Law and Uncertainty: Risks and Legal Processes examines the role of the law and legal institutions in coping with the risks and uncertainties that pervade our lives. it examines key concerns, such as how issues relating to risks can be dealt with by means of legal processes, and how risks can be controlled through different legal formulations and techniques. The contents cover a wide range of risk issues as they arise in legal contexts, ranging from the problems of assessing risks within the criminal justice system To The difficulties that judges encounter in processing risk-laden issues through the courts. This study brings together papers delivered at the WG Hart Legal Workshop of 1995, held at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies in London.
A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.
International law is a system of rules and principles that regulates behaviour between international actors in the present, but is based on what is expected to happen in the future. This book explores how risk and uncertainty are imagined, articulated, and managed across the various fields of international law.
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is one of several federal agencies responsible for protecting Americans against significant risks to human health and the environment. As part of that mission, EPA estimates the nature, magnitude, and likelihood of risks to human health and the environment; identifies the potential regulatory actions that will mitigate those risks and protect public health1 and the environment; and uses that information to decide on appropriate regulatory action. Uncertainties, both qualitative and quantitative, in the data and analyses on which these decisions are based enter into the process at each step. As a result, the informed identification and use of the uncertainties inherent in the process is an essential feature of environmental decision making. EPA requested that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convene a committee to provide guidance to its decision makers and their partners in states and localities on approaches to managing risk in different contexts when uncertainty is present. It also sought guidance on how information on uncertainty should be presented to help risk managers make sound decisions and to increase transparency in its communications with the public about those decisions. Given that its charge is not limited to human health risk assessment and includes broad questions about managing risks and decision making, in this report the committee examines the analysis of uncertainty in those other areas in addition to human health risks. Environmental Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty explains the statement of task and summarizes the findings of the committee.
Over the last decade the regulatory evaluation of environmental and public health risks has been one of the most legally controversial areas of contemporary government activity. Much of that debate has been understood as a conflict between those promoting 'scientific' approaches to risk evaluation and those promoting 'democratic' approaches. This characterization of disputes has ignored the central roles of public administration and law in technological risk evaluation. This is problematic because, as shown in this book, legal disputes over risk evaluation are disputes over administrative constitutionalism in that they are disputes over what role law should play in constituting and limiting the power of administrative risk regulators. This is shown by five case studies taken from five different legal cultures: an analysis of the bifurcated role of the Southwood Working Party in the UK BSE crisis; the development of doctrines in relation to judicial review of risk evaluation in the US in the 1970s; the interpretation of the precautionary principle by environmental courts and generalist tribunals carrying out merits review in Australia; the interpretation of the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement as part of the WTO dispute settlement process; and the interpretation of the precautionary principle in the EU context. A strong argument is thus made for re-orienting the focus of scholarship in this area.
A risk analysis textbook which is intended as a basic text for students as well as a reference for practitioners and researchers. It provides a basis for policy analysis and draws upon a variety of case studies.
We’ve seen it before, with asbestos-related disease, leukaemia clusters and lung cancer caused by cigarettes. There tends to be a lag between the emergence of environmental risks and chemical injuries, and their recognition and therapeutic treatment by medicine and the law. Law, Environmental Illness and Medical Uncertainty examines how our society governs new health concerns as they emerge, and the barriers that face new and uncertain theories seeking recognition in the law. In this book, Tarryn Phillips focuses her investigation on the struggle over the controversial condition multiple chemical sensitivities, or MCS (also known as environmental illness). Presenting nine case studies where workers sought compensation for MCS from their multinational employers, she captures a nuanced portrait of their embittered, unequal battles over the scientific, legal and insurance paradigms for understanding toxic risk, environmental illness and the regulation of industry. It draws on three years of fieldwork in Australia, including interview data with lay people and sympathetic and sceptical experts, participant observation in the courtroom and textual analysis of official reports. The book gives a unique, ethnographic insight into the governance of risk and uncertainty within a neoliberal economy, medico-scientific controversies and courtroom dramas. It highlights how a skeptical approach towards emergent environmental concerns is encouraged within the current regime, and decision-makers face disincentives for taking a sympathetic approach. Compellingly written and easy to read, it should appeal widely to interested lay people, and students and scholars of science and technology studies, medical anthropology, sociology of health and illness, and critical legal studies.
Both risk and uncertainty are neo-liberal concepts, which can be viewed as complementary techniques for governing diverse aspects of life, rather than natural states of things. This new book examines the way these constructs govern the production of wealth through 'uncertain' speculation and 'calculable' investment formulae. The way in which risk and uncertainty govern the minimisation of harms through insurance and through the uncertain practices of 'reasonable foresight' is discussed, and O Malley looks at the way these same techniques were historically forged out of moral and social beliefs about how to govern properly. In addition, the book analyzes is how, during this process, ideas such as 'contract' and distinctions between insurance and gambling were invented to order to 'properly' govern the risky and uncertain future.
