Air Pollution Materials Damage: Economics and the Law

Recent concerns about the adverse effects of acid rain have increased the attention given to materials damage effects from air pollution. This article surveys the economics of valuing materials damage effects and relates these methods to the technical aspects of estimating actual damages. The current statutory and regulatory framework within which materials damage effects are considered is also reviewed. The key weaknesses of the relevant sections of the Clean Air Act, in terms of effectively using economic and technical information on materials damage, are identified. The article concludes with several general observations concerning the regulation of materials damage effects.     

A Biographical Glimpse of William Sealy Gosset

Federal statistical coordination is dead. After four decades of episodic but declining support, the Office of Management and Budget has dismantled its limited capacity for statistical policy and coordination. Failure to reestablish a strong central statistical policy function as a separate unit in the Executive Office of the President will slowly but inevitably lead to a decline in the quality, integration, and relevance of national statistics, to say nothing of the waste of statistical resources. There is an immediate, quite serious threat to the integrity of federal statistics. OMB statistical policy personnel and decisions are now absorbed in an organization devoted in fact to regulatory policy and paperwork burden reduction. Forty years of periodic disasters have become an intolerable national disgrace.     

Why Health Care Reform Now? Strategic Framing and the Passage of Obamacare

Economic reform and health care reform were both focal points outlined in President Obama's policy agenda, with increasing pressure to address economic and social insecurity given that President Obama entered office during the Great Recession (2007–09). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as ‘Obamacare’) successfully passed in March 2010 in the context of the economic crisis. We argue that the strategic framing of the economic crisis, through reasoning and arguments linking health care reform with economic downfall, is important in understanding the successful passage of Obamacare, and that this is reflected through strategic frames in speeches delivered by the President on health care reform. Health care reform has been successful not in spite of but rather because of the economic crisis of 2008, that allowed President Obama to use a strategic frame focusing on costs and economic problems. The two main frames identified are the ‘market’ and ‘rights’ frames. President Obama's strategic frames specifically surrounding the economic and cost‐containment priority of health care reform are categorized as a ‘market’ frame in this article. He used this frame until the passage of the law in 2010, when the frame shifted to ‘rights’ frames, largely portrayed through anecdotes and focused on the concept of ‘access’ to care rather than the ‘cost’ of care. This is observable through tracking speeches and statements made in support of health care reform between 2009 and 2013.     

我国慈善信托法律规制的变迁与完善

慈善信托是当代慈善发展的基本运作模式,是调动市场力量与社会资源参与慈善的有力工具。《信托法》上的公益信托名实不符且不能适应慈善信托的发展需要,为此《慈善法》最终专章规定了“慈善信托”以期矫正。在《信托法》有关规定尚未正式宣布失效的背景下,慈善信托配套法规政策的出台完善是应重点关注并需要审慎处理的焦点问题。应本着《慈善法》的理念目标、基本原则,从放宽认定标准、设置监管分工、明确受托人、监察人的资格及权利义务、完善扶持促进政策等方面进一步提升具体制度机制的科学性与操作性,促进中国慈善信托的持续健康发展。     

澳大利亚《信息自由法》评析

政府信息和文件一直被视为是政府机关的财产而由所掌握信息的机构来决定是否对其进行公开。随着社会的发展和进步,知情权的概念逐渐形成共识,并被国际社会看作是一项基本人权得以保障,在新闻媒体和公众的推动下,澳大利亚开始重视保护公众知情权,并相应地制定了有关信息自由的法律以公开政府信息,保证公民知情权的实现。     

