RR v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions: Empowering Tribunals to Enforce the Human Rights Act 1998

In RR v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions – follow-on litigation from the high-profile bedroom tax cases – the Supreme Court handed down a judgment which has significant implications for social security law, the interpretation of the Human Rights Act, the tribunals system, the judicial control of delegated legislation, and access to justice. Central, however, was the issue of the enforceability of human rights. We argue that the Supreme Court was not only justified in its interpretation of the Human Rights Act but that it has made the protections of the Act more easily enforceable.     

Privatisation and Pensions: Some Pitfalls for Women?

This article pursues two themes. The first describes EU pension provision and how this has changed since the early 1980s. The arguments and proposals for further reform by influential organisations such as the World Bank are then examined. In the light of this analysis, the paper argues that while EU pension reform to date has been concerned primarily with adjusting detailed rules, some proposals presently being canvassed point to more radical reform amounting to 'privatisation'. Privatisation is here taken to mean the end of state and employer financing of pension provision for individuals and the substitution of national and company schemes by individual pension and personal savings plans. The second theme of the article is an evaluation of the extent to which existing and possible future pension provision in the EU facilitates or hinders access by people (predominantly women) who are outside the labour market, who are engaged in certain forms of paid work and who are engaged in unpaid caring work. The paper reveals that while access to existing pension schemes is restricted in respect of the first two groups of people, compensatory rules serve to ensure the continued access of those engaged in unpaid caring work. Bringing together the two themes of women's access and pension reform, the paper concludes by arguing that women carers would be disadvantaged were privatisation of pensions in the EU to go ahead.     

United Kingdom: Pensions: latest trustee toolkit module tackles fund management

The Pensions Act 2004 (Sections 247–249) requires trusteesto have knowledge and understanding of the law relating to pensions     

Polarization and Policy: The Politics of Public‐Sector Pensions

For decades, America's state and local governments have promised their workers increasingly generous pensions but failed to fully fund them, producing a fiscal problem of staggering proportions. In this article, we examine the politics of public pensions. While mainstream theoretical ideas in the American politics literature would suggest the pension issue should be polarized, with Democrats pushing for generous pensions over Republican resistance, we develop an argument—rooted in more traditional theoretical work by Schattschneider, Lowi, Wilson, and others—implying that both parties should be expected to support generous pensions during normal times and that only after the onset of the Great Recession, which expanded the scope of conflict, should the parties begin to diverge. Using a new data set of state legislators' votes on hundreds of pension bills passed between 1999 and 2011, we carry out an empirical analysis that supports these expectations.     

教唆行为:共犯行为抑或实行行为

教唆行为的定位问题不仅关涉教唆者的定罪量刑,也关涉共犯体系的发展与完善。传统的教唆行为共犯性理论在共同犯罪的构成要件判断、立法协调性及司法裁定的妥当性等方面,都存在解释论上的困难。承认教唆行为为具有独立构成的实行行为符合正犯行为的判断标准,同时也能有效地消解教唆行为共犯性语境下的诸多尴尬。