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The application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to the Member States has given rise both to a controversial phraseology and a controversial case-law. This paper offers a reconstruction of the constitutional intent and proposes a conceptualization in conformity with the structural function and the constitutional contemplation of the pouvoir constituent. As to the phraseological debate, it demonstrates that the Charter's application to the Member States may occur by reason of either "implementation" or "interpretation" of EU law and the two strands are embraced but not synthetized by "scope" as a collective term. As to the substantive debate, it demonstrates that the CJEU's case-law on "implementation" is not only amorphous but also inconsistent with the Charter's constitutional mandate. The paper proposes a novel approach based on the notion that the application to the Member States is accessory to the supremacy of EU law. The paper's argument is presented in the following steps. First, the paper presents the pristine rationale and constitutional function of the application to the Member State through its emergence and historical context. Second, it provides a taxonomy and critical overview of the CJEU's amorphous case-law and presents the Court's futile attempt to create a coherent doctrine that faithfully reproduces the constitutional contemplation behind the diagonal application and that reflects the division of competences between the EU and its Member States. Third, it sets out the proposed doctrine of "displacement." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to question the dominance of human rights as the primary normative framework for European social media regulation, and academic research in this field. Analysing EU legislation and recent ECJ cases, it shows that issues like discriminatory content moderation, profiling, and promotion of stereotypes cannot adequately be addressed within a human rights framework. The centrality of individual rights in the EU legal regime not only fails to address collective issues, like platforms' influence on culture and social norms, but cannot even offer effective, equal protection to individuals. In policy debates, the depoliticised and individualistic language of human rights can legitimise corporate activities and downplay important questions about the political economy of this privatised, highly-concentrated, advertiser-funded industry. The paper also considers interpretations of human rights as structural conditions or collective values, and argues that they cannot fully overcome the limitations discussed here. Given the entrenched role of fundamental rights in EU law, critics of social media cannot avoid relying on them. However, academics should also seek to develop more explicitly political critiques, based on alternative normative visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author notes that widespread concerns have been raised about protecting genetic privacy and confidentiality in insurance and employment. He argues that effective protections are difficult because complicated issues, such as the right of access to health care, are invariably implicated.

Author argues that the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination against workers based on their genetic makeup. He also examines state legislation and recently proposed federal legislation prohibiting genetic discrimination.

In response to the awareness that genetic discrimination is a significant problem, many states have passed or are passing legislation regulating the use of genetic information. Authors discuss the weaknesses as well as the strengths of such legislation, and recommend that the laws be redrafted to prohibit discrimination on the basis of any type of predictive medical information.

The debate around whether novel beings should be legally recognized as legitimate rights holders is one that has produced a vast amount of commentary. This paper contributes to this discourse by shifting the normative focus of moral rights away from criteria possessed by the novel beings in question, and back toward the criterion upon which we ourselves are able to make legitimate rights claims. It draws heavily on the moral writing of Alan Gewirth's identification of noumenal agency as the source of all legitimate rights claims. Taking Gewirthian ethical rationalism as providing a universally applicable hypothetical imperative which binds all agents to comply with its requirements, the paper argues that it is at least morally desirable that any legal system should recognize the moral rights claims of all agents as equally legitimate. By extension, it is at least morally desirable that the status of legal personhood should be granted by a legal system to all novel beings who are noumenal agents, insofar as this status is necessary for rights' legal recognition. Having established the desirability of this extension, the paper closes with an examination of recent cases involving both biological and nonbiological novel beings in order to assess their conformity with the desirable approach outlined above. The paper demonstrates that such recognition is conceptually possible, thus requiring us to move beyond the current anthropocentricity of legal systems and recognize the legitimate moral claim for legal personhood for all novel beings who possess noumenal agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to investigate the stance of the Italian Constitutional Court (ItCC) on ECHR and CFREU and their respective Courts, ECtHR and CJEU. The aim is to verify if the attitude of the ItCC could be described in terms of openness or closedness, understanding openness as an effort to practise loyal cooperation through procedural means and, substantively, as greater attention for the norms of supranational orders, and closedness as the setting aside of all forms of procedural ties with the supranational Courts and the voluntary dissociation from their outcome, with the purpose of prioritising domestic constitutional provisions. To conduct the analysis, the article refers to the theory of interlegality, questioning whether ItCC, operating 'on the borders between several normative orders', has a broader accountability to these different orders. The first part of the paper is devoted to some elements drawn from the case law indicating openness, such as the language use by the ItCC, the procedures, the