A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Justice Everywhere a blog about philosophy in public affairs

Academia / Education

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Writing a good referee report for a journal article

[This article was originally posted on Politicsblog, of the journal Politics.]

Peer-reviewing articles for journals is one of the important professional contributions made by academics. But it can seem an unusual exercise when undertaken for the first time and it is a difficult art form to master. There are a number of extended resources online with useful guidance, from academics, editors, publishers, and the American Philosophical Association, and a set of links to discussions on aspects of peer-review on various blogs. Here I offer seven quick tips that are designed to help make a review useful to both an editor and an author:

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Democracy / Economics / Governance

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Are financial markets – markets?

Philippine-stock-market-board

(source: wikimedia)

What a weird question, you may think. But consider:

  • In textbook markets, what is traded are products that are supposedly useful to customers. What is traded in many financial markets are highly artificial contractual arrangements that are several layers away from what happens in the real economy.
  • In textbook markets, participants are liable to go bankrupt if they overspend. In financial markets, some market participants know that they are too big to fail, creating problems of “moral hazard.”
  • In textbook markets, participants are expected to inform themselves about the products they trade. At least in some financial markets, what matters are not the “fundamentals” (e.g. the economic success of a company the shares of which are traded), but what other participants do. Many participants try to make profits by outrunning market movements or “sentiments”; this can lead to large swings, in disconnect from fundamentals (more…)

General

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If everything is measured, can we still see one another as equals?

Relational egalitarians hold what matters for justice is that all members of a society “stand in relations of equality to others.” The idea that all human beings are moral equals is widely shared: it underlies the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many national constitutions. How will this norm be affected by the arrival of “big data,” the collecting and analysing of huge amounts of data about individuals? Internet companies and government services collect data about individuals’ activities, including geographic locations, shopping behaviour and friendships. Many individuals voluntarily share such information on social media, some also track their physical activities in meticulous details. Experts expect that “people analytics” – big data applied to the measurement of work performance – will have a revolutionary impact on labour markets. (more…)

Gender / International

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Standing together for women’s empowerment: the UN strategic shift is worth a try

In his message on 2016 International Women’s Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon summarised the UN’s efforts for gender equality with an evocative metaphor: “We have shattered so many glass ceilings we created a carpet of shards. Now we are sweeping away the assumptions and bias of the past so women can advance across new frontiers”. Ban Ki-moon has recently been recognised as a champion of the promotion of women’s rights. His main achievement in the field has been to prioritise the issue on the UN agenda. As a matter of fact, the UN further the promotion of gender equality worldwide, not only through the CEDAW treaty and related instruments, but also through the adoption of a gender-sensitive policy of recruitment and the constant monitoring of women’s rights enjoyment in a number of domains (e.g. health, education, labour). UN efforts towards gender equality and women’s empowerment have been continuous and lately they have shown a remarkable degree of adaptability and pragmatism that might be conducive to a less immediate and visible, but more long-lasting and widespread diffusion of emancipatory principles worldwide. Apparently, the recent UN change of strategy for promoting gender equality is challenging traditional conceptions of feminism; however, this does not mean it is incompatible with them. Moreover, if successful, this new strategy might represent a model of agency for advocates of global justice. (more…)

General

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Call for Papers: Global Justice and Political Reality

A two-day workshop discussing direct normative responses to global realities

Durham University, 23rd-24th June 2016

Due to entrenched public opinion, vested interests among elites, global cooperation problems, and a host of other constraints existing systems impose on would-be reformers, there is currently a great distance between what should be done and what can be done. These limitations raise important questions about the role political philosophers can play in helping to guide decision-makers and the appropriate shape of short- and long-term moral and ethical thinking. To what extent should the constraints of political reality shape and/or constrain the way in which we theorise about moral problems? What kinds of normative recommendations can we offer on issues of pressing political import if we hope them to be realised in the foreseeable future? In short, what can demands of global justice require here and now?

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Governance / Punishment

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Criminal (in)justice and social contribution

The latest figures show that the proven reoffending rate for adult ‘offenders’ released from custody between April 2013 and March 2014 was 45.8%, with those who served sentences of less than 12 months having reoffended at a rate of 59.8% (Ministry of Justice, 2016). These kinds of statistics mean that increased attention has been directed towards understanding the reasons why people stop offending – largely in the hope that this evidence will support the design of reoffending-reducing reforms (see, e.g., the Discovering Desistance project). Another recent Ministry of Justice report brings together much of this research in its compilation of a list of ‘desistance factors’ in response to the question: What helps individuals desist from crime? (‘Transforming Rehabilitation’, 2014)

MarkoLovric at Pixabay (CC0 Public Domain)

MarkoLovric at Pixabay (CC0 Public Domain)

Two of these factors are of particular interest, given my purposes here: (i) ‘having something to give to others’ and (ii) ‘being believed in’ (see below for a brief account of each, respectively; and see Table 2.2 for the full list). (more…)

Democracy / Migration / Rights

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More thoughts on the £35,000 threshold – a response to Jesper Pedersen

The UK government has recently announced that it is raising the income threshold for non-EU citizens who wish to immigrate to the UK from £20,800 to £35,000. This threshold will apply not just to new immigrants, but also to those who have lived in the UK already for more than five years. It is the contention of this post that this new £35,000 threshold is not just unwise or poorly thought out, but also unjust.

Jesper Pedersen considers this issue with admirable even-handedness, but what if, rather than doing anything akin to sitting on this particular fence, we wanted to vault right over it, and claim – as I do here – that the policy is unjust? What support for making this statement could we muster? (more…)

Democracy / Migration / Rights

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Is the £35,000 rule unjust?

From the 1st April onwards any non-EU immigrant to the UK who does not otherwise have a connection with the country* must earn at least £35,000 by the end of their fifth year here, or otherwise face deportation. This policy is expected to make a small but largely insignificant contribution to lowering net migration numbers.

The commentariat’s verdict has been unequivocally harsh. This discriminatory law, it has been pointed out, will do next to nothing to keep out the kinds of people that draw the ire of the tabloids: unemployed “scroungers” and low-skilled immigrants who, it is claimed, depress the wages of – and take jobs away from ­– low-skilled British workers.

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Democracy

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Voters or residents: how should we draw our electoral map?

In recent months, the Right in both Britain and the US have been accused of trying to manipulate electoral rules to increase the influence of their supporters, and diminish the power of left-leaning voters. Both cases raise important questions about the objectives and principles underpinning electoral democracy, and specifically who elected representatives are supposed to represent.

At the heart of the dilemma is the question of how electoral districts should be drawn.

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Education

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Good books for a ‘first read’ in political philosophy / ethics

Recently, I was asked a question I have been asked on a few occasions: ‘what books should I recommend to a friend who has never read any political philosophy or ethics, but is interested in taking a look at the subject?’ I reply to this question with assorted recommendations, but what I recommend almost certainly varies depending on my mood, what I am currently researching/teaching, and, most significantly, how my memory is functioning in that moment. My recommendations are also limited to the list of books that I have read. To rectify these deficiencies, I write this post with two aims in mind: first, to identify some of the books I often recommend and garner suggestions from others about suitable books; and, second, thereby, to provide a list of texts to refer people when they ask the question above. (more…)