Yes, but Just Cause is a discrete, knowable doctrine, and can be rebutted if the employee wants to pursue a claim of wrongful dismissal. You can't just say you have just cause, and have the problem go away. Also, usually only in cases where a transgression is severe (i.e. theft, fraud, lying, etc) is it legal to terminate without a second incident.
Also, in every Canadian province there are employment laws that require a certain period of notice upon termination. The money they give you is in lieu of your notice, which is generally two weeks, but can increase with long-term employment. Also generally, if they terminate you for just cause, they *don't* owe you compensation or notice in lieu of compensation.
IOW, you either get notice or pay in lieu of notice, or termination for just cause.
That's called an MPA -- Masters of Public Administration. It's like an MBA, but without the detailed, textured understanding of the market. Instead, they focus on the human resources aspects of human performance management. They're basically PHB's without even the pretense of business knowledge.
The reason the US should sign on to Kyoto and the ICC is because it *is* in their best long-term interests.
Both of these treaties espouse what the US wants the world to believe are US ideals. The US constantly talks about itself as a world leader in environmentalism and the fight for humane, legal international activity. The US always projects itself as a world leader in the fight for human rights, and insisted on being involved in the development of the many treaties these accords would enforce. But when it comes down to binding itself to the ideals the US has insisted on, it suddenly decides to refuse to be counted. This makes the US look like a cynical, manipulative and untrustworthy nation and puts it in the ranks of the 'rogue states' that the US spends so much time decrying.
How credible does it make the US look when they insist on rules, and then refuse to be bound by them? Does the US really believe it will be convicted by the ICC? Does it really think it will be plunged into economic disaster by Kyoto? Neither of these accords is sufficiently toothsome to seriously injure anything but the overstimulated pride of some members of the US state department. Most of the Americans I've met in my life actually *believe* in the ideas of accountability that these international documents attempt to implement. I's just the PNAC-type cabalists who want to be above the law.
So, to argue that signing on to these agreements "isn't in the best interests of the US" is simply falling for the line fed to you by those who stand to lose something by having their previously unaccountable behaviour measured against a standard that the US itself had a hand in creating. Sure, maybe the US will be 'held accountable' for some of the stuff that has gone on, but do you honestly think the US will not come out smelling like roses? If you think that the US has been involved in some genuinely inhuman behaviour, don't you think it serves your collective conscience better to have it out? Do you think that by not accepting blame for your mistakes that somehow the world holds you in a higher regard?
How is it not in the US's best interest to walk the talk?
So what do you now that glowing animals are not permitted? The Commission didn't pass any laws -- they just declined to give permission. Where does that power come from? Is this decision by the state government ultra vires?
OK. I am missing something here. Where is the issue of the morality of the decision relevant to the discharge of the responsibilities you listed? Perhaps you're reading their mandate from the wrong direction. There is no argument of morality necessary to prohibit something. They simply have to justify the decision in the terms of their enabling legislation -- in this case the safety of the environment and resources. It may be pretty anomolous in the face of the other jurisdictions, but that's the way it goes when you have 50 independent jurisdictions. Maybe those other jusrisdictions have different laws. Maybe the pro-glowfish folks there made better arguments. Maybe the environment is mostly unregulated in some of those jurisdictions. If you want glowing animals to be legal in California, the easiest way to ensure it is to have a law passed that permits them. You're going to have to address the "morality" argument at some point, though, so being dismissive of it is just asking to be beaten by it again and again.
Most of the arguments here are along the lines of "how dare these ignoramuses interfere with the production of glowing fish in the fine state of California? Luddites! Facists!" etc.
Why not try turning that question on its head? You might understand the conclusion a bit more. Begin from the position that you have no right to do something that's not permitted by the law. Then ask: Why should California allow glowing pets? Is it likely to cause a huge economic boom? Perhaps it will make a noticeable impact on the crime rate? Will they alleviate starvation? Reduce the destructive seismic activity? Where is the public interest in permitting it?
Is the best answer that you can come up with "Because we can!" Or the even more credible "Because I want one?" If so, can you be surprised that the Commission decided against it? Even in the face of "complete" scientific certainty, if there's no good reason to permit it, why would they? The fact is that as much as industry biologists would like people to believe they know it all, most regulators don't believe them (unless they've been lobbied intensely). Biotechnology is in its infancy, and the honeymoon days of Science! ended in the 70's. And, the more dangerous a technology apears to be, the more reluctance the public demands from regulators.
