The Roma in Bulgaria’ s Criminal Justice System: From Ethnic Profiling to Imprisonment

This paper examines the use of ethnic-specific crime data by law enforcement authorities as an instrument to formulate policies. The focus is on Bulgaria – one of the few East European countries whose criminal justice system keeps data on ethnicity – and the country’s Roma population. During the 1990s, Bulgaria’ s deep economic and social crisis impacted significantly on Bulgaria’ s Roma minority and, arguably, led to an increase in crime rates amongst the Roma. To date, however, the Bulgarian government has failed to adequately address this situation. The main argument that this paper puts forward is that over-policing of the Roma minority is a consequence of lack of adequate data on the Roma’ s involvement in crime, coupled with a crime-fighting strategy that is largely based on ethnic prejudice. As a result, a disproportionate number of Roma end-up in prisons or in long-term detention. Former inmates, in turn, influence their communities and establish a ‘revolving cycle’ of crime and social marginalisation, which is manifested in an increasing critical mass of the Roma male population in the criminal justice system.     

National Human Rights Institutions in Europe

Since the 1990s, the number of national human rights institutions(NHRIs or ‘national institutions’) has been growingin Europe. The aim of these institutions is to help implementinternational human rights at the national level and narrowthe gap between government and civil society. After discussingthe history and role as well as the advantages of creating nationalinstitutions in European states, this article analyses the differentmodels of composition and the principal competences of NHRIsin light of the Paris Principles that provide guidelines forthese institutions. The NHRIs also create networks at nationaland regional levels. The article highlights how NHRIs in Europecan contribute to the implementation of human rights and whatstructure, functions and relationships they may adopt in orderto ensure their effectiveness.     

Legal Typologies and Topologies: The Construction of Indigenous Alterity and Its Spatialization Within the Colombian Constitutional Court

This article examines the different legal articulations between indigenous typologies and topologies, that is, the relationship between someone classified as an indigenous subject, a grantee of minority rights, and the spatial arrangements such as reservations or ancestral territories considered necessary for indigenous “cultural survival.” I analyze how the jurisprudence of the Colombian Constitutional Court manifests and rests on the diverse combinations of these two factors. The typology/topology binary characterizes the manner in which these legal discourses portray indigeneity and culture. This binary also offers insight into a broad range of issues, including the access that indigenous peoples have to minority rights, the use of customary law, and the spatial delimitations that frame indigenous legal jurisdictions. Some of the complexities that arise from this binary are: the conceptualization of indigenous places as habitats, the idea of culture as a list of traits, and the concept of “degrees” of indigeneity that determine these peoples' access to minority rights.     

Support for Multiculturalism and Minority Rights: The Role of National Identification and Out-group Threat

Support for multiculturalism and minority rights is examined in three studies among ethnic Dutch participants. Three models are tested for how national identification is related to perceived realistic and symbolic threats and to levels of support. Findings in all three studies are most in agreement with a ‘group identity lens’ model in which the relationship between national identification and support for multiculturalism is mediated by perceived threat. In addition, in Study 3, authoritarianism was independently related to threat and support for immigrant and minority rights and not indirectly through national identification. Findings across the three studies confirm the stability of the results and the usefulness of the group identity lens model for understanding reactions toward multiculturalism and minority rights.     

Enforcing the Child's Right to Know Her Origins: Contrasting Approaches Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on Human Rights

The justification of the child's right to know her origins andthe fundamental interests underlying it have attracted a lotof attention in recent years. This article goes one step furtherand assesses that right's enforcement in practice together withits guiding principles. It starts by restating what the rightconsists in and what interests it protects according to differentinternational human rights instruments. It then reveals theconflicts of rights that lie at the heart of the implementationof the right to know and explain its complexity. After consideringthe competing interests present, the article argues that noneof these interests and rights should be regarded as absoluteand suggests ways in which they can be balanced against eachother. The recent evolution in the European Court of Human Rights(ECtHR) case law with its more nuanced balancing of the competingrights is contrasted with the Convention on the Rights of theChild (CRC)'s focus on the child's paramount interest. The articleargues that these different approaches are reflected in nationallegal orders in Europe. By tracing the origins of this divergenceback to those conflicting international legal paradigms andby proposing abstract adjudication principles to guide the concretebalancing of competing rights, the article hopes to contributeto a better understanding and ultimate reconciliation of thechild's multiple identities – social and biological.     

