This paper is a historical, legal and philosophical analysis of the concept of human dignity in German and Kenyan constitutional law. We base our analysis on decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, in particular its take on life imprisonment and its 2006 decision concerning the shooting of hijacked airplanes, and on a close reading of the Constitution of Kenya. We also present a dialogue between us in which we offer some critical remarks on the concept of (...) human dignity in the two constitutions, each one of us from his own philosophical perspective. (shrink)

In this essay, we suggest practical ways to shift the framing of crisis standards of care toward disability justice. We elaborate on the vision statement provided in the 2010 Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Medicine) “Summary of Guidance for Establishing Crisis Standards of Care for Use in Disaster Situations,” which emphasizes fairness; equitable processes; community and provider engagement, education, and communication; and the rule of law. We argue that interpreting these elements through disability justice entails a commitment to both (...) distributive and recognitive justice. The disability rights movement's demand “Nothing about us, without us” requires substantive inclusion of disabled people in decision‐making related to their interests, including in crisis planning before, during, and after a pandemic like Covid‐19. (shrink)

Recognizing inherent and inalienable nature of dignity and universality of certain values, the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, introduces to the foundations of Polish legal system some elements of natural law which may be used for application of the Basic Law. Constitutional recognition of these elements only makes sense on the assumption of their cognizability. Therefore, as an important element of constitutional concept of natural law is taken the recognition of the argument of cognitivism according to which (...) moral assessments may have the nature of judgments and truth qualification (they may be true or false). In the course of application of the constitution, norms of natural-law character and natural-law justification. Since dignity and the essence of freedoms and rights based on dignity are the only inviolable values recognized by the constitution, the arguments of natural law lead to a far-going reinterpretation of constitutional norms. The norm of natural law protecting inviolable values will have precedence in the event of collision with norms protecting other values, also with constitutional norms. Even if such a norm is formulated on the basis of the provisions of the constitution, in fact natural law is given higher rank than elements based only on enacted law. Despite that, reliability of a legally established order does not seem to be radically endangered. -/- Konstytucja RP uznając przyrodzoność i niezbywalność godności oraz uniwersalność niektórych wartości, wprowadza do podstaw całego polskiego systemu prawnego elementy prawnonaturalne, które mogą być wykorzystane w stosowaniu konstytucji. Konstytucyjne uznanie takich elementów ma sens przy założeniu ich poznawalności, stąd istotnym elementem konstytucyjnej koncepcji prawa naturalnego jest uznanie tezy kognitywizmu głoszącej, że oceny moralne mogą mieć charakter sądów i kwalifikację prawdziwościową – mogą być prawdziwe lub fałszywe. W procesie stosowania konstytucji mogą być formułowane normy o charakterze prawnonaturalnym oraz uzasadnienia prawnonaturalne. Ponieważ jedynymi wartościami uznanymi w konstytucji za nienaruszalne jest godność oraz istota wolności i praw, których godność jest źródłem, argumentacja prawnonaturalna może prowadzić do daleko idącej reinterpretacji norm konstytucyjnych. Norma prawnonaturalna chroniąca warunki konieczne poszanowania godności lub istoty wolności i praw będzie miała pierwszeństwo w razie kolizji z normami chroniącymi inne wartości, także z normami konstytucyjnymi. Choć norma taka będzie formułowana na podstawie przepisów konstytucji, to jednak faktycznie prawo naturalne uzyskuje wyższą rangę od elementów opartych jedynie na stanowieniu. Mimo tego bezpieczeństwo prawne nie wydaje się być radykalnie zagrożone. O prawnonaturalnym charakterze normy i uzasadnienia decyduje oparcie w ocenach moralnych, które pretendują do bycia sądami, do bycia prawdziwymi lub fałszywymi. Z punktu widzenia stosowania konstytucji i wymogu intersubiektywnej komunikowalności i kontrolowalności dookreślania treści prawnonaturalnych, dla nadania ocenom charakteru sądów istotny jest kształt procedur i argumentacji prowadzących do tego dookreślenia. Powinny to być procedury i argumentacja typowe dla dyskursu mającego na celu sformułowanie prawdziwych sądów. Maksymalizowana powinna być dyskursywność takich procedur, a podstawą rozstrzygnięcia powinien być, jeśli to tylko możliwe, konsens. Nie mogą być uważane za rozstrzygające argumenty odwołujące się do woli indywidualnej lub zbiorowej, reakcji emocjonalnych, stopnia rozpowszechnienia danej oceny czy do tradycji kulturowej. (shrink)

Corruption has assumed a new turn in 4th Republic Nigeria, particularly where non-human animals are alleged by human animals to deep their hands into the public tilt for their selfish non-human animal purposes. This is a clear case of hypocrisy on the part of human animals in that, at one instance we contend that non-human animals are inferior to human beings and at the other instance, we affirm though inadvertently that non-human animals are not inferior but equal since they (...) have the capacity to steal: we, therefore, are unable to steer ourselves out from the dilemma of our ambivalence to arrogate to ourselves a god-like status over non-human animals. We contend that this is another profound inhumane case of violation of non-human animals which is condemnable. We have suggested that the solution to this quagmire is first to admit that non-human animals have basic rights like human animals especially when we understand this notion of Rights going beyond its parochial conception. The method we have employed in showing moments of human's inhumanity to non-human animals is what has been conceived as Ibuanyidanda Philosophy according to which we aver that ihe di nwereisinaodu (anything that exists serves a missing link of reality). We have argued in favour of the thesis that the federal government should allow justice prevails against acts of theft by either civil or public servants. -/- . (shrink)

The present religious constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany is the product of protracted historical conflicts and political settlements that began in the sixteenth century. The mediation of these conflicts and settlements and the piecemeal establishment of the constitution was the achievement of imperial public law and diplomacy. Germany’s religious constitution—a secular and relativistic juridical framework protecting a plurality of confessional religions—pre-dated liberalism and democracy, and owes nothing to normative philosophical constructions of individual freedoms and (...) rights, or social justice and moral community. Rather, it was the product of a political compromise between warring confessional blocs, and of the institutions of public law that were the instruments and effects of this compromise. (shrink)

The conceptual model of United Nations reform - "UN 3.0" includes the General Program of Action on UN Reform, consisting of two stages. The first stage for 2020-2025 envisages the transformation of the main organs of the UN - the General Assembly and the Security Council with measures to improve the effectiveness of the management system, address the "veto problem", problem of financing, improve staff work and administrative and financial control, strengthen UN media, improvement of work with the global civil (...) society. The General Assembly is converted into the General All-Parliamentary Assembly of the UN. In the structure of the Assembly, the Council for Law is being established, which coordinates the activities of UN structures in the field of law. To coordinate the activities of the UN in the field of human rights and civil society, ethical issues, the General all-parliamentary Assembly creates the Council on ethics, human rights and civil society and transforms the Committee on information into the Council on public information and communication with civil society. The structure of the Council includes all UN media. The reform of the UN Security Council is carried out in three sub-stages. At the 1st sub-stage (2020-2021) the Security Council is transformed into the Council of Existential Security (CES). The membership of the CES is increased to 25 member countries, of which five countries have the right of the unconditional (absolute, eternal) veto: Great Britain, France, China, Russian Federation, USA. The General All-Parliamentary Assembly elects 15 new permanent members of the Council of Existential Security with the right of the conditional (limited) veto: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, Nigeria, Pakistan , Turkey, Japan (if they fulfill the mandatory restrictive conditions). At this sub-stage, the CES elects also five non-permanent members with the right of a conditional (limited) veto when they meet the mandatory restrictive conditions, with a rotation period of 2 years from geographical regions (or regional unions): Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific Ocean (2 places), Eastern Europe. On the second sub-stage (2022-2023), subject to the effective activity of the CES of the enlarged composition and compliance with mandatory restrictive conditions, new permanent members of the "Existential Security Council" are elected with the right of a conditional (limited) veto: Iran, Spain, Poland, Saudi Arabia. Members of the CES may be regional unions, whose member countries are not represented in the CES, but still have one vote with the right of a conditional (limited) veto. -/- Two essential levels of the veto: 1. Unconditional (absolute, eternal) veto is the historical right of veto of the five permanent members of the Council of Existential Security - Great Britain, China, Russia, USA, France; 2. Сonditional (limited) veto is the veto of other permanent and non-permanent members of the Council of Existential Security. The right of veto is a unique international school for the achievement of consensus, a school of high democracy for Humanity, a reliable guarantee of the viability of the UN structure. The Council for Existential Security centralises the management of the UN subsidiary bodies with the expansion of their security functions: the Military Staff Committee, the Counter-Terrorism Committee, the Committee for the Prevention of the Spread of Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons, the Sanctions Committees and other committees. On the basis of the decision of the Council of Existential Security, the General All-Parliamentary Assembly creates permanent contingents of UN peacekeeping and counter-terrorism forces. In addition, two Centers are being created in the structure of the Council for Existential Security: the World Center for the Elimination of the Effects of Technogenic and Natural Disasters with branches on all continents and the World Center for the Analysis of Existential Risks and the Overall Security Strategy. The Center is developing the Programs of research and monitoring of global existential threats and risks. In order to increase the level of legitimacy and authority of the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Rules of procedure for elections to this post are changing. Each member country of the Council for Existential Security represents one of the most authoritative candidates for election to the post of Secretary General at the session of the General All-Parliamentary Assembly, with the possibility of nominating candidates from other countries, including those not members of the Council for Existential Security. Elections are held in two rounds during one day of the session of the Assembly. The Legal Committee of the UN General Assembly is developing a Program for the Reform of the Judicial System of the United Nations, which takes into account the proposals of the previous international discussion and determines the scope and terms of the reform of the courts. In accordance with the Program of Action on UN Reform for 2020-2025, reforms are under way in the structure of the Economic and Social Council. The central task of the reform is to strengthen the coordinating role of ECOSOC in the entire system of UN-related specialized agencies, funds and programs related to the Council. The key task of the UN reform is the solution of the financing problem. A unified "UN Open Budget "Solidarity XXI" is being created, including the financing of peacekeeping operations and other expenses. Each country, a member of the United Nations, lists in an established period, once a year, an Existential contribution - the Earth Tax. The Earth Tax for each UN member state is established on the basis of four scales of calculation: Scale I - for 5 permanent members of the Council of Existential Security, who have the right of absolute (absolute) veto; Scale II - for the permanent members of the SEB, who have the right to a conditional (limited) veto; Scale III - for non-permanent members of the SEB, who have the right to a conditional (limited) veto; Scale IV - for all other UN member countries. The program of action on UN reform includes a set of measures to ensure transparent work of the International Civil Service Commission with the involvement of the UN media. To strengthen control functions in the sphere of personnel policy, administrative and financial management, the General All-Parliamentary Assembly of the United Nations establishes the Permanent Commission on Ethics and Administrative and Financial Control. All members of the Commission, members of the Committees and auditors are independent in their activities from the leadership of the United Nations, its funds and programs. The General All-Parliamentary Assembly completes the first stage of the Program of Action on UN Reform in 2025 and, following an open discussion, introduces a single language of international communication - Esperanto and approves it as the official language of the United Nations. With a view to more effective work of the central UN governing bodies in the face of increasing existential threats and risks, reducing the current expenses for the maintenance of the central bodies of the UN, the Council for Existential Security and the General All-Parliamentary Assembly decide on the relocation of the UN headquarters to Iceland. The UN building complex in New York is transferred to preferential use of non-governmental organizations, which contribute to the implementation of the goals of the United Nations. At the second stage of the UN reform in the period 2026-2028, additional necessary transformations are being made in the UN system. At the end of the first stage of the reform, taking into account the reforms carried out by the main organs of the United Nations and the internal improvement of the work of all its structures, the United Nations Program of Action for the years 2026-2028 is being developed. (shrink)

An overview of what Frege accomplishes in Part II of Grundgesetze, which contains proofs of axioms for arithmetic and several additional results concerning the finite, the infinite, and the relationship between these notions. One might think of this paper as an extremely compressed form of Part II of my book Reading Frege's Grundgesetze.