legal reasoning, and the effects of judgements. Attention is given to the contextual reference to the recognition norms of both the Italian Constitution and European Union (EU) Treaties and to the increasing use of preliminary rulings to the CJEU. The second part of the paper discusses a substantive criterion created by the ItCC, the 'greatest extension of guarantees', demonstrating that it does not refer to the level of protection of individual rights, but to the balance of the entire constitutional system. Our conclusion is that the ItCC trends concerning supranational rights express a deferent and operational, but vigilant cooperation, retaining a margin to ensure the vitality of the domestic Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first international human rights convention to state expressly that discrimination includes the failure to provide reasonable accommodation. The duty has been described as transformative but has also been critiqued for its lack of structural impact. This paper evaluates the transformative potential of the reasonable accommodation duty encompassed by the Convention, and considers how its potential can be realised. It argues that the duty is transformative because of the substantive equality it provides for individuals, and because it requires both active engagement with persons with disabilities and proactive consideration of barriers to inclusion, in multiple contexts. However, it contends that full realisation of the duty's transformative potential depends on appropriate legislative formulation. This may be a problem in dualist states where application of the Convention is not automatic and pre-existing legislation may be perceived as satisfying the obligation. The paper supports this contention with an analysis of Irish law, arguing that the full transformative potential of the reasonable accommodation duty has not yet been achieved in Ireland, and identifying the reasons for this. The paper examines the practical consequences of inadequate implementation and highlights pitfalls and best practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at rights in practice to understand how migrant EU citizens' formal social rights translate into substantive ones. It highlights a factor thus far overlooked in the literature on welfare states and migrants' social rights: namely, the actors involved in welfare delivery. The argument is based, first, on non-profit organisations' (NPOs) function as 'rights intermediaries'; and second, on the distinct make-up of the 'welfare mix' across countries, with which NPO's role in the provision of services, and hence their capacities and autonomy, varies. Focusing on EU citizens' cross-border social rights, and drawing on in-depth research in Germany and Sweden, the paper reveals how NPOs defend and facilitate access to rights in both countries. Yet NPOs' extensive role in the German welfare sector generates greater capacities for NPOs to pursue inclusive objectives than what is available to their Swedish counterparts, which occupy a much more limited position as welfare providers. This, it is argued, can be important for understanding how boundaries of social citizenship are drawn in each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The democratic dialogue model is a domestic constitutional model of rights protection, which is used to explain and evaluate the relationship between domestic courts and legislatures. It is characterised by there being some capacity on the part of the legislature to respond to a court decision and it claims, among other things, to produce a 'better protection of human rights'. This paper examines whether the democratic dialogue model can be, and should be, applied to the relationship between state legislatures and, respectively, the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union (the European Courts). The paper first demonstrates that this proposed application of the model differs from other accounts of dialogue hitherto applied at the transnational level. It examines how exactly the model can be applied to the relationship between national legislatures and the European Courts and it demonstrates that the model provides an explanatory framework for the interactions between the institutions. It argues that the normative claims of the domestic dialogue model are achieved when the model is applied in the proposed way, but it acknowledges that the achievement of those normative claims might not always be desirable at the transnational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Paper argues that to protect at-risk communities — and all Americans — from the deadly effects of environmental racism, Congress must pass the Environmental Justice for All Act. The Act is intended to "restore, reaffirm, and reconcile environmental justice and civil rights." It does so by restoring an individual's right to sue in federal court for discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or national origin regardless of intent under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, strengthening the National Environmental Policy Act, and providing economic incentives focused on environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International human rights specialists and libertarian philosophers have rarely pursued meaningful exchanges, but this paper probes some of their common ground. In recent years, leading international monitoring bodies have developed a principle described here as the 'Libertarian Principle of Human Rights' (LPHR). It runs as follows: Governments cannot legitimately recite public morals as a sufficient justification to limit individual human rights. That principle might seem obvious in many societies today, but throughout history, including the history of liberalism, any notion that certain individual interests must trump religious or customary beliefs has stood as the rare exception. The seemingly Western and secular suggestion of a libertarian principle inherent within human rights may seem at odds with the view that human rights ought to reflect diverse cultural traditions; however, LPHR underscores an anti-authoritarianism, which, it is argued, must form part of any serious conception of human rights. LPHR can be substantiated even for highly controversial rights, such as LGBTQ+ rights, suggesting that it applies a fortiori to more settled rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Total testamentary freedom in English law came to an end