Focusing on coltan, Chapter 9 describes how increasingly complex global commodity chains became entangled with conflict in Central Africa. For the majority of consumers of electronics downstream, most of what happens in Central Africa remains out of sight and out of mind. But the violence of supply chains now reaches into many corners of that region, casting people in the dangerous role of foot soldiers of globalization in a context where the wealth they carry is often violently contested. This chapter shows how the disaggregated and patchwork-like nature of global supply chains makes them ideally suited to latch onto eastern Congo’s equally dispersed and fragmented artisanal mining economy. Today’s mineral supply chains, unlike their twentieth-century predecessors, are able to accommodate -- indeed work through -- forms of ordered anarchy such as are found in contemporary Central Africa. In accommodating local forms of violence and competing claims to order-making, they more closely resemble the fragmented political order that emerged around the pre-colonial caravan trade than colonial-era systems of monopolies on the extraction and long-distance conveyance of minerals. However much ongoing supply chain initiatives promise corridor-like, closed-pipeline solutions, they will always remain leakier than the integrated industrial extractive machineries they replaced.

In Chapter 7, I describe a committed research praxis where scientists strive to articulate the community-level value commitments that define good science, and to evaluate the degree to which particular scientific activities and products reflect those commitments. I argue that one primary way for psychologists to engage in this sort of committed praxis is by asking questions together in a place. That is, we can subject our work to insistent moral attention through collective and locally situated forms of reflection and responsibility. I suggest that these forms could include reflexivity, transparency, participatory and community-oriented research practices, political, historical, and material analyses of our research traditions and products, resistance to overgeneralized and “scaled” forms of neo-liberal management, and other practices that help anchor research work to the local and communal commitments that justify it.

The authority to prescribe raises a range of important ethical concerns. This chapter provides an account of the ethical issues in independent and supplementary prescribing with an overview of ethical frameworks, medical and non-medical prescribers. The core of ethical considerations of prescribing is the imbalance of power between the prescriber and patient where there is the potential for abuse and the power to control. As such, links to governing bodies are included with specific relationships between ethics and codes to remind practitioners that objective external standards are necessary to ensure they have a frame of reference against which to judge their actions

Style is notoriously difficult to define; there are many different literary styles and many different ways of understanding style. This chapter discusses several of these possibilities and suggests that the work of style will be best understood by close attention to the multiple technical resources that constitute any style. This kind of attention will show that style is not separate to meaning, not merely an adornment or accessory to it, for style is inseparable from expression. In particular, it is style that generates meaning and implication, over and above the apparently paraphraseable sense. Although some Victorian novelists stated that the ideal style effaced its own presence, Victorian novels are more aware of their verbal artistry, and indeed their artifice, than some critics allow or than the ideal of transparency permits. Such a self-understanding is helpfully writ large in novels that dramatize a writer’s development of their literary style, including George Meredith’s Diana of the Crossways, Charlotte Bronte’s Villette and Thomas Hardy’s The Hand of Ethelberta.

This chapter evaluates the unique obligations governments have when they commit citizen data to cloud service providers. In particular, the chapter focuses on how the responsibilities of governments are different than other types of cloud computing users focusing on specific procurement obligations, and other legal requirements.

The chapter also evaluates issues related to “data sovereignty”, outsourcing of government functions, and the potential risk to citizens from outsourcing critical infrastructure. Further, barriers that governments face when procuring cloud computing services including data localization restrictions, difficulties in comparing costs to traditional IT services, and ill-suited contract templates designed for traditional IT-outsourcing being applied to cloud computing services.

The chapter also explains that since operations or services are outsourced to cloud, governments must have the means to monitor them in order to retain a certain level of control over the operations they are outsourcing. The chapter examines government procurement programs in the United States, United Kingdom, and European initiatives to adopt cloud computing at the government level.

Corruption is a current and complex problem with significant effects on trade. For example, at the time of writing the US Justice Department was intervening in a case against a large a pharmaceutical company. It was alleged that the company was responsible for a scheme of drug price increases in the US, as it “ … bribed doctors and their staffs to increase sales.” The price of the drug, addressing infant seizure disorder, had increased 97,000% since the year 2000. Also, many of the affected sales were driven by Medicare reimbursements.1 This case suggests that corruption may: Corruption is also a concern in a global perspective. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres, when addressing the UN Security Council on the issue of corruption in post-war territories, stated that “Corruption robs schools, hospitals and others of vitally needed funds,” with negative effects on people’s rights, foreign investment, and the economy. Based on the World Economic Forum, the cost of corruption is at least $2.6 trillion, or five percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP). According to the World Bank, businesses and individuals pay more than $1 trillion in bribes every year.2 Finally, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), through its Clean Government Initiative, has identified at least four negative effects of corruption, namely: The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) builds upon international instruments on corruption. It addresses them differently, by adhering to their principles, encouraging their observance, or mandating their ratification or accession. The list of instruments includes (Art. 26.6)