Arlie Hochschild glosses the practice of women migrants in poor nations who leave their families behind for extended periods of time to do carework in other wealthier countries as a “global heart transplant” from poor to wealthy nations. Thus she signals the idea of an injustice between nations and a moral harm for the individuals in the practice. Yet the nature of the harm needs a clear articulation. When we posit a sufficiently nuanced “right to care,” we locate the harm (...) to central relationships of the migrant women. The “right to (give and receive) care” we develop uses a concept of a relational self drawn from an ethics of care. The harm is situated in the broken relationships, which in turn have a serious impact on a person’s sense of equal dignity and self-respect, particularly since the sacrifice of central relationships of the migrant woman allows others (mostly women) to maintain these same relationships. The paper ends with a brief discussion of some of the solutions we need to consider. (shrink)

At the beginning of Republic 2 (358e–359b), Plato has Glaucon ascribe a social contract theory to Thrasymachus and ‘countless others’. This paper takes Glaucon’s description to refer both within the text to Thrasymachus’ views, and outside the text to a series of works, most of which have been lost, On Justice or On Law. It examines what is likely to be the earliest surviving work that presents a philosophical defence of law and justice against those who would prefer their (...) opposites, On Excellence by an anonymous author usually referred to as ‘Anonymus Iamblichi’; the views on these topics among the Socratics, including Crito, Simon the Cobbler, Aristippus of Cyrene, and Antisthenes; and Socrates’ debate with Hippias ‘On Justice’ in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (4.4.5–25). Its main contention is that the ‘countless others’ referred to by Glaucon points chiefly, but not solely, to the members of the circle of Socrates, who themselves espoused a range of views on justice and law, and their relations. (shrink)

There is an old and powerful argument for the claim that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A recent response to this argument, sometimes called the “dependence response,” centers around the claim that God’s relevant past beliefs depend on the relevant agent’s current or future behavior in a certain way. This paper offers a new argument for the dependence response, one that revolves around different cases of time travel. Somewhat serendipitously, the argument also paves the way (...) for a new reply to a compelling objection to the dependence response, the challenge from prepunishment. But perhaps not so serendipitously, the argument also renders the dependence response incompatible with certain views of providence. (shrink)

Apology is arguably the central act of the reparative work required after wrongdoing. Claudia Card’s (1940-2015) analysis of complicity in collectively perpetrated evils moves one to ask whether apology ought to be requested of persons culpably complicit in institutional evils. To better appreciate the benefits of and barriers to apologies offered by culpably complicit wrongdoers, this article examines doctors’ complicity in a practice that meets Card’s definition of an evil, namely, the non-medically necessary, nonconsensual “normalizing” interventions performed on babies born (...) with intersex anatomies. It argues that in this instance, the complicity of doctors is culpable on Card’s terms, and that their culpable complicity grounds rightful demands for them to apologize. (shrink)

Apology is arguably the central act of the reparative work required after wrongdoing. The analysis by Claudia Card of complicity in collectively perpetrated evils moves one to ask whether apology ought to be requested of persons culpably complicit in institutional evils. To better appreciate the benefits of and barriers to apologies offered by culpably complicit wrongdoers, this article examines doctors’ complicity in a practice that meets Card's definition of an evil, namely, the non-medically necessary, nonconsensual “normalizing” interventions performed on babies (...) born with intersex anatomies. It argues that in this instance the complicity of doctors is culpable on Card's terms, and that their culpable complicity grounds rightful demands for them to apologize. (shrink)

Abstractionism in the philosophy of mathematics aims at deriving large fragments of mathematics by combining abstraction principles (i.e. the abstract objects $\S e_1, \S e_2$, are identical if, and only if, an equivalence relation $Eq_\S$ holds between the entities $e_1, e_2$) with logic. Still, as highlighted in work on the semantics for relevant logics, there are different ways theories might be combined. In exactly what ways must logic and abstraction be combined in order to get interesting mathematics? In this paper, (...) we investigate the matter by deriving the axioms of second-order Peano Arithmetic from Frege's Basic Law V (the extension of $F$ is identical with the extension of $G$ if, and only if, $F$ and $G$ are extensionally equivalent) in the presence of a relevant higher-order logic. The results are interesting. Not only must we take on logic as true, and not only must we apply our logic to abstraction principles, but also we have to apply our theory of abstraction back to the logic in order to arrive at arithmetic. Thus, what Abstractionism gives us is not simply what we get from abstraction via logic, but also what we get from logic via abstraction. (shrink)

In the traditional interpretation, The Republic is a continuation of the discussions in Gorgias, according to which virtue and polis laws are tricks invented by a mass of weak people to capture the lust for power of the best individuals, few in number but naturally inclined to leads. The theses of Calicles of Gorgias resemble the ideas set forth by Trasymachus in Book I of The Republic. The central political theses expressed by Socrates in The Republic are: (...) the best rulers are wise, the best rulers rule for the benefit of those led and not for their sake, it is very unlikely that a city will have the best rulers because there is a chasm between the values ​​of most people and the values ​​of the wise, the greatest harm to a city is civil strife for who should rule, harmony between citizens as to who should rule, and harmony requires the city to cultivate virtue and the rule of law. -/- DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27958.57922 . (shrink)

Political theorists have recently sought to replace the liberal, contractual theory of the firm with a political view that models the authority relation of employee to firm, and its appropriate regulation, on that of subject to state. This view is liable to serious difficulties, however, given existing discontinuities between corporate and civil authority as to their coerciveness, entry and exit conditions, scope, legal standing, and efficiency constraints. I here inspect these, and argue that, albeit in some cases significant, such discontinuities (...) fail to undermine the firm/state analogy, either because they are not significant enough to do so or because the particular trait on which they hinge is not decisive for how authority, in the state and in the firm, should be regulated to be legitimate. A pro tanto requirement exists, I thus argue, that corporate authority be held to regulatory norms comparable to those legitimate states abide by, including civil liberties, rule-of-law constraints, and accountability to subjects. (shrink)

The following essay reconsiders the ontological and logical issues around Frege’s Basic Law (V). If focuses less on Russell’s Paradox, as most treatments of Frege’s Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (GGA)1 do, but rather on the relation between Frege’s Basic Law (V) and Cantor’s Theorem (CT). So for the most part the inconsistency of Naïve Comprehension (in the context of standard Second Order Logic) will not concern us, but rather the ontological issues central to the conflict between (BLV) and (CT). (...) These ontological issues are interesting in their own right. And if and only if in case ontological considerations make a strong case for something like (BLV) we have to trouble us with inconsistency and paraconsistency. These ontological issues also lead to a renewed methodological reflection what to assume or recognize as an axiom. (shrink)

Is the virtue of the good citizen the same as the virtue of the good man? Aristotle addresses this in Politics 3.4. His answer is twofold. On the one hand, (the account for Difference) they are not the same both because what the citizen’s virtue is depends on the constitution, on what preserves it, and on the role the citizen plays in it, and because the good citizens in the best constitution cannot all be good men, whereas the good man’s (...) virtue is uniform. On the other hand, (the account for Identity) the two virtues are identical in the good men in the best constitution, in which all are good citizens, each possessing the ability for ruling and for being ruled. This nuanced answer can be seen as Aristotle’s synthesis of a Periclean view (contribution to state blots out personal wrongs) and a Socratic view (no good citizen is without justice). Its nuances reflect the extent to which Aristotle’s conceptions of good citizenship and the best constitution accommodate deviations of what is probable from the human ideal set out in his ethical writings. In the present chapter, I will first address three puzzles regarding the nuances of Aristotle’s answer. Second, I will consider one question about its implication: Does Aristotle’s account for Difference turn out to entail something ultra-Periclean: that no one can simultaneously be a good man and a good citizen in any constitution other than the best? I shall argue the negative. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the Protestant contribution to the modern concept of autonomy on the basis of an analysis of John Calvin's moral theology. I show that Calvin affirms our incapacity to know and want what is morally good, as expressed by natural law. Such incapacity is compensated for by the biblical mandates that, according to Calvin, should be incorporated into the positive legislation of Christian republics. In view of all this, I conclude that Calvin is far from the (...) Kantian idea of autonomy which defines our Modernity. (shrink)

Suppose Molinism is true and God placed Adam in the garden because God knew Adam would freely eat of the fruit. Suppose further that, had it not been true that Adam would freely eat of the fruit, were he placed in the garden, God would have placed someone else there instead. When Adam freely eats of the fruit, is he free to do otherwise? This paper argues that there is a strong case for both a positive and a negative answer. (...) Assuming such cases are possible under Molinism, we are left with a puzzling question: if Molinism is true, what can you do? (shrink)

This study aimed to enhance the mastery level of the campus journalists of Cuyo Central School, Division of Palawan in basic news writing through (CEB) Contextualized Error – Based Worktext. It used mixed methods, the quantitative approach was utilized to know the common errors committed by the participants of the study in writing news articles, their level of achievement and the testing of significant difference of their scores in pre-test and post – test. The challenges they met in utilizing (...) the intervention material was also presented through quantitative method. The qualitative method was utilized in presenting the changes to be done to further enhance the material based from the challenges met by the participants of the study. Interview method and Focus Group Discussion were used as instruments. The common errors committed by the pupil-journalists in content is Following the correct news writing format or style that gained a score of 31.7, in technical Showing the news writers ability with a mean of 27.4, while in ethics most news writers did not cited sources properly and observed copyright laws with a mean of 7.6. There is a significant difference between the scores of pre-tests and post-test as revealed by paired-t test, a p-value of almost 0.00 at 0.05 and 0.01 level of significance moved the researcher to reject the null hypothesis. The great challenges that the respondents posted is No sufficient and concrete examples to create meaningful learning with a frequency score of 10 or 100%. The challenges they met were the bases of the enhanced intervention material. It can be concluded that CEB Worktext is effective as intervention material and the enhanced worktext as output of this study will be more appropriate as review material for campus journalists. (shrink)

