The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the air and its part in global climate change have motivated individuals and corporations to consider ways to reduce the amount of it. As a solution, the notion of carbon emissions trading—also known as carbon offsets—came into being and was approved by elected officials. This approach allows people […]

The carbon content of fuels is the focus of U.S. government strategy to encourage increased use of nonpolluting sources of energy and discourage use of fossil fuels by making them more expensive to use. Lawmakers discerned that placing a tax on fuels using carbon in any form will reduce their attractiveness to consumers. That is […]

Charter schools have become one of the most sweeping school reforms in the United States in recent decades. Charter schools seek to reform public education through a blend of elements found in public schools (universal access and public funding) and elements often associated with private schools (choice, autonomy, and flexibility). While the definition of charter […]

Child abuse is generally defined in two ways. One is the nonaccidental injury to a child that requires medical attention. These are acts of commission. The second part of the definition is neglect, acts of omission where parents and other adults fail to meet the basic needs of the child. Nearly all experts concur that […]

Controversies concerning child care in the United States, which center on who should take responsibility, have moved in and out of the spotlight for more than 150 years. Social and moral issues concerning appropriate child care are motivated primarily by the dilemma of public versus private responsibility for the well-being of children. Outline I. Background […]

Recent increases in childhood asthma have created controversies about the environmental causes. Children living in urban areas are especially vulnerable to asthma because of the high number of pollutants and allergens in their environment. Others argue that exposure to pesticides in the air and food helps cause it. Asthma is a disease that affects breathing. […]

A core controversy is whether environmental stressors, such as pollution and pesticides, are responsible for the increase of childhood cancers. Outline I. Background II. Childhood Cancer Facts III. Scientific Model: Struggling to Keep Up with Policy IV. Costs Are Very High: Who Pays? V. What Environmental Stressors Cause Childhood Cancers? VI. Chemicals and Childhood Cancers […]

Karl Marx maintained that the root of most crime and injustice could be found in class conflict. Within and without the academies of crime and justice, this contention is highly controversial. In fact, it is so controversial that here in the United States the whole idea of class itself is often in a state of […]

Beginning in the mid-1980s, a series of court cases began to reveal the extent of sexual abuse committed by clergy in various religious contexts. Although the popular press has tended to associate the clergy abuse scandals as a “Catholic” issue, in fact, the problem is widespread in many religious contexts, including non-Christian religions as well. […]

The consequences of dramatic climate change are uncertain in terms of specific impacts. This uncertainty is everyone’s concern. Some general effects, such as rising ocean levels, are known. Specific weather changes that are not yet known could occur abruptly. Many scientific, legal, and international debates are emerging with respect to this issue. Outline I. What […]

When new drugs and medical devices are developed, they need to be tested on humans to ensure their safety and effectiveness. Clinical trials—the tightly regulated and carefully controlled tests of pharmaceuticals in large groups of people—raise many ethical challenges. Some of these challenges revolve around the individuals participating in research: Are people being coerced? Are […]

To clone is simply to produce an identical copy of something. In the field of biotechnology, however, cloning is a complex term referring to one of three different processes. DNA cloning is used to produce large quantities of a specific genetic sequence and is common practice in molecular biology labs. The other two processes, therapeutic […]

Coal is essentially a kind of “compacted sunlight.” It is a combustible material derived from leafy biomass that has absorbed energy from the sun and has been compressed in the earth over geologic time. It is usually found in seams associated with other sedimentary rock. Historically, Earth went through the Carboniferous age about 350 to […]

The use of consumer credit has become an increasingly important feature of the U.S. postindustrial economy in general and household financial management in particular. In fact, the recent economic boom of the mid-2000s was primarily fueled by consumer spending that was financed by soaring levels of household borrowing. Although the Great Recession of 2008–2010 has […]

One of the most divisive debates in contemporary family sociology and child psychology centers on corporal punishment, known to most persons as spanking. Corporal punishment is the most widespread and well-documented form of family violence. In recent years, scholars as well theologians have debated the question of whether corporal punishment is an appropriate form of […]

The focus on, study of, and prosecution for corporate crime is a relatively new phenomenon—one that has recently gained wide public attention. For criminologists, “corporate crime” refers to acts in violation of the law that are committed by businesses, corporations, or individuals within those entities. Corporate crime is also closely associated with white-collar crime, organized […]

Corporate governance refers to the way a corporation is managed, administered, and controlled by the various stakeholders. The stakeholders such as the shareholders, boards of directors, and managers run the corporation and shape and execute the strategies and day-to-day operations. The other stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers, regulators, and society at large are also […]

A fundamental objective of the federal tax law is to raise revenues to cover the cost of government operations. Ordinarily, Congress will set annual budgets, based on anticipated revenues, to plan expenditures and create a balanced budget. Until recently, the last balanced budget was in 1969. Beginning in 1970, there were 28 straight years of […]