The devastating impact of the national opioid epidemic has given rise to hundreds of lawsuits. This article details the extremely broad range of legal claims, compares the opioid cases to other public health litigation efforts, including tobacco, and describes the special mechanism — a multidistrict litigation — through which more than 700 opioid-related cases have been consolidated thus far, with settlement almost certain to follow.

Litigation cannot solve a public health crisis. But litigation can be an effective complementary tool to regulation by increasing the salience of a public health issue, eliciting closely guarded information to move public opinion, and prompting legislative action. From tobacco to opioids, litigants have successfully turned to courts for monetary relief, to initiate systemic change, and to hold industry accountable For years, litigators have been trying to push firearm suits into their own litigation moment. But litigation against the gun industry (...) poses special challenges. Not only has the regulatory regime failed to prevent a public safety hazard, Congress has consistently underfunded and understaffed the relevant regulatory actors. And in 2005 it legislatively immunized the gun industry from suit with the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. This paper surveys the field of litigation in response to gun violence, tracking the limited successes of victims and stakeholders suing the gun industry. We find that victories remain confined to individual actors and unlike high-impact public litigations in other areas, aggregate class actions and major public litigation led by state attorneys general are noticeably absent in the firearm context. (shrink)

By endowing technology with the attributes of autonomous agency, human beings are ethically sidelined. Individuals are relieved of responsibility. The suggestion of being in the grip of irresistible forces provides an excuse for rejecting responsibility for oneself and others, thus creating conditions for inappropriate or antisocial behavior. It also impedes the search for solutions to pressing social problems associated with applications of technology. Failure to assign and accept responsibility for decisions to deploy “conventional” technology will inevitably impede our ability to (...) deal with the social and ethical challenges of robotics. (shrink)

Que reste-t-il du « printemps arabe » et que peut-on soutenir à propos de l’identité du processus révolutionnaire, après que la naissance du « califat » de Daech en 2014 a fait apparaître le problème théologico-politique comme l’un des principaux effets de ce processus, que les théories du complot ont fusé de toutes parts pour tenter d’expliquer les causes des malheurs qui ne cessent de s’abattre sur le monde arabe, et que l’implication de nombreuses parties, régionales et internationales, da...

This paper closely examines Strauss’ conception of “Medieval Enlightenment”. It focuses on the central role that Arab philosophy has played in the development of Strauss’s thought and discusses the validity of the uses he makes of it. It also emphasizes the interest of Strauss’s analyses as regards Arab philosophy while drawing attention to the tensions they create. It claims that Strauss’ involvement in the quarrel between Ancients and Moderns aims at showing that medieval philosophy cannot be reduced simply to the (...) effort to reconcile philosophy and religion. The ideas of some Arab philosophers cropped up throughout Strauss’s philosophical development and determined his interpretation of Maimonides and Plato as well as his stance in opposition to the moderns. However Strauss’s idea of the “medieval Enlightenment” remains fundamentally ambiguous. Is that Enlightenment supposed to be an argument for the preservation of faith alongside reason or does it rather express a kind of atheism or disguised materialism? (shrink)

The next steps in health reform, like all such efforts before it, will have to engage the issue of American health care federalism – the relationship between the federal and state governments in the realm of health law and policy. Since its enactment in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has offered a robust example of modern federalism and revealed new complexities. This article recounts the findings of our five-year study of the federalist and nationalist features of ACA (...) implementation. Contrary to the claims of ACA opponents that the law marked a federal “takeover,” the ACA's governance structures have advanced rather than suppressed state power. But we also found that the advances in state power occurred seemingly independently of the statute's structural arrangements; that is, the ACA's nationalist and federalist features both enhanced state power over health policy. These findings raise questions about whether cherished American federalism values are unique to federalist structures; they also raise the question of what exactly health care federalism is for, and why we continue to design health policy with federalism front and center. It is not clear that enhanced state power has brought better health policy. If it has not, is federalism for its own sake worth the trade-off? (shrink)