Our concept of the universe and the material world is foundational for our thinking and our moral lives. In an earlier contribution to the URAM project I presented what I called 'the ultimate organizational principle' of the universe. In that article (Grandpierre 2000, pp. 12-35) I took as an adversary the wide-spread system of thinking which I called 'materialism'. According to those who espouse this way of thinking, the universe consists of inanimate units or sets of material such as atoms (...) or elementary particles. Against this point of view on reality, I argued that it is 'logic', which exists in our inner world as a function of our mind, that is the universal organizing power of the universe. The present contribution builds upon this insight. Then I focussed on rationality; now I am interested in the responsibility that is the driving force behind our effort to find coherence and ultimate perspectives in our cosmos. It is shown that biology fundamentally differs from physics. Biology has its own fundamental principle, which is formulated for the first time in history in a scientific manner by Ervin Bauer. This fundamental principle is the cosmic life principle. I show that if one considers the physical laws as corresponding to reality, as in scientific realism, than physicalism becomes fundamentally spiritual because the physical laws are not material. I point out that the physical laws originate from the fundamental principle of physics which is the least action principle. I show that the fundamental principle of physics can be considered as the "instinct of atoms". Our research has found deep and meaningful connections between the basic principle of physics and the ultimate principles of the universe: matter, life and reason. Therefore, the principle of least action is not necessarily an expression of sterile inanimateness. On the contrary, the principle of physics is related to the life principle of the universe, to the world of instincts behind the atomic world, in which the principles of physics, biology, and psychology arise from the same ultimate principle. Our research sheds new light to the sciences of physics, biology, and psychology in close relation to the basic principles. These ultimate principles have a primary importance in our understanding of the nature of Man and the Universe, together with the relations between Man and Nature, Man and the Universe. The results offer new foundations for our understanding our own role in the Earth, in the Nature and in the Universe. Even the apparently inanimate world of physics shows itself to be animate on long timescales and having a kind of pre- human consciousness in its basic organisation. This hypothesis offers a way to understand when and how the biological laws may direct physical laws, and, moreover, offers a new perspective to study and understand under which conditions can self-consciousness govern the laws of biology and physics. This point of view offers living beings and humans the possibility of strengthening our natural identity, and recognising the wide perspective arising from having access to the deepest ranges of our own human resources and realising the task for which human and individual life has been created. (shrink)

This study aimed to enhance the mastery level of the campus journalists of Cuyo Central School, Division of Palawan in basic news writing through (CEB) Contextualized Error – Based Worktext. It used mixed methods, the quantitative approach was utilized to know the common errors committed by the participants of the study in writing news articles, their level of achievement and the testing of significant difference of their scores in pre-test and post – test. The challenges they met in utilizing (...) the intervention material was also presented through quantitative method. The qualitative method was utilized in presenting the changes to be done to further enhance the material based from the challenges met by the participants of the study. Interview method and Focus Group Discussion were used as instruments. The common errors committed by the pupil-journalists in content is Following the correct news writing format or style that gained a score of 31.7, in technical Showing the news writers ability with a mean of 27.4, while in ethics most news writers did not cited sources properly and observed copyright laws with a mean of 7.6. There is a significant difference between the scores of pre-tests and post-test as revealed by paired-t test, a p-value of almost 0.00 at 0.05 and 0.01 level of significance moved the researcher to reject the null hypothesis. The great challenges that the respondents posted is No sufficient and concrete examples to create meaningful learning with a frequency score of 10 or 100%. The challenges they met were the bases of the enhanced intervention material. It can be concluded that CEB Worktext is effective as intervention material and the enhanced worktext as output of this study will be more appropriate as review material for campus journalists. (shrink)

Alexander James Dallas' An Exposition of the Causes and Character of the War was written as part of an effort by the then US government to explain and justify its declaration of war in 1812. However publication coincided with the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War. The Exposition is especially interesting for the insight it provides into the self-constraint of American foreign policy and of the conduct of a war. The focus is on the foreign policy (...) of the early republic and the related philosophy of law and war. A central idea is that international law should chiefly benefit those remaining at peace. -/- Dallas was a Philadelphian who settled there in 1783, the year of the Peace of Paris which ended the War of Independence, arriving from Jamaica after a British education. He wrote much on law, becoming the first recorder of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He later served as Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and federal district attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania, appointed by President Jefferson. He was appointed Secretary of Treasury by President Madison. -/- In this edition the original text is presented with annotations to help identify persons and events of interest. The editor has also added an Introduction, a Bibliography, a short Chronology of Dallas' life and the events of the War, and an analytical Index. As such this annotated edition presents a key primary source in a manner helpful to research for students of the early Republic. (shrink)

Algeria is one of the many countries that are gifted with an abundantly rich and diversified urban heritage, which stems from the multiplicity of successive human civilizations and its natural environment that is rich in all forms of heritage. These can be invested from a tourism perspective for sustainable development in accordance with a myriad of global challenges that exist in the tourism space. The most important heritage areas in Algeria include, among others, Casbah of Algiers, on which this article (...) sheds light in this research. The Casbah (meaning citadel (fortress) refers unambiguously to the citadel of Algiers in Algeria and the traditional quarter gathered around it. In 1992, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared Casbah to be a World Cultural Heritage site. This article seeks to highlight the remarkable urban and cultural potential of the Casbah obtained throughout its ancient history and refers to the monumental buildings inter alia Ketchaoua Mosque, Al Safir Mosque, Grand Mosque, Palais des Rais, Palace of the Dey, Dar Hassan Pasha, and its cultural diversity such as traditional handicrafts jewellery, dress, furnish etc. By taking advantage of the heritage pillars for the sake of heritage tourism development and tourism promotion in a way that achieves the sustainability of this unique urban heritage area, great progress can be made. UNESCO support is in addition to the local government bodies that enacted a series of laws that regulate rules and offer direction to preserve this valuable heritage at the local and also on the global level. (shrink)