In today’s broader context of resistance to the expansion of international trade, particularly in the United States (with its rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)) and the United Kingdom (with its rejection of the European Union), the regulatory coherence chapter of the TPP is highly relevant. Its cross-cutting sectoral approach and use of industry-specific annexes to reduce technical or regulatory barriers to trade is likely to serve as the model for all future multilateral trade treaties. Moreover, even though the TPP was rejected by the Trump administration, it later rose as the CPTPP. The United States may still participate in some form. Recently, the United Kingdom expressed an interest in becoming a party. Ambitious trade deals like the TPP sometimes take decades to finalize. In any case, both the substantive provisions and the architectural structure of a highly negotiated free trade agreement (FTA) like the TPP are quite enduring, so the TPP’s regulatory coherence mechanics are likely to re-surface in future FTAs. In other words, the current form of the TPP will serve as a model for any future TPP or similar mega-regional FTA.

Every day, millions of administrative decisions take place in the public sector: building permits, land use, tax deductions, social welfare support, and access to healthcare, etc. When such decisions affect the rights and duties of individual citizens and/or businesses, they must meet the requirements set out in administrative law. Of those is the requirement that the body responsible for the decision must provide an explanation of the decision to the recipient. As many administrative decisions are being considered for automation through algorithmic decision-making (ADM) systems, it raises questions about what kind of explanations they need to provide. Fearing the opaqueness of the dreaded black box of these ADM systems, countless ethical guidelines have been produced, often of a very general character. Rather than adding yet another ethical consideration to what in our view is an already overcrowded ethics-based literature, we focus on a concrete legal approach, and ask: what does the legal requirement to explain a decision in public administration actually entail in regards to both human and computer-aided decision-making? We argue that, instead of pursuing a new approach to explanation, retaining the existing standard (the human standard) for explanation already enshrined in administrative law will be more meaningful and safe. To add to this we introduce what we call an ‘administrative Turing test’ which could be used to continually validate and strengthen computationally assisted decision-making, providing a benchmark on which future applications of ADM can be measured.

The rules of the SPS Chapter confirm and reinforce the rules under the WTO SPS Agreement by incorporating not only relevant provisions of the WTO SPS Agreement but also decisions of the WTO SPS Committee. Although most of the “SPS Agreement plus” rules are procedural in nature, they are expected to contribute to the enhanced governance of SPS measures in the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, the SPS Chapter would improve the transparency regarding the adoption and implementation of SPS measures. While the SPS Chapter requires improved transparency among the TPP parties, TPP parties may consider it more efficient and appropriate to take the same transparency measures to non-parties as well. If they apply the transparency measures required by the SPS Chapter on a nondiscriminatory basis, the impact of the SPS Chapter would extend beyond the region. Moreover, if the SPS Chapter is successfully implemented, it could lead to the creation of new rules on SPS measures under other FTAs and the WTO.

With new forms of private power in the Algorithmic Society – a bottom-up approach could help next to the top-down approach taken by Constitutional States. This chapter investigates to what extent principles of consumer law can serve as leverage when artificial intelligence (AI) used for mutual transactions on digital platforms leads to adverse consequences for consumers. Constitutional States are keen to advance the digital transformation. They look to find a balance between promoting innovation and freedom of contract with robust consumer protection. Following an introduction of technology notions, this Chapter explores whether the use of machine learning, AI and automated decision making (ADM) in private law transactions creates a dichotomy between digital platforms and consumer protection regulation. What is left of principles of contract law, if contracts are almost completely automated and the negotiations process leaves no room for divergence? Which legal principles could serve to provide trust to private individuals in the pre-contractual and the contractual phase of transactions on AI-driven digital platforms? The author discusses a toolkit for regulators to empower the weaker parties on algorithmic-driven digital platforms, in the contract negotiations and the governance phase. Given the extensive body of European consumer regulation, this Chapter applies EU regulation.

Transparency is central in current policy debates about international law. One sees it being waved as a flag or wielded as a sword in debates on the legitimacy of international institutions and their role in global governance. Its proponents talk about ‘sunlight being the best disinfectant’, while its opponents see it as changing modern diplomacy. Due to their crucial role in gatekeeping international commitments, these debates have also touched on the issue of transparency in international adjudicating bodies. This has led to fruitful legal and normative analysis of the state of the art of transparency in international courts. This chapter attempts to contribute to these debates by assessing three understudied aspects of transparency in the international adjudication debate. Firstly, adding to the previous literature, this chapter attempts to make a different, though cumulative, case for why transparency in international adjudication matters. It does so by showing how most theories of compliance with international law as well as theories of compliance with international legal rulings are very much information-dependent. If one takes the step of accepting that more transparency leads to more information, then whether or not a dispute is open to the general public becomes relevant for reasons beyond its normative value. It also becomes a question of compliance. Secondly, in line with previous literature on the topic, this chapter provides a theoretically informed survey of the design of procedural rules associated with transparency at the main global adjudicating bodies. Specifically, it does so by assessing design features, which are expected to impact transparency outcomes: whether the rule is mandatory or a default-rule, status quo option; agenda-setters and the scope for possible shifts from the status quo; and the number of veto-players. Finally, the chapter goes beyond the rules of international adjudicating bodies and assesses transparency outcomes in 1,248 disputes at eight major adjudicating bodies across several issue areas. Using online disclosures by international adjudicating bodies as an empirical case study, this chapter provides a novel and comprehensive map of de facto transparency in international disputes. By doing so, it shows that rule-based assessments of how transparent an international adjudicating body is may be misleading.

