The Trip – A Case of Problematic Friendship?

In Sweden, there have been several cases in recent years where local politicians and officials have been accused of corrupt behaviour. This article concerns one such case, where a Chairman of the Municipal Board and a County Governor were invited by a wealthy business man to the inauguration of a vacation facility abroad. Their travel costs and lodgings were paid for by the business man, whose firm also sold equipment to the municipality as well as the county. When the trip became known to the prosecutors at the Swedish National Anti-Corruption Unit, a police investigation was conducted and charges raised against them for giving (the business man) and receiving (the Chairman and the County Governor) bribes. Eventually, after two trials (District Court and Court of Appeal), the Chairman, County Governor, and the business man were cleared of all charges against them. The trip was viewed by the courts as a gift, not a bribe. It is argued that the case raises interesting questions about entangled friendship relations and the blurred boundaries between private and professional roles which are important for understanding local corruption (and allegations of corruption) in Sweden. Therefore, the article's main focus concerns what could be described as actions in the grey zone.     

The Portuguese Parliament and Public Opinion: A Case for Reform?

During the past decade, the Portuguese political system has been under close scrutiny. As in other Western democracies, the topic of citizens' dissatisfaction with democratic institutions has been at the centre of a wide debate amongst public opinion and politicians. This debate has focused on parliament and parliamentary reform has often been seen as a way of enhancing parliament's image. However, as this note will show, there is no clear evidence that the Portuguese are dissatisfied with this institution. Indeed, this is still an under-researched area. Why is there an assumption that the Portuguese parliament has a negative image? And why should this have consequences for parliamentary reform? In the context of the creation of a Portuguese Election Study, this note aims to raise questions for future research on this topic. The note will look into the concept of legislative support, assess the evidence available on the Portuguese parliament's popularity and suggest indicators that would help to clarify the Portuguese views on this. It will also explore the connection between legislative support and the role of parliament, to enquire whether popularity indicators can make a case for parliamentary reform.     

A System��s Approach to Crime Prevention: The Case of Macao

Macao has the world’s largest casino industry and represents a unique political, social, and cultural system that differs significantly from Western societies. The overall crime rate in Macao is relatively low. Scholarly knowledge about crime and crime prevention in Macao, however, is very limited. This paper first reviews crime prevention theories, typologies, and various strategies in Western societies, followed by an introduction and discussion of crime prevention practices in Macao. Crime prevention strategies in Macao may be characterized as a tripod structure with three major supporting legs: traditional criminal justice practices, social prevention beyond the criminal justice system, and situational crime prevention measures. The paper then discusses the factors that may contribute to the low level of crime in Macao and points out the direction for future research in Macao.     

Public Broadcast Stations' Exclusion of Candidates from Debates: A Step Toward Political Independence?

Government-operated broadcast stations are in an anomalous situation in their continuing struggle for political independence. Not only must government stations meet the informational needs of their audiences, the stations must address the market-induced failures of commercial broadcasting. Controlling their programming is one facet of meeting these obligations. Nevertheless, government stations have been accused of violating the First Amendment when they have exercised their editorial discretion to exclude candidates from debates sponsored by the stations. This article explores political candidates' rights of access to debates in light of a United States Supreme Court decision that held that government stations may use subjective criteria to exclude candidates from debates. Although the Court's decision reinforced government stations' First Amendment rights to exercise editorial discretion, the decision did not significantly advance public broadcasting's struggle for political independence.     

Cultural Policy and Values: Intrinsic versus Instrumental? The Case of Romania

This article addresses cultural policy in post-Communist Romania, focusing on the justifications for support of culture and the arts. The objectives are to clarify values legitimizing public support and to determine their effect on the meaning and impact of cultural policy. The author argues that justifications of public funding—instrumental or intrinsic—depend on how successive governments represent the roles conferred to culture and the arts, as well as on the particular ideas of culture and art they promote. Policy discourse after 1989 has been characterized by its nourishment of a persistent instrumental ideology that gradually connected to the international debate and has been dominated by a traditional, narrow conception of culture and art, which conflicts with a modern conception. Until recently, the fluctuations and conflicts between different values and ideas of culture and art have worked to constrain cultural policy, disrupting its implementation and altering its effects.     

‘The Right to Shoot Himself’: Secession in the British Commonwealth of Nations

The ultimate test of whether an association is voluntary or not is if you can leave it. It is difficult, at this remove, to appreciate how live an issue secession from the British commonwealth of nations was in the 1920s and 1930s. It occupied an inordinate amount of time and negotiation for a doctrine that had been ostensibly conceded in 1920. Yet, much as with the case of the appeal to the judicial committee of the privy council, once the dominions sought to take advantage of the freedom which had been guaranteed by official statements, they found a formidable amount of diplomatic pressure and legal opinion brought to bear to indicate that no such right could be officially declared. This article traces the evolution of the arguments about the right to secede in the 1930s, and examines how the right came eventually to be exercised in the case of the new commonwealth countries in the 1940s. It concludes by examining how the doctrine of secession as developed in the 1930s was abandoned in order to retain Indian membership in the commonwealth.     