Arthur Kaufmann is one of the most prominent figures among the contemporary philosophers of law in German speaking countries. For many years he was a director of the Institute of Philosophy of Law and Computer Sciences for Law at the University in Munich. Presently, he is a retired professor of this university. Rare in the contemporary legal thought, Arthur Kaufmann's philosophy of law is one with the highest ambitions — it aspires to pinpoint the ultimate foundations of law by explicitly (...) proposing an ontology, a general theory of knowledge and concept of a person. Kaufmann's work derives, first of all, from the thinking of Gustav Radburch, his teacher, and then from ideas of Karl Engish and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The philosophy undertakes to pursue the ultimate foundation of law, law which is understood by Kaufmann, first of all, as a "concrete judgement" that is, what is right in a concrete situation. Justice belongs to the essence of law and "unjust law" is contradictio in adiectio. Kaufmann opposes all those theories, which as the only foundation for establishing just law (Recht) adopt legal norms (Gesetz). In Kaufmann's opinion , such theories are powerless in the face of all types of distortions of law rendered by political forces. He suggests that the basic phenomenon which needs to be explained and which cannot be disregarded by a philosopher of law is so-called "legal lawlessness" ("Gestzliches Unrecht"). "Legal lawlessness" which forms a part of life experience for the people of twentieth century totalitarian states. It proved "with the accuracy of scientific experiment" that the reality of law consists of something more than bare conformity with legal norms. The existence of lex corrupta indicates that law contains something "non-dispositive" which requires acknowledgment of both law-maker and judge. Kaufmann, accepting the convergent concept of truth and cognition, assumes that "non-dispositive" content, emerging as the conformity of a number of cognitive acts of different subjects (inter-subjective communicativeness and verifiability), indicates the presence of being in this cognition. The questions "What is law?" and "What are the principles of a just solution?" lead straight to the ontology of law, to the question about the ontological foundations of law. Kaufmann discerns the ontological foundations of law in the specifically understood "nature of things" and, ultimately, in a "person". He proposes a procedural theory of justice, founded on a "person". In my work, I undertake to reconstruct the train of thought which led Kaufmann to the recognition of a "person" as the ontological foundation of law. In the first part, the conception of philosophy adopted by Kaufmann, initial characteristics of law — of reality which is the subject of analysis, as well as, the requirements for proper philosophical explanation of law posed by Kaufmann are introduced. In the second, Kaufmann's reconstruction of the process of the realisation of law is presented. Next, the conception of analogy which Kaufmann uses when explaining law is analyzed. In the fourth part, Kaufmann's conception of ontological foundations of law is discussed. A critical analysis is carried out in which I demonstrate that the theory of the ontological foundation of law proposed by Kaufmann and the concept of a person included in it do not allow a satisfac¬tory explanation of the phenomenon of "legal lawlessness" and lead to a number of difficulties in the philosophical explanation of law. Finally, the perspectives of a proper formulation of the issue of the ontological foundations of law are drafted in the context of the analyzed theory. My interest is centered on the conception of philosophy adopted by Kaufmann, according to which the existence of the reality is inferred on the basis of a certain configuration of the content of consciousness, whereas at the point of departure of philosophy of law, the data to be explained is a certain process, which is, basically, a process of cognition, while the reality appears only as a condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process. I wish to argue that the difficulties which appear in the explanation of law are a consequence of the assumed fundamental philosophical solu¬tions, which seem to be characteristic, though usually not assumed explicitly, in philoso¬phy and theory of law dominant at present in continental Europe. Thereby, I wish to show the significance of ontological and epistemological solutions to the possibility of a proper formulation of the problems posed by philosophy and theory of law. Kaufmann proclaims himself in favour of a philosophy which poses questions about the ultimate foundations of understanding of the reality. In epistemology, he assumes that answers to the questions "What is reality like?" and ultimately "What is real?" are inferred on the basis of uniformity of a cognitive acts of different subjects. Cognition of the reality is accomplished exclusively through the content of conceptual material. The two fundamental questions posed by philosophy of law are "What is just law?" and "How is the just law enacted?" The latter is a question about the process of achieving a solution to a concrete case. Since, in Kaufmann's opinion, law does not exist apart from the process of its realisation, an answer to the question about the manner of realisation of law is of fundamental significance to answering the question: "What is law?" and to the explanation of the question about the ontological grounding of law, which is, as well, the foundation of justice. The proper solution has to take into account the moment of "non-dispositive" content of law; its positiveness understood as the reality and, at the same time, it has to point to the principles of the historical transformation of the content. Law, in the primary meaning of the word, always pertains, in Kaufmann's opinion, to a concrete case. A legal norm is solely the "possibility" of law and the entirely real law is ipsa res iusta, that which is just in a given situation. Determination of what is just takes place in a certain type of process performed by a judge (or by man confronted with a choice). Kaufmann aims to reconstruct this process. A question about the ontological foundation of law is a question about the ontological foundations of this process. In the analyzed theory it is formulated as a question about the transcendental conditions, necessary for the possibility of the occurrence of the process: how the reality should be thought to make possible the reconstructed process of the realisation of law. Kaufmann rejects the model for finding a concrete solution based on simple subsump¬tion and proposes a model in which concrete law ensues, based on inference by analogy, through the process of "bringing to conformity" that which is normative with that which is factual. Kaufmann distinguishes three levels in the process of the realisation of law. On the highest level, there are the fundamental legal principles, on the second legal norms, on the third — concrete solutions. The fundamental principles of law are general inasmuch as they cannot be "applied" directly to concrete conditions of life, however, they play an important part in establishing norms. A judge encounters a concrete situation and a system of legal norms. A life situation and norms are situated on inherently different levels of factuality and normativeness. In order to acquire a definite law both a norm (system of norms) and a life situation (Lebenssachverhalt) should undergo a kind of "treatment" which would allow a mutual conformity to be brought to them. Legal norms and definite conditions of life come together in the process of analogical inference in which the "factual state" ("Tatbestand") — which represents a norm, and in the "state of things" ("Sachverhalt") — which represents a specific situation are constructed. A "factual state" is a sense interpreted from a norm with respect to specific conditions of life. The "state of things" is a sense constructed on the basis of concrete conditions of life with respect to norms (system of norms). Legal norms and concrete conditions of life meet in one common sense established during the process of realisation of law. Mutatis mutandis the same refers to the process of composition of legal norms: as the acquisition of concrete law consists in a mutual "synchronization" of norms and concrete conditions of life, so acquisition of legal norms consists of bringing to conformity fundamental principles and possible conditions of life. According to Kaufmann, both of these processes are based on inference through analogy. As this inference is the heart of these processes it is simultaneously a foundation finding just law and justice. How does Kaufmann understand such an inference? As the basis for all justice he assumes a specifically interpreted distributive justice grounded on proportionality. Equality of relations is required between life conditions and their normative qualification. Concrete conditions of life are ascribed normative qualification not through simple application of a general norm. More likely, when we look for a solution we go from one concrete normative qualified case to another, through already known "applications" of norms to a new "application". The relation between life conditions and their normative qualifica¬tion has to be proportional to other, earlier or possible (thought of) assignments of that which is factual to that which is normative. Law as a whole does not consist of a set of norms, but only of a unity of relations. Since law is a, based on proportion, relative unity of a norm and conditions of life, in order to explain law in philosophical manner, the question about ontological base of this unity has to be asked. What is it that makes the relation between a norm and conditions of life "non-dispositive"? What is the basis for such an interpretation of a norm and case which makes it possible to bring a norm and conditions of life into mutual "conformity"? This is a question about a third thing (next to norms and conditions of life), with respect to which the relative identity between a norm and conditions of life occurs, about the intermediary between that which is normative and that which is factual and which provides for the process of establishing of norms, as well as, finding solutions. It is the "sense" in which the idea of law or legal norm and conditions of life have to be identical to be brought to mutual "conformity". In Kaufmann's opinion such a sense is nothing else but the "nature of things" which determines the normative qualification of the reality. Since establishment of this "sense" appears to be "non-dispositive" and controlled inter-subjectively (namely, other subjects will reach a similar result) so, in conformity with the convergent concept of truth, the "nature of things" must be assigned a certain ontological status. According to Kaufmann this is a real relation which occurs between being and obligation, between the conditions of life and normative quality. However, it should be underlined that from the point of view of the analyzed system the "nature of things" is a correlate of constructed sense, a result of a construction which is based on the principle of consistent understanding of senses ("non-normative" and "normative") and is not a reality which is transcendent against the arrangement of senses. In Kaufmann's theory, inference from analogy appears to be a process of reshaping the concepts (senses) governed by tendency to understand the contents appearing in relations between that which is factual and that which is normative in a consistent way. The analogical structure of language (concepts) and recognition of being as composed of an essence and existence is an indispensable requirement for the possibility of the realisation of law, based on specifically understood inference from analogy. It is necessary to assume a moment of existence without content which ensures unity of cognition. Existence emerges thus as a condition of the possibility of cognition. According to Kaufmann, the "nature of things" is the heart of inference through analogy and the basis for establishment of finding of law. Inference from the "state of things" to a norm or from a norm to the "state of things" always means inference through the "nature of things". The "nature of things" is the proper medium of objective legal sense sought in every cognition of law. In Kaufmann's view, the question whether the "nature of things" is ultima ratio of interpretation of law or is only a means of supplement gaps in law or whether it is one of the sources of law, is posed wrongly. The "nature of things" serves neither to supplement the gaps nor is it a source of law as, for example, a legal norm may be. It is a certain kind of "catalyst" necessary in every act of making law and solving a concrete case. Owing to "nature of things" it is possible to bring to a mutual conformity the idea of law and possible conditions of life or legal norms and concrete conditions of life. In Kaufmann's conception the "nature of things" is not yet the ultimate basis for understanding the "non-dispositiveness" of law. The relation between obligation and being is determined in the process of the realisation of law. Both the process itself and that which is transformed in this process are given. A question about the ontological bases of "material" contents undergoing "treatment" in the process of the realisation of law and about being which is the basis of regularity of the occurrence of the process arises. Only this will allow an explanation that the result of the process is not optional. Thus, a question about reality to which law refers and about the subject realising the law has to be formed. To this, Kaufmann gives the following answer: that which is missing is man but not "empirical man" but man as a "person". A "person" understood as a set of relations between man and other people and things. A "person" is the intermediary between those things which are different — norm and case are brought to conformity. A "person" is that which is given and permanent in the process of the realisation of law. It determines the content of law, is "subject" of law; this aspect is described by Kaufmann as the "what" of the process of realisation of law. A "person" consists of precisely just these relations which undergo "treatment" in the process. On the other hand, a "person" is "a place" in which the processes of realisation of law occur, it is the "how" of normative discourse, a "person" is that which determines the procedure of the process, being "outside" of it. This aspect of a "person" is connected with the formal moment of law. A "person" being, at the same time, the "how" and the "what" of the process of the realisation of law, is also, to put it differently, a structural unity of relation and that which constitutes this relation (unity of relatio and relata). According to this approach a "person" is neither an object nor a subject. It exists only "in between". It is not substance. Law is the relation between being and obligation. That which is obligatory is connected with that which is general. That which is general does not exist on its own, it is not completely real. Accordingly, a "person" as such is also not real. It is relational, dynamic and historical. A "person" is not a state but an event. In Kaufmann's opinion, such a concept of a "person" helps to avoid the difficulties connected with the fungibility of law in classical legal positivism. A "person" is that which is given, which is not at free disposal and secures the moment of "non-dispositiveness" of law. Kaufmann concludes: "The idea (»nature«) of law is either the idea of a personal man or is nothing". Theory points at the structure of realising law and explains the process of adoption of general legal norms for a concrete situation. The analysis has shown however, that in this theory a satisfactory answer to the question about the ultimate foundations of law is not given. It seems that in the analyzed theory the understanding of human being takes place through understanding of law. What is good for man as a "person", what is just, what a "person" deserves may be determined only against the existing system of law. A "per¬son" adopted as a basis of law is the reality postulated in the analysis of the process of the realisation of law. It is a condition of possibility of this process ( explaining, on one hand, its unity and, on the other hand, the non-dispositive moments stated in this process). A "person" in the discussed theory is entirely defined by the structure of law, it can be nothing more than that which is given in law, what law refers to, what law is about. Being, which is a "person", is constituted by relations between people and objects, the relations which are based on fundamental links between norms and conditions of life established in a process of bringing them to conformity. It has to be assumed that man as a "person" is a subject of law only as far as realising law "treats" given senses according to their current configuration. The system of law is a starting point and it describes in content what man is as a "person". Moreover, being a "person" is the condition for entering legal relations. Consistently, Kaufmann writes that "empirical man" is not the subject of law, man is not "out of nature" a "person". People become "persons" due to the fact that they acknowledge each other as "persons" — acknowledging, at the same time, law. This acknowledgement is a con¬dition of existence, of the possibility of the occurrence of process of realisation of law and of constituting legal relations which ultimately constitute a "person". Kaufmann assumes, that law tends towards a moral aim: it may and must create an external freedom, without which the internal freedom to fulfil moral obligations cannot develop. However, this postulate is not based on the necessary structure of human being. From the point of view of his system, it is nothing more than only a condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process of the realisation of law — lack of freedom would destroy the "how" of this process. Thus, the postulate to protect the freedom of personal acts has to be interpreted, in accordance with the analyzed theory, as a postulate, the fulfilment of which aims ultimately at the accomplishment of the very same process of realisation of law itself and not the realisation of a given man. Kaufmann considers a "person" to be an element which unites the system of law as a whole. Law is a structure of relations, which are interdependent and inter-contingent. Consequently, a "person" which is to form the ontological basis of law has to be entity consisting of all relations. Being also the "how" of the process of realisation of law, if a "person" is to warrant its unity, it has to be a common source for all procedures. Hence, a single "person" would constitute a subject of law. Man appears to be only a moment of a certain entirety, realisation of which should be an aim of his actions. Law, creating a "person" as an object and subject of law becomes a primary entity. In the analyzed theory, the basis for determination of aims which law sets to man is not the allocation of man-subject to something which improves him but rather, such relation is only just constituted by law. A question appears, why should aims set in law also be the aims of "empirical man"? Why is this "empirical man" to be punished in the name of a "person" understood in such a way? If, however, it is assumed that what is man is determined by a system which is superior to him, then man has to be understood only as a part of a whole and there are no grounds to prohibit istrumental treatment of man and so the road to all aspects of totalitarianism might be opened. A problem of the application of created theory to the reality arises, the reality which the theory pretends to explain. Ultimately in his theory Kaufmann does not give any systemic grounds for a radical questioning of the validity of any legal norms. Every new norm becomes an equal part of system of norms. It is only its interpretation and application to given conditions of life that may be disputable, however, this refers to all norms without exception. Cohesive inter-pretation of norms and applications is necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of just law. New norms have to be interpreted in the light of others, correspondingly, the other norms require reinterpretation in the light of the new ones. Contradiction in interpretation of a norm does not form a basis for questioning norms but may serve only to question the manner of their interpretation (understanding). Therefore, no grounds exist to assume any legal norm as criminal or unjust, and in consequence, to question any consistently realised system based on formally, properly established norms, as "legal lawlessness". As law and a "person" do not exist without the process of realisation of law, the role of legal safety becomes crucial as the condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process of realisation of law. Denying legal safety would be tantamount to negation of law in general (also of moral law) as negation of safety takes away, at the same time, the basis for occurrence of the process of realisation of law. Moreover, any lack of legal safety would also mean lack of a basis for the existence of man as a "person". Kaufmann's thesis, that civil disobedience is legalized only when it has a chance to lead to success, consistent with his concept of the foundations of law, seems to point directly to conclusions which deny the facts taken under consideration and doubtlessly Kaufmann's own intentions, since it would have to be assumed that accordingly there are no grounds to question a legal system in force based on violence which secures its operation. Force finally seems to determine which one of the mutually irreconcilable normative systems constitute law and which does not. A legitimate position is one which leads to success, it is the weaker system which is negated. If so, then basically violent imposition of law is not an act directed against the law in force but, to the contrary, realisation of law. In the context of the new system the former system of law may be talked about as unjust solely in the sense of being incapable of being consistently united with the new. However, at the base, ultimately, lies force which reaffirms differences and excludes from the process of realisation of law certain norms and their interpretations. Kaufmann was aiming at grounding of that which is "non-dispositive" in a certain given framework of interpretation. Nevertheless, he does not provide foundations for the understanding of phenomena, which he undertakes to explain at a point of departure. Instead of explaining them the theory negates the possibility of their existence. The reality postulated in regard to "non-dispositive" moments of the reconstructed process of acquiring law consist of a specifically understood "person", which appears in Kaufmann's conceptions as a condition of the possibility of the realisation of law. According to this approach understanding of a "person" may be only a function of law. To understand "legal lawlessness" and foundations of justice it is necessary to look for such theory of law in which understanding of man as a "person" and being is not a function of understanding of law (in which a "person" is not only a condition for possibility of reconstructed process of realisation of law; for possibility of cognition processes). It seems necessary to start from theory of being and a "person" based on broader experience than the one assumed by Kaufmann and reconstruct the ontological foundations of the process of realisation of law only in such perspective. Kaufmann points out that that to which law refers is ipsa res iusta a concrete relation of man to other people and things. This relation, in his theory, appears to be basically only just constituted by law (normative senses "applied" to conditions of life). Therefore, understanding the relation between a given man and other people and things which constitute the aim of his actions, that is understanding of good, is enacted against the background of constitution of senses; constitution which is a result of a process aiming towards consistent understanding of particular contents (of nor¬mative and non-normative senses). "Being" is secondary towards constructed senses it is only their correlate. The primary relation consists of relation of a man to law (system of norms), while the secondary relation is one of man to something which is the aim of his action (relation between man and good). Considering such approach it is difficult to envision a satisfying answer to the fundamental question: why does law put concrete man under any obligation to obey it? The source of this problem can be seen in reduction of the base for understanding good to content of obligation formulated in auto-reflection. Such reduction seems to be a consequence of Kaufmann's adoption of "convergent concept of truth" and in con¬sequence his recognition of indirect, essentialistic grasp of reality formulated in concepts as the basic and only foundation of theory of being and of law. In view of such an approach, analogy of law, concepts and being is the condition for the possibility of the process of transformation of senses which aims at consistent interpretation of all law. Existence is postulated with respect to the possibility of unity of experience and cognition. However, also a different approach to understanding of the problem of being and good is possible. In spontaneous cognition being is affirmed, first of all, not as a certain, non-contradictory, determined content, but as something existing. Together with a cer¬tain content (passed indirectly through notions) existence of being is co-given. The basis for unity of being is not formed by the consistence of content, as it is in the case of the theories departing from the analysis of cognition processes, but by an act of existence realising content (essence). Such an approach makes it also possible to go beyond the convergent concept of truth. It is worth mentioning that allocation of an agent to good is realised not only by the content of duty. A statement that something is good is primary with respect to determination of this good in content. The recognised good always bears some content, however, there are no reasons to base the concept of good exclusively on indirect, formulated in concepts cognition. As primary, can be adopted the relation of man to good and not of man to law. Determination in content appears to be only an articulation of aspectual cognition of being, as an object of action. In such a case the basis for relative unity of norm and conditions of life is not the "nature of things" understood as correlate of sense but it is relation to good based on internal constitution of man as potential, not self-sufficient being. It does not mean, that the moments of the process of realisation of law singled out by Kaufmann are not important to determination of what is just. He, quite rightly, points to significant role played by norms in the evaluation of concrete situations, in man's search for closer specification in content of good innate to him. The structure of process of determining law for a concrete situation, to a great degree corresponds to the processes of determining law which take place not only in the legal sciences. Kaufmann's analyses of the process of realisation of law show the complexity of the structure of these processes and point towards important moments allowing a better understanding of law and man. Nevertheless, these analyses cannot be a basis for construction of philosophical theory of law, theory which hopes to point out the ultimate, ontological foundations for understanding law. Kaufmann's results may become fully valid only in a more general perspective including broader experience at the point of departure. (shrink)

