Responsibility Matters

Individual responsibility is an issue at the heart of public debates surrounding justice today - this book explores the philosophical implications of this hugely topical contemporary debate.

Corporate scandals and lack of confidence in our largest institutions mean that corporate social responsibility (CSR) now matters more than ever. Encroaching on CSR are concepts such as corporate sustainability and corporate citizenship, and older concerns with business ethics, business in society and the ethical corporation. This significantly revised and updated version of The Planetary Bargain explains the relations among these concepts and reflects the author's new ideas and their new context. Enterprises across the world are waking up to the need for social responsibility towards shareholders and potential investors, managers and other employees, customers, business partners and contractors or suppliers, the natural environment and the communities within which they operate, including national governments and non-governmental organizations. Drawing on case studies of international companies and analysis of research from the past two decades, The Planetary Bargain shows how corporations can preserve their profitability while treating all stakeholders ethically and responsibly. It suggests a cooperative CSR strategy which creates prosperity for corporations and for the people they serve. It presents the case for a worldwide agreement, or 'planetary bargain', between private and public sectors, arguing that it is good for business and essential for future prosperity and stability.

Most of us spend a fair amount of time trying to avoid responsibility. That's not too astounding. What is surprising, says Peter French, is that we tend to dodge the good variety as well as the bad.

This authoritative Commentary on the recast Regulation 2019/1111 on matters of matrimonial and parental responsibility presents a deep analysis of the Regulation and is authored by leading experts in family law and private international law. Employing a granular, article-by-article approach, the Commentary acts as a detailed reference point on the uniform jurisdiction rules for divorce, legal separation and marriage annulment, as well as for disputes over parental responsibility with an international element, including child abduction.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

This book argues that Congress's process for making law is as corrosive to the nation as unchecked deficit spending. David Schoenbrod shows that Congress and the president, instead of making the laws that govern us, generally give bureaucrats the power to make laws through agency regulations. Our elected "lawmakers" then take credit for proclaiming popular but inconsistent statutory goals and later blame the inevitable burdens and disappointments on the unelected bureaucrats. The 1970 Clean Air Act, for example, gave the Environmental Protection Agency the impossible task of making law that would satisfy both industry and environmentalists. Delegation allows Congress and the president to wield power by pressuring agency lawmakers in private, but shed responsibility by avoiding the need to personally support or oppose the laws, as they must in enacting laws themselves. Schoenbrod draws on his experience as an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council and on studies of how delegation actually works to show that this practice produces a regulatory system so cumbersome that it cannot provide the protection that people need, so large that it needlessly stifles the economy, and so complex that it keeps the voters from knowing whom to hold accountable for the consequences. Contending that delegation is unnecessary and unconstitutional, Schoenbrod has written the first book that shows how, as a practical matter, delegation can be stopped.

Personal responsibility is now very much on the political agenda. But what is personal responsibility? Why do we care about it? And what, if anything, should governments do to promote it? This book explores the idea that individuals bear a special responsibility for the success or failure of their own lives looking at philosophical theories, political ideologies, and public opinion on the subject. Alexander Brown lends support to a recent move in political philosophy to deal with real world problems and shows how philosophy can contribute to public democratic debate on pressing issues of personal responsibility. Articulate, provocative, and stimulating, this timely book will make a significant contribution to one of the most important debates of our time.

Exploring many of the most pertinent ethical and economic issues of our time, this book offers both new insights and innovative solutions. Including case studies of international companies and analysis of research, Michael Hopkins addresses global commercial and social problems and examines the question of corporate social responsibility. His presentation of the case for a worldwide agreement or `planetary bargain' between the private and public sectors is both a challenge and a potential source of hope for all those engaged in business in the last years of the twentieth century.