Plato’s pronouncements about political freedom in the Laws have sparked renewed interest in the literature. The present paper takes a new angle on that vexed question. It focusses on Plato’s account of the birth of unlawful freedom, or ‘theatrocracy’, at the end of book 3. By studying the transition from moderate to excessive freedom, it wishes to shed light on what sets the two apart. The paper provides a causal analysis of the key passage, suggesting four compatible and complementary (...) explanations for the process it describes. The first is presented as the main one, but it is made more likely by the addition of the three others. (shrink)

If the criminal trial is aimed simply at ascertaining the truth of a criminal charge, it is inherently problematic to prevent the prosecution from adducing relevant evidence on the ground of its unlawful provenance. This article challenges the starting premise by replacing the epistemic focus with a political perspective. It offers a normative justification for the exclusion of unlawfully obtained evidence that is rooted in a theory of the criminal trial as a process of holding the executive to the (...) rule of law. On this theory, it is the admission rather than exclusion of such evidence that is inherently problematic. The differences between this theory and others that are in currency will be noted, as will its implications and limitations. (shrink)

This article focuses on the problem of criminal liability for unlawful engagement in economic activities, analyses the emergence and development of this norm in criminal law and the ways of its optimal explanation. Special attention is paid to the problem of identification of illegality of activities, based on specific tax and economic regulation. The study concludes that criminal liability must be limited to a violation of fundamental requirements for the legality of business, and does not include particular abuses occurring (...) in legal business. The author also deals with the criteria of delimitation of criminal and administrative liability for unlawful engagement in economic activities. Under Article 202(1) of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania, application of criminal liability is limited by two alternative conditions: either a person illegally undertakes activity in entrepreneurial way or on a large scale. According to the paper, the above-mentioned regulation lacks clarity and leads to the risk of unfounded prosecutions. The author gives practical examples, where on the basis of inexplicable criterion of an entrepreneurial way, criminal charges are filed in respect of petty economic activities. Such practice is incompatible with the purposes and principles of criminal law. The paper proposes to delete the criterion of an entrepreneurial way from the definition, leaving the possibility of criminal liability only in case of large scale illegal economic activity. The article also substantiates the conclusion that prohibited business activities provided for in Article 202(2) of the Criminal Code actually defies logical explanation and should be removed from the regulation. At the end of the article, the author offers a sample of optimal legal wording of unlawful engagement in economic activities in criminal law. (shrink)

The laws are not silent in war, but what should they say? What is the moral function of the law of armed conflict? Should the law protect civilians who do not fight but help those who do? Should the law protect soldiers who perform non-combat functions or who may be safely captured? How certain should a soldier be that an individual is a combatant rather than a civilian before using lethal force? What risks should soldiers take on themselves to avoid (...) harming civilians? When do inaccurate weapons become unlawfully indiscriminate? When does 'collateral damage' to civilians become unlawfully disproportionate? Should civilians lose their legal rights by serving, voluntarily or involuntarily, as human shields? Finally, when should killing civilians constitute a war crime? These are the questions that Law and Morality at War answers, contributing to a cutting-edge international debate. Drawing on the concepts and methods of contemporary moral and legal philosophy, the book develops a normative framework within which the laws of war and international criminal law can be evaluated, criticized, and reformed. While several philosophical works critically examine the moral status of civilians and combatants, this book fills a gap, offering both an account of the laws of war and war crimes, and proposing how the law could be improved from a moral point of view. (shrink)

For too long, criminal law scholars overlooked immigration-based offences. Claims that these offences are not ‘true crimes’ or are a ‘mere camouflage’ to pursue non-criminal law aims deflect attention from questions concerning the limits of criminalization and leave unchallenged contradictions at the heart of criminal law theory. My purpose in this paper is to examine these offences through some of the basic tenets of criminal law. I argue that the predominant forms of liability for the most often used immigration offences (...) are, at least in principle, controversial and depart from what is often presented as the paradigm in criminal law. Above all, immigration offences are objectionable because they fall short in fulfilling the harm principle and, given that criminal punishment as used against immigration offenders is often a secondary, ancillary sanction to deportation, they license excessive imposition of pain. (shrink)

The foreskin is a complex structure that protects and moisturizes the head of the penis, and, being the most densely innervated and sensitive portion of the penis, is essential to providing the complete sexual response. Circumcision—the removal of this structure—is non-therapeutic, painful, irreversible surgery that also risks serious physical injury, psychological sequelae, and death. Men rarely volunteer for it, and increasingly circumcised men are expressing their resentment about it.Circumcision is usually performed for religious, cultural and personal reasons. Early claims about (...) its medical benefits have been proven false. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control have made many scientifically untenable claims promoting circumcision that run counter to the consensus of Western medical organizations.Circumcision violates the cardinal principles of medical ethics, to respect autonomy, to do good, to do no harm, and to be just. Without a clear medical indication, circumcision must be deferred until the child can provide his own fully informed consent.In 2012, a German court held that circumcision constitutes criminal assault. Under existing United States law and international human rights declarations as well, circumcision already violates boys› absolute rights to equal protection, bodily integrity, autonomy, and freedom to choose their own religion. A physician has a legal duty to protect children from unnecessary interventions. Physicians who obtain parental permission through spurious claims or omissions, or rely on the American Academy of Pediatrics' position, also risk liability for misleading parents about circumcision. (shrink)