Forensic Pathological Considerations of a Unique Case of “Complicated Suicide”*,†

In the forensic literature, peculiar and uncommon cases of suicides defined as “complicated” are reported. In these circumstances, the suicide method chosen by the victim fails, and death occurs due to a subsequent unforeseen accidental event defined as secondary trauma. Through retrospective examination of 25,512 autopsies in 27 years (1993–2019) at the Bureau of Legal Medicine of Milan, a unique case of complicated suicide was identified from a total of 4497 suicides. It concerns an elderly man who, after killing his wife by inflicting incised wounds to her neck, tried to hang himself by tying a rope to a heater and jumping from the window located over the heater itself. However, the rope suddenly snapped and the man fells to the ground causing fatal traumatic injuries. Death occurred because of an accidental event caused by the failure of the hanging mechanism. Therefore, a peculiar yet characteristic case of complicated suicide is described.     

Is Enforced Self-regulation a Form of Risk Taking?: The Case of Railway Health and Safety

Enforced self-regulation exemplifies a number of regulatory trends, in particular the co-existence of public and private forms of regulation, state moves to harness other sources of regulation and the growing attempt of the state to penetrate deep into corporate life. This paper explores the limits of enforced self-regulation through discussion of corporate responses to occupational health and safety regulation in Britain. It takes the example of the railway industry where a particularly extreme version of enforced-self regulation eventually led to tragic consequences.     

What's the Use of a Hashtag? A Case Study

Although there are now sophisticated techniques for the analysis of social media, socio‐legal studies has yet to draw on them fully. In this article, we demonstrate how Twitter can produce insights about protest, law, and legality, through a case study of protests against the ‘bedroom tax’. The first involved challenging a policy in the courts using a test case or cases. We discuss the litigation strategies and the mess they created and counterpose those strategies with those of four prolific ‘tweeps’ who participated in our study. We argue that, despite the small number of participants, these people have, in their own way, been enormously influential and made things happen. Our position is not evaluative of the different strategies – but, rather, one that recognizes that legality is mobilized in different ways.     

The Temporal Paradox of Regions in the EU Seeking Independence: Contraction and Fragmentation versus Widening and Deepening?

This article investigates the possibility of regional entities within EU Member States to become EU Member States in their own right following their secession from their mother state. International law does not automatically allow such regions to remain EU Member States since it refers this issue back to the constituent instruments of international organisations and a reading of both the EU Treaties and the ECJ's jurisprudence seems to preclude such a ‘continued membership’. The article then further explores the legal issues which could arise during the accession process of the newly independent state. After suggesting solutions to bridge the gap between its secession and its own EU membership, it is argued that the key challenge for such a region would be to ensure a smooth transition, without the loss of prerogatives under EU law, from being an EU region to an EU Member State proper.     

United Nations Mission to Kosovo: in Violation of the Right to Life?

International organisations are expected to abide to human rights standards in the course of their operations. However, to what standards are transitional regimes held accountable? Should the UN exercising executive powers be held accountable to the same or higher standard than a national government? In this article, the author discusses the legal basis relied upon by a UN internal human rights mechanism, the Human Rights Advisory Panel (HRAP), that declared the UNMIK in violation of its positive obligation to investigate enshrined in Article 2 of the EHRC. A closer look at the opinions issued by the HRAP reveals that it might have misapplied the standard set forth in the relevant jurisprudence of the European Court for Human Rights, and thereby held UNMIK accountable under stricter requirements.     

Organised Criminals as “Agents of Obligation”: The Case of Ireland

Relying on Brown's (2005a, b) thesis that contemporary shifts in penal policy are best understood as a reprisal of colonial rationality, so that offenders become “non-citizens” or “agents of obligation”, this article argues, firstly, that this framework (with certain important refinements and extensions) finds support in developments in Irish criminal justice policy aimed at offenders suspected of involvement in “organised crime”. These offenders have found themselves reconstituted as “agents of obligation” with duties to furnish information about their property and movements, report to the police concerning their location and, importantly, refrain from criminal activity or face extraordinary sanctions. Secondly, it is submitted that this draconian approach to the control of organised crime is built on false premises; specifically the idea that “organised crime” as such exists and is best controlled through restrictions on the freedom of key groups or “core nominals”.     