Chapter 5 analyses how the United States’ environmental information regime, set out in the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 (FOIA), has guaranteed the right of access to environmental information. Similar to Chapter 4, this chapter provides an overview of the FOIA regime and concludes that the US’ conceptualisation of the right is different from that of the Aarhus Convention in two key ways: first, the FOIA regime is primarily based on promoting transparency rather than protecting the environment; second, the regime has adopted an identity-driven conceptualisation that emphasises the role of information disseminators. This alternative conceptualisation does operate to guarantee the core elements of the right, challenging the substantive normativity of the Aarhus Convention. However, the US also shares, and has adopted, various procedural elements from the Aarhus Convention, evidencing the procedural normativity of the Aarhus Convention.

The introduction outlines the kind of attention to prose techniques that forms the basis for the chapters that follow. It claims that prose is all too infrequently granted this kind of attention. In part, this is because of the claims to ordinariness that prose writing often proposes for itself, where prose comes to seem either prosaic or prosy. Critical and philosophical traditions have reinforced the view that prose is at its best when it effaces itself, when it conceals its own wording. But this principle has tended to distract from the craft of prose. The introduction outlines the parts of prose (punctuation, words, sentences, and so on) and the various genres (realism, comedy, Gothic, science fiction, and creative non-fiction) that subsequent chapters take up for inspection as regards the techniques of prose themselves.

This chapter discusses a grammar of realism that calls upon a variety of prose effects, including the management of time effects and the presence of abundant or telling detail, to show what is at stake in realist writing and how much happens in the prose despite its alleged retreat from artifice. Although realism has found itself assailed periodically, often for its artifice, this chapter testifies to the enduring value of realist prose while offering insights into its evolution.

The introductory chapter sets out how the right of access to environmental information was developed at the international level and its relevance to current environmental decision-making processes and environmental regulation. This chapter also introduces legal transplant theory and the Aarhus Convention, which provide the theoretical and legal framework, respectively, that acts as the text’s anchoring point. The chapter also sets out the three legal jurisdictions where the legislature’s efforts to guarantee the right will be analysed, providing the scope of the text.

This chapter develops a selective genealogy of the concept of publicity as it appears throughout the history of political thought, beginning with Plato and ending with Henry Sidgwick. Beyond its intrinsic interest, there is instrumental value to tracing a genealogy of publicity. Two benefits stand out in particular. First, by looking to what the giants of the past had to say about transparency in government, we find a greater diversity of positions than we currently see. Some flatly reject openness in government, embracing opacity in its place. And second, looking to the past shows how the concept of publicity can take on many different forms. Sometimes it refers to being offered justifications for the laws one lives under, sometimes it means that persons must have access to the philosophical theories inspiring the political systems they inhabit, sometimes it is used as a kind of test to probe the morality of public policies, sometimes it means that persons should be able to carefully monitor what public officials are up to, and so on.

On one understanding of the concept, publicity deems it impermissible for public officials to hide the reasons and moral theories that inform their policy choices. As just one example of this, publicity forbids the utilitarian from cloaking her policy recommendations in terms of a moral theory other than utilitarianism. While this might seem like a compelling requirement at first, its proponents have offered little argument for it, as defenders of utilitarianism have been quick to point out. To remedy this, I try to rehabilitate the blanket ban on false rationales demanded by this understanding of publicity, relying on the work of Bernard Williams (himself a fierce critic of esoteric utilitarianism). None of the arguments recovered from Williams successfully rule out secret rationales on the part of public officials. This understanding of publicity, I conclude, lacks compelling justification.

Most democracies are representative. Elected by the people, representatives constitute a legislature and create laws. This is typically done through voting. This raises an interesting question of institutional design: should our representatives vote transparently or by secret ballot? No contemporary philosopher, to my knowledge, has addressed this question. In this chapter I argue that if we take seriously the value of political equality—a normative ideal that nearly all democratic theorists embrace—then voting among representatives in a legislature ought to occur by secret ballot. Representatives should vote just as citizens do in elections. Democratic equality, I argue, thrives in darkness.

John Rawls’s full publicity condition says that persons in the society the philosopher theorizes about must in some sense have access to everything the philosopher says in her theorizing. In other words, everyone living in Rawls’s perfectly just society must have access to A Theory of Justice and related works. This account of publicity is the most difficult to analyze because there are many different interpretations of what, precisely, it requires and also many different arguments in its favor. Not only this, but certain criticisms of Rawls that some deem fatal to his project depend on particular interpretations of this publicity condition that can quite reasonably be rejected. In the current chapter I show that, once again, we face deep trade-offs. Insisting on this account of publicity will change the way political philosophy must be done, but doing so will help achieve normatively worthwhile ends.