Pantheonizing the Jerusalem Haram: from Pan-Islamic to a national Palestinian pantheon

Analyzing the initiative to establish an Islamic–Arab–Palestinian pantheon in the holiest place in Jerusalem against the background of the Arab–Jewish conflict in Palestine, this article discusses the transformation of the Haram pantheon from an all-Islamic burial place to a Palestinian national one in which the Husayni family was given priority. Understanding decision-making regarding who was entitled to be buried in this special place is the main focus of the article. The eight personalities who were buried at the Haram signify different motivations according to the authority in charge of allowing the burial in the Haram, family ties and networks and the political needs of the Arabs of Palestine as well as the Hashemites.     

Nuisance Value: Uyghur activism in Germany and Beijing–Berlin relations

While a small number of Uyghur communities had begun to settle in Germany already in the 1950s and 1960s, since the 1990s they have chosen Munich as their center of national and political activism in Europe and worldwide. By that time the Chinese had begun to apply pressure on the German government to restrict Uyghur activities and to monitor and intimidate them and their German supporters, also by using spies and collaborators. As a democratic country Germany rejected the Chinese demands, although refusing to admit former Uyghur Guantanamo inmates. Despite occasional tension, Sino–German relations have not been affected by the presence of Uyghurs, some of them labeled as ‘terrorists’ by Beijing. My conclusion is that the Uyghur ‘threat’ has been deliberately inflated by China as a tool in its relations with other governments and that economic relations and technology import are far too important to spoil by persecuting Uyghurs.     

Correlativity

In a celebrated article, published nearly a century ago, Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld endeavored to elucidate the various types of jural relations. Hohfeld’s scheme has been justly regarded as a seminal contribution to analytical jurisprudence, and has stimulated lively debate since. This Essay aims to refute one of Hohfeld’s fundamental and most influential theses: the axiom of right–duty correlativity. To do so, it employs the simplest refutation strategy in first-order logic, namely providing a valid counterexample. Part I discusses earlier attempts to do likewise, and explains why they failed. For the most part, previous illustrations of ostensibly standalone rights or standalone duties neglected relevant parties who could owe the correlative duties or hold the correlative rights, respectively. Part II puts forward a simple argument: There are abstract duties in private law that ban certain types of conduct without reference to specific victims. Those duties are not necessarily correlative with rights, although their breach may generate secondary duties with corresponding rights. In particular, tort law allows plaintiffs to recover for harm caused by breach of duty that occurred before they acquired legal personality. This is tantamount to recognizing duties that are not correlative with rights, and therefore invalidates the correlativity axiom.     

Libya's Diplomatic Success in Africa: The Reemergence of Qadhafi on the International Stage

This article traces the development of Libya's African policy between 1996 and 2001, during which Qadhafi extricated his country from its pariah position to become a prominent player on the African stage. It analyzes the motives behind Libya's diplomatic encroachment into Africa, the tactics used by Qadhafi to crown this African policy with success, and the benefits garnered to Libyan interests far beyond the regional setting. The discussion is presented mostly from the Libyan point of view. Thus, particular emphasis is placed on the systematic and extensive coverage of Tripoli's African policy in the Libyan media. However, non-Libyan Arab and African sources are also thoroughly reviewed.     

Clinical practice guidelines: the warped incentives in the U.S. healthcare system

The healthcare system is sick. The players are incentivized to maximize their own benefit and externalize their costs onto the other parties. This paper examines the warped incentives that underlie the system. The tort system, lacking expertise and slow to adapt, is unable to overcome cognitive biases to adequately solve the problems. Clinical practice guidelines could pose a solution, but not as they are currently developed. Guidelines promulgated by healthcare associations are infected by a web of conflicts of interest with every player in the industry. Government agencies, and their revolving doors, are underfunded and also subject to the industry's web of conflicts. Even if adequate guidelines could consistently be produced, state legislatures and courts have been unwilling and unable to substantially incorporate guidelines into the legal landscape. Lastly, this article proposes a private regulation regime that could be a solution which would align all of the players' incentives to society's interests.     

A dynamic theoretical framework of gradual institutional changes

How do institutions transform? To answer that question, this article introduces a dynamic theoretical framework of gradual institutional changes. Instead of looking at each mode of gradual change—like layering or drift—as a stand‐alone process, we examine how the application of one mode of change affects the opportunities of change agents to induce additional modes of gradual transformation. We first point to the fact that any single mode of change produces a real but limited transformation. Nevertheless, since the application of a gradual mode of change alters the institutional context, it opens new change opportunities by affecting the support in the targeted institution and/or its internal coherence. Consequently, change agents who aspire to comprehensive transformation will be able to use these new opportunities to implement additional modes of gradual transformation. Two case studies of gradual social policy transformations in Israel exemplify these theoretical assertions.