Indigenous Australia and health rights

Over the last decade, there has been a significant shift in public policy in relation to indigenous Australians. The new policy frameworks have been marked by an antipathy towards a policy discourse based on a human rights framework. This has also been associated with a shift from an approach based on "self-determination" to one founded on the idea of "mutual obligation". This article describes these developments in detail and considers the implications for human rights discourse.     

Property rights in personal data: Learning from the American discourse

This contribution is an attempt to facilitate a meaningful European discussion on propertization of personal data by explaining the idea as it emerged in its ‘mother-jurisdiction’, the United States. The piece starts with an overview of how the current US legal system addresses the data protection problem and whether, according to the US commentators, the law does it effectively. Furthermore, the contribution presents propertization of personal information as an alternative to the existing data protection regime and one of the ways to fill in the alleged gaps in the US data protection system. The article maps the US propertization debate. Pro-propertization arguments are considered from economic perspective as well as from the perspective of the limitations of the US legal and political system. In continuation it analyses proposals on how property rights in personal data would have to be regulated, if at all, in case the idea of propertization is accepted. The main points of criticism of propertization are also sketched. The article concludes with a brief summary of the US propertization discourse and, most importantly, with a list of the lessons Europeans can learn from their American counterparts engaging in the debate in the home jurisdiction. Among the main messages is that the outcome of the debate depends on the definition of the problem propertization is called on to tackle, and that it is the substance of the actual rights with regard to personal data that matters, and not whether we label them as property rights or not.     

Indigenous self-determination in an age of genetic patenting: recognizing an emerging human rights norm

This Note explores how the law can help indigenous people obtain meaningful control of their genetic material. Part I will briefly discuss the background of genetics, life patents, and indigenous groups. Part II sets out the domestic common law and international human rights law and demonstrates that neither currently provide adequate protection for indigenous peoples. Part III considers the human right of self-determination in the context of indigenous research and patenting, and illustrates that an emerging international norm recognizes an indigenous people's right to control their genetic material. Part IV argues that Congress should pass legislation to adequately meet the human rights needs of indigenous peoples generated by the rapid advancement of biotechnology. This Note concludes that congressional action to protect indigenous peoples is consistent with domestic and international law, and is a natural advancement of human rights and responsible state action.     

从西方人权话语拓展看中国人权话语的国际化

西方人权话语拓展的主要方式是软渗透和硬介入。软渗透表现为通过西方人权"区域理念--区域规则--国际规则--国内规则"的规范扩散,推动非西方国家接受由西方主导建构起来的国际人权规范体系,形成对西方人权话语的法律确信,最终实现"西方人权国际化"和"国际人权国内化"。硬介入表现为通过政治、军事、经济、外交等方式强行推动非西方国家接受西方人权话语并将之纳入国内法律秩序,加速了西方人权国际化。西方人权话语拓展引起"它变"和"自变"效果。一方面,面对软渗透和硬介入,非西方国家或者被动接受,或者借助条约批准、保留等国际法手段予以选择性认同或变通,甚至提出竞争性替代话语加以对冲。另一方面,西方人权话语也在内外因素下不断自我调适,逐步提升可接受性。中国对外拓展人权话语,应充分利用"百年未有之大变局"带来的战略机遇期,借助政治、经济、文化等多种途径,加速国际人权话语格局的变革;尽快形成以发展主义权利观为核心的人权话语体系,并通过对话来增进中国人权话语的价值共识;坚持发挥规范性力量的作用,学会利用国际法律机制,着力提升在国际人权体系内将中国理念和话语转化为国际规则以及保障国际规则被遵守的制度能力。     

The rights of donor inseminated children to know their genetic origins in Australia

Twenty years after it was recognised that adopted children have rights to understand their origins, the dawn has finally broken with respect to children conceived as a result of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), specifically donor insemination (DI). Recipients and practitioners of conception technologies focus their energies and ethical deliberation on the achievement of pregnancy and the successful birth of the child. Law, in contrast, must focus beyond birth to enshrine respect for the rights of the child, who is 'not legally capable of defending [his or her] own future interests.' This article undertakes an assessment of what is in the best interests of a child using empirical studies to ground a position that should be adopted by law in Australia. This article also critically evaluates the current legal position of the various States and Territories with regards to a DI conceived child's rights to know of their form of conception; access to identifying information of their donor; at what age they may access information; the position of DI children born before existing legislation; record-keeping; and finally whether international law grants such children rights. Australian children must enjoy the right in theory and practice to know they were donor conceived and the identity of their donor. It is disappointing that New South Wales, as the most recent State to propose legislation on ART, has not utilised international empirical research on the best interests of DI children or even followed the Infertility Treatment Act 1995 (Vic) which seems to be far more progressive in recognising how best to protect the rights of DI children. The current legal position is chaotic. States and Territories should confer power on the Federal Government to legislate uniform and explicit regulation of ART for the benefit of DI children.     