with the passage of the Inheritance (Family Provision) Act 1938, since replaced by the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. The Act introduced the family provision rule, which allows disinherited family members to apply to court for a financial award out of the estate. This paper critically re-examines the parliamentary proceedings, held between 1928 and 1938, which debated the merits of testamentary freedom and the need to limit the doctrine by introducing the family provision rule, then already in force in many of the Dominions. There were strong social arguments in favour of redressing unjust disinheritances, pitted against core values of personal freedom and private ownership. The paper will show that there were compelling merits in introducing the family provision rule and the Act has stood the test of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the adoption of a multiethnic liberal-democratic model of governance in post-independence Kosovo and the dual task of state-building to secure unity and manage diversity. This article explains why in post-conflict and post-independence Kosovo, its domestic sovereignty and legitimization have become conditioned by the integration, accommodation, and protection of its minorities. While the existing literature has mainly focused on the shortcomings deriving from the exogenous character of state-building in Kosovo, this paper aims to challenge and complement this view by drawing on the “state-in-society” approach developed by Joel Migdal, which highlights that the actual states have less coherence than their theoretical counterparts. Analysis of post-independence Kosovo reveals the legislation-implementation gap and the unintended consequences arising under the impact of endogenous factors. Overall, this article shows that multiethnic state-building in Kosovo has been crucially transformed and “limited” by local idiosyncrasies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public figures often apologize after making controversial statements. There are reasons to believe, however, that apologizing makes public figures appear weak and risk averse, which may make them less likeable and lead members of the public to want to punish them. This paper presents the results of an experiment in which respondents were given two versions of two real-life controversies involving public figures. Approximately half of the participants read a story that made it appear as if the person had apologized, while the rest were led to believe that the individual had stood firm. In the first experiment, hearing that Rand Paul apologized for his comments on civil rights did not change whether respondents were less likely to vote for him. When presented with two versions of the controversy surrounding Larry Summers and his comments about women scientists and engineers, however, liberals and females were more likely to say that he should have faced negative consequences for his statement when presented with his apology. The effects on other groups were smaller or neutral. The evidence suggests that when a prominent figure apologizes for a controversial statement, individuals are either unaffected or become more likely to desire that the individual be punished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the importance of person-centred approaches to the practice of contemporary medicine and psychiatry. In considering the many aspects of person-centred approaches it outlines some key perspectives, including freedom and human rights; improving individual practice and the quality of services; increasing clinicians' work satisfaction; combining value-based and evidence-based practice; and the training of future generations of psychiatrists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative "gender audit" of Egypt's two constitutions (2012, 2014) developed after a people's uprising in 2011 and 2013 led to the ousting of two presidents (Mubarak and Morsi respectively). Egypt's two constitutions are particularly compelling for the study of gender politics in transitional constitutionalism because while the number of women participating in the constitution writing process was very similar, the gendered outcomes were starkly different. While the political opportunity for mobilizing around women's rights was enhanced in the aftermath of Mubarak's demise, the capitalization of these opportunities by organized political forces with an anti-feminist agenda undermined the prospects of en-gendering the first post-Mubarak constitution. In contrast, the constitution of 2014, developed under severely circumscribed political space inhibiting women's mobilization, witnessed the exercise of women's constitutional agency to redress the containment of women's rights under the previous constitution and en-gender many elements of it, though the extent of its enforceability remains obscure. This paper draws on primary and secondary data to analyse, through a gender lens, the processes and outcomes involved in constitution drafting along three axes:context and political opportunity structures; coalitional politics, and political and ideological struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, it did so not as a nation-state, but as a “state of communities,” self-defining as multiethnic, diverse, and committed to extensive rights for minorities. In this paper, this choice is understood as a response to a dual legitimation problem. Kosovo experienced both an external legitimation challenge, regarding its contested statehood internationally, and an internal one, vis-à-vis its Serb minority. The focus on diversity and minority rights was expected to confer legitimacy on the state both externally and internally. International state-builders and the domestic political elite in post-conflict Kosovo both pursued this strategy. However, it inadvertently created an additional internal legitimation challenge, this time from within Kosovo’s majority Albanian population. This dynamic is illustrated by the opposition movement “Lëvizja Vetëvendosje” (Self-Determination Movement), which rejects the framing of Kosovo as first and foremost a multiethnic state. The movement’s counter-narrative represents an additional internal legitimation challenge to the new state. This paper thus finds that internationally endorsed “diversity management” through minority rights did not deliver as a panacea for the legitimacy dilemmas of the post-conflict polity. On the contrary, the “state of communities” continues to be contested by both majority and minority groups in Kosovo. