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Under mandated choice policies, people are free to choose whichever option they prefer, but “choosing not to choose” is penalized. In Australia, voting is mandatory, and abstaining is penalized with a fine. In New Zealand and several American states, it is mandatory for those who want to obtain a driver’s license that they decide whether to register as organ donors. If they fail to do so, they will not receive a driver’s license. Proponents of such policies stress that they may be the least autonomy-infringing ways of achieving some good and provide society with knowledge about people’s preferences and are, partly for these reasons, preferable to employing defaults. This article compares mandated choice in voting and donor registration with respect to the ends served, how a mandated choice policy will serve these ends, the distribution of burdens, and the nature of the possible options. It is argued that mandated choice is more attractive in the context of donor registration.

The beta-delayed proton emission from the lightest Ar-isotopes has been measured with a high-granularity, large solid-angle Si-detector set-up. Although designed for the detection of beta-delayed twoproton and three-proton events, the setup also permitted measurement of proton energy shifts due to the beta-neutrino recoil. We discuss how spectroscopic information can beextracted from such measurements, even at the drip line. For the case of 31 Ar, the ground state spin could be determined as 5 2.

The exposure of doctors, nurses and other medical professionals to risks in the context of epidemics is significant. While traditional medical ethics offers the thought that these dangers may limit the extent to which a duty to care is applicable in such situations, it has less to say about what we might owe to medical professionals who are disadvantaged in these contexts. Luck egalitarianism, a responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice, appears to fare particularly bad in that regard.If we want to maintain that the medical professionals are responsible for their decisions to help, cure and care for the vulnerable, luck egalitarianism seems to imply that their claim of justice to medical attention in case of infection is weak or non-existent. The article demonstrates how a recent interpretation of luck egalitarianism offers a solution to this problem. Redefining luck egalitarianism as concerned with responsibility for creating disadvantages, rather than for incurring disadvantage as such, makes it possible to maintain that medical professionals are responsible for their choices, and that those infected because of their choice to help fight epidemics have a full claim of justice to medical attention.