Why Does Copyright Ignore Performers? The Case of Flamenco in Spain

Abstract

This article analyzes the gap between the perceived value of the performer's contributions to the musical work and the treatment that it receives in the market. It applies to the case of flamenco in Spain. The proposed methodology is based on three approaches: a study of intellectual property laws; interviews with experts to differentiate among creative and humdrum agents; and finally, double system surveys to determine the perceived valuation of the contributions of such agents. The conclusions show how the flamenco performer develops a creative labor; however, it is not protected by copyright or via royalties, commensurate with its importance.     

Do Market Participants Learn? The Case of the Budapest Stock Exchange

In the paper we consider one of the faster growing Central European emerging markets: the Budapest Stock Exchange (BSE), in order to see whether the market becomes more weak-form efficient over time. The Hungarian exchange is selected because it is the oldest stock exchange operating in the region and, in 1995, it was the first Central European exchange admitted by the London Stock Exchange as a properly regulated stock exchange. As an econometric tool for comparative analysis, we use a Test for Evolving Efficiency (TEE). In a comparison of nine stocks and the market index (BUX) we found that the BSE becomes more mature but the process is surprisingly slow.     

Are there Emerging West African Criminal Networks? The Case of Ghana

This paper situates discussions about emerging African Criminal Networks (ACN) within Ghana specifically, and West Africa generally, and seeks to present the initial results of an empirically based study on the activities of transnational organised criminal (TOCs) groups in Ghana. The paper argues that the nature of state and statehood in Africa and its inability to establish effective regulatory mechanisms contributes to the rise of these particular types of criminal groups. It begins by conceptualising the place of Ghanaian and West African criminal groups within the framework of international crime. Furthermore, it undertakes an in-depth analysis of three types of crimes; namely computer and internet crime, drug trafficking and (artisanal) small arms manufacture and smuggling in Ghana. By applying a set of standard variables and criteria, the paper evaluates the growth of TNCs in these three issue-areas and how such activities potentially undermine public institutions like the Ghana Police Service (GPS), customs, excise and preventive services (CEPS), judiciary, banking and political parties and political institutions in Ghana. Finally, it seeks to offer an explanatory framework for the growth and acceptance by local communities of the activities of organised crime in Ghana by situating this within a cultural ethos and the social welfare roles played by those involved in such crimes.     

Independence or autonomy: which is the goal?

At times in psychiatric treatment practice in the United States, the notion of individualism or independence (an American ideal) is confused with autonomy (a rights goal). Client autonomy is defined as the ability of clients to make their own choices. When the societal ideal of independence overrides individual autonomy, inclusion and client well-being may be jeopardized. A case will be presented to illustrate these points. We make recommendations for professional education to protect client rights through understanding the distinction between autonomy and independence.     

The Failure of the First Income Tax: A Tale of Commercial Tax Evaders?

This article constitutes a re-examination of the financial failure of the first income tax in Britain, introduced in 1799 in order to address the rising cost of the French revolutionary wars. In accounting for this failure, the existing literature has focused largely on failings in the administration of the tax, often blaming, for example, its emphasis on local responsibility for tax collection, and its reliance on the honesty of its contributors. This article furthers these interpretations by highlighting that such issues were particularly problematic in their application to the commercial sector of society. It argues that the preferential treatment of commercial interests in the substance of the tax, on account of their privileged position in the political sphere, led to the establishment of a culture of commercial evasion. The evidence for this is examined at length, through both detailed analysis of the yield of the tax, as well as the attitudes of contemporaries evident in the literature at the time. This analysis ultimately leads to the conclusion that commercial evasion of the first tax played a pivotal, and hitherto underplayed, role in the financial underperformance of the tax.     

The Pinochet Case: International Criminal Justice in the Gothic Style?

Book reviewed in this article:
Woodhouse, Diana (ed), The Pinochet Case: A Legal and Constitutional Analysis     

Structural Reform Policy: Privatisation and Beyond—The Case of Greece

Privatisation, coupled with liberalisation and competition, constitutes one of the most popular policy options to improve the performance of state-owned enterprises. However, in Greece, it was only after 1991 that privatisation started to gain ground in the political and economic agendas of governments. Drawing upon the theoretical underpinnings of privatisation, the paper overviews and critically analyses the new legal framework on denationalisation in Greece. The paper argues that, though the modernisation of the legal regime is welcomed, the Greek government has failed to treat privatisation as part of wider structural reforms aiming at enhancing competition and foreign investment. The paper concludes that wider structural reforms, including regulatory reform and liberalisation, as well as combating corruption and bureaucracy and promoting transparent capital markets, are absolutely necessary in order to create a competitive environment, which would both complement and support privatisation efforts.