关于完善散居少数民族权益保障法律制度的思考

随着社会经济的发展,少数民族公民散居于各地的趋势日益明显。因此,保护散居少数民族权利的法律制度建设越来越重要,已经成为同民族区域自治法律制度同等重要的法律制度。文章从论述完善散居少数民族权益保障的重要意义入手,分析了我国现行的散居少数民族权益保障机制,指出了其所存在的不足和问题,并针对这些缺陷,从观念上、立法上提出了完善散居少数民族权益保障法律制度的意见和建议。     

No child left behind in the European Union?: the position of Romani children

This paper analyses how different EU documents (communications, recommendations, reports and surveys, etc.) focusing on Roma frame the position of Romani children. Many studies have shown that because of their intersectional positioning, Romani children often face multiple discrimination and triple exclusion: on the basis of their ethnicity, their age and their socio-economic status. The paper comments on selected findings on Roma in the Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey published by the Fundamental Rights Agency in late 2016. One of the main findings of this Survey was that 80% of Roma live below the country-specific risk of poverty line in all EU Member States in which the Survey has been conducted. By specifically examining the implication this finding has for the position of Romani children, I argue that their position is, in fact, produced and reproduced with systemic, but also everyday racism. When it comes to Roma, but specifically Romani children, not even the European Union (EU), based on principles of fundamental human rights, is immune to such phenomena.     

Partisanship,Sophistication, and Public Attitudes about Majority Rule and Minority Rights in Congress

The balance between majority rule and minority rights is a central issue in the design and operation of democratic institutions and remains a contested issue in debates of policy‐making processes. Remarkably, public attitudes about this balance are not subjected to scholarly investigation. In this article, we report the findings of the first survey experiment in which the American public's attitudes about majority rule and minority rights in legislative bodies are explored. We find robust support for both majority rule and minority rights, discover that only a few Americans distinguish between the US House of Representatives and Senate in the application of these principles, and demonstrate that views of majority rule and minority rights can be moved once we introduce respondents to the partisan implications of procedural rules. Moreover, with conflicting theoretical expectations about the effect of political sophistication on attitudes about majority rule and minority rights, we find that higher levels of political sophistication are associated with stronger partisan effects on attitudes about the balance between majority rule and minority rights in Congress.     

Regulating stop and search: a challenge for police and community relations in England and Wales

Policing in England and Wales has become increasingly contested since the 1960s and has been subject to unprecedented levels of public scrutiny. Stop and search powers have played a central role in this process and, though often described as an essential part of modern policing, have continued to provide a flashpoint in police–community relations. In this article the authors briefly review the history of stop and search in England and Wales, drawing particular attention to the concerns that have been raised about the use of this power in relation to minority ethnic communities. The article goes on to consider how issues of public trust and confidence have been addressed and raises questions about the effectiveness of efforts to regulate this area of activity. Finally, we suggest that regulation has become too tightly bound to ‘‘race’’ and measures of disproportionality. Instead, we argue that the current focus on ‘‘race’’ should be broadened to include other groups that may be subject to over-policing and that monitoring should be based on a system of triangulation, which combines multiple indicators and mixed methods.     

Parallel imports: more CD than WOW?

Legal context: Intellectual property rights, particularly trade marks, haveas their primary aim the protection of the rights holder (andperhaps consumer) by allowing him and only him to sell eg, hispatented product, or his product under his trade mark. Counterfeitersand infringers are stopped in their tracks. However, intellectualproperty law has a secondary use – allowing rights holdersto stop products being marketed in Europe without their consent,even when said products are genuine. Key points: This article summarises the law on parallel importation andexhaustion of rights, focussing on two recent UK cases; thesuccessful action by the music industry for copyright infringementby CD-WOW, a leading CD retailer based in Hong Kong and thesuccessful appeal against a finding of trade mark infringementby parallel importer Mastercigars Direct, which imports Cubancigars. Practical significance: Parallel imports provide a means for entrepreneurs to exploitprice differentials between countries in Europe and countriesin the rest of the world. As such, they occur on a significantscale, generating substantial revenues. IP rights holders haveconsistently taken action against such individuals, with Sonyin particular heading to the courts on regular occasions, meetingmostly with success.     

