Carl Cranor - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Carl Cranor

Law and contemporary problems, 2001

Environmental Health

The manufacture and production of industrial chemicals continues to increase, with hundreds of th... more The manufacture and production of industrial chemicals continues to increase, with hundreds of thousands of chemicals and chemical mixtures used worldwide, leading to widespread population exposures and resultant health impacts. Low-wealth communities and communities of color often bear disproportionate burdens of exposure and impact; all compounded by regulatory delays to the detriment of public health. Multiple authoritative bodies and scientific consensus groups have called for actions to prevent harmful exposures via improved policy approaches. We worked across multiple disciplines to develop consensus recommendations for health-protective, scientific approaches to reduce harmful chemical exposures, which can be applied to current US policies governing industrial chemicals and environmental pollutants. This consensus identifies five principles and scientific recommendations for improving how agencies like the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approach and conduct hazard a...

Regulation & Governance, 2016

Regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe have well-deserved reputations for fixating o... more Regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe have well-deserved reputations for fixating on the total benefits and costs of proposed and final regulatory actions, without doing any more than anecdotally mentioning the subpopulations and individuals who may bear disproportionate costs or reap disproportionate benefits. This is especially true on the "cost" side of the cost-benefit ledger, where analysts exert little effort to even inform decisionmakers and the public that the costs of regulations might be distributed either regressively or progressively. Many scholars and advocates have observed that regulation can increase the efficiency of market outcomes, but caution about its untoward (or suboptimal) effects on equity. Here, we argue that without considering distributional information about costs and benefits, regulatory policies in fact can also cause violence to notions of efficiency, for two reasons: (i) society cannot hope to approach Pareto-efficient outcomes without identifying those who must lose so that others can gain more; and (ii) because the harm experienced by involuntary risks and by imposed regulatory costs is likely non-linear in its magnitude (at the individual level), efficiency is, in fact, a strong function of the shape of the distribution of these effects. This article reviews evidence about the distribution of regulatory costs and benefits, describes how agencies fail to incorporate readily available distributional information, and sketches a vision for how they could analyze costs and benefits to promote more efficient regulatory choices and outcomes.

JL & Pol'y, 2007

The Frye test required that the generic kinds of studies, tests or techniques on which an expert ... more The Frye test required that the generic kinds of studies, tests or techniques on which an expert might rest testimony must be "generally accepted in the pertinent field." Id. at 104. Specifically it noted that, "Just when a scientific principle or discovery crosses the line between the experimental and demonstrable stages is difficult to define. Id. Somewhere in this twilight zone the evidential force of the principle must be recognized, and while the courts will go a long way in admitting expert testimony deduced from a well-recognized scientific principle or discovery, the thing from which the deduction is made must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs." Id.

ISEE Conference Abstracts, 2018

More than fifty years ago, Sir Austin Bradford Hill’s Presidential Address to the Royal Society o... more More than fifty years ago, Sir Austin Bradford Hill’s Presidential Address to the Royal Society of Medicine—The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation?—identified some ...

The Blackwell Guide to Business Ethics, 2017

Many Late lessons from early warnings chapters provide examples of early warning scientists who w... more Many Late lessons from early warnings chapters provide examples of early warning scientists who were harassed for bringing inconvenient truths about impending harm to the attention of the public and regulators. There is also some evidence that young scientists are being discouraged from entering controversial fields for fear of such harassment. In addition, where warnings have been ignored and damage has ensued, it has often proven difficult in the past to achieve prompt and fair compensation for the victims. Some ideas for reform, building on some current institutional models are explored here.

Introduction: Addressing legal and ethical issues for selecting experts for court testimony. Meth... more Introduction: Addressing legal and ethical issues for selecting experts for court testimony. Methods: Review some salient articles and legal cases. Results: The adversary system invites lawyers to ...

Philosophy Research Archives

The aim of this paper is to try to clarify the nature and justification of respect for the law. I... more The aim of this paper is to try to clarify the nature and justification of respect for the law. In section I, I try to clarify the nature of respect for a legal system and distin guish it from related concepts. In the next section, I consi der problems justifying the attitude of respect toward a legal system. In section III, I discuss the extent to which one has duties to behave respectfully toward and to try to adopt an attitude of respect toward a reasonably just legal system. One consequence is that it is difficult to show that one has a duty to obey the law because it is respect-worthy. In the last sec tion, I sketch further consequences of preceding sections and suggest that respect for the law properly understood is neither the boon of oppression nor the bane of conscientious moral agents. A-5 * An earlier and shorter version of this paper was read at the Eastern Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association held in Atlanta in December 1973. Since then the paper has been rewritten with the guidance of comments by

Science, Law, and the Possibility of Justice, 2000