In their article ‘Consent-GPT: is it ethical to delegate procedural consent to conversational AI?’, Allen et al 1 explore the ethical complexities involved in handing over parts of the process of obtaining medical consent to conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, that is, AI-driven large language models (LLMs) trained to interact with patients to inform them about upcoming medical procedures and assist in the process of obtaining informed consent.1 They focus specifically on challenges related to accuracy (4–5), trust (5), privacy (5), (...) click-through consent (5) and responsibility (5–6), alongside some pragmatic considerations (6). While the authors competently navigate these critical issues and present several key perspectives, we posit that their discussion on trust in what they refer to as ‘Consent-GPT’ significantly underestimates one vital factor: the interpersonal aspect of trust. Admittedly, this …. (shrink)

Selon les auteurs le nouveau "College" d'enseignement supérieur devra être petit démocratique, auto-administré et résidentiel ; son but sera de créer une authentique communauté de culture, de connaissances académique et d'économie. Les collèges Ruskin, Bauhaus et Black Mountain sont décrits comme précurseurs.

At once provocative and inspiring_, Against the Flow_ is a work of polemic from an internationally respected writer and thinker on arts education. Peter Abbs argues that contemporary education ignores the aesthetic and ethical as a result of being in thrall to such forces as the market economy and managerial and functional dictates. He identifies the present education system as being inimical to creativity and authentic learning and instead, narrowly focused on the quantitative measuring of results. This absence of a (...) creative and ethical dimension in education has implications for art making in wider society. Art is shown as emerging from, and appealing to, the ironic postmodernist sensibility and mass media-led culture, while being devoid of philosophical significance. This book opens up a fresh and timely debate about the vital power of creativity in modern education. Drawing on examples from modern poetry, literature and visual art, it is an eloquent and passionate argument for the need to develop ethical and aesthetic energies to confront the growing vacuity of contemporary culture. (shrink)

This paper presents the problem of robust and nonfragile stabilization of nonlinear systems described by multivariable Hammerstein models. The objective is focused on the design of a nonfragile feedback controller such that the resulting closed-loop system is globally asymptotically stable with robust H ∞ disturbance attenuation in spite of controller gain variations. First, the parameters of linear and nonlinear blocks characterizing the multivariable Hammerstein model structure are separately estimated by using a subspace identification algorithm. Second, approximate inverse nonlinear functions of (...) polynomial form are proposed to deal with nonbijective invertible nonlinearities. Thereafter, the Takagi–Sugeno model representation is used to decompose the composition of the static nonlinearities and their approximate inverses in series with the linear subspace dynamic submodel into linear fuzzy parts. Besides, sufficient stability conditions for the robust and nonfragile controller synthesis based on quadratic Lyapunov function, H ∞ criterion, and linear matrix inequality approach are provided. Finally, a numerical example based on twin rotor multi-input multi-output system is considered to demonstrate the effectiveness. (shrink)

This volume reaffirms the indispensable place of the arts in any coherent curriculum. The author hopes that the specific arguments formulated in the book will advance the conservationist post-Modernist aesthetic.

The outcome of this is explored, in detail, in relation to the teaching of literature, creative writing and drama.

Difficile tolérance est écrit par Yves-Charles Zarka avec la collaboration de Cynthia Fleury en vue d’étudier la question de la tolérance dans les sociétés occidentales et la place qu’occupent les communautés arabo-musulmanes au sein de ces sociétés. Les deux auteurs mettent l’accent sur l’incompatibilité entre les valeurs de l’Occident et celles de l’islam ; ils défendent l’idée de l’impossibilité de l’émergence de la tolérance dans la culture de l’islam et soulignent la nécessité de réagir face aux revendications communautaires, de plus (...) en plus menaçantes pour la République. Cet article commente et discute les principaux postulats, présupposés et exemples historiques mobilisés par les deux auteurs. Il attire l’attention sur les erreurs de lecture, les contresens et les déformations au prix desquels les auteurs soutiennent leur thèse sur l’absence de la tolérance en islam. (shrink)