Nomadic Territories: A Human Rights Approach to Nomadic Peoples' Land Rights

In most societies nomadic peoples face discrimination. At theheart of this discrimination frequently lies the crucial issueof property in land. The sharing of lands between nomads andsettled agriculturalist societies has often led to violent confrontation.Access to land is a determining factor for many nomadic peoplesas whether or not nomads have access to land will determinethe survival of their mobile lifestyle. Historically nomadicpeoples have not been regarded as having any rights to landbecause their nomadic lifestyle was not considered to fulfilthe criterion of ‘effective occupation’ of the land.By exploring the evolution of international law regarding nomadicpeoples’ land rights, this article analyses how humanrights law could provide nomadic peoples with rights to usetheir lands. Ultimately, this article argues that under thebanner of international human rights law, nomadic peoples aregaining the right to live on their land in their traditionalways through the gradual establishment of a specific corpusof law dedicated to the rights of nomads.     

Governing Health and Social Security in the Twenty-First Century: Active Citizenship Through the Right to Participate

This article discusses the role of individual rights in the production of active citizenship. In recent years, the notion of ‘active citizenship’ has become an object of research in both political and social science. Studies that draw on the Foucaultian governmentality tradition have been particularly interested in various societal discourses and practices through which active citizenship is being produced. However, the role of law and rights has been neglected or even rejected in these studies. The aim of this article is thus to show that certain procedural rights, the right to participate in particular, constitute an important legal technology in the production of active citizenship. The analysis is based on the recent developments in Finnish social and health care law. It will also be argued that despite the apparently convergent subject-matter, Jürgen Habermas’s normative theory of the ‘procedural paradigm of law’ does not offer a meaningful framework in which to address the relationship between active citizenship and procedural rights since it is based on an overly narrow conception of subjectivity.     

Servitude and Forced Labour in the 21st Century: The Human Rights of Domestic Workers

Organisations and scholars have recently drawn attention towhat they call a modern form of slavery, ‘domestic slavery’.Domestic workers in Europe and elsewhere live and work in appallingconditions and are vulnerable to abuse. This article describesthe problem, presents the relevant legal instruments and analysesa decision of the European Court of Human Rights, Siliadin vFrance, where France was found in breach of the prohibitionof slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour under theEuropean Convention on Human Rights. The paper examines thegrowing interaction between international labour law and internationalhuman rights law. It argues that the decision in Siliadin andits legal implications constitute a positive first step towardsaddressing the problem of the coercion and vulnerability ofmigrant domestic workers.     

Liberalism and Minority Rights. An Interview

The interview focuses on Kymlicka's major area of research, i.e., the issue of minority rights. Kymlicka explains why the rights of national minorities have been traditionally neglected in the Western political tradition. He argues that these rights promote individual freedom, and so should be seen as promoting liberal democratic principles. The interview covers many issues including the relationship between ethno-cultural groups and other forms of "identity politics"; how to individuate cultural groups with legitimate claims to minority rights; whether something like a "cosmopolitan view" can seriously challenge the need for minority rights; what are the dangers of building transnational political institutions such as the EU for democratic citizenship; what are the bases of social unity in multination states and what are the limits of toleration of illiberal minorities.     

Becoming a Threat: The Burqa and the Contestation Over Public Morality Law in France

Through an examination of legislative debate and court opinions, this article illustrates that the French understanding of public order policing as a bulwark of freedom and national sovereignty deeply informed the development of (and contestation surrounding) the 2010 ban on all facial coverings in public. This ban notably includes the burqa or niqab, garments worn by a small minority of Muslim women in France. This article has two aims. The first is to expand on the sociolegal argument about the contested nature of rights protections and constitutional constraints on legislative authority by highlighting how a nation's legal culture can profoundly shape that contestation. The second aim of this article is to show, through a technique called legal archaeology, how longstanding French views on rights confront current European‐inspired alternative views that would give more weight to individualistic protections against state action than has traditionally been the case in France.     

The “Conventionalization” of Safety Crimes in the Post-Communist New Member States of the European Union

This article begins by presenting a brief overview of the neglected area of “safety crime” in the post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. Quantitative and qualitative evidence is reviewed, suggesting both the widespread nature of safety crimes, and a deteriorating work environment, in which safety crimes are routinely tolerated. Evidence of the “institutionalized tolerance of non-compliance” is provided through a case study of labor inspection in the new member states, focusing on Latvia, currently the worst performer in health and safety in Europe. Against a background of general violations of labor rights, current innovations in European-level regulatory strategies are critiqued, in particular, the shift towards “soft law” and compliance-based strategies, relying on appeals to corporate social responsibility, together with the encouragement of various forms of voluntary initiatives. It is suggested that such (self)-regulatory strategies may be inappropriate as forms of crime control in the new member states of the European Union. In effect, a convergence domestic and European Union policies may open the door to the further “conventionalization” of safety crimes in the new member states.This article is based on a paper first presented to a seminar, “Regulating Corporate Crime and White-Collar Crime: Developments across Europe”, Finnish Police College, Helsinki, 3–4 September, 2004. Financial support for the research was provided by a European Commission Marie Curie chair award (no: 509727). The author would like to thank Kit Carson and Steve Tombs, as well as the participants in the Helsinki seminar for their helpful comments. Any errors remain those of the author alone.     

