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REASON, OBJECTIVITY, AND HUMAN NATURE ARE NOW SUSPECT IDEAS. AMONG POSTMODERN THINKERS, RICHARD RORTY HAS ADVANCED AN ESPECIALLY FORCEFUL CRITIQUE OF THESE NOTIONS. DRAWING PARTLY ON WITTGENSTEIN'S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, RORTY CONTENDS THAT OBJECTIVITY IS NO MORE THAN A METAPHYSICAL NAME FOR INTERSUBJECTIVE AGREEMENT AND THAT "HUMAN NATURE" IS AN EMPTY CATEGORY, THERE BEING NOTHING BENEATH HISTORY AND CULTURE. HOWEVER, WITTGENSTEIN HIMSELF RECOGNIZED THE WORLD'S MANY CIVILIZATIONS, "THE COMMON BEHAVIOR OF MANKIND," WITHOUT WHICH RORTY'S ETHNOCENTRIC SOLIDARITY WOULD BE INCONCEIVABLE. THIS COMMON FORM OF LIFE -- THE LIFE OF THOSE WHO SPEAK -ENCOMPASSES COUNTLESS HUMAN ACTIVITIES THAT PRESUPPOSE AND ARE INTERWOVEN WITH THE CONCEPTS OF REASON AND OBJECTIVITY.

Discusses the moral, political, & economic dimensions of John Maynard Keynes's criticism of utopian visions of laissez-faire capitalism. Neoclassical & Australian economic theory contribute to a vision of an idealized market economy founded on three basic claims: (1) market mechanisms encourage an efficient coordination of competing human activities & desires, (2) market incomes are proportionate to the productive contributions of individuals, & (3) each individual's economic fate is the product of informed choices made within a stable & predictable socioeconomic system. Keynes rejects all of these assumptions, & argues that market mechanisms often perform in uncertain ways with unknowable & often unjust outcomes. Further, separate decisions based on competing interests often lead to results that are not socially optimal; examples are cited in which laissez-faire capitalism contributes to market instability, lack of correlation between income & production, & general inequality. It is concluded that Keynes's criticism of market capitalism contains a moral dimension concerned with justifying personal incomes in reference to public good-rather than private entitlement. 49 References. Adapted from the source document.

The global financial crisis highlighted the interconnectedness of international financial markets and the risk of contagion it posed. The crisis also emphasized the importance of supranational regulation and regulatory cooperation to address that risk. Yet, although capital flows are global, securities regulation is not. As a 2019 report by IOSCO notes, the regulatory challenges revealed during the global financial crisis have by no means dissipated over the last decade. Lack of international standards, or differences in the way jurisdictions implement such standards, can often result in regulatory-driven market fragmentation. This article considers a range of cooperative techniques designed to achieve international regulatory harmonization and effective financial market supervision. It includes discussion of a high profile cross-border supervisory experiment, the 2008 US-Australian Mutual Recognition Agreement, which was the first agreement of its kind for the SEC. The article also examines some key regulatory developments in Australia and Asia since the time of the US-Australian Mutual Recognition Agreement.

This review paper is based on a talk given at the British Pharmaceutical Society Winter Meeting in 2018 derived from the Home Office Report on the workings of the UK Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA) published in November 2018. The review deals with the context in which the PSA 2016 arose and how this piece of legislation differs from other UK drug regulations. It attempts to put the PSA in context with other control schemes being instituted around the world and to assess the success of the Act in its first 2 years of implementation. For more details the reader is referred to Review of the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, Home Office, November 2018.

Shareholder participation in corporate governance and investor activism are topics du jour in the United States and around the world. In the early part of the 20th century, Professors Berle and Means considered that shareholder participation was impossible in the transformed commercial world that they described in The Modern Corporation and Private Property. This was a world characterized by dispersed and vulnerable shareholders, in which owners do not manage, and managers do not own, the corporation. In such an environment, the goal of corporate law became one of protecting shareholder interests rather than providing shareholders with participation rights. The structure of capital markets and profile of shareholders in the United States today is dramatically different from that time. The rise of institutional investors challenged the idea that the only possible paradigm in corporate law is one of shareholder protection. Shareholder participation in corporate governance is not only feasible but a contemporary reality. As this Article demonstrates, however, there are competing narratives about shareholders and their right to participate in corporate governance around the world. Although a negative view underpins much recent debate in the United States, a diametrically opposite view of shareholder power and activism has gained traction in many jurisdictions outside the United States. This Article focuses on one manifestation of this positive view of shareholders, namely shareholder stewardship codes, which originated in the United Kingdom following the 2007–2008 global financial crisis and are now proliferating throughout the world. These competing narratives concerning the role of shareholders in corporate governance have significant regulatory implications. In particular, the narratives pose challenges to regulators, who attempt to differentiate between "good activists" and "bad activists."