Human Rights in the Public Sector

This article examines how universal human rights have been given practical effect in the UK through the Human Rights Act. It focusses on the role of human rights in public services and using the duty placed on public officials as a lever to bring about positive change.     

How to Advance Social Rights without Jeopardising the Human Rights Act 1998

When the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was drafted, governments grasped that human rights are needed as safeguards, not only against authoritarianism but also against the causes of authoritarianism. For this reason, the UDHR encompasses civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. This holistic vision of human rights was obscured during the Cold War and more recently by economic neo‐liberalism. The UK government neglects social rights, which have a very low public profile, although there is evidence that the profile of these human rights is increasing. UK domestic law and practice is inconsistent with the holistic vision of human rights and the government's binding international social rights obligations. The UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights recommends that the UK provides for ‘the legislative recognition of social rights’ which can be approached in various ways. One way is to proceed social right by social right (for example, the rights to housing, health and education), and sector by sector (for example, the sectors of housing, health and education). This administrative law approach advances explicit social rights without implicating or jeopardising the Human Rights Act 1998.     

Human Rights in Policing: The Past,Present and Future

This article seeks to demonstrate, largely from practitioners’ perspectives, the growing evolution in understanding and implementation of meaningful human rights standards within the policing context. In the early 2000s, human rights were perceived and treated as a rather restrictive framework in UK policing. They are now more readily seen as a set of tools that guide and help the police to balance the views and interests of all parties to the criminal justice process. Human rights values enable police in the UK to better endeavour to do the right thing, ‘without fear or favour’.     

Personalizing solidarity? The role of self-tracking in health insurance pricing

Can data-driven innovations, working across an internet of connected things, personalize health insurance prices? The emergence of self-tracking technologies and their adoption and promotion in health insurance products has been characterized as a threat to solidaristic models of healthcare provision. If individual behaviour rather than group membership were to become the basis of risk assessment, the social, economic and political consequences would be far-reaching. It would disrupt the distributive, solidaristic character that is expressed within all health insurance schemes, even in those nominally designated as private or commercial. Personalized risk pricing is at odds with the infrastructures that presently define, regulate and deliver health insurance. Self-tracking can be readily imagined as an element in an ongoing bio-political redistribution of the burden of responsibility from the state to citizens but it is not clear that such a scenario could be delivered within existing individual private health insurance operational and regulatory infrastructures. In what can be gleaned from publicly available sources discussing pricing experience in the individual markets established by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act 2010 (ACA), widely known as ‘Obamacare’, it appears unlikely that it can provide the means to personalize price. Using the case of Oscar Health, a technology driven start-up trading in the ACA marketplaces, I explore the concepts, politics and infrastructures at work in health insurance markets.     

美国基层政府行政绩效考评实践及其启示

WANG Jian-min;XIAO Zhi-kang;XIAO Ming-zheng     

过失犯中被害人的作为义务与自我负责的边界

被害人自我答责理论强调自我决定,从而保障个人自由。法所关注的领域,是交往性的契约领域。非契约领域,属于个体的自治空间。刑法并不关注发生在"自我管辖领域"内的"侵害行为和侵害结果"。在自治领域,被害人应当确保"结果的不发生"。对参与被害人"自我管辖领域"内的行为,立足于限制的正犯概念和共犯的二元参与体系的概念,能够在教义学上得到准确解读。义务人在事实上有防止结果发生的可能性、义务履行与利益损害不能显著失衡、不能以生命为代价履行义务、人身保护与财产保护义务的"强制力"应当有别,是考量作为义务边界的因素。超出财产保护义务履行范围的,义务人完全进入到了自我管辖的空间。对于造成的损害结果,由被害人答责。超越人身保护义务的,应区分职业义务人与非职业义务人,分别对待。行为人创设的风险与职业义务人伤亡之间存在紧密关联之时,属于急迫性风险,由行为人答责。职业义务人正常履行职业义务的,属于职业性管辖。职业义务人发生误判之时,不能由职业义务人自我答责。无义务者实施保护行为造成损害的,应该对侵害结果自我答责。     

犯罪着手的教义学重述:学说对决、命题重证与具体解答

形式客观说并未丢弃实质,故其本为形式与实质相结合说。是否立足于构成要件行为是法益侵害紧迫危险性的刑法定型,决定了形式客观说和实质客观说各自是否为犯罪着手认定提供了明确标准,且是否导致犯罪着手认定的过于提前或推迟,进而决定了是否背离罪刑法定原则。犯罪着手的认定标准,应抛弃脱离形式限制的实质客观说而仍坚持形式客观说,但其“开始命题”应通过“基于大数法则的类型化危险形成说”而将犯罪着手的认定标准予以实质性落实。通过“基于大数法则的类型化危险形成说”,形式客观说对结合犯、隔离犯、徐行犯和原因自由行为型犯罪的着手能够做出妥当解答。     

美国国会议员访台现象研究(1997～2008)

台湾地区是美国国会议员访问最频繁的地区之一。本文分析了从1997年到2008年的美国国会议员访台记录分布及其决定因素,获得了如下主要发现:第一,美国国会议员访台频次变动受台湾岛内政治变动和美国国会选举周期影响,但以前者更为重要;第二,《与台湾关系法》赋予美国国会及其议员干预台湾问题的权力,是造成美国国会议员、特别是外交事务、军事、情报等委员会成员频繁访台的根本原因;第三,意识形态、选区利益、经贸关系等对美国国会议员访台也产生了一定的影响。     

中美西部开发比较研究

美国对其西部的开发在世界各国的边疆开发中堪称经典。比较中美两国西部开发在战略目标、历史背景、社会经济基础、文化意识、经济诱因、开发模式、面临的生态环境等七个方面的异同 ,美国西部开发的经验为我国西部开发提供了有益的借鉴     

涉数据竞争行为正当性的判定标准分析

数字经济背景下的竞争很大程度上依托于数据的积累和应用,而平台数据具有牵一发而动全身的特点,在其商业模式的影响下,互联网平台经营者之间围绕数据的获取和使用等行为产生了利益冲突。由于我国尚未确立数据相关的权利,现有司法裁判中通常寻诸《反不正当竞争法》第二条进行规制。虽然此举是目前相对可取的模式,但实务中的正当性判定仍存在利益分配不平衡的情况,同时,一般条款亦存在适用边界不明晰的问题。因此,需要对现有司法判定方式进行局部调整,将审视“搭便车”行为、关注消费者利益和市场效果作为改进的一般原则,把相关市场界定和比例原则作为具体操作思路,再从多元视角分配利益格局,以进一步完善涉数据竞争行为的正当性判定标准。