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Volatility Products and their Uses: An Introduction to the VIX Index and Volatility Instruments
Get PDFYou Don’t Need Lungs to Suffer: Fish Suffering in the Age of Climate Change with a Call for Regulatory Reform
Get PDFFish are sentient — they feel pain and suffer. Yet, while we see increasing interest in protecting birds and mammals in industries such as farming and research (albeit few laws), no such attention has been paid to the suffering of fish in the fishing industry. Consideration of fish welfare including reducing needless suffering should be a component of fisheries management. This article focuses on fisheries management practices, the effects of anthropogenic climate change on fisheries management practices, and the moral implications of fish sentience on the development and amendment of global fishing practices. Part I examines domestic and international fisheries, including slaughter practices for wild-caught and farmed fish. Part II discusses the impact of climate change on global fisheries management. Part III outlines recent scientific discoveries that reveal that fish have sentient capabilities. Part IV analyzes psychological and economic roadblocks to acknowledging fish harm. Part V discusses strategies to incorporate concerns over fish harm into current practices. Part VI discusses the United States’ Public Trust Doctrine, arguing that: (1) it exists at both the state and federal levels; and (2) it requires stricter fisheries management practices that impose humane requirements on commercial fisheries. Part VII concludes that (1) anthropogenic climate change is inflicting an enormous amount of suffering on fish populations, and (2) fisheries management practices must mitigate these harms by incorporating moral considerations
Tax Talk and Reproductive Technology
Get PDFThe tax system both reacts to and helps create attitudes about the value of certain behaviors and choices. This Article makes three principal claims—one empirical, one normative, and one interpretative. The Article demonstrates through data that a representative sample of fertility clinics in the United States does not make information about the tax consequences of compensated human egg transfers—commonly called egg “donation”—publicly available. In 2015, in a case of first impression, the United States Tax Court decided in Perez v. Commissioner that a compensated egg transferor must report as income any amount she receives for her eggs. Although the Tax Court missed an opportunity to clarify further complex questions about the tax consequences of transfers of human bodily materials, the basic holding of Perez was clear. Even so, a content-based analysis of public internet forums and bulletin boards suggests that compensated egg transferors remain unclear about their tax obligations. This confusion is due in large part to the absence of what this Article calls “tax talk” on the part of the fertility clinics themselves. Women who receive compensation for providing eggs reject the idea that they are engaged in any sort of commercial activity, preferring to think of themselves as altruistic actors who receive money only because of their generosity and willingness to endure discomfort and inconvenience. Intended parents benefit from construing egg transferors as “donors” because that allows the intended parents to relegate compensation to a secondary role in any negotiations with the egg transferor. The absence of tax talk also allows intended parents to minimize the specter of “baby buying.” That cloud hovers over any assisted reproductive technology involving compensation for either gestational services or activity resulting in gamete transfers. Fertility clinics reinforce the altruism narrative and provide the foundation on which a multibillion-dollar industry stands. The absence of tax talk depresses the price of eggs and allows most of the industry profits to go to the drug manufacturers, the fertility clinics, and the doctors who own the clinics. They all profit handsomely from others’ reproductive work. The normative solution to the absence of tax talk in the reproductive technology context is for the Internal Revenue Service to issue clear guidance to all fertility clinics regarding the tax consequences of egg transfers. Furthermore, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine should require issuance of appropriate tax forms to compensated egg transferors. This will put taxpayers on notice of their filing obligations and likely increase tax compliance. From an interpretative perspective, taxing compensated egg transfers recognizes the importance of that activity. Taxation signals that reproductive work deserves to be treated like any other labor. The tax system thereby exercises its power to mark an activity as important and within the mainstream of human experience. The alternative—allowing compensated human egg transfers to escape taxation despite the law—turns compensated reproductive work into a preferred (and economically risky) type of labor activity with unintended consequences for women and others
The Effects of Counseling Provider Attachment Style and Empathy on Boundary Behaviors
No full textCounselors are regularly confronted with boundary issues within day to day clinical practice with clients. Despite the code of ethics serving as a general guideline for appropriate counselor behaviors to ensure optimal client care, its ambiguity leads counselors to rely heavily on clinical decision making (Zur, 2007). The balance of staying within treatment boundaries and wanting to best help clients can be a challenge. Nevertheless, boundary transgressions can have consequences for both the counselor and client, at times leading to suspension of professional licenses and client psychological harm. This study examined counselor demographics (gender, practice setting, years of experience, and theoretical orientation), empathy (cognitive and affective), and attachment patterns (anxious and avoidant) in their influence on counselor boundary behaviors within the therapeutic relationship. Findings revealed demographic factors including male providers and those with more years of experience engage in more boundary behaviors. Study findings also provided evidence that those who are more anxiously attached and have greater affective empathy may also engage in more boundary behaviors with clients. It was found that counseling providers higher in anxious attachment engage in more self-disclosing type boundary behaviors
Influence and Bias Factors on Female Adolescent Alcohol Use
No full textThis study tested multiple hypotheses related to the influence of certain factors on female adolescent alcohol use. Demographic information, academic stress levels, and parental monitoring behaviors were examined. Peer alcohol use, peer non-alcohol specific risk behavior, and perception of peer alcohol use were also measured. One sample (n=184) was collected and used in analyses. Results from this data collection provided evidence that the demographic variable of age, the variable of peer alcohol use, and the variable of perception of peer alcohol use all influence an individual’s alcohol use. The perception of peer alcohol was shown to influence both drinkers and non-drinkers alike, in that those that drink alcohol had the perception that their friends were drinkers, too, and those that did not drink alcohol had the perception that their friends were non-drinkers, as well
Trump and his Tweets: Presidential Propaganda and its Potential Influence on the Actions of Others
Get PDF“I Need This Job ”: A Comparative Study between a Student Leader’s Sense of Socioeconomic Status and their Sense of Job Security within Student Affairs
Get PDFHuman Rights, Economic Justice and U.S. Exceptionalism
Get PDFOn April 5, 2019, PILR held their triennial symposium titled: Revisiting Human Rights: The Universal Declaration at 70. As a reflection of the event, a few panelists composed contribution pieces reflecting on the topic
Do Criminal Minds Cause Crime? Neuroscience and the Physicalism Dilemma
Get PDFThe idea that mental states cause actions is a basic premise of criminal law. Blame and responsibility presuppose that criminal acts are products of the defendant\u27s mind. Yet, the assumption that mental causation exists is at odds with physicalism, the widely shared worldview that “everything is physical.” Outside of law, there is probably no field of secular study in which one can seriously assert that unseen nonmaterial forces can cause physical events. But if physicalism is true then a fundamental premise of modern criminal justice must be false, namely, that criminals deserve punishment because their crimes are the products of their criminal minds.
Efforts to reconcile mind-based theories of criminal responsibility with physicalism encounter a dilemma: how can one say that everything occurs in accordance with physical laws while insisting that offenders deserve blame and punishment precisely because their conduct is not dictated by physical laws? The dilemma highlights the fact that, even if mental states can cause actions, they would have to also be “autonomous” of the physical (and physical laws) to be morally significant. Unless causative mental states are untethered to underlying neuronal activity, people\u27s actions are not their “own” but are merely products of causal chains originating outside themselves far back in time. Thus, if mental states are not autonomous, they could no more have independent moral significance than mental states that are purely epiphenomenal. But the supposition that mental states are autonomous leads to the unpalatable suspicion that the law sends people to prison and deprivation based on spooky-spectral New Age nonsense that no modern thinker would, in any other context, believe