In English law there is a strong (though rebuttable) presumption that life should be maintained. This article contends that this presumption means that it is always unlawful to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from patients in permanent vegetative state (PVS) and minimally conscious state (MCS), and that the reasons for this being the correct legal analysis mean also that such withdrawal will always be ethically unacceptable. There are two reasons for this conclusion. First, the medical uncertainties inherent in the definition and (...) diagnosis of PVS/MCS are such that, as a matter of medical fact, it can never be established, with the degree of certainty necessary to rebut the presumption, that it is not in the patient’s best interest to remain alive. And second (and more controversially and repercussively), that even if permanent unconsciousness can be unequivocally demonstrated, the presumption is not rebutted. This is because there is plainly more to human existence than consciousness (or consciousness the markers of which can ever be demonstrated by medical investigations). It can never be said that the identity of the patient whose best interests are at stake evaporates (so eliminating the legal or ethical subject) when that person ceases to be conscious. Nor can it be said that the best interests of an unconscious person do not mandate continued biological existence. We simply cannot know. That uncertainty is legally conclusive, and (subject to resource allocation questions and views about the relevance of family wishes and the previously expressed wishes of the patient) should be ethically conclusive. (shrink)

Those who campaign for law reform to permit “euthanasia” may seek different things and at least some of what they seek may already be permissible under the criminal law of England and Wales. In this paper I examine one means whereby the criminal law delivers outcomes acceptable to the euthanasia lobby, that is the curious notion of “causation” deployed by the law, which adds a value override to the more usual notion of factual causation such that, for example, if medical (...) treatment falls within the acceptable range as normal and proper, the pre–existing injury or illness is treated as exclusively the cause of death and the doctor escapes criminal liability, even where the medical treatment will shorten life to the certain knowledge, possibly even the wish, of the doctor. Thus the law may already be delivering a range of outcomes — euthanasia in a weak sense — acceptable to the euthanasia lobby. If so, it achieves this by stealth. That is inappropriate to the doctor–patient relationship, which is one of trust. So there is a strong case for greater transparency. Moreover, there are limits to the acceptable outcomes which an unreformed criminal law can deliver and in a range of cases the criminal law condemns the doctor to impotence and the patient to a prolonged, miserable and undignified death. So there is also a case for going beyond the current law and legalising euthanasia in a strong sense. (shrink)

Relying on the systematic, logical, and analytical methods, national legislation and some internationally accepted guidelines, as well as on the research conducted by the Lithuanian scientists and law practitioners, this article consistently and comprehensively deals with the problems arising in the areas of interpretation and application of tax law. The article examines the relevant tax concepts, studies the tax law system, deals with the relevant issues arising in the field of application of legal regulations on taxation, and provides a particularly (...) detailed analysis of court jurisprudence within the context of the relationship between tax and law. On the basis of the analysis conducted, it was established that the basis for the Lithuanian tax law system consists of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania; the Law on Tax Administration; tax laws that lay down specific taxes and of by-laws adopted on their basis; national legal regulations that contain a consideration attribute and set mandatory payments to the State budget; the Law on Customs; ratified international agreements; the European Union legal regulations to the extent they are related to the duties, import excise duty, and value added tax; and the European Union directives in respect of direct and indirect taxes and the extent to which they are related to tax administration. When relationships in public law are directly regulated by the relevant public law regulations, it is not private law regulations, but the corresponding public law regulations that must be applied. In order to determine the need for tax authorities to rely on the regulations of the Civil Code, it is necessary to state the necessity to assess legal relationships from the point of view of private law or to identify a gap in legal regulation of public law due to which the norms of the Civil Code are subsidiary. Prior to establishing the tax base, the tax authority does not have to rebut transactions in civil procedure. The taxpayer’s obligation to fulfil tax liabilities that are properly prescribed by tax laws is not called into question by unlawful acts of other persons which constitute grounds for their civil (non-contractual) liability for the damages caused. The factual circumstances of tax relations established in the court cases heard in criminal and/or administrative procedures, do not need to be proved again – they are relied on in the course of tax inspections or when hearing tax disputes. The principle of equality of taxpayers requires tax administrators to give equal treatment to the facts with respect to all participants regarding the same tax relationship and obliges taxpayers to pay taxes honestly, because non-payment of taxes is a breach of public interest and therefore of this principle. In accordance with the principle of general applicability and equality, each taxpayer has an obligation to pay taxes as prescribed in tax legislation observing the calculation and payment procedures stipulated in the tax legal regulations, whereas the amount payable as established by the tax administrator shall be regarded as well-founded to the extent that it does not exceed the criterion of equality and reasonableness. The principle of clarity of taxation requires the tax administrator to adopt clear and comprehensive decisions with respect to the taxpayer and therefore to ensure their rights and legitimate interests. In the calculation of tax by applying the principle of primacy of content over form, it is necessary to establish that a transaction, an economic deal or indeed any group thereof has been concluded for the purpose of obtaining tax benefits. (shrink)

