Arthur Danto was quite engaged in the world, through campus activism at Columbia and as an early member of Amnesty International USA. Danto's line seems to betray a deeply felt humanism that guided his practical politics. Danto's work with Amnesty was motivated in part by a brief glimpse into France's violence during the war in Algeria. He writes about being in Paris during the 1961 October Massacre and seeing the bodies of Algerian protesters, killed by police, floating (...) in the Seine. The ethic of responsiveness, as well as the desire to be able to narrate the present as past, was something Danto carried over to his philosophy as well. Danto claims that the means of fighting are therefore limited to those that would not prevent the war itself from ending and peace from beginning again. (shrink)

This essay examines why the recent recognition of human rights violations against women, as exemplified by Amnesty International's 1995 report on women, remains bound to the limitations of traditional approaches to human rights. The essay argues that despite Amnesty International's commitment to incorporating violations against women into its activities, it nevertheless upholds questionable assumptions about the gendered subject, gender relations within the family, and the relationship between the family and the state.

In Wilmot-Smith’s recent ‘Law, “Ought”, and “Can”,’ he argues that legal obligation does not imply ability. In this short reply, I show that Wilmot-Smith’s arguments do not withstand critical scrutiny. In section 1, I attack Wilmot-Smith’s argument for the claim that allowing for impossible obligations makes for a better legal system, and I introduce positive grounds for thinking otherwise. In section 2, I show that, even if Wilmot-Smith had established that impossible obligations make for a better legal system, his subsequent (...) attack on OIC fails. (shrink)

This brief review (1100 words) examines Stephen Hopgood's half journalism-half anthropological journey inside the world of Amnesty International. The book is an outstanding piece of both reportage and analysis, and the review discusses the various pressures, political and ideological and social, on AI and those that work in its International Secretariat. As the review notes, AI is more like a religious order than anything else, and that observation has ramifications for the NGO world beyond AI.

An emerging consensus regards domestic amnesties for international crimes as generally inconsistent with international law. This legal consensus rests on a norm against impunity: the chief role of international criminal law, and of the fledgling International Criminal Court , is to end impunity for violators of the worst of criminal acts. But the anti-impunity norm, and the anti-amnesty consensus that has arisen from it, now face serious difficulties. The ICC's role in the ongoing conflict in (...) Northern Uganda illustrates the deadlock that has now emerged between countries wishing to retain the power to use domestic politics and criminal law as tools for negotiation with current or outgoing perpetrators, on the one side, and the ICC's determination to apply a consistent international anti-impunity norm, on the other. The paper argues that the anti-impunity norm itself is based on a narrowly retributivist conception of criminal justice. A broader norm for democratic accountability, by contrast, would continue to prefer prosecutions over amnesties in international law, less for the opportunity for deserved retribution for perpetrators than for the public enactment of the deliberative procedures associated with the rule of law.Keywords: amnesty; impunity; international law; international criminal court. (shrink)

Does the establishment of a permanent InternationalWar Crimes Tribunal (International Criminal Court - ICC) constitute a challenge to national sovereignty? According to previous US governments and several American observers, the answer is yes. Establishing a world court that acts independently of the states that gave birth to it renders the idea of sovereignty meaningless. This article analyzes the American objections to the ICC and the conception of sovereignty and international law underlying these objections. It first considers the structure (...) and intent behind the criminal court and attempts to unveil the logic hiding behind the idea of ‘America’s historical uniqueness.’ It touches on the diverging US and European conceptions of sovereignty and ends up arguing that governments that stick to traditional conceptions of sovereignty and international law in the employment of their foreign policy may lose the moral legitimacy that has proven increasingly important for winning the sympathy of allies and regaining world leadership. Keywords: The ICC; US opposition to the court; sovereignty; international law; exceptionalism (Published: 19 May 2009) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2009, pp. 83-108. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i2.1973. (shrink)