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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What influence do funders have on the development of civil rights legal mobilization? Fundraising is critical to the creation, operation, and survival of rights organizations. Yet, despite the importance of funding, there is little systematic attention in the law and social movements and cause lawyering literatures on the relationship between funders and grantees. This article recovers a forgotten history of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) campaign to protect black lives from lynchings and mob violence in the early twentieth century. I argue that funders engaged in a process of movement capture whereby they used their financial leverage to redirect the NAACP's agenda away from the issue of racial violence to a focus on education at a critical juncture in the civil rights movement. The findings in this article suggest that activists tread carefully as the interaction between funders and social movement organizations often creates gaps between what activists want and what funders think movements should do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-human animal chimeras, containing human neurological cells, have been created in the laboratory. Despite a great deal of debate, the status of such beings has not been resolved. Under normal definitions, such a being could either be unconventionally human or abnormally animal. Practical investigations in animal sentience, artificial intelligence, and now chimera research, suggest that such beings may be assumed to have no legal rights, so philosophy could provide a different answer. In this vein, therefore, we can ask: What would a chimera, if it could think, think about? Thinking is used to capture the phenomena of a novel, chimeric being perceiving its terrible predicament as no more than a laboratory experiment. The creation of a thinking chimera therefore forces us to reconsider our assumptions about what makes human beings (potentially) unique (and other sentient animals different), because, as such, a chimera's existence bridges our social and legal expectations about definitions of human and animal. Society has often evolved new social norms based on different kinds of (ir)rational contrivances; the imperative of non-contradiction, which is defended here, therefore requires a specific philosophical response to the rights of a thinking chimeric being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the continued expansion of "red flag" laws allowing broader classes of people to petition a court for the removal of firearms from individuals who exhibit dangerous conduct, this paper argues that state laws should adopt a double-filter provision that balances individual rights and government public safety interests. The main component of such a provision is a special statutory category - "reporting party" - that enables a broader social network, such as co-workers or school administrators, to request that a law enforcement officer file a petition for an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO). A double-filter provision would not give reporting parties a right to file a court petition directly. Instead, parties would file a request for petition with law enforcement officers (first filter), who must seek an ERPO from the court if they find the reporting party's information credible. That information is then transmitted to the court (second filter) as a sworn affidavit of the reporting party. The goal is to facilitate a balanced policy model that (1) widens the reporting circle in order to feed more potentially life-saving information into the system, (2) mitigates the risk of erroneous deprivation of constitutionally protected due process and Second Amendment rights.

The current debate on closed-loop brain devices (CBDs) mainly focuses on their use in a medical context; possible criminal justice applications have only received incidental scholarly attention. Unlike in medicine, in criminal justice, CBDs might be offered on behalf of the State and for the purpose of protecting security, rather than realizing healthcare aims. It would be possible to deploy CBDs in the rehabilitation of convicted offenders, similarly to the much-debated possibility of employing other brain interventions in this context. Although such use of CBDs could in principle be consensual, there are significant differences between the choice faced by a criminal offender offered a CBD in the context of criminal justice, and that faced by a patient offered a CBD in an ordinary healthcare context. Employment of CBDs in criminal justice thus raises ethical and legal intricacies not raised by healthcare applications. This paper examines some of these issues under three heads: autonomy, human rights, and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities face a dilemma in determining how to create fair, consistent, and reliable processes that respect the rights of both alleged perpetrators and victims and encourage people to bring complaints forward. Using the literature on non‐law forms of ordering and neo‐institutional theory, this article examines university Ombuds and Title IX Coordinators and their handling of sexual misconduct disputes. Primary data collection included a review of 1200 documents and interviews with 14 Ombuds and 13 Title IX Coordinators from 22 large institutions of higher education between 2011 and 2014. This study concludes that Ombuds and Title IX Coordinators, despite being designed in sharply contrasting ways, converge (but not fully) toward a hybrid of formality and informality. This paper examines Title IX to understand what drives convergence behavior and to analyze how the recent changes in the law may alter the process of convergence. As Title IX law continues to develop, the theory of procedural convergence has important implications for the creation of non‐law dispute mechanisms and the balance between individual rights and the organizational development of legal norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the Covid-19 pandemic changing the constitutional-power structures of our democracies? Is this centennial public health emergency irreversibly constraining our liberties? The paper examines recent state-measures of containment during the initial phase of spread of the Covid-19 crisis. It compares primarily