scholarly journals Evolution and Decline: Making Wholeness in a Time of Ecological Decline

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 662
Author(s):  
Neil Ormerod

Drawing on three key elements in Lonergan’s thought—emergent probability, the triad of progress/decline/redemption, and the law of the cross—this paper explores the struggle to remake some sense of wholeness in an era of serve ecological decline and the cost to be paid to turn it around. It identifies political action as the most urgent arena for those seeking to redeem our present situation, while also acknowledging the important of personal and cultural resistance to the forces of decline.

2021 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-258
Author(s):  
Neil Ormerod

Globally we are entering into uncharted waters as the current cycle of decline lurches towards ecological disaster. Lonergan posits the law of the cross as the divinely enacted redemptive path for overcoming decline and restoring humanity on the path of genuine progress. Faced with the prospect of unprecedented global suffering, what is the moment of redemptive suffering that Christians and others are called to enact in response to the present decline? Drawing on Lonergan’s notion of a scale of values, the article considers responses at the personal, cultural, and social levels of value and the timeframes in which they operate. It will argue that in our current situation, only social change, in terms of economic and political action, can operate in a timeframe adequate to the urgency of the problem.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Andrew J Serpell

Payday loans are small-amount, short-term, unsecured, high-cost credit contracts provided by non-mainstream credit providers. Payday loans are usually taken out to help the consumer pay for essential items, such as food, rent, electricity, petrol, broken-down appliances or car registration or repairs. These consumers take out payday loans because they cannot — or believe that they cannot — obtain a loan from a mainstream credit provider such as a bank. In recent years there has been a protracted debate in Australia — and in several overseas jurisdictions — about how to regulate the industry. Recent amendments to the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth) — referred to in this article as the 2013 reforms — are designed to better protect payday loan consumers. While the 2013 reforms provide substantially improved protection for payday loan consumers, further changes to the law may be warranted. This article raises several law reform issues which should be considered as part of the 2015 review into small amount credit contracts, including whether the caps on the cost of credit are set at the right level, whether the required content and presentation of the consumer warnings needs to be altered, whether more needs to be done to protect consumers who are particularly disadvantaged or vulnerable and whether a general anti-avoidance provision should be included in the credit legislation.


Author(s):  
Paula J Dalley

Despite the ubiquity of agents in the modern world, agency law does not have a coherent explanation or unified theory. The Restatement (Third) of Agency updates and attempts to explain the law, but its explanations are limited in scope and at times unpersuasive. Like other contemporary commentary on agency law, the Third Restatement draws from contract and tort theory, an approach which ignores the unique features of agency law. Agency law enables principals to act through agents; it also ensures that principals using agents do not thereby escape liability or other consequences of their choices. This paper develops a theory to fit agency law. The "costbenefit internalization theory" is based on the simple premise that the principal, who has chosen to conduct her business through an agent, must bear the foreseeable consequences of that choice. Conversely, as the bearer of the risks, the principal is entitled to receive the benefits created by the agency relationship. The cost-benefit internalization theory explains and illuminates virtually all agency law doctrine.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 45-71
Author(s):  
Natalia Zych

The article examines the idea of plain legal language as a standard in creating comprehensible and effective communication in legislative acts. It features plain legal language techniques and tools used to tackle the visual and linguistic layer of legal texts. Selected techniques were implemented to experimentally modify the Polish Consumer Rights Act of 30 May 2014. The document, transformed in the spirit of plain legal language, was then submitted for assessment to lawyers as well as individuals with no legal background. The article features the results of the experiment as well as conclusions which make it possible to say whether the “simplified” act is more comprehensible to an average reader, and to assess the cost of the changes introduced in the original provisions of the law.


2013 ◽  
Vol 333-335 ◽  
pp. 623-627
Author(s):  
Jing Jun Li ◽  
Yong Hua Jiang ◽  
Bo Dan ◽  
Wei Wei Gao

Orthogonal discrete frequency coding waveforms(DFCWs) is an ideal quasi-orthogonal waveform. This paper analyses the ambiguity function of DFCWs and the results indicate that the correlation characteristics of DFCWs have only relationship with the code length and coding order. Based on the theoretical analysis, we defined the cross-correlation energy as the cost function, and used the improved discrete particle swarmoptimization(DPSO) to optimize the order of DFCWs. The new signal can effectively restrain the cross-correlation level between the two DFCWs. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the designed DFCWs.


Author(s):  
Robert D. Cooter ◽  
Ariel Porat

This book examines how the law of torts, contracts, and restitution can be improved by showing how private law reduces the cost of accidents, lubricates bargains, and encourages unrequested benefits. It considers the two pervasive rules of tort law that provide incentives for actors to reduce accident costs: strict liability and negligence. It also explains how contract law achieves effiency through the remedy of damages and how restitution law allows benefactors to recover gains that their beneficiaries wrongfully obtained from them. The book makes three central claims: misalignments in tort law should be removed; in contract law, promisee's incentives should be improved; and the law should recognize some right of compensation for those who produce unrequested benefits. Each claim is based on the desire to reform private law and to make it more effective in promoting social welfare.


Author(s):  
Tina Beattie

Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s idea of homo sacer and on the Catholic natural law tradition, Beattie explores the paradoxes and tensions inherent in the Christian understanding of divine justice and human laws. While natural law resists the pessimism of some Protestant theologies and their secularized postmodern derivatives, the doctrine of original sin means that all human laws are flawed in their quest to maintain justice through the imposition of order. Beattie argues that Christ is homo sacer in whom God is profaned, the human is made sacred, and the crucified body of the dehumanized other on the cross becomes the bearer of an absolute dignity outside the law.


Author(s):  
Janny H.C. Leung

This chapter discusses the intricacies of interpreting multilingual legal texts. Multiplicity of legal languages potentially amplifies linguistic indeterminacy, which in turn contributes to legal indeterminacy. It would be a nightmare for a bilingual or multilingual jurisdiction if the application of two or more language versions of the law to the same case leads to two or more different legal outcomes. Such legal indeterminacy could give rise to chaos. Indeed, these nightmares have periodically haunted bilingual and multilingual jurisdictions. Established rules of legal interpretation, having been derived with the assumption that there is only one official text of the law, are not always helpful in resolving interpretation problems in a multilingual jurisdiction. In multilingual jurisdictions, the authority of the law is shifted away from the text that represents it. The cost of linguistic inclusivity is that each constituent group of a multilingual jurisdiction has to surrender predictability of legal outcome derivable from a single version of the law.


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