If scientists want people to trust them, they need to refrain from climbing on their high horses, and provide more persuasive arguments. Fear is a more powerful motivator than curiousity in the general public. Maybe the Commission was motivated by fear in this case. Guess what? Fear is not illegal. It permeates the law like almost no other emotion. Ignore it, and you'll never have your glowing, talking, housecleaning fruit bat.
They blocked it on the basis of a moral argument. It is not the Dept of Fish and Game Commission's job to block the sale of genetically modified fish on a moral argument. They completely disregarded all scientific facts surrounding the situation.
And why is it not the Commission's "job" to block the sale on a moral argument? Do the legislation or regulations specifically preclude moral considerations, i.e. "The Commission shall not consider any argument not directly related to scientific data?" Usually, these decisions are based on questions like "do the regulations prohibit this", "does this pose an unreasonable threat to the status quo" or "is this in the public interest?" Sure, Commissioners might have found moral arguments persuasive, but they probably have the jurisdiction to be persuaded. If decisions were made solely on numbers, then there would be no power of discretion, and no reason for any sort of decision-making process (i.e. the numbers would make the decision).
The law is merely a system of dispute resolution -- and as such is dedicated to providing a satisfactory resolution to the persons wronged. In the western conception of criminal law, the persons wronged are the "community". In our modern experience, this means the state. It's not unlike the system of standards set up by the IOS -- somewhat abstracted, and meant for all intents and purposes to provide a threshold of behaviour. Not an ideal, but a minimum -- based on gut reaction.
Systems such as the US's ill-advised "three strikes" law, and Canada's more contextual Dangerous Offender law are an attempt by legislators to address their admitted bafflement concerning issues of pathological behaviour. Pathology is not the point. Punishment and isolation are the point. Once a person emerges from prison, they are (aside from perhaps a loss of voting privileges) no different from Ghandi in the "eyes of the law". Until they act again. An offender registry is an attempt by the public to address the reality of pathology in the face of the formal equality granted to everyone -- even those for whom criminal activity is necessary to their identity, if not compulsive.
The law in "post-enlightenment" Western thought (I'm not competent to comment on the law in Eastern thought) is an attempt to codify social boundaries between what are, philospohically, individual entities frozen in time -- mostly divorced from their historical and social context. Rational actors. If there is to be any value in the concept of formal equality and universality, it must be applied to those even with an obvious penchant for harming others to achieve their own ends. A registry, as simple-minded as it may be, addresses the need of people to deal with the disconnect between the political requirements of society and the pragmatic need to address the possible inherent risks of the people in their midst.
Clearly there is room for meaningful change, but it's simply not possible in the social context I've described. In our world, everyone is simply who they are right now -- not who they may have been or who they might become.
I didn't mean to imply that a public registry is necessarily a good predictor of future behaviour, or that it doesn't have harmful effects on the persons listed there. My point was that the simple listing of criminal criminal convictions provides insufficient information to the public. Sadly, the public is probably not prepared to view the information in context in many cases. I was responding to the other poster's suggestion that there was no good reason to single out pedophiles when killers don't get listed. Because of the nature of the different crimes as they are constructed technically within the criminal law, simply listing convictions is implying that both groups behave pathologically. This is not necessarily true.
Another example that comes to mind would be a listing of everyone who is conviceted of auto theft, and a parallel listing of everyone convicted of vehicular homicide. One pretty much always requires intent, whereas the other does not always require it. One implies a different level of criminality than the other -- but I fear the public would not recognize such "technicalities."
People don't get convicted of criminal acts simply because they are bad people. How many soccer moms are going to know how to step beyond their visceral fears and realize this -- especially since society makes no efforts to encourage them to?
As for rehabilitation...well, all I can say is I don't think we really do believe in it.
I agree generally with your assessment of the dubious benefits of releasing information to a public ill-equipped to assess it. However, I think there's an important difference between homocide and sexual assault that makes releasing that infromation less valuable in one instance than the other. Basically, the difference between those two crimes is that homocide is often not premeditated. Sexual assualt almost always is.
