BC court orders government to pay for treatment

On 9 October 2002, the British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld a ruling of a BC court that the BC government must not discriminate against a disabled and disadvantaged group when choosing what medical treatments it will fund. The Court of Appeal ordered the BC government to pay for a particular form of treatment. The case is significant in the context of HIV/AIDS because it could lend support to arguments that a government must make appropriate accommodation for the health-care needs of other disabled and marginalized groups--for example, safe injection supervision for the treatment of addiction.     

Parliamentary Questions,Oversight, and National Opposition Status inthe European Parliament

This study examines when and why members of the European Parliament (EP) use parliamentary questions as a form of fire alarm oversight. We argue that the multilevel nature of the EU political system allows members of the EP from national opposition parties to use parliamentary questions to alert the European Commission to governments' failures to implement EU policy. Representation in the EP provides the only avenue for such oversight for national opposition parties. Using a new sample of EP parliamentary questions, we demonstrate that MEPs from national opposition parties are more likely to alert the Commission to violations of EU law in their own member states. These parliamentary questions may lead the Commission to take legal action against member‐state governments.     

Parliamentary questions in the European parliament: Representation,information and control

Parliamentary questions and the membership of the European Parliament have both remained under‐researched. This article redresses the deficit by using a content analysis of written questions to analyse the behaviour of MEPs. Since tabling a question is one of the last formal rights of the backbencher, the study of parliamentary questions may be regarded as a particularly useful tool for increasing our knowledge of the way that MEPs understand their role as representatives. First the formal rules, function, and importance of parliamentary questions are explained. The following dimensions of questions are analysed: the questioning activity of MEPs, party groups, and national delegations; the issues MEPs raise in their questions, and the territorial dimension of the questions.     

European criminal law and European identity

This contribution aims to explain how European Criminal Law can be understood as constitutive of European identity. Instead of starting from European identity as a given, it provides a philosophical analysis of the construction of self-identity in relation to criminal law and legal tradition. The argument will be that the self-identity of those that share jurisdiction depends on and nourishes the legal tradition they adhere to and develop, while criminal jurisdiction is of crucial importance in this process of mutual constitution. This analysis will be complemented with a discussion of the integration of the first and the third pillar as aimed for by the Constitutional Treaty (TE), which would bring criminal law under majority rule and European democratic control. Attention will be paid to two ground breaking judgements of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that seem to boil down to the fact that the Court actually manages to achieve some of the objectives of the CT even if this is not in force. This gives rise to a discussion of how the CT (and related judgements of the ECJ) may transform European criminal law in the Union to EU criminal law of the Union, thus producing an identity of the Union next to the identities prevalent in the Union. The contribution concludes with some normative questions about the kind of European identity we should aim to establish, given the fact that such identity will arise with further integration of criminal law into the first pillar.

Morality in criminal law and criminal procedure: Principles,doctrines, and court cases

One of the drawbacks of the current era of predominance of Positive Law over Natural law, is that the moral roots of criminal law are all too easily overlooked or even ignored. Yet one should always keep in mind that moral standards (and the related area of Natural Law) historically preceded any type of criminal legislation or judicial decisions. This Note describes some selected aspects of criminal law of the United States (both substantive and procedural), with occasional references to other countries where necessary. Particular attention is focused on criminal law court cases and on how they deal with morality. The author argues that much more attention should be paid to the fundamental relationship between moral values and criminal law.     

Alberta court orders methadone maintenance therapy for prisoner on interim basis

On 2 May 2003, Justice VO Ouellette of the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench ordered the Director of the Fort Saskatchewan Correctional Centre to provide methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) to Milton Cardinal on an interim basis. Prior to his arrest and incarceration, Mr. Cardinal had been receiving MMT to treat opiate addiction. Following the expiration of 30 days from his arrest and incarceration, he was placed under the blanket "mandatory withdrawal policy" enforced by Alberta correctional authorities.     

UK: court orders publication ban in case of HIV-positive health-care worker

In November 2001, an HIV-positive health-care worker brought legal proceedings to prevent the National Health Service from notifying his previous patients that he is infected. The health authorities had intended to carry out a "look back" exercise to notify patients that they may have been exposed.     

Section 8 orders on the public-private law divide*

While section 9(2) of the Children Act 1989 prevents a Local Authority from applying for a child arrangements order directly, a case file study of residence and contact orders made in 2011 found that a significant number of applications for residence orders in the County Court were supported and sometimes even instigated by local authority children’s services (Harding & Newnham, 2015). The findings of the study demonstrate that residence orders often formed part of solutions offered to the family and can even operate as an alternative to formal public law remedies in situations where the parents are no longer able to provide care, and grandparents or other relatives take over. In these ‘hybrid cases’ private law orders are used to resolve situations on the fringes of public law action and, in some cases, divert cases from voluntary accommodation or formal care proceedings. This article raises questions about whether cases are being diverted to private law remedies in an appropriate manner and argues that closer scrutiny of the practice is required to ensure that the rights of parents, children and kinship carers are appropriately respected.