This book analyzes the implementation of CSR reporting and codes of business conduct and ethics in the legal systems of the USA, Austria and China and their enforcement in international supply chain arbitrations. The book demonstrates that long-term profit maximization is increasingly intertwined with corporate ethics and CSR policies. In order to prevent window-dressing and greenwashing, certain control mechanisms and legal standards are required along the entire supply chain. This book introduces an ethics and CSR system recommending a reward-based (...) whistleblowing mechanism, internal oversight by a CSR and Ethics Committee comprised of independent board members and at least one sustainability expert, and an external, independent and comprehensive assurance of CSR reports provided by auditing firms or newly formed governmental agencies consisting of certified CSR experts. The author emphasizes the significance for supply chain leaders to ensure contractual enforcement of their codes of business ethics and conduct along the supply chain. Against this background, the author created a comprehensive fictitious case scenario covering a supply chain dispute arising from the breach of the supply chain leader’s code of business conduct and ethics by a lower-tier supply chain member. The author acknowledges the fact that in most of the cases the governing law of international supply chain contracts is English law or law based on English law. Thus, the author discusses potential contractual claims for damages arising from a loss of profits caused by a loss of reputation resulting from violations of core provisions of the chain leader’s supplier code of conduct pursuant to English law. As international supply chain disputes usually involve more than two parties, and international arbitration is the ideal means for the resolution of these disputes, the book compares the arbitration rules for consolidations and joinders of some of the most significant international arbitration institutions: SIAC, ICC, AIAC, ICDR, VIAC, CIETAC and HKIAC. The book is directed at legal practitioners, legislators of various jurisdictions, board members of corporations, ethics and compliance officers, academics, researchers and students. It is the author’s main goal that the book serves as an inspirational source for the establishment or the improvement of a corporate ethics and CSR system preventing window-dressing and greenwashing and covering the entire supply chain. Furthermore, it is intended that students develop a deeper understanding for the enforcement of corporate ethics and CSR policies. (shrink)

The function of the state as a symbol of identity has become increasingly important as major powers of the pre-Cold War era have given way to self-determination. The conventional role of the state has, however, simultaneously been challenged by the process of globalization which transcends such national boundaries. In this book, Barbara Emadi-Coffin seeks to explain this contradiction through a radical new theory. Emadi-Coffin analyzes the increasing interaction of multinational corporations, international organizations and transnational interest groups, such as Greenpeace (...) and Amnesty International, in processess of the global political economy. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the ideas of religious and political identification of modern Russia and the USA. The main conceptual positions of Russian and American philosophers, political scientists, and theologians are presented. These ideas create the specific axiological unity of American and Russian forms of culture and civilizations. The search for national idea and cultural identification is presented in the article from the position of national and international security of the USA and Russia. The author pays attention to (...) original concepts of American philosophers, which have developed new «typologies of God». From this point of view God exists in human being in the new «technocratic» or «political» qualities. The conclusions about the priority collaboration of Russia and the USA in cultural spheres are made. (shrink)

Whether or not to grant ‘amnesty’ has been a contentious policy issue in a wide range of settings, from human rights violations to draft avoidance to library fines. Recently, the idea of amnesty has come to structure many debates over irregular immigration. While amnesty’s meaning is usually treated as self-evident, the term in fact signifies in a variety of normative directions. This article employs amnesty as an optic to examine accountability questions that structure normative debates over (...) irregular immigration in liberal states. It distinguishes among conceptions of amnesty emphasizing forgiveness, erasure and vindication, and argues that developing a vindicatory account of amnesty is both particularly difficult and particularly necessary in the immigration setting. (shrink)

Edited in collaboration with FoLLI, the Association of Logic, Language and Information this book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation, WoLLIC 2015, held in the campus of Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA in July 2015. The 14 contributed papers, presented together with 8 invited lectures and 4 tutorials, were carefully reviewed and selected from 44 submissions. The focus of the workshop was on interdisciplinary research involving formal logic, computing and programming theory, and (...) natural language and reasoning. (shrink)

The 2002 volume of the internationally renowned Oxford Amnesty Lectures series. This volume seeks to explore the role and limitations of ideas of human rights in the area of gender and sexuality; in particular, when considering the social position of women, gay men, trans-gendered and transsexual persons. The authors are internationally distinguished writers from the areas of literature, social theory, law, and journalism.

This 4000 word entry to Routledge’s Handbook of Development Ethics (Jay Drydyk & Lori Keleher, eds., 2018) considers development within United States of America and Canada. Indigenous peoples and their nations are also featured. Canada and USA are both characterized by the UN Development Program as maintaining very high human development. Addressable weaknesses are nevertheless evident when performance is compared, for example, with OECD member nations. This entry focuses upon such comparison, noting characteristic political institutions and attendant social inequality in (...) the areas of social welfare, education and health. The histories of both nations over the past half-century suggest that cultural shifts within USA have displaced the ethos of social responsibility that the country had previously shared with Canada, replacing it with an ideal of self-reliance. The turn may be a factor in the USA’s increasing inequality and general weakness in social welfare programs since the 1980s. Events since 2016 especially also display a turn towards another ideal of self-reliance: isolationism. USA’s reduction in global commitments – to open trade, to limits on environmental impact, and especially, to immigration – contrast greatly with Canada’s evolving commitment to a global society and to a cultural ideal of multiple non-assimilated cultures within its borders, including cultures of new immigrant populations. Canada is by many measures a more equal society, but it shares with USA continued failings in development for aboriginal groups and vulnerability for that group and others. (shrink)