This paper presents in outline Luigi Ferrajoli’s axiomatic and general theory of law, as developed in his lifelong work Principia Iuris . The first section focuses on the three main aspects of the theory: the methodological, the theoretical and the pragmatic, which respectively represent the theory’s syntax, semantics and its pragmatics. Ferrajoli identifies three deontic gaps of norms: firstly, the one between their validity and efficacy ; secondly, the one between their justice and validity ; and finally, and most importantly, (...) the one between validity and existence (i.e. normative force). The presence of such gaps is, according to Ferrajoli, the extraordinary innovation that entrenched constitutions have brought into modern legal systems, by establishing norms that are superior to statutes and case law. In this sense, all normative phenomena (except for the constitution itself) can be conceived both as norms and as facts. In the second section the role of juridical science is briefly discussed. (shrink)

The author tries to explore several new amendments to the penal code of Lithuania, made by the Law on 2 December 2010. The first amendment concerns article 72 of the Penal code of Lithuania (confiscation of property). Prior to the year 2003, confiscation of property implied the right of the court to confiscate any property in possession of the sentenced person. However the Penal code of 2003 set up a new concept of confiscation: just proceeds of the crime or objects (...) intended to be used in committing a crime should be confiscated. However practice was very poor. New law aimed at boosting practice of confiscation, particularly from third persons, to whom usually the offender transfers property. Previous wording of the law provided for that the property should be confiscated from the third person just in case the person knew or could know that the property that he possesses is from a crime. The law of 2010 added new alternative conditions. (shrink)

Starting from a teleological understanding of the rule of law, this article argues that private power is a rule of law concern as much as public power. One way of applying the rule of law to private power would be to limit instances of ‘lawlessness’ and arbitrariness through formal requirements and procedural guarantees. However, we argue that private power is, to a significant extent, constituted by law in the first place – and that its lawful exercise is no less pernicious (...) than its unlawful exercise. Drawing on this constitutive function of law, we propose a normative core of the rule of law grounded on the moral equality of individuals. Attention to individuals’ needs, capabilities, and public autonomy points to requirements of distributive justice and democratic participation as part of the power-conferring function of law. Through a discussion of contestations of fossil fuel policy, the article shows the critical and empowering potential of a reconfigured rule of law. (shrink)

It is still underestimated to what extent in his main works Hugo Grotius not only sketched and developed a system of private, state and international law; but also outlined a general philosophy or theory of law. By asking questions concerning the law of property, the law of prize and booty, the law of peace and war or the legal status of sovereignty he did not only refer to the 'right side', i.e. to actions that can be labelled as rightful and (...) legal. He also dealt with many aspects of what is not right and unlawful, not limiting himself to just give mere examples of crossing the border to the 'non right side'. It was a part of Grotius's methodological approach to systematically reflect on the law from the perspective of its violations. One example of such a violation is the act of piracy and the figure of the pirate. To outline this is the aim of the following article. By showing that the pirate and his 'legal twin', the privateer, were belong together as two sides of the same coin, they come to symbolise in an exemplary way the differentiation between 'right' and 'non right' as the unity of law in the legal philosophy of Grotius. (shrink)

This chapter first discusses four categories of international criminal law, namely international aspects of national criminal law, international criminal law stricto sensu, suppression conventions/transnational criminal law, and international standards for criminal justice. It then explains some crosscutting issues that are in the forefront of both historical and contemporary discussions in the area, organizing the material under the rubric of jurisdiction, paying particular attention to how this plays out in a number of suppression conventions. The appropriateness of domestic court jurisdiction is (...) a fundamental issue in relation to most of the subject matter of the first three of the categories of international criminal law and to significant instruments developed in the fourth. The chapter also introduces a recent international criminal treaty, namely 2010 Beijing Convention on the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Relating to International Civil Aviation, that is regarded as the state of the art. (shrink)

In Britiain, it is unlawful,regardless of the motive of the discriminator,to refuse to give a woman a job because of hersex. On the other hand, the U.K. case ofCoker and Osamor v. The Lord Chancellor and theLord Chancellor's Department suggests that itis permissible, by `pre-selecting' anindividual man, to rule out any possible femalecandidates. The singular facts of this caseshould not disguise the troubling conclusionthat while sex (and race) discrimination maysometimes be blatant and deliberate, morefrequently it is subtle and routine. (...) Furthermore, discrimination is much moredifficult to challenge, let alone eradicate,when it is embedded in the system. This notestarts from the premise that, while sexequality requires more than the appointment ofwomen to influential posts, that is, at least,a start and if it is decided in advance thatappointments will be made only from a smallcircle of `acceptable' people there is a realdanger that the idea of the `establishment' asa self-perpetuating (white) male enclave willbe confirmed. (shrink)