Recently, several authors have utilized the notion of dependence to respond to the traditional argument for the incompatibility of freedom and divine foreknowledge. However, proponents of this response have not always been so clear in specifying where the incompatibility argument goes wrong, which has led to some unfounded objections to the response. We remedy this dialectical confusion by clarifying both the dependence response itself and its interaction with the standard incompatibility argument. Once these clarifications are made, it becomes clear both (...) (1.) that the dependence response does not beg the question against the proponent of the incompatibility argument and (2.) that the dependence response advances the dialectic whether it is developed as a version of Ockhamism or as a version of multiple-pasts compatibilism. (shrink)

The contribution focuses on philosophical issues of justice of positive law in the light of the social teaching of John Paul II. The analyses start with consideration of anthropological foundations of justice as virtue, develop with the reflexion upon justice of actions realizing justice and finally arrive at examination of the criteria of justice of law. -/- It is argued that relations between a human being and goods (ends of actions) form ontological basis of natural law and justice of actions (...) – orders and prohibitions are secondary in respect to these relations. An aim of just law (and natural law) is not preservation or restoration of abstractly understood moral order based on norms – orders and prohibitions) but integral development (good) of a person – a being possessing dignity. John Paul’s II philosophy of law takes advantage primarily of Thomas Aquinas’ approach to law and combines it with constructions which are typical for modern human rights protection. John Paul’s II conception of natural law is anthropocentric and bases on subjective rights thinking. Human dignity and human rights which derive from it provide basic criteria for the justice of law. Human rights as subjective rights disclose natural law which is understood as a set of goods for a human person. These goods are ends of actions and as such they determine actions and their forms. This point of view is compatible with Aquinas’ definition: “law is nothing but a rational plan of operation, and … the rational plan of any kind of work is derived from the end” (Summa contra gentiles, lib. 3, cap. 114, n. 5). -/- Positive (human) law which is not just has no normative power in this sense that it does not in itself provide reasons for concrete actions of a concrete actor. Sometimes there are moral reasons for following unjust law, however if its norm prescribes actions which are wrong in themselves (internally wrong) there is moral obligation to act contrary to such a legal norm. -/- Zasadniczym przedmiotem opracowania jest filozoficzna refleksja Jana Pawła II nad sprawiedliwością prawa stanowionego. Analizy przebiegają od zagadnienia antropologicznych podstaw sprawiedliwości poprzez problematykę działań realizujących sprawiedliwość do zagadnienia sprawiedliwości prawa stanowionego. Opracowanie zamykają uwagi wskazujące na kontekst teologiczny istotny dla problematyki sprawiedliwości, którego analiza wykracza jednak poza podjęte zamierzenie koncentrujące się na problematyce filozoficznoprawnej. Argumentuje się, że u podstaw tej refleksji leży namysł nad relacją człowieka do dobra, która stanowi ontologiczną podstawę prawa naturalnego i sprawiedliwości – nakazy i zakazy są wtórne wobec tej relacji. Celem prawa i sprawiedliwości jest dobro konkretnego, obdarzonego godnością człowieka, a nie np. przywracanie abstrakcyjnie pojętego porządku moralnego. Od strony konstrukcji teoretycznej, filozofia prawa Jana Pawła II jest osadzona przede wszystkim na koncepcji Tomasza z Akwinu łączonej z konstrukcjami typowymi dla współczesnej ochrony praw człowieka. To w godności i wynikających z niej prawach człowieka poszukiwać trzeba zasadniczych treściowych kryteriów sprawiedliwości prawa. Prawa człowieka jako prawa podmiotowe są podstawowym wyrazem prawa naturalnego, stanowiącego ontyczną podstawę sprawiedliwości i które pojmowane jest jako zespół dóbr dla osoby, zatem i celów kształtujących działanie. Perspektywa pojmowania prawa naturalnego jest antropocentryczna. Prawo stanowione, które nie jest sprawiedliwe, nie ma „mocy prawa”, przede wszystkim w takim sensie, że nie stanowi samo w sobie racji działania. Niekiedy, ze względów moralnych, niesprawiedliwe prawo wymaga posłuszeństwa. Jeśli jednak prawo stanowione daje uprawnienia do czynów wewnętrznie złych i nakazuje takie czyny, to nie tylko nie obowiązuje w sumieniu i nie jest racją działania, ale obowiązkiem jest postępowanie wbrew takiemu prawu. (shrink)

I reconstruct the civic republican foundations of Eugene Debs’s socialist critique of capitalism, demonstrating how he uses a neo-roman conception of freedom to condemn waged labour. Debs is also shown to build upon this neo-roman liberty in his socialist republican objections to the plutocratic capture of the law and threats of violence faced by the labour movement. This Debsian socialist republicanism can be seen to rest on an ambitious understanding of the demands of citizen sovereignty and civic solidarity. While Debs (...) shares some of the commitments of earlier American labour republican critics of capitalism, he departs from them in his thoroughgoing commitment to common democratic ownership of productive property. His socialist republicanism remains valuable today for its ability to illuminate features of plutocratic control, judicial autocracy, and the regime of property best suited to suppressing economic domination. I conclude that Debs not only deserves a prominent place in an emerging radical republican canon but presents a distinctive contrast with many of his Marxist contemporaries and offers a compelling challenge to recent liberal, plebeian, and socialist forms of republicanism. (shrink)

Ruins are evocative structures, and we value them in different ways for the various things they mean to us. Ruins can be aesthetically appreciated, but they are also valued for their historical importance, what they symbolize to different cultures and communities, and as lucrative objects, i.e., for tourism. However, today an increasing number of ancient ruins have been damaged or completely destroyed by acts of war. In 2001 the Taliban struck a major blow to cultural heritage by blasting the Bamiyan (...) Buddhas out of existence. They were not easy to destroy. This direct targeting of cultural property might change our attitudes toward conservation practices. Francesco Bandarin, the UNESCO assistant director-general for culture, states, “Deliberate destruction has created a new context. At the time, Bamiyan was an exceptional case.” Bandarin’s comments notwithstanding, the destruction of cultural property in times of war is not new. Not only is there relatively settled international law prohibiting the looting of cultural property during times of war, we can find examples of intentional destruction of cultural property from thousands of years ago. In this paper I would like to focus on one particular case, that of the Mỹ Sơn Archaeological Sanctuary, in the Socialist Republic of Việt Nam. Mỹ Sơn is the foremost Champa archaeological site and the largest archaeological site in Việt Nam. The largest temple (kalan) at Mỹ Sơn, A1, was destroyed in a US bombing raid in 1969. In this paper I highlight different approaches to architectural cultural heritage preservation in terms of reconstruction, restoration, and ruination -- with an eye to applying these approaches to the remains of the A1 temple in Mỹ Sơn. I briefly discuss the history of Mỹ Sơn before providing some reasons to believe that we should allow A1 to ruinate. (shrink)