Based on the influential Oxford Amnesty Lectures, this volume examines the forces shaping urbanization today and the divisions that threaten the world's cities. It consists of essays by eight leading urban thinkers and practitioners. Many contemporary issues are addressed, including the impact of globalization and migration on cities, the consequences of the 'war on terror' for urban policing tactics, the new development paradigm being adopted by international institutions in the developing world, the challenges facing urban planners in the (...) developed world, and the suffering of the homeless. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for the permissibility of post-conflict amnesties, although not on prudential grounds. It argues that amnesties of a certain scope, targeted to certain categories of perpetrators, and offered in certain contexts are morally permissible because they are an acknowledgment of the difficulty of attributing criminal responsibility in mass violence contexts. Based on this idea, the paper develops the further claim that deciding which amnesties are permissible and which ones are not should be decided on a case-by-case (...) basis. Against what seems to be an increasingly popular assumption of some international actors, just as "blanket" amnesties are impermissible, so is an absolutist rejection of all types of amnesties. (shrink)

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, LPNMR 2004, held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA in January 2004. The 24 revised full papers presented together with 8 system descriptions were carefully reviewed and selected for presentation. Among the topics addressed are declarative logic programming, nonmonotonic reasoning, knowledge representation, combinatorial search, answer set programming, constraint programming, deduction in ontologies, and planning.

If, as Max Weber famously argued, science in general (Wissenschaft)*that is, the focused, disciplined use of reason*cannot justify itself on its own terms, then each individual science*law is among his examples*remains without foundation. Law, Weber wrote, operates by distinguishing between legality and illegality. Whatever is brought before it by way of formally correct procedures demands and receives judgment. An action is either legal or illegal; a person either not-guilty or guilty. But law itself remains in legal limbo. Law as a (...) science cannot determine whether the science of law is legal.1 This conundrum, Niklas Luhmann would say, is the foundational paradox, the paradox of all foundations, and thus the foundation of all of Luhmann’s speculations. Modernity consists in the functioning of operationally closed social systems that reproduce themselves internally, autopoietically, by means of their own elements. Seen from the perspective of sociology, or at least Luhmann’s sociology, social systems - law included - find their legitimacy only through the continued success of their operations. Legitimation durch Verfahren [Legitimation through procedure],2 as Luhmann famously and controversially put it early in his career. (Published: 1 September 2010) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2010, pp. 239-254. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v3i3.5488. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eleventh General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton SocietyNazareth College, Rochester, New York, USA, 11–14 June 2009Christine BochenThe Eleventh General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society was held 11–14 June 2009 at Nazareth College, Rochester, New York. The theme, “Bearing Witness to the Light: Merton’s Challenge to a Fragmented World,” invited presenters and participants to explore ways in which Thomas Merton serves as a model of (...) creative interreligious dialogue and witnesses to its importance in building a world in which the dignity of every person is respected and nurtured.General session speakers explored Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu dimensions of Merton’s life and writings. They included Judith Simmer-Brown; James Connor, OCSO; Herbert Mason; and Rachel Fell McDermott. In addition to Judith Simmer-Brown’s presentation, “Profile of a Trappist Yogi: A Tibetan Buddhist Perspective,” and Rachel Fell McDermott’s presentation, “Why Zen Buddhism and Not Hinduism? The Asias of Thomas Merton’s Voyage East,” concurrent sessions focused on Merton and Buddhism, Merton and Zen Buddhism, and Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh.An exhibit of Merton’s photographs, “A Hidden Wholeness: The Zen Photography of Thomas Merton,” on loan from the Thomas Merton Center and Archives at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, was on display during the meeting and through the summer in the Nazareth College library. [End Page 195]Christine BochenNazareth CollegeCopyright © 2010 University of Hawai‘i Press... (shrink)

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing, SAT 2011, held in Ann Arbor, MI, USA in June 2011.The 25 revised full papers presented together with ...

