Exiles as Co-Authors

This chapter explores shared identity as a basis for exile politics. It provides a dialogical account of individual and social or collective identities that conceives of these as a narrative. It then provides an overview of associative obligations and argues that shared identity generates special duties that can account for why exiles go beyond the minimal duty to assist. Shared identity can help address obstacles to collective action and make these more extensive efforts practicable and effective. Exile complicates identity, however. Exile engenders greater pluralism in exile and exile provides a site for identities suppressed back home to survive and flourish, ensuring that marginalized perspectives are given some expression. This pluralism, however, can hinder prospects for collective action, and lead to systematic divergences between the homeland and those in exile. Exile politics’ ameliorative function back home is in tension with, although not necessarily fatal to, its ability to perform a corrective function abroad.

The brain drain as exploitation

When skilled individuals emigrate from developing states to developed states, they leave a burdened state behind and bring their valuable human capital to a state that enjoys vast advantages by comparison. Most of the normative debate to date on this so-called ‘brain drain’ has focused on the duties that skilled emigrants owe to their home state after they emigrate. This article shifts the focus to the question of whether their host state acquires special duties toward their home state and argues for an affirmative answer to that question. After identifying the conditions under which ‘exploitative free-riding’ can occur, the article shows that the brain drain is a case of exploitation that gives rise to special duties of compensation for developed host states.

Civic Minstrels in Late Medieval England: New Light on Duties and Careers

The publications of the ongoing Records of Early English Drama project since 1979 have made available for the first time much early documentation about minstrels, including the civic minstrels or town waits. While this material leaves many questions unanswered, a more detailed picture of the early history of civic minstrels is emerging. This article focusses on three aspects of that history that have not previously been studied as such: the towns that employed civic minstrels by 1509, the minstrels’ possible special duties in ports, and their employment mobility.

Justice for all also means special duties for special risks (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED In this letter, we made a response to Crutzen’s comment on our recent publication in JMU. Our article was an analysis of the technologic Tower of Babel that analysed the global functioning and interaction of contract tracing apps for COVID-19. In general, we are concerned with both legal and ethical disconformity between different apps, while Cruzten focuses primarily on ethical concerns and the protection of human rights. In a sense, the two papers appear complementary, rather than in conflict with each other. However, we do not agree with Crutzen’s assertion that making a contact tracing app mandatory for international travellers is totally unacceptable. We argued that justice for all also means special duties for special risks. Indeed, a contact tracing app, which is mandatory for international travellers, is a threat to fundamental rights. However, in light of the delicate balance between public health and individual rights and freedoms, we believe this measure is fully acceptable, especially based on an assessment of necessity, proportionality, and adequacy.

Mandatory and Default Rules in Serbian Company Law

The matter of company law in Serbia is regulated by the Law on Companies, which does not contain the general provision defining whether it is based on the freedom of will, unlike the Law on Obligations, which defines so. Even therefrom, it can be concluded that the rules of the Law on Companies are in general mandatory. Such conclusion only confirms the exception-provision which defines that founders of the LLC their mutual relations and their relations with the Company regulate freely, unless by this Law otherwise defined. So, only the rules regulating mutual relations of founders and their relations with the LLC are default, unless otherwise provided in particular case. Other rules of the company law in Serbia are in general mandatory. However, even when the provisions regulating certain matter being mandatory, it does not mean that there is absolutely no space for deviations, like in below described cases of special duties, for example. But such deviations do not necessarily mean that the rules from which it is deviated are default ones.

Compensation

This chapter looks at so-called backward-looking justifications for affirmative action, e.g., most notably arguments that justify affirmative action as a way of providing quasi-compensation for descendants of victims of past injustices. The chapter is quite critical of this justification. One reason for this derives from Parfit’s important non-identity problem, while another reason for this skepticism derives from the difficulties of providing an attractive account of what a quasi-compensation-relevant relation of descent consists of. With these two problems in mind the chapter also scrutinizes the view that innocent beneficiaries of historic injustice have special duties to bear the costs of affirmative action. In closing, the chapter argues that the expounded criticisms of compensation-based justifications of affirmative action are compatible with the view that there exist duties (e.g., on the part of states) to apologize for past injustices.

Beyond Parents: Collective Duties to Children

In this chapter, I consider duties non-parents might have to children. I consider empirical evidence which suggests that parents matter less for children than is commonly assumed, and that other members of society matter more. I suggest that this influence on children generates duties to the children that are similar- albeit weaker- to those of parents. All members of society are responsible for the content of children’s character and this impact brings duties to ensure society is not harmful to the child. Further, the intertwined nature of children’s lives means that special duties to one child transfer to others. The implication is that the perfectionist duties explored in chapter 11 apply not just to parents but to all citizens, who have a moral duty to change their conduct in ways that will further the wellbeing of children.

Distributing Parental Duties

In this chapter, I consider the special duties that some adults have to children and defend what is known as the causal theory. According to this account, people come to have duties to children because they create them in a needy state, and effectively make profound choices on behalf of their children. I show why this view is preferable to both the voluntariness view – according to which people can only have special duties when they agree to them – and to the social conventions account – which suggests that special duties are whatever the social conventions state them to be. Finally, I show how the causal view can dodge the problem of assigning too many people as the relevant causes of children, and thus as that child’s parents.