In his political treatise, Mabadi ara ahl al-madina al-fadhila, Abu Nasr Alfarabi, the medieval Muslim philosopher, proposes a theory of virtuous city which, according to prominent scholars, is modeled on Plato’s utopia of the Republic. No doubt that Alfarabi was well-versed in the philosophy of Plato and the basic framework of his theory of city is platonic. However, his theory of city is not an exact reproduction of the Republic’s theory and, despite glaring similarities, the two theories (...) do differ in many aspects. In both, Alfarabi’s Mabadi ara ahl al-madina al-fadhila and Plato’s Republic, the theory of virtuous city is accompanied by a theory of the soul. Since the theory of soul plays a foundational role in both theories of the virtuous city, the present article intends to provide an explanation for the differences between the two theories of the city in terms of the differences between the two theories of the soul. (shrink)

The policy makers or lawyers may face the need of legal research for reasons. The congressmen may plan to make new laws to address the challenges of their constituent or to the interest of nation. The lawyers may need to serve their clients who like to know the legal issues involved, the strategies to deal with their loss and recovery, and prospect for winning the case if the dispute has gotten worse. The lawyers may practice in a solo business or (...) might work as an associate lawyer in the law firms. A senior lawyer or partner in some cases may like to exploit the junior work force about the problems or grievances from the potential clients. Since he needs to focus their attention on other matters, such as the business expansion of his law firm or more lucrative cases in need of career hands, he may tap the junior lawyer for the legal research, who could assist with the basis of his final legal opinion. The memorandum, opinion letter and brief would be such forms of professional communication for the lawyers and legal researchers. The congressman also can be supplemented with the aid of staffs in terms of his legal expertise and grasp of the issues standing for carrying their responsibility more effectively. For the lawyers and legal researchers, the structure of state and federal legal system is the kind of important variants to orient their work direction and basic frame for the most efficient and adequate scope of search and analysis. The paradigm change also is revolutionary to impact the general base of people. Decades ago, the research or researcher only related with the class of professionals, such as professors, lawyers, career officers and cadres of enterprises. They would enjoy insulation and exploit their research work as an entrance barrier from lay people. Their large shelves at home study or in the room or corner of office thrust an impression that he or she is learned and knowledgeable. This impliedly communicates his or her prestige of social or professional success. The books and articles seem to symbolize a kind of monopoly which bears to exclude unclassified or non-professional workers. The change is remarkable that every citizen could benefit from the on-line sources of information, which, of course, is generally true of professional knowledge. Now professors fear of plagiarism that students often are the kind of suspect. The legal research would turn on the help of digitization which revolutionizes to incur a new mode of research operation. About the query, the citizens and people can readily verify its truth or falsity with one clique within the personal computer. An enormous amount of information is currently flowing on the internet and on-line sources of reference, which shapes an informative and knowledgeable society. As the medical doctors warned decades ago, the precept is any most effective, “forbear from your intelligence or knowledge work for your health.” Many of them now spend long hours a day to satisfy their curiosity and intelligent search. He or she may be well awarded an academic degree if to recognize their hard work on his PC. Nevertheless, this information age does not always bring a positive progress, which arouses the kind of issues, say, right of privacy, on-line fraud. In some cases, this transformation may lead to an inferior attitude of researcher. My today’s experience is one of exotic case. I have received an e-mail from Google CEO stating that I have been selected as one of twelve winners from the pool of Google users. The award money is enormous which stalls me for some time. The authenticity and reliability have hit my head, and I utilized a verification service website managed by the team of lawyers. It costs five dollars and remaining 24 dollars would be processed upon the progress of interaction. I am waiting for an answer from the team. Then the research nowadays is not limited to the basic context of our subsistence, but influences in any depth into the professional lives. (shrink)

On September 7, 2008 the executive administration of American President George W. Bush announced that his government would take over the giant mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, costing the citizens $200 billion. One week later, the 160 year-old American investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. What would soon be known worldwide as “the financial crisis” had begun. In response to that crisis, less than a month later, on October 3, 2008, the (...) United States Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which established the Troubled Asset Relief Program and authorized the use of $700 billion in taxpayer funds to bail out the banking and finance industry. As a result, the U.S. Treasury reports that the total bailout gave Bank of America $45 billion, Citigroup Bank $45 billion, AIG Bank $40 billion, J. P Morgan $25 billion, Wells Fargo $25 billion, General Motors $10.4 billion, Goldman Sachs $10 billion, Morgan Stanley $10 billion, GMAC $5 billion, and Chrysler corporation, a mere $4 billion. This response to a perceived crisis was not limited to the United States. On October 12, 2008—in one day alone—the United Kingdom coughed up the equivalent of €679 billion in bank relief. And in Germany, Der Spiegel reported on December 23, 2008 “The German government whipped its €480 billion bank bailout package through parliament in record time.". (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes wrote in his Leviathan that money exchanging hands, monetary policies, activities, and transactions are the blood of the “Leviathan” - the eponymous subject of the book. Hobbes writes that this Leviathan's “blood” includes the “collectors, receivers, and treasurers; of the second are the treasurers again, and the officers appointed for payment of several public or private ministers.” Hobbes, follows this with an analogy of a living man, stating that this “artificial man maintains his resemblance with the natural [man]; (...) whose veins, receiving the blood from the several parts of the body, carry it to the heart; where, being made vital, the heart by the arteries sends it out again, to enliven and enable for motion all the members of the same.” Hobbes maintains a parallel between the natural man and what he calls the “artificial man”, the state throughout his Leviathan. -/- Ultimately, the mechanisms of finance in the United States are the accumulation of historical precedents - both legal and non-legal (such as economic, but also social). These precedents have led to the current system, on a continuing and settled basis. The legal and economic systems merging for the best system of an international monetary order can represent a balance of legal realism and legal formalism. -/- “Money” is printed by the U.S. government, designated as an official note. Value is correlated with how many of those printed pieces of paper exist. This is the basic concept of inflation. This concept of value and inflation is said to be connected to a commodity - such as how much gold or silver existed in the Federal Reserve's physical locations or Fort Knox. Such systems have been in place since at least Mesopotamia, where clay tablets were used to represent credit, or comparable contracts that seem to resemble modern forms of fiat currency. (shrink)

Finnis claims that his theory proceeds from seven basic principles of practical reason that are self-evidently true. While much has been written about the claim of self-evidence, this article considers it in relation to the rigorous claims of logic and mathematics. It argues that when considered in this light, Finnis equivocates in his use of the concept of self-evidence between the realist Thomistic conception and a purely formal, modern symbolic conception. Given his respect for the modern positivist separation of (...) fact and value, the realism of the Thomistic conception cannot be the foundation for the natural law as Finnis would reconstruct it. Nor can the purely formal modern conception of self-evidence provide a foundation for practical reason. This raises some doubt as to whether there can be self-evident principles of practical reason as Finnis suggests. The article contributes to the analysis of the Finnis reconstruction of the natural law by providing a rigorous analysis of his claim for self-evidence. It frames this analysis historically, suggesting the roles that certainty and mystery play in the apprehension of moral meaning. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that differences between the ‘new moral science’ of the seventeenth century and scholastic natural law theory originated primarily from the skeptical challenge the former had to face. Pufendorf’s project of a scientia practica universalis is the paramount expression of an anti-skeptical moral science, a ‘science’ that is both explanatory and normative, but also anti-dogmatic insofar as it tries to base its laws on those basic phenomena of human life which, supposedly, are immune to skeptical (...) doubt. The main scholastic legacy to the new moral science is the dichotomy between an ‘intellectualist’ and a ‘voluntarist’ view of natural law (or between lex immanens and lex imposita). Voluntarism lies at the basis of both theological views, such as Calvinism, and political views, such as those of Hobbes and Locke. The need to counterbalance the undesirable implications of extreme voluntarism may account for much of the developments in ethics and politics during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Scottish natural jurisprudence, which tried to find a middle way between skepticism and extreme voluntarism, is less secular and more empirical than received wisdom admits. There emerged, as one of its ‘accidental’ outcomes, a systematic, self-contained and empirical economic theory from the search for an empirically based normative theory of social life. The basic assumption of such a theory, namely, the notion of societal laws as embedded in trans-individual mechanisms, derives from the voluntarist view of natural law as ‘imposed’ law.Later discussions of social issues in terms of ‘economic’ and ‘ethical’ reasons originated partly from a misreading ofthe Scottish natural jurisprudential framework of economic theory. Starting with this reconstruction, I try to shed some light on recent discussions about the role of ethics in economics. (shrink)

Oftentimes we consider how the law and public policy were interwoven one another for any fine appeal to the constituents and global public. Nonetheless, we are fairly never definite to suggest any hard picture of their relationship. It rather involves an issue of meditative process of philosophy, humanity and social justice as well as a wider of public contention from the purview of temporal and spatial evolution. The paper, in the face with this difficult conundrum, attempts to highlight some of (...) basics despite a surfeit of work products in this field. The paper begins with the instant queries or explanation from the peer scholar practitioners, which would be some of communication with the author. Then the author elicits some of principled relationship between the two concepts. (shrink)

In recent years, Islamic feminism has become a prevalent and controversial topic among scholars from Muslim countries and Western feminists. While respecting the efforts of Muslim activists, this paper argues that because Islamic perspective is inherently anti-pluralist, it is not conducive to feminism and even at odds with it. Since it is impossible to make any generalizations about Muslim countries, this paper focuses on the debate of Islam and feminism as it relates to Iran. Islamic laws that are the ground (...) for constitutions in many Muslim countries treat men and women unequally. In countries with a theocracy, Islam becomes a political system where the power of the ruling elite, which are the clerics, becomes an important obstacle on the way of reforms. As a worldview, Islam provides a fixed identity of women and men that is irreconcilable with any liberating theory. The significance of this discussion lies in the potential of celebration of “Islamic feminism” for reinforcing the fusion of religion and politics in a country such as Iran, which has a religious state. (shrink)

This paper addresses a fundamental line of research in neuroscience: the identification of a putative neural processing core of the cerebral cortex, often claimed to be “canonical”. This “canonical” core would be shared by the entire cortex, and would explain why it is so powerful and diversified in tasks and functions, yet so uniform in architecture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the search for canonical explanations over the past 40 years, discussing the theoretical frameworks informing this research. (...) It will highlight a bias that, in my opinion, has limited the success of this research project, that of overlooking the dimension of cortical development. The earliest explanation of the cerebral cortex as canonical was attempted by David Marr, deriving putative cortical circuits from general mathematical laws, loosely following a deductive-nomological account. Although Marr’s theory turned out to be incorrect, one of its merits was to have put the issue of cortical circuit development at the top of his agenda. This aspect has been largely neglected in much of the research on canonical models that has followed. Models proposed in the 1980s were conceived as mechanistic. They identified a small number of components that interacted as a basic circuit, with each component defined as a function. More recent models have been presented as idealized canonical computations, distinct from mechanistic explanations, due to the lack of identifiable cortical components. Currently, the entire enterprise of coming up with a single canonical explanation has been criticized as being misguided, and the premise of the uniformity of the cortex has been strongly challenged. This debate is analyzed here. The legacy of the canonical circuit concept is reflected in both positive and negative ways in recent large-scale brain projects, such as the Human Brain Project. One positive aspect is that these projects might achieve the aim of producing detailed simulations of cortical electrical activity, a negative one regards whether they will be able to find ways of simulating how circuits actually develop. (shrink)

