers, first, a cake-eating economy(without production), where the utilitarian and Rawlsian recommend the same allocation.Second, a productive economy with education and capital, where it turns out that the recommendationsof the two EOs are in general different. But when the utilitarian program diverges, thenwe prove it is optimal for the extended Rawlsian to ignore the uncertainty concerning the possibledisappearance of the human species in the future. We conclude by discussing the implicationsfor intergenerational welfare maximization in the presence of global warming.

Community pharmacist intervention in depressed primary care patients (PRODEFAR study): randomized controlled trial protocol.

Background: Treatment of depression, the most prevalent and costly mental disorder, needs to be improved. Non-concordance with clinical guidelines and non-adherence can limit the efficacy of pharmacological treatment of depression. Through pharmaceutical care, pharmacists can improve patients' compliance and wellbeing. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness and costeffectiveness of a community pharmacist intervention developed to improve adherence and outcomes of primary care patients with depression. Methods/design: A randomized controlled trial, with 6-month follow-up, comparing patients receiving a pharmaceutical care support programme in primary care with patients receiving usual care. The total sample comprises 194 patients (aged between 18 and 75) diagnosed with depressive disorder in a primary care health centre in the province of Barcelona (Spain). Subjects will be asked for written informed consent in order to participate in the study. Diagnosis will be confirmed using the SCID-I. The intervention consists of an educational programme focused on improving knowledge about medication, making patients aware of the importance of compliance, reducing stigma, reassuring patients about side-effects and stressing the importance of carrying out general practitioners' advice. Measurements will take place at baseline, and after 3 and 6 months. Main outcome measure is compliance with antidepressants. Secondary outcomes include; clinical severity of depression (PHQ-9), anxiety (STAI-S), health-related quality of life (EuroQol-5D), satisfaction with the treatment received, side-effects, chronic physical conditions and sociodemographics. The use of healthcare and social care services will be assessed with an adapted version of the Client Service Receipt Inventory (CSRI). Discussion: This trial will provide valuable information for health professionals and policy makers on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a pharmaceutical intervention programme in the context of primary care. Trial registration: NCT00794196

Double blind controlled trial of D-penicillamine in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis.

One hundred and eighty nine patients with primary biliary cirrhosis were entered into a double blind, placebo controlled randomised trial starting in January 1978 to assess the therapeutic value of d-penicillamine 1200 mg daily. Eighteen of the 98 patients receiving d-penicillamine and 22 of the 91 placebo treated patients died during the study. Thirty six per cent of those on d-penicillamine and 8% of those on placebo were withdrawn from the study. No difference in overall survival was noted between the two groups of patients whether the results were analysed for the entire period of observation or only during the period in which the patients were receiving therapy. The mortality rate of those receiving d-penicillamine in histological stage I to II, however, was one third of that of the placebo group although this difference did not reach statistical significance. Using the occurrence rate ratio as the statistical method of analysis, no effect of d-penicillamine was noted on any clinical, biochemical or hist

Nadolol plus isosorbide mononitrate alone or associated with band ligation in the prevention of recurrent bleeding: A multicenter randomized controlled trial.

Background and aims: Previous clinical trials suggest that adding non-selective beta-blockers improves the efficacy of endoscopic band ligation (EBL) in the prevention of recurrent bleeding, but no study has evaluated whether EBL improves the efficacy of beta-blockers + isosorbide-5-mononitrate. The present study was aimed at evaluating this issue in a multicentre randomised controlled trial (RCT) and to correlate changes in hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG) during treatment with clinical outcomes. Methods: 158 patients with cirrhosis, admitted because of variceal bleeding, were randomised to receive nadolol+isosorbide-5-mononitrate alone (Drug: n=78) or combined with EBL (Drug+EBL; n=80). HVPG measurements were performed at randomisation and after 4¿6 weeks on medical therapy. Results: Median follow-up was 15 months. One-year probability of recurrent bleeding was similar in both groups (33% vs 26%: p=0.3). There were no significant differences in survival or need of rescue shunts. Overall adverse events or those requiring hospital admission were significantly more frequent in the Drug+EBL group. Recurrent bleeding was significantly more frequent in HVPG non-responders than in responders (HVPG reduction ¿20% or ¿12 mm Hg). Among non-responders recurrent bleeding was similar in patients treated with Drugs or Drugs+EBL. Conclusions: Adding EBL to pharmacological treatment did not reduce recurrent bleeding, the need for rescue therapy, or mortality, and was associated with more adverse events. Furthermore, associating EBL to drug therapy did not reduce the high rebleeding risk of HVPG non-responders.