the Italian scenario with the Chinese and the American one. It asks whether the measures adopted particularly in the Italian case (known as DPCMs) amount to a state of exception or to a use of emergency powers. Cognizant of the authoritarian risks in severed enjoyments of constitutional rights, the authors conclude that this is not what occurred in the case of solid democracies. At the level of governmental analysis, the "decree" strategy of the Italian DPCMs allude to paternalistic forms of power-exercise that empty the self-determining prerogative of the parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prison laws and policies often do not explicitly state the rights and privileges for the individuals residing there. This space is a unique example of where the law‐on‐the‐books meet the law‐in‐action—a place where "law‐in‐between" operates in the hands of street‐level workers. Using data collected from interviews with restricted housing unit residents and staff in four men's prisons, this paper examines how the law‐in‐between operates in a highly structured and punitive environment. Findings reveal agreement among residents and staff regarding general definitions and perceptions of rights, with some similarities regarding what rights are broadly. However, divergence exists in discussion of how rights are accessed in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the standard of proof applicable in proceedings for imposing pecuniary penalties for violation of competition rules. Australia, New Zealand and the UK have chosen the civil standard. This unfortunately overlooks the safeguards required by the relevant human rights treaties in proceedings that involve the determination of a 'criminal charge'. Conversely, Hong Kong has adopted the criminal standard, which may prove unworkable in these proceedings in which economic analysis is key. After analysing whether one may set this quagmire aside by asserting that these proceedings do not involve the determination of a criminal charge, it will be argued that the more plausible solution is to accept the criminal charge characterisation, limit the civil standard to the effects-based elements of the charge and apply the criminal standard to other elements. This will achieve a permissible proportionate derogation from the human rights safeguards. Similar bifurcated models have been adopted for charges such as public nuisance and harassment, and have successfully withstood human rights challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making decisions is an important component of everyday living, and issues surrounding autonomy and self-determination are crucial for persons with intellectual disabilities. Article 12 (Equal Recognition before the Law) of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities addresses this issue of decision-making for persons with disabilities: the recognition of legal capacity. Legal capacity means recognizing the right to make decisions for oneself. Article 12 is also moving in the direction of supported decision-making, as an alternative to substituted decision-making. The objective of this paper is to show conceptually the connection between supported decisionmaking and the preservation of personal autonomy for persons with intellectual disabilities. This paper discusses supported decision-making based on Bach and Kerzner's model: (a) legally independent status, (b) supported decision- making status, and (c) facilitated decision-making status. Arguments will be made based on John Stuart Mill's concept of autonomy and arguments against it using Sarah Conly's argument for paternalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) in 2014 ruled in Digital Rights Ireland that the Data Retention Directive was invalid for exceeding the limits of proportionality in light of Articles 7, 8 and 52(1) of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (Charter). Subsequently, preliminary references from the England and Wales Court of Appeal and the Swedish Administrative Court of Appeal sought clarification from the ECJ as to whether EU law permitted a general obligation to retain traffic data covering all persons, all means of electronic communication and all traffic data without any distinctions, limitations or exceptions for the purpose of combating crime. The ECJ in Tele2 and Watson ruled that in light of Articles 7, 8, 11 and 52(1) of the Charter, EU Member States were precluded from adopting national measures which provided general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data of all subscribers and registered users relating to all means of electronic communication. The ECJ also ruled that Member States were only permitted to adopt data retention measures for the purpose of fighting serious crime, and only when access to retained data was subject to prior review by a court or an independent administrative body. In 2018, the issue of the UK's data retention regime envisaged in Part 4 of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 came before the England and Wales High Court. The High Court ruled that Part 4 was incompatible with EU law because access to retained communications data was not limited to the purpose of fighting serious crime, and it was not subject to prior review by a court or an independent administrative body. This judgment was regarded by the claimants, Liberty, as a 'landmark victory for privacy rights'. However, this paper questions whether certain aspects of the High Court ruling are indeed a victory, by assessing its compatibility with EU law and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains variation in how committed postwar Democrats were to civil rights? I use evidence from state delegation behavior at national party conventions to assess this. I examine two types of issues: challenges to the credentials of all-white southern delegations and efforts to change the platform language on civil rights issues. While the latter is widely known, the former are more obscure but, I argue, important indicators of how strongly committed some state delegations were to civil rights. I use archival materials to trace the story of how these issues came onto the party committee's agenda in the first place and then assess the correlates of state delegation voting behavior. In 1948, the strongest predictor of being willing to unseat the all-white Mississippi delegation was the increase in Black population percentage in a state. More states, however, were willing to