Armed reprisals are the limited use of military force in response to unlawful actions perpetrated against states. Historically, reprisals provided a military remedy for states that had been wronged by another state without having to resort to all-out war in order to counter or deter such wrongful actions. While reprisals are broadly believed to have been outlawed by the UN Charter, states continue to routinely undertake such self-help measures. As part of the roundtable, “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” this (...) essay examines the doctrine of armed reprisals in light of recent instances of states using force “short of war” in this manner. We argue that the ban on reprisals has been largely ignored by states, and that recent attempts to apply the laws of armed conflict to the cyber domain are further weakening this prohibition. We conclude that this is a potentially dangerous development that lowers the bar for resorting to military force, risking escalation and thereby further destabilizing the international system. (shrink)

The concept of family economy in Islam has been addressed under various issues in classical sources though not extensively discussed in the classical literature. Islamic jurisprudence generally embraces pragmatical approach and pays attention to the needs of society. It is evident that economic relationship within the family is not addressed under a single heading in classical sources, but rather evaluated under numerous headings. From this perspective, it can be observed that each individual within the family concept enjoys distinct economic rights (...) and responsibilities. The social, ethical and financial responsibilities in the family are carried out within the framework of maintenance. In this respect, the Islamic legal system approaches the concept of family economy with a balanced view between income and expenditure, lawful and unlawful, and blessing and burden, and does not evaluate the issue purely as an economic activity. However, in contemporary times, the term family economy is understood more in terms of the economic and legal statues of the individuals within the family, such as their handling and responsibilities concerning acquired properties and the nature and manner of property distribution. This approach significantly diverges from the individual and social responsibilities entailed by property ownership in Islamic law. In Islam, the possession of individual economic rights and freedoms does not imply that one has no responsibilities towards others and cannot act irresponsibly. Based on this fundamental paradigm difference, this article aims to analyze the concept of family economy from the standpoint of Islamic law, discussing what it is and is not. The study has revealed that, even today, economic interests and activities within the family sometimes lead to conflicts, causing the parties to abandon their ethical and religious responsibilities in favor of establishing definite lines solely based on legal grounds. This, in turn, significantly undermines the essence and continuity of being and remaining a family. Furthermore, when examining writings that attempt to explain the economic status of the family according to Islamic law, it is evident that the provisions found in classical fiqh books, which were arranged according to the human, Islamic, and customary structure of that period and were quite functional, are repeated without considering the contemporary societal structure and changing human character. Although these provisions are accurate and effective within their own context, they are deemed inapplicable by modern individuals, rendering them ineffective. The appropriate way to address this issue can be to emphasize that the rules concerning family economy in classical fiqh are not merely ethical and conscientious, but that legal intervention will ensue if they are not adhered to. The fundamental assertion of this article is based on this premise: the concept of family economy inherently exists in Islamic law, imposes various responsibilities on the parties, is structured on a balance of blessings and burdens, and entails legal, ethical and religious responsibilities. (shrink)

Across a broad range of subjects, there is now wide agreement that the principle of proportionality governs the extent to which a provocation may lawfully be countered by what might otherwise be an unlawful response. That is the central role assigned to proportionality in international law and it is deeply rooted in the cultural history of societies. However, if the core institutions of a legal system are too weak to be relied upon to take remedial action against wrongdoers, then (...) they must at least be authorized to license appropriate action by the wronged party and to insure that its response remains within prescribed parameters. The practice described in this essay demonstrates that a high degree of accord is emerging across a broad range of issues to the appropriate standards by which the proportionality of countermeasures can be assessed. The practice of various institutions authorized to render second opinions as to the compliance with those standards is gradually narrowing the range of indeterminacy inherent in the term proportionality. Some of this case law has been disappointingly episodic. The well-crafted second opinion, through its precision, its invocation of precedent, and its careful weighing of the probity of the facts presented to it, deepens and narrows the jurisprudential stream while strengthening its embankments. If applied in practice through second opinions rendered by legitimate institutions, proportionality is an example of an indeterminate principle becoming gradually empowered to provide persuasive answers to difficult questions and, thereby, case by case, building the objective determinacy of the principle. (shrink)

