Suchergebnisse

Georg von Wangenheim - Certification as solution to the asymmetric information problem? -- Victoria I Daskalova and Michiel A. Heldeweg – Challenges for Responsible Certification in Institutional Context -- Richard Neerhof – The use of conformity Assessment of Construction Products by the European Union and the Dutch Government -- Peter Rott – Certification of medical devices -- Vibe Ulfbeck and Anders Mollmann, Public Function Liability of Classification Societies -- Gerrit Hornung and Stefan Bauer – Privacy through Certification? -- Arne Lawrenz – Certification in E-Commerce -- Miranda P.M. Meuwissen – Can Certification Enhance the Feasibility of Insurance? -- Axel Halfmeier – Liability of Rating Agencies under German and European Law -- Hanna Schebesta – Control in the Label -- Carola Glinski – Certification of the sustainability of biofuels in global supply chains

This paper is a response to Jeff McMahan's "Just Cause for War" (Ethics & International Affairs 19, 2005). McMahan holds, as many have, that there is a just cause for war against group X only if X have made themselves liable to military force by being responsible for some serious wrong. But he interprets this liability requirement in a very strict way. He insists (1) that one may use force against X for purpose Y only if they are responsible for a wrong specifically connected to Y; and (2) that one may use force against an individual member of X only if he himself shares in the responsibility for the wrong. This paper defends a more permissive, and more traditional, view of just war liability against McMahan's claims. Against McMahan's first claim it argues that certain "conditional just causes," such as disarming an aggressor, deterring future aggression, and preventing lesser humanitarian crimes, can be legitimate goals of war against X even if X have no specific liability connected to them. Against McMahan's second claim it argues that soldiers who have no responsibility for X's wrong may nonetheless be legitimately attacked because in becoming soldiers they freely surrendered their right not to be killed by enemy combatants in a war between their and another state, so killing them in such a war is not unjust. Though initially a criticism of McMahan, the paper makes positive proposals about conditional just causes and the moral justification for directing force at soldiers.

As open public data initiatives have become prevalent among local and national governments across the globe with promises of benefits such as increased accountability, challenges, especially the governments' lack of willingness to open public data, have also begun to emerge. Existing governance research on open public data primarily focuses on how open public data can increase the accountability of public bodies. The important steps in achieving accountability are, however, ignored. In this paper, we view the perceived risk of liability as a barrier for the public bodies to disclose their data in the first place, and hence to achieve accountability as a desired outcome. We explore the link between perceived risk of liability and accountability by looking into the recently announced Interim Measures for the Opening of Public Data in Shanghai as an example of a local regulatory initiative of open public data. Our findings show that by identifying the specific data entities and outlining their corresponding duties, the interim measures clarify the roles of different public bodies and under what conditions they can incur liability. By introducing an exemption clause, they also provide public bodies with legal flexibility to cope with uncertain consequences of data utilization. In this way, we argue that the interim measures, outlining duties for specific entities in data opening in accounting for the consequences of data utilization while remaining flexible due to their temporality, constitute a novel regulatory approach towards reducing the legal uncertainty around perceived risks of liability in the area of open public data, hence potentially contributing to increased accountability.