Enforcing trust judgments within the European Union: European Enforcement Orders

New rules have been introduced for enforcement of judgmentsin European Member States. Since 21 October 2005, for judgmentsdated after 20 January 2005 it has been possible to use a newenforcement system called the European Enforcement Order aswell as the old system of registering foreign judgments. Thisarticle examines the new rules as they apply to judgments intrust cases.     

Looking for Coherence within the European Community*

Abstract: This paper discusses the relationship between the idea of coherence and the legal order set up by the European Community. It focuses on a specific dimension of this relationship and shows how the appeals to coherence made by the European Court of Justice have shaped a particular branch of the European legal order, namely, the judicial review of Community acts. The analysis of the Court of Justice's case law in this field shows that in its extensive use of coherence the Court of Justice explored and brought into play different types of coherence and, while it failed to distinguish between them, it made use of sorts of coherence that thus far legal theorists have disregarded. The article concludes that a closer collaboration between legal theory and legal practice would be profitable for both legal theorists and Community law specialists.     

Situating the academic study of controlling state crime

This article reviews the academic context of state crime, focuses on its control, posits a number of areas where control can have a series of unintended consequences, and then suggests how to improve the publics ability to control state crime. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The development of air transport law within the European Community

I would like to acknowledge the funds provided by the ESRC and the help and advice of Professor John Usher.     

Daily life and family in an Ottoman urban context: Historiographical stakes and new research perspectives

The Ottoman history of the family and of everyday life is presently experiencing deep theoretical and methodological renewals. Following the discovery of new archival resources, and the application of new questionings to previously known resources, the field is the object of an intense research investment. The horizon of expectation has enlarged, as renewed interpretations on tradition, Islam and their influence on everyday life, family, communal, urban and gender relations are the object of intense speculations in the contemporary intellectual panorama. The object of this article, conceived as an introduction to a thematic issue of the journal guest-edited by the authors, is first to draw a panorama of the existing literature on everyday life in an Ottoman context, with an attention to the successive methodological approaches and theoretical elaborations of which the field has been the support of, and then to identify the main stakes for today's research. The authors also argue that, in the present international panorama of research on those themes, not only is the Ottoman Empire an interesting application field for innovative methods, but might also be at the heart of a deep renewal, with at stake the discussion of the heritage of culturalist visions of history and of paradigms such as center/periphery relations and modernization.     

Justice,Legitimacy and the Authority of Legislation within the European Union

What are we to make of the authority of legislation within the EU? EU lawyers have questioned the significance of legislative decision‐making within the EU. This article challenges these views and argues that the EU legislature must enjoy adequate freedom to shape EU law with the general interest in mind. Institutional accounts that seek to curtail the authority of legislation tend to rest upon ‘content‐dependent’ conceptions of political legitimacy, according to which the legitimacy of a decision depends on its moral qualities. Such conceptions overlook reasonable disagreements on justice and rest upon an overly optimistic (pessimistic) view of the Court (the legislature). The article argues for a content‐independent conception of legitimacy, following which the benefits of legislative decision‐making are more easily understood. The authority of legislation deserves wider recognition among EU lawyers for reasons of political legitimacy and because the EU legislature is better positioned to decide in the general interest.     

On compensation schemes for data sharing within the European REACH legislation

There is an intense debate on the impact of labour regulation in India today. Labour regulation in India differ state-wise and apply differently across types of workers (both regular and contract workers). This paper examines the joint effects of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) and variable enforcement intensity on the growth in a size of temporary contract workers in the organised manufacturing sector. It uses the state level amendments to Industrial Dispute Act of 1947, and the average size of total number of labour inspectors for each state, as independent variables to capture the variation in labour regulations and enforcement intensity across thirty-one Indian states for the period 2000–2007. This paper argues that, average Indian firms located in strict EPL states hire differentially more temporary contract workers as compare to regular workers in response to variable enforcement intensity. Among other findings, the empirical analysis shows that firms prefer to employ excessive number of contract workers to circumvent firing and overall compliance costs of regular workers as stipulated by the Indian labour laws. Our results are robust to alternative specifications.     

欧洲逮捕令在欧盟成员国国内的适用问题研究

欧洲逮捕令是在欧盟范围内取代传统引渡制度而施行的一种逮捕和移交人犯的国际刑事司法合作新机制.规范欧洲逮捕令的框架决定对欧盟成员困具有强制约束力,但不具有直接效力,各成员国必须采取必要措施以使本国国内法与框架决定的规定相符合.欧洲逮捕令在有的成员国遭遇宪法问题,有的成员国在适用时表现出对其他国家法律制度的不信任,还有一些国家的国内转化法存在着与框架决定不尽一致的规定.但从总体上来看,欧洲逮捕令在欧盟范围内已得到全面执行并取得了初步成功.     