Hygiene, Medicine, and Modernity in Korea, 1876–1910

Modernity in relation to medicine and the body is central to discussions on modernity in Korea. I have chosen to write this paper I have already penned several writings that are related to the topic: modern hygiene, cleanliness, medical service, and medicine. First topic is about the contrast between premodernity and modernity by comparing the prevalence of cholera in the early nineteenth and the early twentieth century. I discussed the new Western hygiene to control cholera decisively contributing to the destruction of the Confucian worldview and the generation of a new colonial modern order as well as preventing an epidemic, cholera. Second topic is about the dichotomy between cleanliness—cultured and uncleanliness—barbarity. Because it was related to the five senses, the discourse of uncleanliness and cleanliness could bring about an immediate effect, which made it the most elementary and primary discourse of modernity in Korea. Third topic is about premodern bodies in topknots and modern bodies in short hair. From among the incidents and topics that I studied then, the most impressive and extreme case regarding the relationship between the body and hygiene was that of the Cut Topknot Act (斷髮令). According to this decree, there were two main reasons for cutting off topknots: hygiene and convenience. Underlying them is the idea that long hair harms political reform and national enrichment. Indeed, this legislation had served as the battleground for a fierce war between modern standards and premodern traditions. Fourth topic is about the modernizing phase of health care system in Korea between 1876 and 1910. The health care system in Korea underwent tremendous changes from 1876 to 1910. In this process, the recently imported Western practices gradually came to occupy the center and existing practices were delegated to the periphery. Final topic is about the sanitation movement that believers of Ch’ ǒntokyo initiated around the twentieth century. This voluntary movement was greatly different from the two external and forced modernizations by Japanese imperialism and Western missionaries.

美国《国家环境政策法》的实施效果与历史局限性

美国<国家环境政策法>制定于20世纪60年代,作为国际上最早出现的环境基本法,它在环境保护理念、制度和程序构建等方面有突破性的规定,至今仍能体现立法者的前瞻性.该法已经有三十多年的实施历程,在环境影响评价、信息公开、公众参与、政府综合决策等方面,既有成功经验,也有失败的教训,为后人研究环境基本法提供了一个非常有价值的活标本.     

台湾地区《环境基本法》评析

2002年12月11日,台湾地区公布施行了《环境基本法》。由于《环境基本法》的公布施行是在台湾地区主要环境保护相关法规均已公布施行后才制定公布,法规架构沿袭了台湾地区1970年代的《公害防治基本法》（草案）及1980年代的《环境保护基本法》（草案）,是否能够处理廿一世纪的前瞻性环境议题,符合“永续发展”的需求,仍有疑问。本文尝试评析该法,简介《环境基本法》的立法背景及沿革,检讨《环境基本法》的实施现状以及评析法规内容,提出本法的不足之处,最后并尝试提出迎向新世纪的环境基本法应具备的架构及内容。     

科学与指向价值的行动:韦伯《科学作为天职》一百年

本文基于韦伯《科学作为天职》的演讲,将Wissenschaft als Beruf的含义重新置于韦伯科学学说的思考脉络之中。本文认为,该演讲通过“为科学而科学”的“意义”问题指涉每个人如何承担自己的价值立场问题,此问题和韦伯科学学说中行动如何承担价值的主题密切相关。一方面,每个人的价值感受是价值行动的起点,不能通过任何伦理义务将之夷平。另一方面,这样的价值感受若不通过价值理性化,就既不会变成塑造价值的力量,也有碍于行动者明白和掌握为价值而行动的自由是什么。二者之间的紧张使韦伯反对任何有机体学说意义上的文明和共同体,转而从“求真”这一充满人为努力的途径来实现行动者对价值真正的“开明”。在这一途径中,诉诸于观念类型的行动者的“开明”是他将习俗和文明由异己的传统变成自己的根本价值立场的关键。但本文结尾表明,韦伯的这个立场将所有的传统都变成了异己的传统,因此留下了现代社会科学如何面对价值的共同体的根本问题。     

言语行为理论视阈下的人物对话翻译

人物对话作为文学作品的重要组成部分,是作家为了表达人物心理意图,塑造人物个性形象,引出行为动作,开展故事情节而刻意安排的。人物对话翻译的好坏直接影响到文学作品的整体翻译。言语行为理论为理解并翻译人物对话提供了很好的视角,译者通过分析言内行为、言外行为和言后行为之间的关系使人物对话翻译更加准确生动。