Along with many jurisdictions, Australia is struggling with the unique issues raised by genetic information in the context of privacy laws and medical ethics. Although the consequences of disclosure of most private information are generally confined to individuals, disclosure of genetic information has far-reaching consequences, with a credible argument that genetic relatives have a right to know about potential medical conditions. In 2006, the Privacy Act was amended to permit disclosure of an individual's genetic information, without their consent, to genetic (...) relatives, if it was to avoid or mitigate serious illness. Unfortunately, additional amendments required for operation of the disclosure amendment were overlooked. Public Interest Determinations —delegated legislation issued by the privacy commissioner—have, instead, been used to exempt healthcare providers from provisions which would otherwise make disclosure unlawful. This paper critiques the PIDs using documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act—specifically the impact of both the PIDs and the disclosure amendment on patients and relatives—and confidentiality and the procedural validity of subordinate laws regulating medical privacy. (shrink)

Many business ethicists assume that if a type of conduct is illegal, then it is also unethical. This article scrutinizes that assumption, using the rideshare company Uber’s illegal operation in the city of Philadelphia as a case study. I argue that Uber’s unlawful conduct was permissible. I also argue that this position is not an extreme one: it is consistent with a variety of theoretical commitments in the analytic philosophical tradition regarding political obligation. I conclude by showing why business (...) ethicists would have a better rejoinder to the “dominant view” of business ethics associated with Milton Friedman if they dispensed with the assumption that illegal implies unethical. (shrink)

The diversity of state confidentiality laws governing public health data presents a significant challenge for public health initiatives. This challenge is further complicated by the array of confidentially laws that are relevant within a state as disclosure and usage standards vary depending upon data holder, type, and source. These laws often have not been updated to address modern confidentiality risks such as unlawful data linkage or breach, leaving many public health organizations without clear guidance in the contentious area of (...) individual privacy. To address these challenges, public health organizations have increasingly turned to the science of de-identification, but whether de-identification adequately meets the many and varied state confidentiality legal requirements remains an unanswered question. (shrink)

Praise be to Allah and peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah and his family and companions, and after: This research tagged with: "Family security is a legitimate purpose to achieve human security" aims to show the importance of family security, and how the Sharia paid great attention to it, and stressed the need to maintain it in all psychological, health, physical, economic and moral fields as the family is the first basic social unit and nucleus, which is (...) based on preserving it, the preservation of the human species, its security and stability, and thus the negligence of it is negligence of the human race and the human species as a whole. This research is supported by legal or Sharia ‘s texts that make it clear that achieving family security is a legitimate goal given great care by Islam, and there is no evidence of this clearer than the rotation of legal provisions either lawful or unlawful around the protection of the family: its religion, soul, mind, dignity and wealth, which preservation ot them represents the preservation of the highest levels of interests, and is called the five necessities. This research came after mentioning the legal texts supported by human studies and experiences as a source of knowledge that benefits the human race, and in support of what was stated in the legal texts of facts and results of interest that may increase the stability of the Muslim and his faith, and highlight the bright face of Sharia, away from other projects and trends that are imposed under the media noise and various pressures, despite the clarity of their destructive effects on the family and human society. The sufferings that were resulted of these devastating effects appered every where, that causes reluctance to show the truth and the beneficial and useful consequent of them, and therefore this research came as a contribution to the promotion and protection of family security as a legitimate purpose to achieve human security, where it included an introduction, seven investigations, results and conclusion. The first section included clarification of the truth of the purposes of Sharia, its sections and ranks, as the second section included confirmation that the role of women is large and important in the protection of family security and that their position in the family is responsible not hired, then the third and fourth sections indicated how Islam achieved health security and protected the family from physical and psychological diseases that may affect its members, then the fifth section showed how to achieve economic and living security, and the sixth section included a statement of how Islam achieved security for the family and protected it from extinction and weak reproduction, which endangers countries and the lack of renewal of generations resulting from the lack of births, while the seventh section dealt with the statement of how Islam achieved security for the family and protected it from crime that targets its foundation and entity. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, and may Allah's prayers and peace be upon our Prophet Mohamed, his family and companions as a whole. (shrink)

Some form of assisted dying (voluntary euthanasia and/or assisted suicide) is lawful in the Netherlands, Belgium, Oregon, and Switzerland. In order to be lawful in these jurisdictions, a valid request must precede the provision of assistance to die. Non-adherence to the criteria for valid requests for assisted dying may be a trigger for civil and/or criminal liability, as well as disciplinary sanctions where the assistor is a medical professional. In this article, we review the criteria and evidence in respect of (...) requests for assisted dying in the Netherlands, Belgium, Oregon, and Switzerland, with the aim of establishing whether individuals who receive assisted dying do so on the basis of valid requests. We conclude that the evidence suggests that individuals who receive assisted dying in the four jurisdictions examined do so on the basis of valid requests and third parties who assist death do not act unlawfully. However, further research on the elements that may undermine the validity of requests for assisted dying is warranted. More research on the reasons why requests for assisted dying are refused is also desirable. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to argue in favor of a private employer’s right to discriminate amongst job applicants on any basis he chooses, and this certainly includes unlawful characteristics such as race, sex, national origin, sexual preference, religion, etc. John Locke and many after him have argued that people have natural rights to life, liberty, and property or the pursuit of happiness. In this view, law should be confined to protecting these rights and be limited to prohibiting (...) other people from transgressing those rights. The law should not hinder an employer’s ability to discriminate, any more than it should compel people to marry against their wishes. These laws generally emerge from a moral perspective that people think should be imposed on everyone else. But those who don’t welcome those morals are in effect being coerced to abide by them against their will; this is unethical. Finally, it will be argued that the free market has mechanisms by which discrimination will, be rendered powerless to harm its victims. (shrink)

