Jack Balkin on why institutions count

Politically, society is orded by a social compact through its institutions. When those institutions and their arrangements are established by law, the social compact become a social contract, and it is enforceable in law. The social compact is otherwise carried out through custom and social pressure to conform to custom. These two terms are often used interchangeably without drawing this distinction. I believe that this is a mistake.

Prof. Balkin's point, generally correct, I believe, is that the social compact changes over time and those changes are eventually reflected in formal changes to the social contract through laws, regulation, and judicial interpretation.

Read it at Balkinization
The Health Care Case and the Social Contract
by Jack Balkin | Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School

Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Dickens — Are we still living in Dickensian times?

For a 200-year-old literary figure, Charles Dickens has much to say about the issues of today.

So believes Queen's University English Prof. Robert Morrison, who says Dickens — born Feb. 7, 1812 — was both a man of his times and a forward-thinker.

In his many novels — including such classics as "A Christmas Carol," "David Copperfield" and "Oliver Twist" — Dickens wrote about issues that still resonate today.

Morrison says Dickens brought attention to child poverty, over-population, environmental degradation and greed.

The popular storyteller's 200th birthday is being celebrated Tuesday by admirers around the world.

Morrison says Dickens, who visited Canada briefly while on a reading tour, was the most popular author of his day and known world-wide.

"He is a man of his time but ... he does map in a lot of what still preoccupies us today."

Read the rest at The Huffington Post
Charles Dickens Birthday: Robert Morrison, English Professor, Says Social Issues Still Resonate Today
The Canadian Press

The growing inequality timebomb

Mansions on one side of the road, and slums on the other. People queuing for food rations, while others drive by in shiny Land Rovers with tinted windows.

These are just some of the sights that have confronted Danielle Nierenberg as she traveled through 30 countries to supervise the Worldwatch Institute’s report titled ‘State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet’. 

"You can see the stark differences within a single country very easily, and you see it every day," she told IPS. "In Africa it doesn’t look like the recession has affected the very wealthy. It has affected poor people the most...." 

Even in "traditionally egalitarian countries", such as Denmark, Sweden and Germany, the income gap has risen from 5 to 1 in the 1980s to 6 to 1 today. The gap is 10 to 1 in the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and Korea, and higher (at 14 to 1) in the United States, Israel and Turkey, according to the report. 

New data for the United States show that the "share of after-tax household income for the top 1 percent more than doubled" from 1979 to 2007, while the share of the "bottom" 20 percent of the population fell from 7 percent to 5 percent. 

"This is one of our most important assessments," said the OECD’s Secretary-General Angel Gurria as he launched the report at the organisation’s headquarters here. "We say ‘divided we stand’ because we have grown unequally...."

"The social contract is starting to unravel in many countries," Gurria said. Uncertainty and fears of social decline and exclusion have reached the middle class in many societies. People feel that they are bearing the brunt of a crisis for which they have no responsibility while those on high incomes appear to have been spared."  [emphasis added]

Read the whole article at IPS

In Crisis, The Rich Get Richer 

By A.D.McKenzie