So, if you group the offenders, you are going to find many more homocides who did so in the course of some other criminal act, and did not actually set out to kill anyone. They just needed the implicit threat of violence to achieve some other goal, and the circumstances caused them to unleash that threat. Many, many people who kill other people do so negligently or even accidentally. The exception is obviously the pathological serial type killer, but the vast majority of people convicted of homocide are not of that cohort.
OTOH, it's pretty unusual to find someone who inadvertantly or negigently commits sexual assault -- especially against minors. You might argue (although the law will generally not support you) that your situation with an adult was aggravated by mixed messages or altered perceptions brought on by mental illness, drugs or alcohol, but if you want to sexually assault a child, you have to set out specifically to do just that.
My point is that a list of convicted killers is not going to provide you with the same sort of implicit motivations as a list of convicted pedophiles. Or a list of convicted sexual assaulters, for that matter. So, the usefulness of a public registry is related to the nature of the criminal acts themselves.
Yeah, but the constitution requires someone to enforce it. It doesn't enforce itself. Unless the legislators or the courts are willing to do so, the constitution is no more meaningful than a post at Slashdot.
My feelings on this are simple: do it right or don't do it at all.
Who's to say that they aren't doing it right? In who's service is the law meant to operate? You the independent inventor? Or the hugely-more-powerful IP lobby made up of multinationals seeking to consolidate their complete control of the marketplace? Who benefits from the status-quo? The proof is usually in the pudding.
As to an economist "proving" something... well, give me a break. An economist can throw light on things, and come up with good ideas, but the idea of them proving things is, in most cases, absurd.
Oh, I don't know. I think economists have been proving for years that if you spend enough money to pay for enough jibberish, then greed, bald power-gathering and exploitation can be made to resemble forces of nature.
It became the core practice of a huge number of lawyers, frankly -- mostly in the corporate law practice, but also in personal injury. Legal positioning has become part of the risk management strategies of most corporate business models now. Rarely is is the core of the business model, however (as appears to be the case with SCO).
As for one poster's comment "I don't believe in mental disorders", that is an astoundingly unthought-out concept. That concept presumes that, of all the things that can go wrong with the human body, the brain never breaks.
I'm with you, JetScootr. Honestly, the only people I've ever known to utter statements like the one you give as an example are people who, it turns out, are deathly insecure about their own possible problems. Sometimes they're people who have "mastered" their demons, and believe that a sheer force of will can overcome anything personal. Nonsense! They make these pronouncements from the greatest heights of hubris. It's like people who lose 10 lbs by checking their bad eating habits declaring people with hyperthyroidism as weak because it's not as easy for them to lose 100 lbs.
Actually, lawyers are are only licenced to practice within their jurisdiction. AFAIK, there is no law society or equivalent for space. Lawyers cannot practice law in space (unless the place they happen to be is deemed to be someone's national territory, in which the laws of judicial "standing" for that jurisdiction would apply). It seems that the article is referring to the property issues arising from mining in places where there is no property law. Since space doesn't even have the equivalent of high-seas maritime law, lawyers won't have much to do in space. Except fly out of airlocks, if slashdotters ae crewing the spacecraft...
Well, you're describing a different network of friends than I have. Even so, I can imagine you're probably right in that situation. There should be some sort of "flag" that people can attach to their friends, that the attachee can't see (like "I barely know this guy").
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but Just Cause is a discrete, knowable doctrine, and can be rebutted if the employee wants to pursue a claim of wrongful dismissal. You can't just say you have just cause, and have the problem go away. Also, usually only in cases where a transgression is severe (i.e. theft, fraud, lying, etc) is it legal to terminate without a second incident.
Also, in every Canadian province there are employment laws that require a certain period of notice upon termination. The money they give you is in lieu of your notice, which is generally two weeks, but can increase with long-term employment. Also generally, if they terminate you for just cause, they *don't* owe you compensation or notice in lieu of compensation.
IOW, you either get notice or pay in lieu of notice, or termination for just cause.
Kessel Run. And you're right -- 3/2c is .5 past lightspeed. Whatever that means.
OK, I'll bite.
The reason the US should sign on to Kyoto and the ICC is because it *is* in their best long-term interests.