This paper examines questions concerning elective ventilation, contextualised within English law and policy. It presents the general debate with reference both to the Exeter Protocol on elective ventilation, and the considerable developments in legal principle since the time that that protocol was declared to be unlawful. I distinguish different aspects of what might be labelled elective ventilation policies under the following four headings: ‘basic elective ventilation’; ‘epistemically complex elective ventilation’; ‘practically complex elective ventilation’; and ‘epistemically and practically complex elective (...) ventilation’. I give a legal analysis of each. In concluding remarks on their potential practical viability, I emphasise the importance not just of ascertaining the legal and ethical acceptability of these and other forms of elective ventilation, but also of assessing their professional and political acceptability. This importance relates both to the successful implementation of the individual practices, and to guarding against possible harmful effects in the wider efforts to increase the rates of posthumous organ donation. (shrink)

This paper unravels the diverse strands in the manifestations of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA, 2002), focusing not only on law’s words, i.e. the rules, principles and procedures, and its interpretations in judgments, but also on its effects. Adopting the violence of jurisprudence approach, it eschews the dichotomy between law and violence, examining the ‘effects of legal force’, in particular, the ways in which law becomes an integral part of the organization of state violence. Through an examination of the (...) unfolding of POTA and laws dealing with ‘organized crime’ and ‘unlawful activities’ (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, 2005), the trajectory of specific cases and judgments by Trial Courts, the High Courts and the Supreme Court, this paper shows how through an interlocking of the ordinary and extraordinary, anti-terror laws erode both the procedural and substantive aspects of the rule of law, become the terrain where permutations in alliance politics and configuration of power are played out, and assume an antagonistic notion of politics which seeks resolution through the elimination and externalization of difference. Extraordinary laws, it argues, are manifestations of a politics of negation. Processes that prolong the lives of such laws, and procedural interlocking and intermeshing that seek to give them permanence, are symptomatic of a deepening of the politics of negation. (shrink)

This article charts a genealogy of marital rape law reform in South Australia in the 1970s, arguing that the new laws were based on constructing the marital rapist as a certain kind of man. South Australia is a significant case study, as it was one of the first Western jurisdictions to attempt to criminalise marital rape. Despite South Australia’s generally progressive politics, the legislation was highly contested, and resulted, in the end, only in a partial criminalization. To overcome the strident (...) opposition to rape law reform, we show that supporters explicitly developed a discourse focusing on concepts of sexual normativity and deviance. The marital rapist, it was argued, had deviated from patriarchal standards of masculine decency: this, not the rape itself, was crucial to determining whether his conduct was unlawful. (shrink)