The refereed proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Automated Deduction, CADE 2003, held in Miami Beach, FL, USA in July 2003. The 29 revised full papers and 7 system description papers presented together with an invited paper and 3 abstracts of invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 83 submissions. All current aspects of automated deduction are discussed, ranging from theoretical and methodological issues to the presentation of new theorem provers and systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Automated Deduction, CADE-13, held in July/August 1996 in New Brunswick, NJ, USA, as part of FLoC '96. The volume presents 46 revised regular papers selected from a total of 114 submissions in this category; also included are 15 selected system descriptions and abstracts of two invited talks. The CADE conferences are the major forum for the presentation of new results in all aspects of automated deduction. Therefore, the (...) volume is a timely report on the state-of-the-art in the area. (shrink)

After the cessation of conflict the majority of those involved in violations of international law will not be held criminally accountable. Rather, it is frequently the case that the bulk of perpetrators receive amnesty. Often, consequentialist considerations weigh heavily on the decision to grant amnesty. For instance, amnesties may be offered in order to generate aggregate security benefits in volatile post-conflict settings. My contention is that states cannot morally justify amnesties by appealing solely to the aggregate benefits (...) they are expected to deliver. The moral objection concerns the distribution of associated costs, where such costs include the risk of re-offense that amnesty generates. Importantly, these costs may be unevenly imposed onto the society. This means that certain citizens will expect to bear individual losses greater than any gains the amnesty can deliver to them. Those placed at a net-disadvantage can object that amnesties are morally unjustifiable: they impose unreasonable burdens on them in order to secure benefits for others. However, as amnesties are often vital to achieve peace there remain strong pragmatic reasons to favour limited prosecutions. Given these concerns it is necessary to justify the differential imposition of cost associated with amnesties. I argue that ex ante contractualism, as a theory of moral justification, is well-suited to this task. According to this framework amnesties are justified only if no individual could reasonably reject the associated burdens. By developing a non-aggregative justification of amnesty this account offers a novel approach to the design and implementation of post-conflict prosecutorial strategies. (shrink)

Throughout Latin America during the past 15 years, new democratic or postwar governments have faced demands for transitional justice following the end of authoritarian rule or the conclusion of internal armed conflicts.

The alliance of the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) and the United States of America (or US) was brought as a result of the Korean War. To South Korea, the war was to defend freedom and democracy with democratic countries including US, on the other side, to North Korea, it was to spread the communism revolution by invading South Korea. The original alliance of both South Korea and US was military alliance. It was gradually extended to the fields (...) of politics, economy, society and culture. The ROK-US alliance continues to change as a result of both advanced international status of South Korea and the status of the United States in international society. Especially both countries have shown about differences Japan and China, and North Korea. And the lingering awareness of the difference between the two sides in the alliance still faces the challenges to be solved. This paper suggests ways to promote future peace condition on the Korean peninsula. To do that, this paper tries to show the basic principles for the identity principle, the principle of universality, the principle of reciprocity. (shrink)

I assess a justification for the granting of transitional amnesties conditional, at the minimum, upon full disclosure of wrongdoing by perpetrators. According to this rationale, such amnesties are morally legitimate because they foster restorative justice. I distinguish between two conceptions of restorative justice that I call the punishment-deprioritizing and punishment-prescribing conceptions. I argue that while conditional amnesties granted to perpetrators of minor offences conditional upon full disclosure, verbal apology and reparations could promote restorative justice well enough to justify them in (...) the eyes of adherents of the punishment-deprioritizing conception, conditional amnesties in favour of perpetrators of serious human rights abuses, because they are unlikely ever to be conditional upon perpetrators’ carrying out burdensome reparations, are likely to promote restorative justice on the punishment-deprioritizing conception only to a limited extent and not enough to justify them from the standpoint of adherents to this conception. Conditional amnesties, I contend, cannot ever promote restorative justice on the punishment-prescribing conception because it holds that punishment is indispensable for the achievement of the aims of restorative justice and amnesties exempt perpetrators from criminal punishment. (shrink)

The International Academy of Freedom of Religion and Belief was formed in July 1985 in England as a result of the meeting of the International Working Group on Religious Freedom in UNESCO with representatives of various religious traditions from different countries. The composition of MASRP includes, in the first place, experts and scientists from the departments of state-church relations of universities of different denominations and from different countries of the world - the USA, England, Italy, Spain, Greece, Belgium, (...) Germany, etc. Currently, among the members of the MSDP, there are already scholars and public figures from Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria and other post-socialist countries. The head office of MASRP is located in Washington, DC. The President of the Academy is James Wood - Professor at Baylor University. The function of the head of the section on the organization of international scientific conferences on freedom of religion is organized by Cole Durem, professor at Bringam-Young University. From Ukraine, the academician of the MSDP is Doctor of Philosophy, Professor Kolodny AM. (shrink)

