Legal enclaves as a test environment for innovative products: Toward legally resilient experimentation policies1

Many countries adhere to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development creed that innovation is good for the economy. Experiments are often used to intentionally create space for innovation. Decisions allowing experiments result in temporary legal enclaves for a few, excluding many others. Therefore, they come with risks. The aim of this article is to provide a set of guidelines that help improve the legal resilience of experimentation policies, so they are better able to withstand legal attacks when they occur. To do so, we first arranged the existing diversity of legal experiments in a theoretical model. Special attention was paid to two archetypes of legal experiments: statutory experiments and regulatory sandboxes. Second, we analyzed the impact of both types of experiments on four core legal principles: legality, certainty, equality, and public accountability. From this assessment, we eventually formulated a set of guidelines to secure or improve legal resilience.     

How Can the European Union Contribute to a COP-6 Agreement? An Overview for Policy Makers

During the 6th Conference of Parties (COP-6) in The Hague, the Netherlands, November 2000, crucial progress on a number of outstanding issues related to the Kyoto Protocol will have to be made to open the way for its early ratification, if not to save it from complete failure. Given the present lack of internal US political support for the Kyoto Protocol, the EU may play a pivotal role in making the Kyoto Protocol agreement a reality even without initial ratification of the US, if its able to provide sufficient leadership. In this overview article we discuss the main issues under negotiation, the problems of finding agreement and opportunities for the EU to catalyse a compromise agreement at COP-6, building on key scientific papers as included in this issue and discussions at the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment Climate Policy Workshop in Amsterdam. Key elements are the inclusion of sinks, the use of the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms as a supplement to domestic action and the international compliance system. Domestic implementation of climate policy is a major factor for the EU's credibility.     

The histopathological spectrum of myocardial inflammation in relation to circumstance of death: a retrospective cohort study in clinical and forensic autopsies

Interpreting a myocardial inflammation as causal, contributory or as of no significance at all in the cause of death can be challenging, especially in cases where other pathologic and/or medico-legal findings are also present. To further evaluate the significance of myocardial inflammation as a cause of death we performed a retrospective cohort study of forensic and clinical autopsy cases. We revised the spectrum of histological inflammatory parameters in the myocardium of 79 adult autopsy cases and related these to the reported cause of death. Myocardial slides were reviewed for the distribution and intensity of inflammatory cell infiltrations, the predominant inflammatory cell type, and the presence of inflammation-associated myocyte injury, fibrosis, edema and hemorrhage. Next, the cases were divided over three groups, based on the reported cause of death. Group 1 (n = 27) consisted of all individuals with an obvious unnatural cause of death. Group 2 (n = 29) included all individuals in which myocarditis was interpreted to be one out of more possible causes of death. Group 3 (n = 23) consisted of all individuals in which myocarditis was reported to be the only significant finding at autopsy, and no other cause of death was found. Systematic application of our histological parameters showed that only a diffuse increase of inflammatory cells could discriminate between an incidental presence of inflammation (Group 1) or a potentially significant one (Groups 2 and 3). No other histological parameter showed significant differences between the groups. Our results suggest that generally used histological parameters are often insufficient to differentiate an incidental myocarditis from a (potentially) significant one.     

Boko Haram : un cas d’école de l’échec de l’islam politique au Nigeria

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article analyse quelques-unes des raisons pour lesquelles Boko Haram s’est avéré incapable de gouverner les territoires qu’il a pu contrôler avant son allégeance à l’État islamique et son retrait dans les marécages du lac Tchad en 2015. L’échec politique du groupe ne tient pas seulement à sa fragmentation, sa criminalisation, son manque de cadres qualifiés et la pauvreté d’une insurrection “low cost.” En effet, le caractère prédateur de la secte est tout à la fois une cause et un symptôme de sa désorganisation et de son incapacité à gouverner. Se réclamant de la légitimité du djihad d’Ousmane dan Fodio à Sokoto, le mouvement n’a jamais cherché à ressusciter l’Empire du Borno pour lever l’impôt et rendre une justice très rudimentaire. Ainsi, le cas de Boko Haram témoigne à sa manière de l’échec de l’islam politique et des tentatives d’extension du domaine d’application de la charia au Nigeria depuis la fin de la dictature militaire en 1999.     

Gender encounters university—university encounters gender: affective archives Aarhus University,Denmark 1928–1953

ABSTRACT

This article deals with the encounters between female students and Aarhus University, Denmark during the first twenty-five years of its existence. My goal is to identify the affective processes of female student life as resulting from the intra-actions of immateriality and materiality. The paper offers an invitation to join me on my research journey into the archives and history of the university. Maria Tamboukou's thinking about the archive as a fragmented, experimental space entangled with the life rhythms of the historian guides this journey. Logbooks from the kitchens in the student halls stand out as holy grails, where affective histories haunt the pages. Affective methodologies are my tools in unlocking a world of seriousness and senselessness, bullying and fun, hate and affection, camaraderie and humiliation.     

Reflective Judgement and Prudential Rationality: A Contribution to an Inclusive Practical Application of Law

Hannah Arendt has developed a theory of the importance of judgment of taste for political manners, founded on the Kantian aesthetic theory. Nowadays this theory is considered a current theoretical reference for establishing a political way to reconcile the demands of the radicalization of deliberative democracy with the need for political inclusion (Iris Marion Young, Seyla Benhabib). Albena Azmanova in her The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment proposes an inclusive political rhetoric. The political theory founded on judgment is based on Kant’s philosophy; it was developed by Arendt and has greatly influenced the current debate, as an alternative theory in which the moral basis of law can be more sensitive to human contexts; a universalist theory more adequate for dealing with the tragic dimension of human life. The theory of political judgment uses the concepts of reflective judgment and ‘enlarged thought’ as its main concepts. As a starting point, a theory like this considers the singular judgments of justice that each person makes. The background, therefore, is not a rational foundation of principles, but the capacity of rational beings to make judgments. This post-metaphysical theory of law, based on a theory of judgment, is a critique of legal positivism, but presents itself as an alternative to the idealistic theory of law. But this theoretical project has received some criticism related to the adequacy of Arendt’s rereading of Kantian philosophy and her attempt to approximate Kant’s reflective judgment to the Aristotelian concept of phronêsis. Some critics, such as Bryan Garsten, believe that Kant’s rhetoric of public reason diminished and displaced the prudential faculty of judgment that Arendt is to be interested in reviving. Arendt’s attempt to find a theory of judgment in Kant’s aesthetic theory is not successful, in Garsten’s view. Our purpose is to show that a critical theory of judicial judgment is not only possible, but necessary; Arendt’s theory of judgment offers an important contribution to a critical theory of judicial judgment, particularly one devoted to the construction of a legal theory that prioritizes a politics of social inclusion. This theory proposes a critical approach to the project of the procedural conception of democracy, since it can mask social exclusion. An adequate understanding of judicial argumentation cannot forget that it happens in a rhetorical context: it is not only important what a discourse says, but how it says it. The radicalization of deliberative democracy supposes a revision of the ways judicial deliberation is thought: not by reference to universal or at least general principles, but taking into consideration what is ‘critically relevant’, with a view to remedying social injustice (following Azmanova).

     

Emotions and Sentiments in Judicial Deliberation

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - The traditional perspective on emotions, anchored in the Western philosophical tradition,...