strengthen the civil rights platform language, and here state population size was the strongest predictor. These results, though, obscure important variation, with a number of relatively smaller, whiter states in the upper Midwest playing a key role. Taken together, these findings elucidate variation in the civil rights preferences of non-southern Democrats, shed new light on debates about the civil rights realignment, and demonstrate the potential of using state delegation voting behavior as evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The socio-economic and productive strength of every nation is determined by the health (the physical, mental and psychological wellbeing) of its people. To guarantee this, the constitutions of some countries, including Nigeria, provide for the right to health, and have framed institutional and policy systems to operationalize and realize this goal, as one of the major objectives of governments. However, despite this great intention on paper, the realization of good healthcare for most of the citizens of this country is still a mirage, despite legal and policy interventions in the form of human rights. The question is, can a rights-based approach to healthcare facilitate or guarantee the realization of this normative claim through access to medical care? This article contends that mere legal and policy frameworks that guarantee the right to health do not automatically engender access to good medical care, as there are hurdles to cross beyond the "limit of available resources". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strong civil society provides individuals with arenas to bring their interests to the attention of policymakers. In so doing, civil society organizations (CSOs) can support state policies, but can also criticize policies. This paper argues that most minority rights advocacy CSOs in the Baltic states have little say in the crafting of policy and are compartmentalized into the existing agendas, with only a few groups able to evaluate policies independently. It concludes that the Baltic civil society is weak because the CSOs working on minority issues ask policymakers either too much, or too little. The findings suggest that policymakers quell criticism of their work from the side of the CSOs by ignoring their activities. Alternatively, by funding the CSO that shores up the state agenda, policymakers delegate their responsibilities to civic actors, keep critical voices from public debates and claim that their policies have the full support of a vibrant civil society. This paper investigates the options available for civil society actors to relate to policymakers in a nationalizing state by drawing on the data collected in 77 semi-structured interviews with the CSOs working with Russian and Polish minorities in the Baltic states between 2006 and 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of social policy's growing focus on children and a changing family policy portfolio, we need better classifications and a more nuanced understanding of policy approaches to children. The aim here is to contribute to further thinking and analysis by reviewing some of the existing conceptualisations and the latest relevant policy developments on the one hand and developing an analytic framework for further research on the other. The article takes an EU-wide approach and empirically examines developments in income support policy, parenting-related leaves, early childhood education and care and children's right to participation to see what they reveal about prevailing approaches to children. The paper identifies some strong moves towards a greater focus on children in social policy but suggests differentiating between three different approaches: family-oriented, childhood-oriented and child-oriented. These approaches differ in terms of whether their primary focus is on children or adults, whether they engage with children directly or indirectly, the set of entitlements involved and the desired outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses various issues related to racial justice and native American rights during the period of President Harry S. Truman, with specific reference to Rice incident in the U.S. Rice incident is associated with Raymond Rice, an eleven-year veteran of the United States army who had been killed in Korean War. Refusal for his burial at Sioux City's Memorial Park Cemetery evoked controversies. The Rice incident is rich in drama and significance, for it illuminates and integrates three larger themes. The first is the character of Truman, a President whose historical reputation has fluctuated over the years. Second, the Rice affair says something about how mid-twentieth-century liberals approached the issue of race. Last and most important, the rice saga resonated among an array of groups within the U.S.

This commentary updates the paper 'Excluding evidence (or staying proceedings) to vindicate rights in Irish and English law' by analysing the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Ireland in DPP v JC. It argues that although the court has relaxed the exclusionary rule in one major respect, it has strengthened it in others, and that Ireland's approach to unconstitutionally or illegally obtained evidence remains very different from that of England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on a paper "Do the "Haves" Still Come Out Ahead." The paper was conceived in an age of hopefulness that saw the triumph of civil rights movements, the proliferation of public interest law, and many experiments in access to justice. Although establishment lawyers found the ferment worrisome, it was a heady time for those who ardently wished to transform law from an instrument of oppression into a tool of liberation. The "Haves" paper was a challenge to the judicial triumphalism that was the received wisdom of the progressive wing of the U.S. legal academy. In effect, it attempted to show that, examined from the bottom up, the U.S. displayed in a subtle form many of the contradictions that rendered grand programs of reform largely symbolic in their results. The recoil by society's managers and authorities against the enlargement of accountability and of remedy for "have not's" is an important component of the movements for deregulation and tort reform. The enlargement of rights and the heightened expectation of protection and remedy that is under attack is one of the master trends of law in the twentieth century.