反贪查案工作机制探讨

上海市人民检察院第一分院反贪局自1995年贪检处成立发展至今,在办案思路、线索评估、把握初查重点及办案模式、办案谋略等方面基本形成了一整套行之有效的做法。在业务工作、队伍建设、检察改革、思想政治工作等方面取得了新的成绩,尤其在如何加强贪污贿赂案件线索的价值评估及初查方案的制定方面作了改革和努力。     

Detention and treatment down under: human rights and mental health laws in Australia and New Zealand

Mental health law reform in recent decades has drawn on the international human rights movement. The entering into force of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on May 3 2008 has been hailed by some as signalling a new era in relation to how domestic mental health laws should be reformed. Both Australia and New Zealand have ratified the CRPD and Australia has acceded to its Optional Protocol. New Zealand and the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria have statutory bills of rights which have an interpretive effect, but are unable to render other statutes invalid. Drawing on the results of interviews conducted with fifty-two representatives of consumer and carer organisations, lawyers, and mental health professionals across Australia and New Zealand, this paper examines the current thinking on human rights and mental health laws in these countries and outlines what changes, if any, may be brought to domestic legislation in light of the Convention.     

Ideology and discourse

Ethnographic methods were used to study alternative dispute resolution as practiced by two mediation projects. Observations of actual mediation sessions, interviews with key informants, and archival data were used. The authors found that the projects could be distinguished according to (a) uses of coercion and consensus in effecting a resolution, (b) the type of posturing that took place between mediator and disputants, and (c) the type of discourse employed. The authors argue that differences between the two projects emanated from whether the project was planned and executed by a state agency or whether it was community-based.     

Human rights and trade mark rights

Legal context. For some time the UK Trade Marks Registry hasrefused to register trade marks which consists of the name ofa well-known individual. This article examines whether the practiceis permissible, not in the terms of intellectual property lawbut whether it is in contravention of the applicant's humanrights. Key points. Looking at the application of the Human Rights Actin the United Kingdom, the article asks how it could apply toan intellectual property case, concluding that the Trade MarkRegistry is clearly a ‘public authority’ and thatthere are a number of ways in which current practice in respectof well-known individuals could be said to infringe their humanrights. Practical significance. It remains to be seen what the Registry'sresponse will be to such arguments and whether it might in thefuture be possible to obtain protection for the name of a celebrity.     

Legal rights in data

It is now apposite to speak of the ‘data centric world’. Businesses are paying ever more attention to their own, and others’ data, as a way of adding value to the organisation and conferring competitive advantage. This in turn is focusing attention on legal rights in data across many business sectors, where we’re starting to see more disputes. Data is funny stuff in and of itself - effectively inert in legal terms. It is more precise to speak of ‘legal rights in relation to data’. Those rights are IP rights - copyright, database right, confidentiality, patents and trade marks - and contract rights. Each IP right has its own rules, and applying those rules to data leads to a complex, multi-layered analysis where the law is unsettled and uncertain. This means that data is an area where contract is very often king, so most businesses regulate access to data by means of a series of agreements. The most commonly contested points in negotiations are around licence scope, derived data, commingled data and post term use.     

Rights-based rights

Ronald Dworkin maintains that particular rights, like the right to free speech and the right to own personal property, can be derived from a foundational right, the right to equal concern and respect. This paper questions the tenability of this program for rights-based rights. A right is an individuated moral or political guarantee which confers a specified benefit on each right-holder and which resists conduct that would derogate it. For there to be rights-based rights, both the foundational right and the rights it implies must satisfy this definition. It is doubtful, however, that the right to equal concern and respect should count as a right since the benefits it confers are at best highly controversial and may not be assignable to individuals. But even if we grant that the content of the right to equal concern and respect can be satisfactorily specified, the status of the derived rights remains problematic. The trouble is that the relation between the right to equal concern and respect and the rights it implies parallels the relation between the principle of utility and the rights it may imply. Both of these foundational principles can extinguish derived rights. Consequently, rights dependent on either of these principles are not trumps, and their standing as rights is suspect. I conclude that Dworkin's method of defending rights is inappropriate for the most important of our rights though it may well serve for less critical ones.     

The irresponsible criminal in Norwegian medico-legal discourse

This article discusses discourses on criminal responsibility in Norway in the 19th and 20th centuries, in light of Michel Foucault's regimes of power and knowledge: the apparatuses of law, discipline and security. The passing of two criminal codes, in 1842 and 1902 marks a development from neo-classical law to a law influenced by positivist criminology. In these consecutive ways of thinking law, the figure of the irresponsible criminal constituted a contentious issue. From being a figure marking the limits of the law, the irresponsible criminal became an object to be disciplined and a security threat. This redefinition of criminal responsibility created or was created by new groups of experts speaking from positions increasingly close to the criminals. The most important professional group was of course the psychiatrists, that emerged in Norway as a distinct professional group in the second half of the 19th century, and whose influence in the legislative process culminated in the 1920s.