Strong and weak family ties revisited: reconsidering European family structures from a network perspective

Family systems appear to be an important factor framing people's individual behavior. Thus far, family systems have been primarily addressed on a macro regional level with indirect measures. Revisiting Reher (1998) and the family ties criterion, the main question of this paper is to examine to what extent we perceive family structures differently in Europe by taking direct measures of the structures of people's broader social networks into consideration. Based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we derived two indicators of family regimes based on individual-level data regarding the density of ego social networks: contact frequency and geographic proximity among network members. We aggregated these data and mapped them on the NUTS 2 level regions for various locations in Europe. The results of our analyses exhibit that, based on these two network indicators, significant differences in family structures between European regions exist. These results confirm the classification of strong family Southern and comparatively weaker family Northern European regions to a large extent, though substantial regional differences in and between countries are also revealed. Our findings demonstrate that the classification of European regions largely depends on which indicator of network density we consider. This is particularly obvious in the Eastern European regions where the classification markedly differs according to the type of network indicator. Intriguingly, social networks in Central European regions can be characterized as rather loose, often even looser than the ‘traditional’ weak ties in Scandinavia. Family regimes can, therefore, be regarded as a construct of multiple dimensions of which one dimension may be classified as weak while the other can be strong at the same time.     

The European Community and the Adoption of International Food Standards within the Codex Alimentarius Commission

Abstract: This article examines the way the European Community defends its interests in food safety matters within the Codex Alimentarius Commission. It shows that the European Community has strengthened its position as a policymaker within the Codex Commission. It also describes how the European members of the Codex Commission engaged (with mixed results) in the defence of certain principles typical of European food policy. These controversial principles are the precautionary principle, the need to consider factors other than science in determining food standards, and the need to label and make traceable food derived from biotechnology. Lastly, the article evaluates the function of the Codex Commission. Since, in at least two cases the discussions within the Codex Commission did not prevent WTO litigation, the value of the Codex Commission may be questioned. However, the overall assessment of the Codex Commission's activity is positive, since it provides an important and not easily replaceable forum to debate food safety issues, which are particularly sensitive for Codex members of the European Community.     

Promoting Human Rights within the Union: The Role of European Private International Law

Abstract:  This article aims to contribute both to the 'Refgov' project, which is focused on the ambition to find ways of promoting human rights within the EU, but also, more in general and apart from the project, to an improved understanding of the crucial place conflict of law rules occupy in the building of a common Europe—a highly political question behind apparently technical issues. In the study the author deals with the parameters, points of interest, etc in relation to private international law which should be heeded if European Member States 'look at' each other's laws, and—in the context of the 'Refgov' project—if the idea is to exchange 'best practices' or harmonise substantive law, or to harmonise private international law, etc further through a type of open method of coordination. The contribution also shows that private international law issues are decisive in respect of every evaluation of the impact of European integration on human rights, both if this integration process takes place through 'negative' harmonisation (for example by falling back on the principle of mutual recognition) and through 'positive' harmonisation.     

Family and tax registers in the Aegean Islands during the Ottoman period

This article examines types of tax registers that provide a picture of families in the Aegean Islands during the Ottoman occupation. Numerical data from the islands of Andros, Myconos, Syros, Serifos, and Patmos are emphasized. Accounts by travelers and Roman Catholic priests and other documentation of that time are also examined. The article attempts to verify the reliability of data from the registers regarding family size, number of households, the possibility of household sharing by more than one family, and number of household heads. Records of personal taxes (ispence, or poll tax) indicate that the families on the islands during the 17th and 18th centuries had only a few members. Exact data cannot be derived because the communities attempted to redistribute taxes according to their own needs rather than following official Ottoman orders. Similar indirect information is derived from another kind of register that recorded the transfer of taxpayers' properties. The number of houses for some islands seems to have steadily increased although the number of family shares did not. This phenomenon may be linked to the status of ownership of immovable property, the horizontal property that was applied, and the nonexistence of cohabitation of extended families. Another issue concerns the number of widows in the tax registers. This large number does not correspond to the family status of these women but rather to tax practices exercised by the communities and participation of these women in the economic and social life of the islands.     

Patterns of family formation: Marriage and fertility timing in Bulgaria at the turn of the twenty-first century — A case-study of Sofia

In this paper, we discuss the changes in the process of family formation in Bulgaria at the end of the twentieth century. Studying the ideal patterns of family formation and the place of children and marriage within them, we offer six typological models. Based on recent population developments and social values changes, we argue that the Hajnal line and the associated hypothesis concerning the existence of separate Eastern and Western Marriage Patterns are irrelevant for understanding the present demographic situation. Attempts to update the line to accommodate recent developments are counter-productive as they obscure the commonality of demographic processes at work across the European continent.     

Intergenerational mobility in the Ottoman Empire: Observations from eighteenth-century Kastamonu

Based on probate estate inventories from eighteenth-century Kastamonu in north Anatolia, this study examines intergenerational mobility patterns in one Ottoman provincial town. Although the topic is well-studied in many Western contexts, historical and contemporary, we still know little about the ways in which socioeconomic disparities and class identities were transmitted across subsequent generations of parents and children in the Ottoman Empire. In order to explore this issue in a sophisticated fashion, this article introduces quantitative techniques and categories of analysis tailored specifically for Ottoman sources. In addition to other findings, our analysis suggests that Kastamonu in the eighteenth century was vertically and horizontally segmented: Not only were there significant impediments to intergenerational mobility across privileged and underprivileged sectors of the society, such transitions were also infrequent across sub-groups within upper and lower classes. Despite a general lack of intergenerational fluidity at all socioeconomic levels, however, our calculations also reveal that the provincial elite were particularly immobile.