National parliaments and the European Union: part of the problem or part of the solution to the democratic deficit in the European constitutional settlement?

European integration is as much an opportunity as a threat to national parliaments. The view that national parliaments have been the main losers in the process is not substantiated by empirical evidence. National parliaments have adapted their structures and procedures to keep pace with the increasing scope of integration. This process has included strengthening the constitutional powers of parliaments in some of the member states. The recognition in the Nice and Laeken declarations that national parliaments have an important role in enhancing the democratic legitimacy of the Union and the key provisions of the draft protocols on the role of national parliaments and subsidiarity adopted by the Convention on the Future of Europe will ensure that national parliaments have the opportunity and the means, if they so choose, to be closely involved in Union affairs. Constitutional change at the Union level is likely to trigger normative and procedural change in the member states.     

Reclaiming freedom of the press: A Hutchins Commission dream or nightmare?

This article explores how and why the Hutchins Commission's vision of a responsible press and an informed citizenry did not, and does not, realistically meet either the needs of the media industries or the public. Although it was the commission's goal to create a healthier society, the new technologies of communication present old and new problems—problems that cannot be negotiated by the commission's well‐meaning but idealistic notions of press responsibility. The Internet demonstrates the old dilemma of elite access and concentrated ownership and a new dilemma of utility characterized by isolated users whose communication can be argued only superficially as socially healthy. Perhaps a more innovative and structurally significant approach, beyond the rhetoric of “press‐responsibility,” is needed to create physical access to media that can achieve the kind of “publicness” the Hutchins Commission envisioned.     

The conflict between the ethics of th individual and the ethics governing public health: practical sustainability of health care in jeopardy?

The "health rights movement" has reconstructed the clinical relationship between health care workers and patients by simultaneously demanding more from traditional medical care and challenging the perceived power differential between doctors and patients by rejecting the paternalistic medical model in favour of an individual patients' rights model. However, the growth in individual expectations of a right to health care creates a potential conflict with the ethics that prioritise public health and guide the rationing of its limited financial and human capital resources. This, in turn, creates a practical dilemma which requires public health institutions to become service orientated while sacrificing their integral role in training and educating the medical workforce and potentially compromising the practical sustainable delivery of public health in Australia. However, the law can play a role in resolving this conflict through legislation, regulations, codes, administrative law and common law in an effort to ensure the quality and future sustainability of public health in Australia.     

How many tiers of criminal justice in England and Wales? An approach to the limitation on fair trial rights

This article proposes a recognition of five tiers of criminal justice reflecting five degrees of limitation on fair trial rights instead of the traditional notion of two tiers of indictable and summary processes in England and Wales. Over the last 15 years, the radical transformation of summary criminal processes has challenged the idea of ‘two tiers of justice’. Such measures as preventive orders, out-of-court disposals and regulatory offences process, which are characterised by higher levels of restriction on due process rights in comparison with the traditional summary process in Magistrates’ Court, should be considered new tiers.     

Pampered or pariah: does animal type influence the interaction between animal attitude and empathy?

ABSTRACT

Research into the interaction between deliberate harm of animals and potential risk for human directed violence has burgeoned in the past two decades. In light of an underlying premise that attitudes are predictive of behaviour, a number of researchers have examined demographic and personality variables that affect attitudes to, and by extrapolation behaviours towards, animals. One particularly active topic of research in this area is the potential relation between human-directed empathy and attitudes to animals, with researchers consistently finding that those with higher human-directed empathy scores tend to hold more pro-animal welfare attitudes. The current study adds to this literature by evaluating the effect of different animal types (Pet, Pest or Profit) in this overall animal attitude/human-directed empathy relationship with a large (n?=?1606), community-based, Australian sample. As anticipated, attitudes towards animals in the Pet category were significantly more pro-welfare than for either Pest or Profit animals and women indicated more pro-welfare attitudes across all three than men. The strength and significance of the relation between human-directed empathy and attitudes to animals varied across Pet, Pest and Profit animal categories and affective vs cognitive empathy. The strongest correlation was found between Pet and the Empathic Concern subscale of the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The implications of these differences for the previously observed link between attitudes to animals and empathy, humane education and future research directions are discussed.     

