Preserving the Identity Crisis: Autonomy,System and Sovereignty in European Law

This article uses Hans Kelsen's theory of a legalsystem to take a fresh look at European Community law,and the relationship between the European Community,its Member States, and international law. It arguesthat the basis of the Community's legal legitimacy isindeterminate, and offers a model to accommodate thatindeterminacy. This model is founded on aconstructivist approach suggested to be particularlyuseful in the EC context. Using this approach, it isargued that the concepts of system, autonomy andsovereignty in the Community can only be understoodthrough the recognition of a plurality of viewpoints,and that it is crucial, in describing the Community,to distinguish between a concept per se and thechoice to adopt that concept.     

Order in the Steinhaus case

In April 1986, one-month-old Lance Tyler Steinhaus sustained serious injuries, attributed to abuse by his father, that left him comatose. His mother and his physicians agreed that he should not be treated aggressively. The Redwood County (Minnesota) Welfare Department obtained a temporary order restraining withdrawal of Lance's antibiotic therapy. Lance's mother and Dr. David Steinhorn, a pediatrician, appealed to the County Court to dissolve the temporary injunction. Judge George I. Harrelson in this decision denied their request on the grounds that both state and federal law establish that infants with life-threatening conditions have a right to medically-indicated treatment and that Lance Steinhaus had such a right because he was in a "vegetative state" rather than technically "comatose." [Editor's note: After conducting another hearing on Lance's neurological status, the court ruled on 18 October that Lance was irreversibly comatose and ordered only "comfort care."]     

试析实施民爆物品安全管理的新举措

为切实加强民用爆炸物品安全管理 ,严防涉爆案 (事 )件的发生 ,罗平县公安局在深入调研和总结近年来民爆物品管理工作经验、教训的基础上 ,确定了新形势下民爆物品安全管理的新路子 :1 加强组织领导 ,层层明确责权 ,严格奖惩考核 ;2 建立完善管理制度 ,规范日常安全管理 ;3 依托基层治保组织 ,落实日常动态监管 ;4 实现管理与服务相统一 ;5 提高爆破作业人员和安全管理员队伍素质。     

Between morality and rationality: framing end-of-life care policy through narratives

This paper analyzes the nature of the debate generated prior to the implementation of the Act Respecting End-of-Life Care in 2015 in Québec (Canada). Including medical assistance in dying (MAID) along existing palliative care services, the act is an important policy change on a very sensitive issue. As such, MAID could be categorized as a morality policy issue, the latter being defined as a particular category of policy because of its specific features (issues of first principle, technical simplicity, high salience, public interest, and public participation). In line with Mucciaroni’s proposition, we rather analyze this issue by understanding morality policy as one of two framing strategies (moral and/or rational-instrumental frame). Our research reconstructs four public opinion framings as advanced and transmitted through the media between 2005 and 2015. It shows that although opponents to the bill unsurprisingly framed the debate in deontological terms, mostly referring to sanctity of life as one of the most important values in society, they also framed it on rational-instrumental grounds in a similar proportion, alleging the danger of a slippery slope and potential abuse. As well, if some of the proponents favored a moral framing centered on the argument that dignity and individual autonomy take precedence over all other values, others put forward a rational-instrumental one, where the slippery slope/abuse argument is used as a cautionary statement against the artificial prolongation of life. Our analysis reinforces Mucciaroni’s and Ferraiolo’s assertions that sensitive issues classified as morality policy cannot be apprehended solely through the unidimensional frame of morality.     

榕江苗族的栽岩文化

苗族自古无文字。在最先的苗族社会活动中,集会议事所产生的结果,只凭口传心记。为了体现民族的意志、大众的决策以及协议某一区域内的规矩,在苗族古代社会中便产生了“栽岩议事活动”。由于这一活动涉及的村寨和人是相对固定的,这就进一步产生了苗族的“栽岩议事组织”。苗民每次集会、议事,形成决议或法规之后,便于村口寨头或集会地栽一岩石(半截在土中,半截露出地面),以作凭据,并警告后人,这就是苗族历史上千古不朽的石头“文字”。     

DAYLIGHT SAVING IN NEW SOUTH WALES: A CASE OF EMOTIVE SYMBOLIC POLITICS?

Abstract: This is a case study of the campaign over daylight saving in New South Wales from the mid-1960s. The period leading to the legislation making daylight saving a permanent feature in 1972 was marked by the involvement of various groups, media campaigns and inter-governmental negotiations. After the legislation was passed, the character of the campaign changed. Conflict was confined mainly to the rural sector, where large-scale citizen involvement occurred. Many anti-daylight saving bodies were created and a petition of over 40,000 names protesting about daylight saving was presented to the Premier. The Country Party was pressured sufficiently to promise during 1973, 1974 and 1975 that a referendum would be held, and this was achieved in May 1976. The results of the poll showed majority approval lay with continuing daylight saving. Until 1972 the policy area appeared to correspond to Theodore Lowi's "regulative" category, but from 1972 the policy arena altered to one which may be viewed in terms of T. Alexander Smith's "emotive symbolic" policy. The article assesses the Smith concept and its usefulness in explaining the issue of daylight saving as an example of intense community debate.     

Interventionary order and its methodologies: the relationship between peace and intervention

Abstract

¹Recently there have been calls from policymakers around the world for practically engaged research to produce evidence-based policy for peace, security and development. Policymakers aim to align three types of methodological approaches to knowledge about peace, security and development in international order: methodological liberalism at state and international levels, aligned with ‘methodological everydayism’ in order to constrain methodological nationalism. Policy operates through broad forms of intervention, spanning military, governmental and developmental processes, which scholarship is expected to refine. Critical scholarship is sensitive about the subsequent ‘interventionary order’, often connecting methodological everydayism with global justice frameworks rather than methodological nationalism or liberalism.

Sir Philip Mitchell, later colonial governor of Uganda, Fiji, and Kenya, responded to Malinowski’s claims [that the British government needed the support of anthropologists] with great scepticism, emphatically expressing a preference for the ‘practical man’ rather than the scientist.²     

Towards a New Ireland

Despite all the contemporary difficulties that we face on the island of Ireland, twenty-four years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, there is a clear sense of hope for a better future. We should be optimistic for our shared future, even if we do not agree on what form that should take. We cannot discuss Northern Ireland or its future without acknowledging that Brexit has significantly shifted the conversation. Not only has it brought Anglo-Irish relations to a low not seen in the past twenty-five years, but it has also damaged the reputation of the UK internationally and brought the topic of Irish unity back to the fore of our political discourse.