Welfare Reform and the Shifting Threshold of Support for Disabled People

Among the highly significant changes to the benefits system made by the Welfare Reform Act 2012 is provision for a new disability benefit, personal independence payment (PIP). PIP is replacing disability living allowance (DLA), received by three million people, as the principal form of state financial support towards disability‐related care and mobility costs for those of working age. The legislation, including regulations prescribing a new disability assessment framework, plays its traditional role in this field of rationing access to benefit and directing front‐line policy implementation. This article examines how, in the context of the Coalition government's welfare reforms, PIP shifts the threshold of entitlement for people with disabilities and it assesses PIP's potential impact on equality and the right to independent living, to whose realisation disability benefits may be expected to contribute significantly. It also considers the impact on disabled people of other relevant reforms, including the controversial ‘bedroom tax’.     

Religion in the Workplace: Eweida and Others v United Kingdom

The European Court of Human Rights judgment in Eweida and Others v United Kingdom dealt with the increasingly controversial questions of religious symbols at work and the clash between free conscience and anti‐discrimination norms. In a change of approach, it held that the right to resign could no longer be seen as adequate protection for religious freedom and that workplace norms that restrict religious liberty must satisfy a proportionality test. However, it accorded a wide margin of appreciation to States in reconciling freedom of conscience and freedom from discrimination, ruling that the importance of non‐discrimination could justify a failure to exempt a religious individual from complying with a policy forbidding discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.     

Enabling freedom of expression in light of filtering measures imposed on Internet intermediaries: Squaring the circle?

This study considers the scope of the injunction a court may issue against an intermediary service provider with a view to preventing or terminating an infringement, particularly of an intellectual property right. The matter is studied in the light of the aim shared by the European Union and the Council of Europe to promote freedom of expression via communication networks. Despite technological progress and the emergence of software that are increasingly precise and ever better controlled in terms of their effects, implementation of a filtering measure appears difficult to reconcile with the right to freedom of expression. Consequently, the problematic comes down to this question: how do we do enough without doing too much?     

论死刑犯实体权利保障的理论基础

在我国废除死刑尚不成熟,限制死刑已成必然的今天,强化对死刑犯实体权利的保障显得格外重要。如何论证死刑犯实体权利保障的正当性,是一个关涉死刑犯实体权利保障的根基性问题。对此,应当从角色理论、尊重少数理论、犯罪相对性理论、权力的隐形操作理论和犯罪二元关系理论加以把握。     

农民工权益缺失——构建和谐社会不能忽视的问题

中国改革开放以来农民分化出一个独特的、人数越来越多的“农民工”阶层。随着社会经济的不断发展,涌向城市的农民工越来越多。农民工在为城市发展,为整个社会的文明做出巨大贡献的同时,却没有获得平等分享一定社会资源的权利,农民工权益保障缺失是当前构建和谐社会的主要矛盾之一,因此解决农民工问题就成为构建社会主义和谐社会的重要一环。