Juridification: Disrupting the Relationship between Law and Politics?

The article addresses some possible implications of juridification in the society. The concept of juridification is unclear, and the empirical knowledge of the social implications of various processes of juridification is weak. We argue that clear‐cut conclusions about the implications of such processes cannot be drawn. To address questions of implications of juridification processes, we focus on the relationship between law and politics. An analytical framework for the analysis of juridification processes is introduced to manage the vast implications of these processes. The discussion indicates complexity and contradictory outcomes of juridification processes. We conclude that to understand the vast complexity of the different kinds of juridification processes, we need more empirical studies from a range of academic fields, including law, economics and political sciences, and that researchers in these fields need to take a step back to get a more satisfactory analytical point of departure for such studies.     

Inventing and patenting activities of scientists: in the expectation of money or reputation?

We propose that scientists use patents/invention disclosures as signals to gain reputation than financial benefits. Based on a newly created dataset on the commercial activities among 2,500 scientists affiliated with 67 institutes of the German Max Planck Society, we explore the relation between the expectations of scientists concerning the outcomes of commercial activities and the likelihood of their patenting and disclosure behaviors. We find that expectation of gaining financial benefits are not related with the patenting activities of scientists without industrial cooperation. Instead, their expectation to gain/increase reputation through commercial activities is correlated with their patenting and disclosures activities. This may in turn also increase the possibility to gain academic promotion, financial benefits through industrial collaboration etc., rather than the immediate personal financial gains.     

Methodological Clarity or the Substantial Purity of Law? Notes on the Discussion between Kelsen and Pitamic

Leonid Pitamic was convinced that law could not be understood and explored by a single method aiming at a pure object of enquiry. He argued that it was necessary to employ other methods besides the normative one (especially the sociological and axiological methods), which, however, should not be confounded. Methodological syncretism can be avoided by clearly distinguishing between different aspects of law and by allowing the methods to support each other. By following this guideline, and by arguing according to a clear method, we can also open up a space for dialogue and for the juxtaposition of contrasting points of view.     

Reaching out to the people? Assessing the relationship between parliament and citizens in Finland

Despite the Open Government (Parliament) initiatives and notions of a ‘democratic parliament’, the relationship between legislatures and citizens remains seriously under-researched. This article introduces a comprehensive analytical framework, combining the normative principles of visibility, accessibility, and permeability with practical indicators (parliament as public space, sharing of information, contact with MPs, media and digital engagement, transparency of legislative process, and actual participation in legislative decision-making) for assessing the public engagement of parliaments. Applying this framework to the Finnish Eduskunta, the authors show that despite recent reforms that have partially ‘opened up’ parliamentary proceedings and attempted to connect citizens to democratic process, there remains scope for reforms and innovations. The Eduskunta should embrace a more positive approach towards new forms of civic participation, particularly regarding how its influential committees operate. The findings reflect the tensions between, or the difficulties in reconciling, traditional forms of representative democracy with alternative and more direct channels of political participation.     

Robotisation of the manufacturing industries in the EU: Convergence or divergence?

This paper investigates whether convergence or divergence of robot densities in the manufacturing industries of 24 EU countries occurred over the period from 1995 to 2015. An answer to this question permits immediate conclusions with regard to the success of convergence of labour productivities within the manufacturing industries of the EU, since it is expected that the use of robots will contribute to the growth of labour productivity. The empirical analysis is based on the robot data of the International Federation of Robotics and uses the convergence testing approach proposed by Rodrik (Q J Econ 128(1):165–204, 2013). Taking all results together, empirical evidence points to non-convergence of robot densities for a first period from 1995 to 2005, while there is relatively fast conditional as well as unconditional convergence for the second period from 2005 to 2015.

     

Comorbid,sequential, or different desires? Exploring the relationship between somnophilia and necrophilia

Relatively little is known of either somnophilia or necrophilia in comparison to other more commonly presented sexual paraphilias. Despite the overt similarities between the two, somnophilia being characterised as an attraction to the sleeping/unconscious, and necrophilia being characterised as a sexual attraction to the dead, there has been little examination of their concurrence or relationship in a single person. A case is presented here of their relationship with directions for clinical and law enforcement awareness.