What is to be learned from the chaotic downfall of the Weimar Republic and the erosion of European liberal statehood in the interwar period vis-a-vis the ongoing European crisis? This book analyses and explains the recurrent emergence of crises in European societies. It asks how previous crises can inform our understanding of the present crisis. The particular perspective advanced is that these crises not only are economic and social crises, but must also be understood as crises of public power, (...) order and authority. In other words, it argues that substantial challenges to the functional and normative setup of democracy and the rule of law were central to the emergence and the unfolding of these crises. The book draws on and adds to the rich ’crises literature’ developed within the critical theory tradition to outline a conceptual framework for understanding what societal crises are. The central idea is that societal crises represent a discrepancy between the unfolding of social processes and the institutional frameworks that have been established to normatively stabilize such processes. The crises at issue emerged in periods characterized by strong social, economic and technological transformations as well as situations of political upheaval. As such, the crises represented moments where the existing functional and normative grid of society, as embodied in notions of public order and authority, were severely challenged and in many instances undermined. Seen in this perspective, the book reconstructs how crises unfolded, how they were experienced, and what kind of responses the specific crises in question provoked. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: European Crises of Public Power: From Weimar until Today, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen / Part I: Semantics, Notions and Narratives of Societal Crisis / 1. What Time Frame Makes Sense for Thinking About Crises?, David Runciman / 2. The Stakes of Crises, Janet Roitman / Part II: Weimar and the Interwar Period: Ideologies of Anti-Modernism and Liberalism / 3. The Crisis of Modernity – Modernity as Crisis: Towards a Typology of Crisis Discourses in Interwar East Central Europe and Beyond, Balázs Trencsényi / 4. European Legitimacy Crisis – Weimar and Today: Rational and Theocratic Authority in the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange, John P. McCormick / 5. Crisis and the Consumer: Reconstructions of Liberalism in Twentieth Century Political Thought , Niklas Olsen / Part III: The Causes of Crises: From Corporatism to Governance / 6. The Constitutionalization of Labour Law and the Crisis of National Democracy , Chris Thornhill / 7. The Crisis in Labour Law: From Weimar to Austerity Ruth Dukes / 8. From the Crisis of Corporatism to the Crisis of Governance, Poul F. Kjaer / Part IV: The Euro and the Crisis of Law and Democracy / 9. What is left of the European Economic Constitution II? From Pyrrhic Victory to Cannae Defeat Christian Joerges / 10. Reflections on Europe’s “Rule of Law Crisis”, Jan-Werner Müller. 11. Democracy under Siege: The Decay of Constitutionalisation and the Crisis of Public Law and Public Opinion, Hauke Brunkhorst/ Part V: The Consequences of Crises and the Future of Europe / 12. Crises and Extra-Legality: From Above and From Below, William E. Scheuermann / 13. “We could all go Down the Road of Lebanon” – Crisis Thinking on the Anti-Muslim Far Right, Mikkel Thorup / 14. Conclusions and Perspectives: The Re-Constitution of Europe, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen Index . (shrink)

The law presents itself as a body of meaning, open to discovery, interpretation, application, criticism, development and change. But what sort of meaning does the law possess? Legal theory provides three sorts of answers. The first portrays the law as a mode of communication through which law-makers convey certain standards or norms to the larger community. The law's meaning is that imparted by its authors. On this view, law is a vehicle, conveying a message from a speaker to an intended (...) audience. The second theory portrays the law as a mode of interpretation, whereby judges, officials, and ordinary citizens make decisions about how the law applies in various practical contexts. The law's meaning is that furnished by its interpreters. According to this theory, law is a receptacle into which decision-makers pour meaning. The third viewpoint argues that these theories, while not altogether wrong, are incomplete because they downplay or ignore the autonomous meaning that the law itself possesses. This theory suggests that the law is basically a mode of participation, whereby legislators, judges, officials, and ordinary people attune themselves to an autonomous field of legal meaning. The law's meaning is grounded in a body of social practice which is independent of both the law's authors and its interpreters and which is infused with basic values and principles that transcend the practice. On this view, law is the emblem of meaning that lies beyond it. -/- Elements of all three theories are present in H.L.A. Hart's influential work, The Concept of Law, which attempts to fuse them into a single, all-encompassing theory. Nevertheless, as we will argue here, the attempt is not successful. Any true reconciliation of the communication and interpretation theories can only take place within the framework of a fully developed participation theory. In the early stages of his work, Hart lays the foundation for such a theory. However, his failure to elaborate it in a thoroughgoing way renders the work incomplete and ultimately unbalanced. As we will see, there is something to be learned from this failure. (shrink)

Kant is often regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern liberal democracy. His political theory reaches its climax in the ground-breaking work, Perpetual Peace (1795), which sets out the basic framework for a world federation of states united by a system of international law. What is less well known is that two years earlier, in his Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793/1794), Kant had postulated a very different, explicitly religious path to the politics of peace: (...) he presents the idea of an “ethical community” as a necessary requirement for humanity to become “satisfactory to God”. While many recent scholars have noted the importance of Kant’s concept of the ethical community, few recognize the force of his argument that such a community is possible only if it takes the form of a church; as a result, the precise status of his proposal remains unclear and under-appreciated. He argues in Division One, Section IV, of Religion’s Third Piece that the idea of this community can become a reality only through a “church” that is characterized by four rational requirements: unity, integrity, freedom, and the changeability of all church rules except these four unchangeable marks. Prior to Section IV, Division One portrays this ethical community as having a political form, yet an essentially nonpolitical matter. He compares it with Jewish theocracy, but observes that the latter failed to be an ethical commonwealth because it was explicitly political. Whereas traditional theocracy replaces the political state of nature (which conforms to the law, “might makes right”) with an ethical state of nature (which conforms to the law that I call, “should makes good”), or attempts to synthesize them, non-coercive theocracy transcends this distinction through a new perspective: it unites humanity in a common vision of a divine legislator whose only law is inward, binding church members together like families, through the law of love. Whereas the legal rights supported by democracy and a system of international law can go a long way to prepare for world peace, Kant’s conviction is that it will be ultimately impossible without support from healthy religion. (shrink)