Both of these treaties espouse what the US wants the world to believe are US ideals. The US constantly talks about itself as a world leader in environmentalism and the fight for humane, legal international activity. The US always projects itself as a world leader in the fight for human rights, and insisted on being involved in the development of the many treaties these accords would enforce. But when it comes down to binding itself to the ideals the US has insisted on, it suddenly decides to refuse to be counted. This makes the US look like a cynical, manipulative and untrustworthy nation and puts it in the ranks of the 'rogue states' that the US spends so much time decrying.
How credible does it make the US look when they insist on rules, and then refuse to be bound by them? Does the US really believe it will be convicted by the ICC? Does it really think it will be plunged into economic disaster by Kyoto? Neither of these accords is sufficiently toothsome to seriously injure anything but the overstimulated pride of some members of the US state department. Most of the Americans I've met in my life actually *believe* in the ideas of accountability that these international documents attempt to implement. I's just the PNAC-type cabalists who want to be above the law.
So, to argue that signing on to these agreements "isn't in the best interests of the US" is simply falling for the line fed to you by those who stand to lose something by having their previously unaccountable behaviour measured against a standard that the US itself had a hand in creating. Sure, maybe the US will be 'held accountable' for some of the stuff that has gone on, but do you honestly think the US will not come out smelling like roses? If you think that the US has been involved in some genuinely inhuman behaviour, don't you think it serves your collective conscience better to have it out? Do you think that by not accepting blame for your mistakes that somehow the world holds you in a higher regard?
How is it not in the US's best interest to walk the talk?
So what do you now that glowing animals are not permitted? The Commission didn't pass any laws -- they just declined to give permission. Where does that power come from? Is this decision by the state government ultra vires?
It looks like a permit scheme to me.
OK. I am missing something here. Where is the issue of the morality of the decision relevant to the discharge of the responsibilities you listed? Perhaps you're reading their mandate from the wrong direction. There is no argument of morality necessary to prohibit something. They simply have to justify the decision in the terms of their enabling legislation -- in this case the safety of the environment and resources. It may be pretty anomolous in the face of the other jurisdictions, but that's the way it goes when you have 50 independent jurisdictions. Maybe those other jusrisdictions have different laws. Maybe the pro-glowfish folks there made better arguments. Maybe the environment is mostly unregulated in some of those jurisdictions. If you want glowing animals to be legal in California, the easiest way to ensure it is to have a law passed that permits them. You're going to have to address the "morality" argument at some point, though, so being dismissive of it is just asking to be beaten by it again and again.
Why not try turning that question on its head? You might understand the conclusion a bit more. Begin from the position that you have no right to do something that's not permitted by the law. Then ask: Why should California allow glowing pets? Is it likely to cause a huge economic boom? Perhaps it will make a noticeable impact on the crime rate? Will they alleviate starvation? Reduce the destructive seismic activity? Where is the public interest in permitting it?
Is the best answer that you can come up with "Because we can!" Or the even more credible "Because I want one?" If so, can you be surprised that the Commission decided against it? Even in the face of "complete" scientific certainty, if there's no good reason to permit it, why would they? The fact is that as much as industry biologists would like people to believe they know it all, most regulators don't believe them (unless they've been lobbied intensely). Biotechnology is in its infancy, and the honeymoon days of Science! ended in the 70's. And, the more dangerous a technology apears to be, the more reluctance the public demands from regulators.
If scientists want people to trust them, they need to refrain from climbing on their high horses, and provide more persuasive arguments. Fear is a more powerful motivator than curiousity in the general public. Maybe the Commission was motivated by fear in this case. Guess what? Fear is not illegal. It permeates the law like almost no other emotion. Ignore it, and you'll never have your glowing, talking, housecleaning fruit bat.
And why is it not the Commission's "job" to block the sale on a moral argument? Do the legislation or regulations specifically preclude moral considerations, i.e. "The Commission shall not consider any argument not directly related to scientific data?" Usually, these decisions are based on questions like "do the regulations prohibit this", "does this pose an unreasonable threat to the status quo" or "is this in the public interest?" Sure, Commissioners might have found moral arguments persuasive, but they probably have the jurisdiction to be persuaded. If decisions were made solely on numbers, then there would be no power of discretion, and no reason for any sort of decision-making process (i.e. the numbers would make the decision).
