How should we attempt to resolve concrete bioethical problems? How are we to understand the role of bioethics in the health care system, government, and academe? This collection of original essays raises these and other questions about the nature of bioethics as a discipline. The contributors to the volume discuss various approaches to bioethical thinking and the political and institutional contexts of bioethics, addressing underlying concerns about the purposes of its practice. Included a...

In a series of landmark decisions since 1990, Canadian courts have shaped a distinctive approach to the regulation of obscenity, hate literature, and child pornography. Missing from the debate, however, has been any attempt to determine whether the legal status quo can be justified by reference to a framework of moral/political principles. The Hateful and the Obscene is intended to fill that gap.L.W. Sumner brings philosophical depth and theoretical rigour to some of the m...

On Liberty is a philosophical work by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, originally intended as a short essay. The work, published in 1859, applies Mill's ethical system of utilitarianism to society and the state. Mill attempts to establish standards for the relationship between authority and liberty. He emphasizes the importance of individuality, which he conceived as a prerequisite to the higher pleasures—the summum bonum of utilitarianism. Furthermore, Mill criticizes the errors ...

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association celebrates its fiftieth anniversary with this overview of its activities--sometimes quiet and sometimes strident--as a watchdog and safeguard for Canadians and their rights as citizens. Through a series of discussions and interviews, a picture of Canada over the last half-century evolves. From the Charter of Freedoms to life and death matters such as abortion and the death penalty through to public security vs. the right to privacy, and a look forwa...

Some would argue that scarcely a day passes without a new assault on our privacy. In the wake of the whistle-blower Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of surveillance conducted by the security services in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere, concerns about individual privacy have significantly increased. The Internet generates risks, unimagined even twenty years ago, to the security and integrity of information in all its forms. The manner in which information is collected...

A monumental investigation of the Supreme Court's rulings on race, From Jim Crow To Civil Rights spells out in compelling detail the political and social context within which the Supreme Court Justices operate and the consequences of their decisions for American race relations. In a highly provocative interpretation of the decision's connection to the civil rights movement, Klarman argues that Brown was more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to racial cha...

Charles Stewart Parnell is the most enigmatic figure in Irish history. An Anglo-Irish landlord from a distinguished Wicklow family, he became the most unlikely leader of Irish nationalism imaginable. He hated the colour green. He was not a dynamic speaker. He was cold and aloof and lacked the popular touch. None the less, from the late 1870s until his fall and death in 1891, he held the whole of Ireland spellbound. He established Home Rule for Ireland – previously a taboo subject in Britis...

Would you change your genes if you could? As we confront the 'industrial revolution of the genome', the recent discoveries of Crispr-Cas9 technologies are offering, for the first time, cheap and effective methods for editing the human genome. This opens up startling new opportunities as well as significant ethical uncertainty. Tracing events across a fifty-year period, from the first gene splicing techniques to the present day, this is the story of gene editing - the science, the impact an...

From a nationally recognized expert, a fresh and original argument for bettering affirmative actionRace-based affirmative action had been declining as a factor in university admissions even before the recent spate of related cases arrived at the Supreme Court. Since Ward Connerly kickstarted a state-by-state political mobilization against affirmative action in the mid-1990s, the percentage of four-year public colleges that consider racial or ethnic status in admiss...

Setting out the implications of the postmodern condition for medical ethics, Troubled Bodies challenges the contemporary paradigms of medical ethics and reconceptualizes the nature of the field. Drawing on recent developments in philosophy, philosophy of science, and feminist theory, this volume seeks to expand familiar ethical reflections on medicine to incorporate new ways of thinking about the body and the dilemmas raised by recent developments in medical techniques.Thes...

As a family physician, the act of listening and holding a patient’s story is a vital part of healing for both the patient and the healer. The telling of a story gives the storyteller the ability to shape his/her experience and to gain some control over the events. The generous listening and receiving of the story heals both the storyteller and the doctor/healer. In this collection, Dr. Zink explores the burden, mystery and privilege of doctoring. She shares stories gathered during her twen...

"Together, the writers sound a sobering warning: the American government is an iron fist in a velvet glove whose purpose remains preserving the status quo and enriching the rich."- Publishers WeeklyWhat happens when the techniques of counterinsurgency, developed to squash small skirmishes and guerrilla wars on the border of Empire, blend into the state's apparatus for domestic policing? In Life During Wartime, fifteen authors and activists reflect on the American ...