Write a briefposition paper blendinglegal, ethical and consequentialist arguments on one of the following matters:

Question A.We are in 2025, and the United Nations has launched preliminary discussions for aninternational convention wherebymember countries committo discourage families within their jurisdiction, by lawful (non-coercive) means, from having more than two children. The treaty is to enter into force only when it gathers 100 ratifications. The declared rationale, in the words of the United Nations Secretary General, is to "reduce the burden on ecosystems, which threatens to bringthe human civilisationto the vergeof extinction infew decades, because of ever increasing scarcity of water and other resources, and of associated local and regional violence." The Secretary General went on to quote John Stuart Mill's words written almost 2 centuriesago (see boxbelow). Australia should/should not adhereto the proposed international agreement.

Question B. Recreational use of marijuana (the least potent of all the cannabis products, often smoked in hand-rolled cigarettes) should/should not be legalised (i.e. sold as a legal product, subject to some regulation, akin to alcohol, tobacco or pharmaceuticals) in Australia.

Some factual information to assist in building your argument in Question A

• John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1857: 'If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which itowes to thingsthat the unlimitedincrease in wealthand population would extirpate fromit, for thepurpose of enablingit to supporta larger, butnot a betteror a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.'
• 1968, Final Act of the Tehran Conference on Human Rights: 'Parents have a basic human right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of children and a right to adequate education and information in this respect'. The General Assembly endorsed the Final Act.
• In the 50 years that followed, numerous international instruments have confirmed the existence of reproductive rights as human rights, in the same formulation ('right to decide freely and responsibly').
• Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Overpopulation is 'the condition of having a population so dense as to cause environmental deterioration, an impaired quality of life, or a population crash'.
• UN Population Prospects 2017: The current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. The group of 47 least developed countries (LDCs) continues to have a relatively high level of fertility, which stood at 4.3 births per woman in 2010-2015. At the same time, fertility is extremely low in Europe and in Japan.
• The fact that overpopulation is bad (conflict for resources, poverty, environmental destruction, decreased quality of life, uncontrolled mass migration) is uncontested, but there is disagreement over "how much is too much". Studies show that by 2007, global demands on the Earth's natural systems exceeded sustainable yields by 50%.
• The "demographic transition theory" posits that with development come lower fertility rates (due to education, women empowerment etc.), therefore the concern should not be with birth rates but with development and democratisation.
• Countries that tried in recent decades to curb population growth often did it coercively, which led to international criticism and allegations of human rights abuse (India, Peru, Singapore, China). On the other hand, some countries have put in place successful non-coercive population programs (Egypt, Tunisia, Iran) which significantly reduced the average fertility.
• From 2018, the UK will only provide social welfare for the first 2 children of a family. A child in UK uses 22 times more resources than a child in Malawi (study). Researchers from developing countries show that the real problem is overconsumption in the developed countries.
• Agronomist Norman Borlaug, in his 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: 'If fully implemented, the [green] revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only'.

Some factual information to assist in building your argument in Question B

• Recreational use of marijuana will become legal in Canada from July 2018. In preparation for this, federal and provincial governments have tightened the rules around impaired driving and brought in a roadside saliva test to check for drug impairment. The federal government is setting up systems to track all cannabis from seed to sale, to license non-medical producers and to test marijuana for potency and quality control.
• The federal law regarding marijuana in the U.S. allows state legislators to decide for themselves whether to prohibit marijuana or not. In the 2016 Gallup poll, 60% of Americans supported regulating recreational cannabis. Starting from 2012 (Colorado), nine states in the U.S. made (or will make soon) recreational use of marijuana legal. The retail sales of cannabis for recreational use amount to about 4.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2018. This leads to the collection of huge taxes by the respective state government, a high proportion of which is directed to education. For example, California's recreational-pot industry will, when up and running, generate $1 billion/year in tax revenue.
• New Frontier Data: the cannabis industry will have created 283,422 jobs by 2020 in the US.
• NBC News and Reuters, Jan. 2018: Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave U.S. attorneys the green light to aggressively enforce federal laws against marijuana even in states where recreational use is legal. He famously said 'good people don't smoke marijuana' during a 2016 Senate hearing. The policy put in place under former President Obama had discouraged federal prosecutors from pursuing marijuana-related criminal cases in states that had legalized the drug. Jeff Sessions said in a recent statement that the Obama-era policy 'undermines the rule of law'.
• Daily Mail: Pope Francis has stated that legalising recreational drugs was 'highly questionable' and would 'fail to produce the desired effects'. He added that legalisation was 'a veiled means of surrendering to the problem'.
• Kevin Sabet, leading US academic, quoted in The Guardian: 'Legal regulation has been a disaster for drugs like alcohol and tobacco. Both of those drugs are now sold by highly commercialised industries who thrive off addiction for profit.... At a time when governments are uniting to stop people smoking, should they really be becoming more laissez-faire about drug use?'.
• Roy Morgan Research - survey 2014: The proportion of Australians who believe it should be made legal has grown from 26.8% (2004) to 31.8% (2014). The 65+ age bracket has seen the largest proportional increase in favour of legalisation, rising from 16.9% to 25.5%. Young Australians aged 18-24 (35.7%) are the age group with the most support for making smoking marijuana legal. The proportion who want it to remain illegal is declining. In 2004, 64.1% of the population thought smoking marijuana should remain illegal; by 2014, it sat at 56.8%.
• Politicians such as NSW Premier Mike Baird and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews have expressed their support for legalising recreational use of cannabis. An Australian study of 18-29 year olds by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research shows that Prohibition does indeed deter illicit drug use. 29% of those who had never used cannabis cited the illegality of the substance as their reason for never using the drug, while 19% of those who had ceased use of cannabis cited its illegality as their reason. 91% of those currently using cannabis weekly said they would use more cannabis if it were made legal.
• A study by Niveau & Dang titled 'Cannabis and Violent Crime' and published in a 2003 issue of Medicine, Science and the Law shows links between cannabis and violence (in addition to deaths from car accidents while intoxicated or violence and aggression while withdrawing).

1. What is the difference between positive and negative liberty?
2. Pure consensus theories are an idealist depictionof law creation in Australia, while pluralist consensus theories show how liberalism works in practice. Explain.
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of legal formalism?
4. Are liberalism and feminism compatible? Explain.
5. Compare the philosophical basis of Aboriginal and Western legal systems. Are the two systems diametrically opposed?
6. Does signing a treaty make that treaty binding on Australia? Why or why not?
7. Why has Australia's reaction to the terrorist threat been criticised? Don't we all want to be safe?