Kant, Copyright and Communicative Freedom

The rapid recent expansion of copyright law worldwide has sparked efforts to defend the ‘public domain’ of non-propertized information, often on the ground that an expansive public domain is a condition of a ‘free culture’. Yet questions remain about why the public domain is worth defending, what exactly a free culture is, and what role (if any) authors’ rights might play in relation to it. From the standard liberal perspective shared by many critics of copyright expansionism, the protection of individual expression by means of marketable property rights in authors’ works serves as an engine of progress towards a fully competitive ‘marketplace of ideas’ – though only if balanced by an extensive public domain from which users may draw in the exercise of their own expressivity. This article shows that a significantly different, and arguably richer, conception of what a free culture is and how authors’ rights underpin it emerges from a direct engagement with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. For Kant, progress towards a fully emancipated (i.e. a ‘mature’ or ‘enlightened’) culture can only be achieved through the critical intellectual activity that public communication demands: individual expressive freedom is only a condition, not constitutive, of this ‘freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters’. The main thesis defended in this article is that when Kant’s writings on publicity (critical public debate) are read in relation to his writings on the legal organization of publishing, a necessary connection emerges between authors’ rights – as distinct from copyrights – and what Jürgen Habermas and others have named the public sphere. I conclude that it is the public sphere, and not the public domain as such, that should serve as the key reference point in any evaluation of copyright law’s role in relation to the possibility of a free culture.     

An Improved Protection for the (Mentally Ill) Trans Parent: A Queer Reading of AP,Garçon and Nicot v France

The European Court of Human Rights has been deciding cases concerning LGBT rights since the early 1980s. Its case law on trans rights has changed drastically over time, imposing upon the states of the Council of Europe certain minimum standards regarding the legal recognition of gender identity. In its recent judgment of April 2017 the Court laid down a new rule to be adopted by domestic legislation; namely, that the legal recognition of gender transition cannot be made conditional upon pursuing medical or surgical procedures which have (or are likely to have) sterilising effects. This article analyses the judgment from a critical perspective grounded in queer theory, noting both the positive and the negative elements of the Court's decision.     

Ethnic Law and Minority Rights in China: Progress and Constraints

Western discourse on human rights in China typically assumes that China's minority rights law must be a sham because China is an authoritarian state. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, China has articulated an "ethnic law" that elaborates rights and preferences that minorities value. At the same time, People's Republic of China ethnic law is inadequate to grant the idealized range of minority rights claimed by the Chinese state, and some rights are being eroded by the marketization of China's political economy. The most notable weaknesses in the ethnic law system include the failure to enlarge the scope of ethnic regional autonomy, a lack of preferential policies sufficient to offset the growth of the economic gap between Han and minority areas, and an inadequate program for overcoming antiminority bias. While an emerging minority elite is a stabilizing factor in minority‐state relations, additional measures to expand minority rights are required, some of which are suggested by the policies of other Asian states.     

The More the Merrier? Hungarian and Romany Minorities in Slovakia

This article discusses some important aspects of thetreatment of minorities in the Republic of Slovakia.It discusses the 1992 Constitution and subsequentdevelopments such as the State language law 1995, therestriction of political rights of Hungarians,educational policies, the setback of EU entry talks,the September 1998 general elections, the Dzurindagovernment's ``De-Meciarization', the 1999 MinorityLanguage Law, and recent electoral legislation. Thespecial condition of the Romany is considered. Theeffectiveness of international mechanisms for theprotection of minority rights (the Organisation forSecurity and Cooperation in Europe, the InternationalCovenant for Civil and Political Rights, the EuropeanConvention of Human Rights, the Framework Conventionfor the Protection of National Minorities) isassessed, as is the involvement of the EU. Finally,the role of the judiciary is reflected upon.