Systems such as the US's ill-advised "three strikes" law, and Canada's more contextual Dangerous Offender law are an attempt by legislators to address their admitted bafflement concerning issues of pathological behaviour. Pathology is not the point. Punishment and isolation are the point. Once a person emerges from prison, they are (aside from perhaps a loss of voting privileges) no different from Ghandi in the "eyes of the law". Until they act again. An offender registry is an attempt by the public to address the reality of pathology in the face of the formal equality granted to everyone -- even those for whom criminal activity is necessary to their identity, if not compulsive.
The law in "post-enlightenment" Western thought (I'm not competent to comment on the law in Eastern thought) is an attempt to codify social boundaries between what are, philospohically, individual entities frozen in time -- mostly divorced from their historical and social context. Rational actors. If there is to be any value in the concept of formal equality and universality, it must be applied to those even with an obvious penchant for harming others to achieve their own ends. A registry, as simple-minded as it may be, addresses the need of people to deal with the disconnect between the political requirements of society and the pragmatic need to address the possible inherent risks of the people in their midst.
Clearly there is room for meaningful change, but it's simply not possible in the social context I've described. In our world, everyone is simply who they are right now -- not who they may have been or who they might become.
Another example that comes to mind would be a listing of everyone who is conviceted of auto theft, and a parallel listing of everyone convicted of vehicular homicide. One pretty much always requires intent, whereas the other does not always require it. One implies a different level of criminality than the other -- but I fear the public would not recognize such "technicalities."
People don't get convicted of criminal acts simply because they are bad people. How many soccer moms are going to know how to step beyond their visceral fears and realize this -- especially since society makes no efforts to encourage them to?
As for rehabilitationSo, if you group the offenders, you are going to find many more homocides who did so in the course of some other criminal act, and did not actually set out to kill anyone. They just needed the implicit threat of violence to achieve some other goal, and the circumstances caused them to unleash that threat. Many, many people who kill other people do so negligently or even accidentally. The exception is obviously the pathological serial type killer, but the vast majority of people convicted of homocide are not of that cohort.
OTOH, it's pretty unusual to find someone who inadvertantly or negigently commits sexual assault -- especially against minors. You might argue (although the law will generally not support you) that your situation with an adult was aggravated by mixed messages or altered perceptions brought on by mental illness, drugs or alcohol, but if you want to sexually assault a child, you have to set out specifically to do just that.
My point is that a list of convicted killers is not going to provide you with the same sort of implicit motivations as a list of convicted pedophiles. Or a list of convicted sexual assaulters, for that matter. So, the usefulness of a public registry is related to the nature of the criminal acts themselves.
I can just imagine the look on the dealer's face.
No, no... judges don't let their opinions affect their approach to the law. What was I thinking?
To be fair, I think it would be fair to pay with 50 "presumable" $1000 bills encased in a big blob of resin shaped like a sucker.
Yeah, but the constitution requires someone to enforce it. It doesn't enforce itself. Unless the legislators or the courts are willing to do so, the constitution is no more meaningful than a post at Slashdot.
The United States hardly has the monopoly in the rights marketplace. You just have the highest prices.
It became the core practice of a huge number of lawyers, frankly -- mostly in the corporate law practice, but also in personal injury. Legal positioning has become part of the risk management strategies of most corporate business models now. Rarely is is the core of the business model, however (as appears to be the case with SCO).
My favourite theory is that Bombadil is actually Tolkien.
Get real!
Ahem. That's Vic Tayback .
Actually, lawyers are are only licenced to practice within their jurisdiction. AFAIK, there is no law society or equivalent for space. Lawyers cannot practice law in space (unless the place they happen to be is deemed to be someone's national territory, in which the laws of judicial "standing" for that jurisdiction would apply). It seems that the article is referring to the property issues arising from mining in places where there is no property law. Since space doesn't even have the equivalent of high-seas maritime law, lawyers won't have much to do in space. Except fly out of airlocks, if slashdotters ae crewing the spacecraft...
Well, you're describing a different network of friends than I have. Even so, I can imagine you're probably right in that situation. There should be some sort of "flag" that people can attach to their friends, that the attachee can't see (like "I barely know this guy").