This paper explores Peter Jaffey's views on the trust and fusion and some aspects of his wider private law theory which impact on his view on trusts law. It shows that, although he is correct that the trust involves both proprietary and personal rights, in the end his theory is ahistorical and unDworkinian, despite his acceptance of a view of law based on Dworkin. His theory is also based on implausible views of the role of equity post-Judicature Acts and the ownership of value and does not adequately fit how trusts law works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of the " essence "—as well as the related concepts of " substance " or " core "—of fundamental rights is absent from the text of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), but regularly appears in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) since the Belgian Linguistic case of 1968. Yet, fifty years after its explicit emergence in the Convention's legal order, it must be observed that a clear understanding of this concept and of its practical utility is still lacking. Indeed, the idea of the essence of fundamental rights has never been clearly defined in its case law, which remains essentially pragmatic and unprincipled in this field. This Article will therefore attempt to remedy this shortcoming by sketching out the different functions assigned to the concepts of the essence, substance, and core of rights in the ECtHR's case law. It is postulated that the concepts of the essence, substance, and core of fundamental rights are invoked for three different types of purposes. First, the concepts of the essence, substance, and core are—apparently at least—used by the ECtHR to fix the " limit on the limits ," for example, the inalienable part of fundamental rights safeguarded from any possible restriction. Second, this concept has been a vehicle for expanding the Convention's sphere of protection for the purposes of guaranteeing its effectiveness. Third, the concepts of the essence, substance, and core of fundamental rights also constitute a "reviewing tool" used by the Court to determine the intensity of the States' obligations on the basis of a prioritization among a series of values at stake. Although these three different functions can be identified on paper, the practical usefulness, workability, and desirability of the concepts of the essence, substance, and core will be questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many teaching hospitals in the United States were founded on philanthropic principles and aimed to aid the urban poor and underserved. However, as times have changed, there has been a divide created between the urban poor and teaching hospitals. There is a plethora of reasons why this is the case. This paper will specifically focus on the histories of ten hospitals and medical schools and the effect that white flight, segregation, elitism, and marginalization had on healthcare institutions all over the United States. It will call for a reexamination of the values of Ivy League and Ivy Plus teaching hospitals and medical schools and for them to take an intentional look into their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proportionality has been testing the judiciary for decades. However, a single replicable model of proportionality has not been consistently applied by the courts. This paper explores the differential application of proportionality in English law. It is argued that these differential approaches create doctrinal confusion and give rise to numerous shortcomings. These shortcomings include: (i) the a priori weighting of fundamental rights; (ii) undue deference to state institutions; and (iii) variable judicial scrutiny dependent upon the source of the rights in question. It will be argued here that the courts ought to adopt a common standard of proportionality review in all proceedings concerning fundamental rights. The viability of this approach will then be tested against existing case law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of affirmative action are currently structured as a litigious conflict among elites taking polarized stances. Opponents call for colorblindness, and defenders champion diversity. How can marginalized activists subvert the dominant terms of legal debate? To what extent can they establish their legitimacy? This paper advances legal mobilization theory by analytically foregrounding the field of contention and the relational production of meaning among social movement organizations. The case for study is two landmark United States Supreme Court cases that contested the University of Michigan’s race-conscious admissions policies. Using ethnographic data, the paper analyzes BAMN, an activist organization, and its reception by other affirmative action supporters. BAMN had a marginalized allied-outsider status in the legal cases, as it made a radical civil rights claim for a moderate, elite-supported policy: that affirmative action corrects systemic racial discrimination. BAMN activists pursued their agenda by passionately defending and, at once, critiquing the university’s policies. However, the organization’s militancy remained a liability among university leaders, who prioritized the consistency of their diversity claims. The analysis forwards a scholarly understanding of the legacy of race-conscious policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Supreme Court of Canada has established that commercial speech is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that commercial speech exists along a continuum of utility and value, which is balanced against objectives such as public health. This article examines jurisprudence to determine when infringements on commercial speech are acceptable, analyzing considerations of evidence, rational connections between policies and outcomes, proportionality, and minimal impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of an ongoing Kosovo Government agenda promoting European Union accession, this paper examines the impact of two transitions – the post-conflict period and the current EU dialogue and negotiations – on the country’s Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities. The paper discusses the social and political dynamics of these two transitions and how they affect the status of the minority communities. It examines the role of intergovernmental and non-profit organizations in advancing protection measures (e.g. by pressing for the elimination of school segregation) and accelerating implementation of important infrastructure projects (as a prelude to national scale up). The paper compares the standards invoked by the Kosovar Government to those used by other European countries in the prelude to accession. It considers whether the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian political leadership are effectively leveraging the political momentum attached to the protection of minority rights, given that this is a central precondition for EU accession. The paper concludes that the current moment offers a unique window of opportunity to the minority communities, but one that will be squandered if minority community divisions and sectional interests continue, as at present, to compound EU policy implementation failures and thereby impede the path towards a multicultural Kosovo. By contrast, the minority community leadership could take advantage of the Kosovar Government’s interest in demonstrating its future membership bona fides by making a determined and joint effort to press for substantive minority rights protections through a unified platform. The paper suggests examples for