This Review Essay examines Mark Freeman’s thoughtful book, Necessary Evils: Amnesties and the Search for Justice. One of the book’s core arguments is that amnesties from criminal prosecution, however unpalatable to liberal legalist sensibilities, should not be entirely purged from the toolbox of post-conflict transitions. Although advancing this argument, Freeman also struggles with it, and ultimately builds a very restrained and heavily technocratic defense of the amnesty. This Review Essay weighs this argument, among others, on its own terms and (...) also within the context of recent events that post-date the book’s publication. The result is a vibrant exposition of the limits of law, and the limits of politics, in transcending episodes of massive human rights violations. (shrink)

Counterpunch, November 23, 2009 In his wild and slanderous "Open Letter to Amnesty International" (signed, fittingly, "Yours, in disgust and despair"),[2] The Guardian - Observer's veteran reporter Ed Vulliamy explains that two "main concerns" motivated him to draft his repudiation of AI's choice of Noam Chomsky to deliver this 2009 Stand Up For Justice lecture: One is that the "pain" individuals such as Chomsky are alleged to cause the "survivors and the bereaved" of the wars in the former (...) Yugoslavia is "immeasurable," and Vulliamy feels some kind of need to help mitigate this pain; the other, apparently, is that the "historical record" as it pertains to these wars is too precious and too fragile to be left in the wrong pair of hands. "For Amnesty International, of all people, to honour this man is to tear up whatever credibility they have estimably and admirably won over the decades, and to reduce all they say hitherto to didactic nonsense," Vulliamy writes. "By inviting Chomsky to give this lecture, Amnesty condemns itself to ridicule at best, hurtful malice at worst -- Amnesty joins the revisionists in spitting on the graves of the dead.". (shrink)

This stunning paperback volume showcases the winners and best entries for the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition and accompanies a major exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in May 2011 and touring the UK and USA thereafter. ‘The contemporary camera maybe a technological marvel but it can’t take photographs, only the photographer can do that. To succeed it involves making an incredible complex of choices and only one chance in the entire history of time to make (...) them as close to perfect as possible. A carefree snap - easy, a composed and considered picture, well, that requires a synergy of skills and perhaps a dash of genius. So that's why this album is such a treat to revel in, its a feast of the worlds best gardens, gardeners, the plants and animals growing and living in them in the very best photographic forms. The images will 'wow' you, make you wish you had been there, wish it was your garden in the picture or wish you had squeezed the button. It’s a testament to a huge array of skills and a catalogue of remarkable beauty’. Chris Packham – BBC Presenter and photographer. (shrink)

This stunning paperback volume showcases the winners and best entries for the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition and accompanies a major exhibition at Kew Gardens in March 2012 and touring the UK, Australia and USA thereafter.

This study aims to reveal the impact and response to the apartheid system in shaping the collective trauma of African society through symbolic representations of suffering and social performativity through political action in “Amnesty” short story by Nadine Gordimer. This study used the cultural trauma theory by Jeffrey Alexander with descriptive qualitative method. The results of this research found that social suffering is symbolically represented with a humanist and theocentric images. Even so, the two seemingly different treatments are essentially (...) the same suffering, disguised by social and cultural symbols. Then, as a response to this suffering, there was social performativy through the political actions of social agents carried out by the Labor Union. These actions occur after going through of socio-cultural processes such as gathering, organizing, rioting, speeches, demonstrations, and accommodating or representing pain as well as distributing social awareness to arrive at the point where the apartheid system is the cause of all forms of suffering they experience. (shrink)

With its express intention ‘to put an end to impunity’, the International Criminal Court (ICC) faces a substantial challenge in the shape of conditional amnesties granted in future national truth commissions (TCs)—a challenge that invokes fundamental considerations of criminal justice ethics. In this article, I give an account of the challenge, and I consider a possible solution to it presented by Declan Roche. According to this solution the ICC-prosecutor should respect national amnesties and prosecute and punish only those perpetrators (...) who have refused to cooperate with the TC. I argue, however, that this compromise is untenable. As a general rule, if we justify the ICC on grounds of deterrence we should not accept conditional amnesties granted in national TCs. (shrink)