The Ottoman legal system is built on religious (sharīʿa) and customary (ʿurfī) laws. The customary law consists of the rules that are not in contrast to the sacred law. Collection of regulations (qānūnnāme) were the most effective way for the execution of the customary laws. The qānūnnāme included the sultan’s orders and edicts (farman). Ottomans regulated and evaluated the taxes through measurements of lands specific times of the year. These measurements would be recorded into the taḥrīr books (written survey of (...) immovable prop-erties). And the administrative qānūnnāme were included in these books. In the qānūnnāmes, we can find information about the taxes, and the unlawful executions of the customary actors (ahl al-ʿurf) as well as the tax regulations. The qānūnnāmes on sanjak are composed accord-ing to the economic, social, and geographical characteristics of the administrative district it is written about, and with this, they provide us information on these issues. In this article, three sanjak qānūnnāmes are taken as the central topic and Kamah, Āmid, Pojega are evaluated in terms of the execution of customary law in these districts. These qānūnnāmes include record-ings of various taxing regulations, altered and cancelled executions, amounts of taxes, and punishments. We can compare the three districts in their economic and social characteristics.Summary: The Ottoman legal system consists of sharia and customary law. Ordinary law is based on some regulations which the sultan deems necessary and is composed of laws. The Ordinary law should not contradict sharia. When the Ottomans conquered a place, they generally protected the current laws (such as Uzun Hasan's laws), except for necessary changes or cancellations. When the Ottomans conquered a place, they used to make census to determine taxes. As a result of this census, Sanjak qānūnnāmes were placed in taḥrīr books. It also involves issues such as public and criminal law, customary tax regulations, and amounts of market taxes, which are approved by the emperor. In this article, the Sanjak qānūnnāmes of different regions belonging to the period of Suleiman the Magnificent, whose dates are close to each other, were selected. The Sanjak qānūnnāmes which are studied on are Kemah sanjak of Erzurum province belonging to (937/1530) and Āmid sanjak of Diyarbekir province belonging to (947/1540) and Pojega sanjak of Budin province belonging to (950/1545). The reason for this is to be able to compare the differences or stableness in tax and practices in the mentioned date range. At the same time, attention has been paid to the effectiveness of customary practices and the parts that are linked to sharīʾa. Some of the laws of Uzun Hasan are in force in Kemah and Amid. In these two sanjaks, some of the bâc taxes and some other taxes were removed. It is seen that the complaints made by the public due to the excess of taxes are taken into consideration. For example, in Kemah, the akche of murahhasiyye paid by the villagers for Armenian priests and bishops is one of them. The taxes that are abolished include kulluk and blend tax and taxes from various business lines. The tax, which was collected by the governors of the sanjak and the castle beys under the name of custom, which was imposed by some local administrators, was cancelled by seeing bidat. When three of the sanjaks are taken together, there are cautions that unfair and unlawful tax collections made by local administrators during tax collection have been abolished and these are accepted as bidat. Kemah sanjak qānūnnāme is 13 pages in total. Kemah, which has a geographical position and military transit route, has commercial relations with cities such as Trabzon and Hasankeyf. In Kemah, there are candle mill (şemhane), creamery (bezirhane) and tavern (meyhane). Kemah is one of the places where the climate has an impact on agriculture. Kemah's economy is based on trade, agriculture, small livestock, beekeeping. In Kemah, where caravan trade is important, trade goods are of value due to its location on the transit road. The Kemah qānūnnāme also contains various taʿzīr for unjust killing, wounding, and adultery. In the city, there are some arcs have ownership in common. The fact that there are mills indicates that the rivers in Kemah are utilized. Âmid Sanjak qānūnnāme consists of two pages. The title that attracts our most attention is that there is vitality and economic activity in the market since Âmid is on the Aleppo-Mosul Silk Road. The high number of weaving looms is due to the production of cotton. Amid has dye house and saphane. Indigo and Amid's red dye sold in the market shows the importance of weaving. Pojega sanjak qānūnnāme is composed of seven pages. Among the qānūnnāmes we have mentioned, this is the most legible one. In addition to the old practices, there are some new regulations in this qānūnnāme. The pig tax is only here because of the non-Muslim population. Transit tax fees indicate trading viability. Based on the studies made on these three sanjaks, it can be said that in the qānūnnāme, the rights of the raia (reaya) were tried to be protected by the rescript of the Sultan himself. Therefore, the most remarkable things in the qānūnnāme are not allowed unfair practices of local administrators and without the need to collect taxes from the public. The dates of the qānūnnāme are close to each other and Despite geographical differences, there is no remarkable change in taxation. Although there are non-Muslim populations in all three sanjaks, it is mostly in the Pojega sanjak. The fact that the pig tax is collected only from this sanjak is evidence of this situation. The presence of meyhane in Kemah, Amid and Pojega sanjaks point to the non-Muslim population. It is also used as a place where the villagers sell their grape juice. The mill tax on Kemah and Pojega show that rivers are used in common. (shrink)

Human beings have a moral duty to intervene to prevent or to mitigate the suffering of free-living animals. This article focuses on that duty, particularly as it exists when an animal asks for help and when animals who need help are within the zone of a person’s ability and willingness to help. As such, people should be free to help if they choose to do so, unencumbered by legal restrictions that outlaw such conduct. However, federal and state laws in the (...) United States remain an obstacle, because they designate some activities that are necessary to help free-living animals as unlawful. Laws should not interfere with human beings’ benign interactions with nature and, in particular, people should be legally permitted to help free-living animals. People should actually assist the individual animals who want or need help, rather than trading individual assistance in favor of ecosystem “management,” policy concerns that favor expediency and budget limitations, or any other tangential issues. (shrink)

This piece criticizes traditional formal and procedural conceptions of democracy, which fail to account for the development of contemporary constitutional democracy. The latter is characterized by a substantive dimension with respect to the content of the decisions taken through the democratic process. The validity of such decision is conditioned by the respect and actualization of fundamental rights, which are established by the constitution. The limits and constraints established by the constitution require juridical science to play a critical and programmatic role (...) vis - à - vis the ‘unlawful’ exercise of public powers, when these enter in contrast with the limits imposed by the constitution. (shrink)