development of such a platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013) might seem an unlikely candidate for intervening in Hollywood's civil rights genre, given both its nationalistic ending and its recuperation of iconic styles and images. This paper argues, however, that the film's pastiche interrogates past cinematic tropes for race and space; in this sense, it proves counterhistorical, a term indicating not a lack of accuracy but a commitment to illuminating the role of visual media in shaping contemporary understandings of history and to encouraging fresh perspectives on the past. Examining the many forms of constraint produced by iconic images of black and gendered personhood, the film also takes on the spatial icon with which many of these figures are associated – the southern plantation. Both exposing and challenging the ways in which spectacular accounts of southern racism occlude the geographic and political reach of African American movements against oppression, the film inconsistently insists on the importance of thinking across conventional demarcations of space and time. At these moments, it suggests possibilities for how even commercial cinema might contribute to new conceptions of black political history and possibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK Constitution is either theorised as a political constitution that is premised on the Westminster model of government or as a legal constitution that rests on moral principles, which the common law is said to protect. Both models conceive of democracy in procedural terms, and not in normative terms. However, the democratic legitimacy of laws stems from a complex constellation of conditions that no longer involves popular or parliamentary sovereignty alone. In this paper, I break with the traditional account that bases law-making authority on the condition of procedural democracy. Instead, I argue for a normative conception of democracy that conditions parliamentary authority. I show that failure to do so amounts to a glaring omission in certain cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a double genealogy of indicators as instruments of governance. These have their roots both in the use of statistical tools for normative purposes by states and in the development of indicators within firms as preferred instruments of ‘new management’. The paper argues that social indicators not only convey information, but are genuine tools of global governance and that, for this reason, their legitimacy depends not only on their accuracy, but also on their accountability. If indicators are intended to produce or effectively produce regulatory effects, they should be subjected to the rule of law and to judicial review. The essay ends by formulating four main principles that these indicators should comply with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal social citizenship is limited in how it enables us to think about informal social citizenship and informal welfare. This informal perspective is important in all contexts where access to social rights is negotiated through local and transnational spaces, and where the state is a relatively minor player. By drawing on work on moral economy (Scott, 1976) and informal welfare (Gough and Wood, 2006) the article aims to propose a new theoretical model to understand the nature and social practice of both informal citizenship and welfare. This model departs from a western-centric understanding of nation-state-based citizenship and national welfare states, adopting instead the perspective that informal social citizenship and welfare have existed independently of the nation state as long as there have been human communities. Formal citizenship together with formal welfare rights represent just one particular crystallization of such informal practice. Our proposed model highlights the interdependent (rather than evolutionary) relationship between formal welfare at national level and informal welfare practices at local and transnational levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have become embedded in various domains of social life, prompting legislative efforts at both national and international levels. In the European Union (EU), this drive for legislation has been reflected in various legal instruments, notably the proposed AI Act, which is expected to become a global standard through the "Brussels Effect." This Article argues that while the AI Act will likely produce a Brussels Effect of its own, such an outcome will be accompanied by a side effect that undermines the EU's ambition to spread legislative text and values in AI governance. Since the AI Act follows EU product safety legislation, its provisions supply limited protection to some of the values the EU policy intends to protect, such as the protection of fundamental rights. These shortcomings are compounded by the EU's active efforts to shape alternative instruments, such as the Council of Europe's proposed convention on AI along the lines of the AI Act. As a result, the diffusion of the AI Act as a global standard will have consequences for the EU policy agenda on AI and the conceptualization of the Brussels Effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gradual digitization of EU migration policies is turning external borders into AI-driven filters that limit access to fundamental rights for people from third countries according to risk indicators. An unshakeable confidence in the reliability of technological devices and their ability to predict the future behaviour of incoming foreigners is leading towards the datafication of EU external frontiers. What happens if the supposedly infallible algorithms are wrong? The article aims to understand the consequences of algorithmic errors on the lives of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers arriving in the European Union. This contribution investigates the socio-political implications of deploying data-driven solutions at the borders in an attempt to problematize the techno-solutionist approach of EU migratory policies and its fundamental rights impact on affected individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the shock provoked by the Snowden revelations, mass surveillance is still a reality in the EU. However, over the past few years, it has been possible to observe a gradual constitutionalization of these practices. This Article maps the ongoing process of progressively defining the constitutional limits and societal affordances of mass surveillance in the EU by focusing on the three main actors who contribute to it. First, this Article presents civil society as the propeller of this trend. Civil society not only advocated for a ban on general surveillance systems in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, but also promoted a series of strategic litigations to challenge state surveillance practices at national and EU levels. Second, it analyses CJEU case law as the main constitutionalizing engine of this process. The Court pragmatically ascertained that an absolute prohibition of mass surveillance did not appear to be a realistic solution and put significant effort into actively defining the legal boundaries of these practices by striving to find an equilibrium between Member State interests and citizens' fundamental rights. Third, it considers the approaches taken by national legislators to be a slowing factor. States are still reluctant to incorporate the constitutional standards progressively developed by courts despite the now significant body of judicially created parameters in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]