Tales of the expected: investigating the rhetorical strategies of innovation champions

Innovation continues to be high on the agenda in construction. It is widely considered to be an essential prerequisite of improved performance both for the sector at large and for individual firms. Success stories dominate the parts of the academic literature that rely heavily on the recollections of key individuals. A complementary interpretation focuses on the way innovation champions in hindsight interpret, justify and legitimize the diffusion of innovations. Emphasis is put on the temporal dimension of interpretation and how this links to rhetorical strategies and impression management tactics. Rhetorical theories are drawn upon to analyse the accounts given by innovation champions in seven facilities management organizations. In particular, the three persuasive appeals in classic rhetoric are used to highlight the rhetorical justifications mobilized in the descriptions of what took place. The findings demonstrate the usefulness of rhetorical theories in complementing studies of innovation.

On the nature of "context" in chemical education

Some of the most pressing problems currently facing chemical education throughout the world are rehearsed. It is suggested that if the notion of "context" is to be used as the basis for an address to these problems, it must enable a number of challenges to be met. Four generic models of "context" are identified that are currently used or that may be used in some form within chemical education as the basis for curriculum design. It is suggested that a model based on physical settings, together with their cultural justifications, and taught with a socio-cultural perspective on learning, is likely to meet those challenges most fully. A number of reasons why the relative efficacies of these four models of approaches cannot be evaluated from the existing research literature are suggested. Finally, an established model for the representation of the development of curricula is used to discuss the development and evaluation of context-based chemical curricula.

Children’s understanding of counterfactual alternatives

This study examines how children integrate information about counterfactual alternatives in making judgments. Previous research in adults had shown that they make judgments on the basis of comparisons between factual events and counterfactual alternatives. We suggest that children adopt a summative strategy instead, where they focus on the presented outcomes, both real and counterfactual, and base their judgments on the overall affective quality of these outcomes. Results from a single experiment comparing adults’ and children’s responses to a counterfactual judgment task show that children do tend to use a summative strategy as opposed to the comparative strategy adopted by adults. These results were further supported by participants’ justifications of their judgments, which were alternative focused for the adults, but outcome focused for the children. The results are discussed in relation to complexity-based theories of the development of human reasoning.

Legal outlier, again? U.S. felon suffrage: comparative and international human rights perspectives

The judiciousness of American felon suffrage policies has long been the subject of scholarly debate, not least due to the large number of affected Americans: an estimated 5.3 million citizens are ineligible to vote as a result of a criminal conviction. This article offers comparative law and international human rights perspectives and aims to make two main contributions to the American and global discourse. After an introduction in Part I, Part II offers comparative law perspectives on challenges to disenfranchisement legislation, juxtaposing U.S. case law against recent judgments rendered by courts in Canada, South Africa, Australia, and by the European Court of Human Rights. The article submits that owing to its unique constitutional stipulations, as well as to a general reluctance to engage foreign legal sources, U.S. jurisprudence lags behind an emerging global jurisprudential trend that increasingly views convicts’ disenfranchisement as a suspect practice and subjects it to judicial review. This transnational judicial discourse follows a democratic paradigm and adopts a “residual liberty” approach to criminal justice that considers convicts to be rights-holders. The discourse rejects regulatory justifications for convicts’ disenfranchisement, and instead sees disenfranchisement as a penal measure. In order to determine its suitability as a punishment, the adverse effects of disenfranchisement are weighed against its purported social benefits, using balancing or proportionality review. Part III analyzes the international human rights treaty regime. It assesses, in particular, Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”), which proclaims that “every citizen” has a right to vote without “unreasonable restrictions.” The analysis concludes that the phrase “unreasonable restrictions” is generally interpreted in a manner which tolerates certain forms of disenfranchisement, whereas other forms (such as life disenfranchisement) may be incompatible with treaty obligations. This article submits that disenfranchisement is a normatively flawed punishment. It fails to treat convicts as politically-equal community members, degrades them, and causes them grave harms both as individuals and as members of social groups. These adverse effects outweigh the purported social benefits of disenfranchisement. Furthermore, as a core component of the right to vote, voter eligibility should cease to be subjected to balancing or proportionality review. The presumed facilitative nature of the right to vote makes suffrage less susceptible to deference-based objections regarding the judicial review of legislation, as well as to cultural relativity objections to further the international standardization of human rights obligations. In view of this, this article proposes the adoption of a new optional protocol to the ICCPR proscribing convicts’ disenfranchisement. The article draws analogies between the proposed protocol and the ICCPR’s “Optional Protocol Aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty.” If adopted, the proposed protocol would strengthen the current trajectory towards expanding convicts’ suffrage that emanates from the invigorated transnational judicial discourse.

