Charter rights & health care funding: a typology of Canadian health rights litigation

Canadian health consumers have increasingly relied on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to demand certain therapies and reasonably timely access to care. Organizing these cases into a 5-part typology, we examine how a rights-based discourse affects allocation of health care resources. First, successful Charter challenges can, in theory, lead to courts granting and enforcing positive rights to therapies or to timely care. Second, courts may grant a right to certain health services; however, subsequently government fails to deliver on this right. Third, successful litigation may create negative rights, i.e. rights to access care or private health insurance without government interference. Fourth, consumers can fail in their legal pursuit of a right but galvanize public support in the process, ultimately effecting the desired policy changes. Lastly, a failed lawsuit can stifle an entire advocacy campaign for the sought-after therapies. The typology illustrates the need to examine both legal and policy outcomes of health right litigation. This broader analysis reveals that the pursuit of health rights seems to have caused largely a regressive rather than progressive impact on Canadian Medicare.     

Police Legitimacy and Citizen Cooperation in China: Testing an Alternative Model

Past research has identified several mechanisms of promoting citizen cooperation with the police, with Tyler’s process-based policing model being one of the most frequently tested frameworks in this line of inquiry. Using data collected from a large sample of residents in a large Chinese city, this study assesses an alternative model of Tyler’s work proposed by Tankebe (2013), positing that police legitimacy, embodied in four aspects of procedural justice, distributive justice, effectiveness, and lawfulness, affects people’s obligation to obey the police, which further influences their cooperation with the police. Results from second-order confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling analysis suggested that Tankebe’s work is supported by the Chinese data. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.     

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement

On October 5, 2015, the 12 countries reached an agreement in principle on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that will build 21st-century trade and investment rules concerning tariffs, services, investment, intellectual property, state-owned enterprises, and other areas. Going beyond the myriad bilateral FTAs and EPAs, the TPP is intended to give shape to policy relating to trade in the Asia-Pacific. Since Japan officially participated in TPP negotiations in 2013, one focus has been on an economic growth strategy that provides opportunities for small- and medium-sized enterprises to consider overseas expansion and that allows Japan to re-emerge as a major exporting country. Regionally, the TPP is expected to contribute to economic development in the Asia-Pacific as a whole at the dawn of an “Asia-Pacific Century.” As the minister in charge of negotiating for Japan's national interest in the TPP, the author shares his perspective about the agreement.     

Testing the Precision of Legal Translation: The Case of Translating Islamic Legal Terms into English

Legal translation is viewed as “a category in its own right” (Weston in An English reader’s guide to the French legal system. Berg, Oxford, (1991, p. 2). It is a kind of translation of the language used for specific purposes (Zhao in J Transl Stud 4:28, 2000). Legal translation requires accuracy in relaying the substance of the message, while respecting the form thereof as well as the genius of the target language (Zhao in J Transl Stud 4:19, 2000; Sarcevic in New approach to legal translation. Kluwer Law International, Hague, 1997, p. 52). As generally accepted worldwide, precision is deemed of paramount importance in legal translation. With this in mind, the present paper deals chiefly with the concept of how legal translation can correctly be tested in order to ensure precision and validity for application and implementation. The paper will argue that the main goal of legal translation and the major criterion against which the precision of legal translation should be tested is to reproduce the same legal effect in the target text as that conveyed in the source text regardless of the method(s) used in the translation process.     

Human rights violations and genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The massacres that took place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between 1996 and 2003 have posed an interesting challenge to the global community, specifically to its more powerful members. Ironically, the Tutsi-dominated government of Rwanda enjoys international recognition and benefits based on the genocide, Rwanda suffered in 1994, but continues to deny the same benefit to Hutus as they were accused of leading a counter-genocide campaign then in the DRC. While the people of the DRC, as well as human rights activists, call for justice for all who were affected, the government of Rwanda, strongly backed by a number of powerful international powers, opposed attempts by the international community to pin charges of genocide perpetrated by its army in the DRC on it. Because of the clear negation of the genocide report by the Rwandan government, the nature of human rights, human rights violations, and genocide criteria proposed and defended by key members of the international community in relation to the mass killings in the DRC are examined.     

Book reviews

Anthony Giddens, THE CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNITY (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990). Anthony Giddens, MODERNITY AND SELF‐IDENTITY: SELF AND SOCIETY IN THE LATE MODERN AGE (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991)

Robert B. Westbrook, JOHN DEWEY AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991)

David Harvey, THE CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY: AN ENQUIRY INTO THE ORIGINS OF CULTURAL CHANGE (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989)

Robin Blackburn, ed., AFTER THE FALL: THE FAILURE OF COMMUNISM AND THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM (London and New York: Verso, 1991)

Andrew Hacker, TWO NATIONS: BLACK AND WHITE, SEPARATE, HOSTILE, UNEQUAL. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992)

Ridgeway, James, BLOOD IN THE FACE: THE KU KLUX KLAN, ARYAN NATIONS, NAZI SKINHEADS AND THE RISE OF A NEW WHITE CULTURE (New York: Thunders Mouth Press, 1991)

Gene H. Bell‐Villada, THE CARLOS CHADWICK MYSTERY: A NOVEL OF COLLEGE LIFE AND POLITICAL TERROR. (Albuquerque, NM: Amador Publishers, 1990)     

Human rights practices and the Indonesian middle class

Abstract

During the New Order we have often witnessed or read in the newspapers or at least heard from various circles about KOPKAMTIB actions such as banning or ordering coverage of a story in the mass media through only a telephone call; carrying out arrests, detention, and interrogation against citizens without regard to the proper procedures delineated in law; inhumane treatment during questioning; carrying out executions performed without regard to legal procedures, more commonly known as “mysterious shootings”; undertaking “political screening” of citizens to determine their loyalty to the government as in the case of prospective nominees in the General Elections; depriving citizens of their civil rights without trial, such as forbidding signatories to the Petition of 50 to leave the country and depriving them of the ability to earn a living by instructing all agencies and state banks not to honor their requests; the arrest and detention of religious teachers and so forth. All of this has been done with the excuse that the individuals involved are suspected of engaging in extremist or other subversive acts.