A guide for translators, about the translation theory, the translation process, interpreting, subtitling, internationalization and localization and computer-assisted translation. A special section is dedicated to the translator's education and associations. The guide include, as annexes, several independent adaptations of the corresponding European Commission works, freely available via the EU Bookshop as PDF and via SetThings as EPUB, MOBI (Kindle) and PDF. For a “smart”, sensible translation , you should forget not the knowledge acquired at school or university, but the corrective (...) standards. Some people want a translation with the touch of the source version, while another people feel that in a successful version we should not be able to guess the original language. We have to realize that both people have right and wrong, and that their only fault is to present requirement as an absolute truth. Teachers agree at least on this principle: “If a sentence is ambiguous, the translation must also be“. There is another critical, less easy to argue, based on an Italian phrase with particularly strong wording: “Traduttore, traditore“. This critique argues that any translation will betray the author‘s language, spirit, style … because of the choices on all sides. What to sacrifice, clarity or brevity, if the formula in the text is brief and effective, but impossible to translate into so few words with the exact meaning? One could understand this criticism that it encourages us to read “in the text.” It seems obvious that it is impossible to follow this advice into practice. CONTENTS: Translation - Assessment of the amount of translated texts - Translation and interpretation - - Translation documents - Translation theories - - Practical / communicative approach - - Approaches of literary theories - - Sociolinguistic mainstream - - Approaches based on linguistic theories - - Approaches based on philosophical and hermeneutic concepts - - Semiotic approaches - The translation process - Types of translations - - Technical translation - Schools of thought - Difficulties associated with specialized domains - The problem of double translation - Thoughts about translation - European standard for translation services - Beautiful infidels - Self-translation - - Types of self-translation - - Factors that promote self-translation - - Self-translation and not authorial translation - Technical translation - - Terminology - - Translation process - - Translation tools - - The technical translator - - - Status - - - Remuneration - Conference interpreting - - Methods of interpretation - - Skills of the interpreter - - Contexts and working languages - - The interpretation in international institutions - - - UNESCO - - - European Union Internationalization and localization - Example - Internationalization and localization - Challenges - Software localization - - Difficulties - - Composing specifications - - Special tools Computer-assisted translation - Translation memory - - Advantages and disadvantages - - General operation - - Various - - Software - Machine translation - - Translation process - - Prerequisites - - Difficulties - - Approaches - - Development - - Existing products and services - - Prospective - Parallel text Subtitle - Subtitling or dubbing? - Description - Subtitling the movies - - Spotting - - Translation - - Simulation - - Engraving, inlaying or packaging - - The live broadcast - Live captioning - - Velotype - - Touch typing - - Computer-aided stenotype - - Speech recognition - Surtitles - - Comments - - Technical means - - Artistic issues - Quasi instant voice translation - - Difficulties - - Ongoing projects - - Future Translation Studies - Theories of translation - Interpretive theory - Back-translation - - The proper use of back-translation - False friends - - Cognates - - - Complete false friends - - - Partial false friends - - False cognates - Translation process - - The implications of the "inside" language - - Total and not absolute translation - - A single model - Untranslatability - - Hovering - - Translation methods - - - Adaptation - - - Calque - - - Compensation - - - Borrowing - - - Periphrasis - - - Translator's note - - Untranslatability of poetry and puns - - An amazing counterexample Translators - Translator's notes - European Master's in Translation - - European Master's in Translation - - - Organization of EMT - - - Core skills - - The EMT label - - EMT Network - - - Eligibility - - Members - European Council of Literary Translators' Associations - - History - - Objectives - International Translation Day Annexes: Translation in EU - Translation Guide - - Think before you write - - - Who will be reading the document? - - - What are you trying to achieve? - - - What points must the document cover? - - Focus on the reader - - - Be direct and interesting - - Get your document into shape - - - When you start - - - As you write - - - Two common problems at the European Commission: - - KISS - Keep It Short and Simple - - - Short... - - - ... and Simple: - - - Simple, uncluttered style also means: - - Make sense - structure your sentences - - Cut out excess nouns - verb forms are livelier - - Be concrete, not abstract - - Prefer active verbs to passive - - - Name the agent - - Beware of false friends, jargon and abbreviations - - - Avoid false friends - - - Avoid or explain jargon - - - Take care with abbreviations - - Revise and cheque check - Clear English Tips - - English prefers to be simple, concise and concrete. - - - Use simple words where appropriate. - - - Prefer a verb to an abstract noun - - - Prefer a gerund to an abstract noun - - - Prefer participles to relative clauses - - - And eliminate participles entirely if appropriate. - - - Use the passive voice sparingly - - - Consider replacing negatives with positives - - - Consider short forms and pronouns to avoid repeating full names … - - - Express conditions, including hidden ones, with ‘if’ ... - - - In general, cut out extra verbiage. - - English prefers straightforward syntax - - - Keep the subject close to the beginning of the sentence - - - Avoid splitting up subjects, modals, verbs and direct objects - - - If a sentence is too long, pull information out into separate sentences. - - - Use topic-introducing phrases sparingly. - - English may use different number, articles, gender or words from other languages - - - Keep uncountable nouns in the singular. - - - Use ‘a’ rather than ‘the’ for members of a class. - - - Do not use gender pronouns for entities. - - - Consider alternatives to ‘of’. - - - Finally, avoid ‘false friends’ in translation. - English Style Guide - - Introduction - - Writing English - - - GENERAL - - - SPELLING - - - PUNCTUATION - - - NUMBERS - - - ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS - - - Acronyms and initialisms - - - Contractions and truncations - - - FOREIGN IMPORTS - - - PARTS OF SPEECH - - - LISTS - - - SCIENCE GUIDE - - - FOOTNOTES, CITATIONS AND REFERENCES - - - CORRESPONDENCE - - - PERSONAL NAMES AND TITLES - - - NAMES OF BODIES - - - GENDER-NEUTRAL LANGUAGE - - About the European Union - - - THE EUROPEAN UNION - - - PRIMARY LEGISLATION - - - SECONDARY LEGISLATION - - - THE EU INSTITUTIONS - - - REFERENCES TO OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS - - - EU FINANCES - - - MEMBER STATES - - - OFFICIAL LANGUAGES AND CURRENCIES - - - EXTERNAL RELATIONS - - TRANSLITERATION - - - TRANSLITERATION TABLE FOR GREEK - - - TRANSLITERATION TABLE FOR CYRILLIC - - FORMS OF ADDRESS - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - - - Envelop - - - Start - - - Close - Style Guide for EU Member States - - Austria - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - - Government bodies and administrative divisions - - Belgium - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - - Federal structure - - Bulgaria - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Croatia - - - Geography - - - Regions - - - Judicial bodies - - - Political and administrative structure - - - Legal instruments - - - Law gazettes, official gazettes and official journals - - - Miscellaneous - - Cyprus - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Czech Republic - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Denmark - - - Geography - 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- - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Malta - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Netherlands - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Poland - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - - Law gazettes, official gazettes and official journals - - Portugal - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Romania - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Slovakia - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Spain - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Sweden - - - Geography - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - Turkey - - - Judicial bodies - - - Legal instruments - - United Kingdom - - - Geography Quotes References About the author - Nicolae Sfetcu . 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Introduction. Taking into account the priorities of the state policy in the field of economic and innovative development of the Perm region, assessment of the regional potential of the digital economy, the strategic importance of economic activities implemented by SMEs for the economy of the region and the country as a whole, the actual impact of the norms on the instruments of development of small and medium-sized enterprises in the Perm region is assessed. The purpose of this study is to (...) improve the regional regulatory platform of tools for the development of small and medium-sized businesses in the Perm region in order to gain the status of an investment-attractive region in the digital economy of the Russian Federation, taking into account the Strategy of the information society in the Russian Federation, which will ultimately contribute to the development of e-business in the Perm region, rehabilitation and competitiveness of the economy of the Perm region in the global market. Methodology. The General methodological basis of the study was the dialectical- materialistic method of cognition of legal reality, which allowed to study the tools of development of small and medium-sized businesses in the Perm region in their development, to consider the problems of tools for the integrated development of small and medium-sized businesses in the Perm region, taking into account the changed socio-economic conditions in inseparable unity with other related tools relevant to the needs of digitalization of society. Such universal scientific methods as analysis and synthesis of doctrinal and normative materials were used in the work. In addition, special legal methods were used: the method of legal modeling, which allows to design possible legal situations using digital tools for the development of small and medium- sized businesses in the Perm region; the method of systematic interpretation used in assessing the actual impact of regional norms on the tools of development of small and medium-sized businesses in the Perm region. Results. The article proposes a new tool for the development of SMEs as a regional electronic platform for the promotion of goods, works and services of SMEs in the Perm region. Attention is paid to the level of digital literacy of SMEs and consumers of their goods, works and services: the conclusion about the lack of digital competence. Conclusion. It is necessary to improve the regional regulatory platform taking into account economic trends: it is important to introduce digital competencies everywhere, including at the professional level in relation to SMEs in the Perm region, in order to increase the business activity of young people and other representatives of the working population. As for the actual introduction of new tools for the development of small and medium-sized businesses in the Perm region, we propose that the regional legislator develop a new electronic information platform at the expense of the regional budget to promote goods, works and services sold by SMEs in the Perm region. We believe that the measures proposed by us to enhance the economic activity of SMEs can be perceived by other regions. (shrink)

The separation of powers principle deeply heritaged in the US constitutionalism affected and continues to influence the law and public policy in the nation. The tripartite scheme of government was quarreled over the history how we have to perceive any best adequate interaction among the Congress, Executive and Judiciary. The Constitution itself merely quibbles on this point, and the Supreme Court justices, in some cases, would not be done as a clear cut for the scope of constitutional power conferred on (...) each branch. As the stare decisis is a rule in the common law countries, it is less prospective to anticipate that a quantum leap can be made for the new paradigm of constitutional government in the US. In this challenge, the paper deals with the sensitive area of three powers involving the issue of presidential privilege and immunity, justiceability and standing, as well as judicial control of public agencies. In the course of discussion, several landmark cases were illustrated to make a point for the angulated controversies, typically involving the pressing pubic issues and officers of absolute or qualified immunity. Given the diverse structure of government, the US model had been followed by many new born republics in 20th centuries. The author would wish that the paper provides a comparative lesson for the circle of those countries. (shrink)

This paper investigates the cultural significance of black holes and suns as metaphors in continental European literature and art, drawing on theoretical insights from French continental authors such as Jean-François Lyotard and Ray Brassier. Lyotard suggests that black holes signify the ultimate form of the sublime, representing the displacement of humanity and our unease with our place in the cosmos. On the other hand, Brassier views black holes as a consequence of the entropic dissolution of matter, reflecting physical reality's indifference (...) to subjective or teleological significance. The study also presents a curated collection of literary works and artworks that employ black holes and suns as metaphors, examining the emergence of these metaphorical objects and identifying discursive and epistemological shifts in society. Furthermore, this collaborative research project, involving the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo and the Federal Fluminense University in Brazil, and the Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic, aims to provide a valuable resource for further academic inquiry. (shrink)

This article explores the law and ethics of lobbying. The legal discussion examines disclosure regulations, employment restrictions,bribery laws, and anti-fraud provisions as each applies to the lobbying context. The analysis demonstrates that given the social value placed on the First Amendment, federal law generally affords lobbyists wide latitude in determining who, what, when, where, and how to lobby.The article then turns to ethics. Lobbying involves deliberate attempts to effect changes in the law. An argument is advanced that because law (...) implicates the use of force and because law ideally reflects the values of a democratic society, seeking to slant the law to serve a client’s narrow interests cannot provide an adequate ethical end for a lobbyist. On the contrary, a lobbyist has an affirmative moral duty to seek reasonably balanced and just laws. The article examines, refines, and defends this proposition in a number of settings. (shrink)

According to one large family of views, scientific explanations explain a phenomenon (such as an event or a regularity) by subsuming it under a general representation, model, prototype, or schema (see Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421–441; Churchland, P. M. (1989). A neurocomputational perspective: The nature of mind and the structure of science. Cambridge: MIT Press; Darden (2006); Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific (...) explanation. In C. G. Hempel (Ed.), Aspects of scientific explanation (pp. 331–496). New York: Free Press; Kitcher (1989); Machamer, P., Darden, L., & Craver, C. F. (2000). Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science, 67(1), 1–25). My concern is with the minimal suggestion that an adequate philosophical theory of scientific explanation can limit its attention to the format or structure with which theories are represented. The representational subsumption view is a plausible hypothesis about the psychology of understanding. It is also a plausible claim about how scientists present their knowledge to the world. However, one cannot address the central questions for a philosophical theory of scientific explanation without turning one’s attention from the structure of representations to the basic commitments about the worldly structures that plausibly count as explanatory. A philosophical theory of scientific explanation should achieve two goals. The first is explanatory demarcation. It should show how explanation relates with other scientific achievements, such as control, description, measurement, prediction, and taxonomy. The second is explanatory normativity. It should say when putative explanations succeed and fail. One cannot achieve these goals without undertaking commitments about the kinds of ontic structures that plausibly count as explanatory. Representations convey explanatory information about a phenomenon when and only when they describe the ontic explanations for those phenomena. (shrink)

With insights from philosophy of language and semiotics, this article addresses judicial choices and semantic errors involved in United States v. Stevens, 130 S.Ct. 1577 (2010) (refusing to read “killing” and “wounding” to include cruelty and thus striking down a federal statute outlawing videos of animal cruelty), and Snyder v. Phelps, 131 S.Ct. 1207 (2011) (finding a First Amendment right to picket military funerals and verbally attack parents of dead soldiers as part of purportedly-public expression). -/- This article maintains (...) that a better understanding of semiotics (the theory of signs) exposes the flaws in both decisions and bolsters the arguments of the lone dissenter in both cases, Justice Alito. Such a better understanding of semiotics involves grasping (a) how expression involves signs, (b) how signs work in general, and (c) the differences between three basic kinds of signs (indexes, icons and symbols). This article maintains that the expression involved in Stevens and in Phelps was a type of indexical or quasi-indexical expression that, for reasons similar to those involved in child pornography cases, should have no First Amendment protection. -/- This article also notes shifting interpretive positions in the Court that cry out for reform. Although Chief Justice Roberts uses a textualist approach in his majority opinion striking down the animal cruelty statute in Stevens, his majority opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 132 S.Ct. 2566 (2012), has no trouble finding a “penalty” a “tax,” upholding the Affordable Care Act, and chastising the dissent for voting to strike down a statute simply because “. . . Congress used the wrong labels.” Id. at 2597. -/- This article attempts to expose such gamesmanship in “textualism” and attempts to lay out a better semiotic path for the Court. It calls for more forthright judicial decision-making in constitutional and statutory interpretation; calls for rejecting mechanical notions of law that conceal judicial choice involved in constitutional and statutory interpretation; and calls for rejecting claims that dictionaries can settle constitutional or statutory interpretation issues without reference to constitutional and statutory goals. -/- Keywords: interpretation, construction, meaning, plain meaning, originalism, original intent, canon, semiotics, signs, signals, symbol, icon, index, signifier, signified, ordinary meaning, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, animal cruelty, first amendment, statutes. (shrink)