Advance Refusals of Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment: The Relativity of an Absolute Right

English law gives the competent patient a right to refuse life-saving treatment, either contemporaneously or in an advance directive. This means that the patient's autonomous choice that in an anticipated situation his/her interests are better served by rejecting life-saving treatment needs to be respected. However, this right is undermined in practice by the courts' approach of applying a presumption in favour of preserving the patient's life whenever the validity and applicability of an advance directive is questioned. The article argues that the patient's right to refuse life-saving treatment only receives the respect it deserves if the decision whether or not a valid and applicable advance directive exists in a given case is instead be approached in an unbiased, disinterested way, and it analyses how this can be achieved in different scenarios.     

Toward a definition and taxonomy of public sector ombudsmen

The world‐wide diffusion of the ombudsman concept and the accompanying academic literature have failed to produce a universal definition of “ombudsman.” As a result, liberal interpretations of the concept have flourished, and the invention of technical terms has gone unchecked. This article examines the two most commonly cited definitions of an ombudsman and the wealth of technical terms for their conformity to the original concept. A definition for public sector ombudsmen congruent with primordial functions and recent conceptual extensions is proposed. The article concludes with a taxonomy of the different kinds of ombudsmen in place today.     

Les groupes d'intérêt économiques face à un changement de paradigme: le cas de l'énergie nucléaire en Allemagne

Cet article s'interroge sur les conséquences de la décision allemande de 1998, qui prévoit l'arrêt de la production d'énergie nucléaire, sur les relations entre les groupes d'intérêt économiques et les acteurs gouvernementaux. L'hypothèse est que ce changement de paradigme énergétique entraîne un changement des relations entre ces acteurs. A partir de l'étude des cadres cognitifs et des stratégies des acteurs, l'article étudie les différentes phases de transformation de la politique énergétique allemande. Si les changements graduels des années 1980 et 1990 ont mené à des adaptations à la marge, la décision de 1998, entraînant la mise à l'écart des groupes d'intérêt économiques, contraint ces derniers à élaborer de nouvelles stratégies: ils cherchent à compenser leur perte d'influence au niveau national par de nouvelles collaborations à l'échelle européenne et au niveau international. Ces stratégies restent néanmoins influencées par les structures nationales.     

Relationships Between Cognitive Strategies of Adolescents and Depressive Symptomatology Across Different Types of Life Event

The objective of the present study was to examine relationships between cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptomatology across different types of life event. A sample of 138 secondary school students filled out a questionnaire. They were asked to indicate their most negative life event ever. On the basis of their answers, 3 types of negative life event were distinguished: loss, health threat, and relational stress experience. No relationship was found between type of negative life event and depressive symptomatology. Significant relationships were found between type of negative life event and the cognitive strategies self-blame and other-blame. Adolescents with a health threat experience scored higher on self-blame, while adolescents with a relational stress event scored higher on other-blame than the other groups. Significant relationships were also found between depressive symptomatology and the cognitive strategies self-blame, rumination, positive reappraisal, putting into perspective, and catastrophizing. No interaction effects were found between type of negative life event and cognitive strategies, suggesting that relationships between cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptomatology are consistent across different types of life event.     

A historical institutionalist view on merging LULUCF and REDD+ in a post-2020 climate agreement

In the context of the UNFCCC negotiation process on a global climate agreement, policy makers are looking for approaches on how to significantly raise the mitigation ambition of all relevant sectors, including the land use sector. Aside of the formal negotiations some Parties to the UNFCCC have started an informal dialogue and discuss how to merge the fragmented accounting rules for mitigation relevant land use activities, in particular those concerning forest-sector emissions. Stressing that ‘history matters’, we use a historical institutionalist perspective to assess the institutional pathways of the different accounting rules for developed and developing countries, their mutual relationship, and in how far they are supportive or counterproductive for this endeavour. Our empirical analysis shows that Parties tend to use any modification phase in the negotiation process to water down already achieved agreements, and that negotiating modalities after targets have been agreed is not conducive either. In the efforts of specifying the Paris agreement, merging existing rules into a common accounting framework is likely to further compromise the exisiting weak rules and modalities, and potentially what negotiators consider as ‘environmental integrity’. With this, a formal negotiation of common rules for the accounting of the land use sector may yield an outcome below what has been achieved since the negotiations on a post-2020 agreement started in 2005. We conclude that politically acceptable approaches for the land use sector that also contribute to the overall objective of raising ambition should avoid reopening already agreed decisions on rules and modalities.