Protecting recognized Geneva Convention refugees outside their states of asylum

This article highlights the predicament of persons recognized as refugees according to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (CSR1951 refugees) when they travel outside their state of asylum. Their status entails ipso facto that, if they are ill-treated abroad, they cannot turn to representatives of their state of nationality and request its diplomatic protection, nor can they expect to receive its consular assistance. It is submitted that a state of asylum ought to extend the scope of protection that it offers CSR1951 refugees residing in its territory, and provide them diplomatic protection and consular assistance when they travel abroad as if they were its nationals. Four claims are advanced in support of this contention: First: the advent of human rights treaties has not rendered obsolete the protection of nationals abroad nor has the practice fallen into disuse. On the contrary, protection abroad retains its pedigree and significance, as is illustrated by the recently adopted International Law Commission's Draft Articles on Diplomatic Protection and by frequent resort to consular assistance. Second: while states previously enjoyed unfettered discretion concerning whether and when to protect their nationals abroad, recent developments in domestic jurisdictions as well as in European Union (EU) treaties point to the potential emergence of a qualified duty to exercise state protection or to be willing to provide justifications for its refusal. These developments call particular attention to the vulnerability of CSR1951 refugees: the professed aim of the EU treaty regime is that EU citizens should enjoy effective state protection wherever they travel; by contrast, CSR1951 refugees are in need of state protection wherever they travel. Third: according to CSR1951, states of asylum are required to issue Convention Travel Documents (CTDs) to recognized refugees lawfully staying in their territory. While CTDs do not in of themselves authorize states of asylum to provide protection abroad to their CSR1951 refugees, they reflect partial recognition of the instrumental role of these states in facilitating safe refugee travel. Fourth: while the 'nationality of claims' requirement remains pivotal to the institution of diplomatic protection, and efforts to effectuate its general relaxation have thus far failed, the International Law Commission (ILC) has 'carved out' an exception authorizing states of asylum to provide protection abroad to their recognized refugees. The ILC's protection-enhancing agenda, reflecting progressive development of the law, is laudable, even though it has opted for a rather cautious approach.

To what extent are EU steel companies susceptible to competitive loss due to climate policy?

In recognition of their competitive vulnerability, a set of special rules have been devised for managing sectors such as steel and cement within the EU ETS. These rules basically seek to set sector specific performance benchmarks and reward top performers. However, the steel sector as a whole will receive the vast majority of its allowances for free in Phase III. Perceptions of competitive vulnerability have been largely based on inherently hypothetical analyses which rely heavily on counterfactual scenario and abatement cost estimates often provided by firms themselves. This paper diverges from these approaches by providing a qualitative assessment of the two key reasons underpinning the competitive vulnerability argument of the EU Steel Companies based on interviews and case study involving the three largest producers of steel within the EU – AcerlorMittal, Corus, and ThyssenKrupp. We find that these arguments provide only partial and weak justifications for competitive loss and discriminatory treatment in the EUETS. This strategy is difficult to counter by governments due to information asymmetry; and it appears to have proved very successful insofar as it has helped the industry to achieve free allocation in Phases I-III of EU ETS by playing up the risk of carbon leakage.

Logical and epistemic foundationalism about grounding: the triviality of facts and principles

In this paper, I seek to undermine G.A. Cohen’s polemical use of a metaethical claim he makes in his article, ‘Facts and Principles’, by arguing that that use requires an unsustainable equivocation between epistemic and logical grounding. I begin by distinguishing three theses that Cohen has offered during the course of his critique of Rawls and contractualism more generally, the foundationalism about grounding thesis, the justice as non-regulative thesis, and the justice as all-encompassing thesis, and briefly argue that they are analytically independent of each other. I then offer an outline of the foundationalism about grounding thesis, characterising it, as Cohen does, as a demand of logic. That thesis claims that whenever a normative principle is dependent on a fact, it is so dependent in virtue of some other principle. I then argue that although this is true as a matter of logic, it, as Cohen admits, cannot be true of actual justifications, since logic cannot tell us anything about the truth as opposed to the validity of arguments. Facts about a justification cannot then be decisive for whether or not a given argument violates the foundationalism about grounding thesis. As long as, independently of actual justifications, theorists can point to plausible logically grounding principles, as I argue contractualists can, Cohen’s thesis lacks critical bite.

Spirit of corporate social responsibility transforming from corporatism to socialized capitalism

This paper offers a critique of current corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in context of global trends. The legitimate modelling of CSR has yet to engage firm and political decision making with wider Society stakeholders. There is urgent need to transform towards socialized capitalism in which separate CSR board may focus on social and environmental concerns and offer more collaborative solutions to global/local CSR issues. This is underpinned with a need for returning to original moral purpose of CSR that has become eroded by narrower short term rational justifications.

Remote law-making? American drone strikes and the development of jus ad bellum

There is growing concern amongst international lawyers that the United States’ use of unmanned armed vehicles to conduct lethal targeting operations against non-state actors is setting a dangerous precedent for the future and might lead to an erosion of important rules under international law. Taking seriously these concerns, this article examines in more detail the potential precedent created by the US through its lethal drone strikes and the provided justifications, for the purpose of the development of jus ad bellum. In identifying the claims made by the US under different theories of customary international law as qualified practice or expressions of opinio juris that can lead to an alteration of the law should they be accepted by the international community, this article takes a first step towards a more extensive debate on the potential effects of the US drone strikes on the development of international law.