Law and Catastrophe

Law and Catastrophe PDF Author: Austin Sarat
Publisher: Amherst Series in Law, Jurispr
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
Law and Catastrophe sketches contours of a relatively fresh--yet crucial--terrain of inquiry. It begins the work of developing a jurisprudence of catastrophe.

Law and Catastrophe

Law and Catastrophe PDF Author: Austin Sarat
Publisher: Amherst Series in Law, Jurispr
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Get Book

Book Description
Law and Catastrophe sketches contours of a relatively fresh--yet crucial--terrain of inquiry. It begins the work of developing a jurisprudence of catastrophe.

Catastrophe

Catastrophe PDF Author: Richard A. Posner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195346398
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Catastrophic risks are much greater than is commonly appreciated. Collision with an asteroid, runaway global warming, voraciously replicating nanomachines, a pandemic of gene-spliced smallpox launched by bioterrorists, and a world-ending accident in a high-energy particle accelerator, are among the possible extinction events that are sufficiently likely to warrant careful study. How should we respond to events that, for a variety of psychological and cultural reasons, we find it hard to wrap our minds around? Posner argues that realism about science and scientists, innovative applications of cost-benefit analysis, a scientifically literate legal profession, unprecedented international cooperation, and a pragmatic attitude toward civil liberties are among the keys to coping effectively with the catastrophic risks.

Disaster Law

Disaster Law PDF Author: Kristian Cedervall Lauta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131796439X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Disasters and their management are today central to public and political agendas. Rather than being understood as exclusively acts of God and Nature, natural disasters are increasingly analysed as social vulnerability exposed by natural hazards. A disaster following an earthquake is no longer seen as caused exclusively by tremors, but by poor building standards, ineffective response systems, or miscommunications. This book argues that the shift in how a disaster is spoken of and managed affects fundamental notions of duty, responsibility and justice. The book considers the role of law in disasters and in particular the regulation of disaster response and the allocation of responsibility in the aftermath of disasters. It argues that traditionally law has approached emergencies, including natural disasters, from a dichotomy of normalcy and emergency. In the state of emergency, norms were replaced by exceptions; democracy by dictatorship; and rights by necessity. However, as the disaster becomes socialized the idea of a clear distinction between normalcy and emergency crumbles. Looking at international and domestic legislation from a range of jurisdictions the book shows how natural disasters are increasingly normalized and increasingly objects of legal regulation and interpretation. The book will be of great use and interest to scholars and researchers of legal theory, and natural hazards and disasters.

The Time of Catastrophe

The Time of Catastrophe PDF Author: Christopher Dole
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317013867
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
If catastrophes are, by definition, exceptional events of such magnitude that worlds and lives are dramatically overturned, the question of timing would pose a seemingly straightforward, if not redundant question. The Time of Catastrophe demonstrates the analytic productiveness of this question, arguing that there is much to be gained by interrogating the temporal conceits of conventional understandings of catastrophe and the catastrophic. Bringing together a distinguished, interdisciplinary group of scholars, the book develops a critical language for examining 'catastrophic time', recognizing the central importance of, and offering a set of frameworks for, examining the alluring and elusive qualities of catastrophe. Framed around the ideas of Agamben, Kant and Benjamin, and drawing on philosophy, history, law, political science, anthropology and the arts, this volume seeks to demonstrate how the question of 'catastrophic time' is in fact a question about something much more than the frequency of disasters in our so-called 'Age of Catastrophe'.

Facing Catastrophe

Facing Catastrophe PDF Author: Robert R. M. Verchick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674047915
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
The author argues for a new perspective on disaster law that is based on the principles of environmental protection. His prescription boils down to three simple commands: Go green, be fair, and keep safe. He argues that government must assume a stronger regulatory role in managing natural infrastructure, distributional fairness, and public risk.--[book cover].

Averting Catastrophe

Averting Catastrophe PDF Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479808482
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein examines how to avoid worst-case scenarios The world is increasingly confronted with new challenges related to climate change, globalization, disease, and technology. Governments are faced with having to decide how much risk is worth taking, how much destruction and death can be tolerated, and how much money should be invested in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Lacking full information, should decision-makers focus on avoiding the most catastrophic outcomes? When should extreme measures be taken to prevent as much destruction as possible? Averting Catastrophe explores how governments ought to make decisions in times of imminent disaster. Cass R. Sunstein argues that using the “maximin rule,” which calls for choosing the approach that eliminates the worst of the worst-case scenarios, may be necessary when public officials lack important information, and when the worst-case scenario is too disastrous to contemplate. He underscores this argument by emphasizing the reality of “Knightian uncertainty,” found in circumstances in which it is not possible to assign probabilities to various outcomes. Sunstein brings foundational issues in decision theory in close contact with real problems in regulation, law, and daily life, and considers other potential future risks. At once an approachable introduction to decision-theory and a provocative argument for how governments ought to handle risk, Averting Catastrophe offers a definitive path forward in a world rife with uncertainty.

Catastrophe and Philosophy

Catastrophe and Philosophy PDF Author: David J. Rosner
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498540120
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
This book takes a different approach to the history of philosophy, exploring a neglected theme, the relationship between catastrophe and philosophy. The book analyzes this theme within texts from ancient times to the present, from a global perspective. The book’s focus is timely and relevant today, as the planet is certainly facing a number of impending catastrophes right now, e.g., environmental degradation, overpopulation, the threat of nuclear war, etc.

Disasters and the Law

Disasters and the Law PDF Author: Daniel A. Farber
Publisher: Aspen Law & Business
ISBN: 9780735562288
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Recent hurricanes and other natural disasters demonstrate serious gaps in the legal system and its ability to respond to events of such magnitude. Disasters and the Law: Katrina and Beyond studies disaster response, prevention, and mitigation strategies by integrating knowledge and experience from urban planning, bankruptcy law, and wetlands law.

Law in Crisis

Law in Crisis PDF Author: Ruth A. Miller
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804772428
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Taking natural disaster as the political and legal norm is uncommon. Taking a person who has become unstable and irrational during a disaster as the starting point for legal analysis is equally uncommon. Nonetheless, in Law in Crisis Ruth Miller makes the unsettling case that the law demands an ecstatic subject and that natural disaster is the endpoint to law. Developing an idiosyncratic but compelling new theory of legal and political existence, Miller challenges existing arguments that, whether valedictory or critical, have posited the rational, bounded self as the normative subject of law. By bringing a distinctive, accessible reading of contemporary political philosophy to bear on source material in several European and Middle Eastern languages, Miller constructs a cogent analysis of natural disaster and its role in modern subject formation. In the process, she opens up exciting new lines of inquiry in the fields of law, politics, and gender studies. Law in Crisis represents a promising new development in the interdisciplinary study of law.

Disasters and Democracy

Disasters and Democracy PDF Author: Rutherford H. Platt
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610912632
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
In recent years, the number of presidential declarations of “major disasters” has skyrocketed. Such declarations make stricken areas eligible for federal emergency relief funds that greatly reduce their costs. But is federalizing the costs of disasters helping to lighten the overall burden of disasters or is it making matters worse? Does it remove incentives for individuals and local communities to take measures to protect themselves? Are people more likely to invest in property in hazardous locations in the belief that, if worse comes to worst, the federal government will bail them out? Disasters and Democracy addresses the political response to natural disasters, focusing specifically on the changing role of the federal government from distant observer to immediate responder and principal financier of disaster costs.