The law commonly conceived as a norm : deficiency of this conception -- On some general hints of this deficiency, and in particular those evinced by the likely origin of the current definitions of law -- The need to distinguish the distinct legal norms from the legal order considered as a whole. The logical impossibility of defining the legal order as a set of norms -- How the unity of a legal order has been sometimes intuited -- How a legal (...) order is not only a set of norms, as it also encompasses other elements -- How such ements are implicitly postulated by the common inquiry into the distinguishing characteristics of law -- Assessment, from this point of view, of the so-called objectivity of law -- The element of sanction -- The expression "the legal order" -- The essential elements of the concept of law. The law as an institution and the law as a precept -- The preceding doctrine on the concept of institution -- My concept of institution and its fundamental characteristics : 1. The objective existence of the institution; 2. Institution and social body; 3. The institution's selfness; 4. The unity of the institution -- Equivalence of the concept of institution and the concept of a legal order -- Evidence for this equivalence based on the doctrine that the law is only "form" -- Mention of some problems that need solving in the light of this equivalence -- Cases in which the original establishment of a law does not depend on norms, but on the emergence of an institution, and the impossibility of reducing the institution to the norms -- The concept of institution and the international legal order -- The institution and the legal relationship: relationships between more persons -- Relationships between persons and things : examples of some of these relationships that, considered more broadly, cab be portrayed as institutions -- The institution and the legal person -- My conception of the law with respect to certain problems relating to : 1. The legal character of state power; 2. The extension of the state personality; 3. The legal relevance of its territory and citizenry -- Critical assessment of some opinions that attach importance to the legal order only insofar as it reflect relationships between persons. Applications to: 1. The legal sanction; 2. The state territory and citizenship; 3. The state bodies; 4. The limits of the legislative function -- Some consequences of my conception with regard to the subjective aspect of the law: the legal relationship; the status of persons; rights in rem; the correlation between rights and obligations; the equal position of subjects -- Recapitulatory remarks -- The plurality of legal orders and the doctrine that reduces all law to state law -- The untenability of this doctrine from a historical and theoretical point of view -- Its untenability with respect to the existing law -- Non-state legal orders; international law -- Ecclesiastical law -- The order of entities that are considered unlawful or are ignored by the state -- Entities that are regulated by the state, but also have an order of their own which is not recognized by the state (private disciplinary orders; the internal organisation of workplaces; so-called unrecognized associations or institutions, etc.) -- Doctrines that confine the concept of a legal order to the order of communities in general and specifically to necessary communities -- The relations between different legal orders. Principles that have to be taken into account with respect to : 1. Original or derivative institutions; 2. The particular or general ends of institutions; 3. Their diverse basis; 4. Simple or complex institutions; 5. Perfect or imperfect; 6. With or without personality; 7. Independent, coordinated or subordinated -- The concept of relevance of one order to another -- The title for this relevance: a. The relation of superiority and correlative dependence between two orders; b. The relation whereby an order presupposes another; c. The relation whereby reciprocally independent orders depend a further one; d. The relevance unilaterally attributed by an order to another on which it depends; e. The relation of succession between orders -- Diverse aspects (existence, content, effectiveness) expressing the relevance an order to another one. Cases in which the existence of an order depends on another: a. Complete subordination of the former to the latter which directly establishes the former or assigns limited autonomy to it. Independence, as far as its existence is concerned, of an order in case of a less expansive subordination (some spheres of the order of the states of a federal state vis-à-vis the latter; the order of states vis-à-vis international law) and general principles; b. In the hypothesis of an order that represents the presupposition of another (state law vis-à-vis international law) -- The relevance of an order to another with respect to its content. Various cases: a. The superior order as the mediated or unmediated source of an inferior order; the superior order (international law, ecclesiastical concordats) which is not the source, and yet affects the content of inferior orders; b. the Superior order about effects the content of more orders subjected to, which however are independent from each other; c. the order of that itself that determines its own content by considering a subjected or independent order : private international law; ecclesiastical law as it refers to civil laws; the law of the state that refers to ecclesiastical law; d. an order that incorporates another -- The relevance of an order to one another with respect to its effects: external and internal effectiveness of an order. Various cases of external effectiveness: a. The relationships between orders where the one partially or totally depends on the other; b. Relationships between more orders that are independent from each other because of a unilateral disposition of one or each of them. Private international law; civil effectiveness of ecclesiastical law; c. Relationships meeting more orders in which one is of the presupposition of the other; d. Relationships between orders that succeed each other -- Diverse extension of the relevance of an order to another. Applications with regard to the problem of so-called natural obligations -- The irrelevance of an order to another; total or partial, reciprocal or unilateral -- A legal order that as such is irrelevant to another, but it is relevant in other respects (orders that are considered unlawful by the state; corporations, de facto institutions) -- Total developments of an order to another: possibility of such an irrelevance also with respect to the order of the state -- Critical assessment of the opposite doctrine. The limitations of the state order; various figures and consequences; examples of matters that are legally indifferent to the state (private disciplinary orders; particular religious orders; the orders of some non-patrimonial associations; etc.) -- The internal orders of the institutions, especially state ones, vis-à-vis the order of other institutions in which they are included. (shrink)

In most traditions, the law is founded upon some extralegal view of morality. There are only a handful of cases prior to the 1970s that involved patenting nonhuman organisms. John Moore made several claims, but the one of most interest to us here was a claim for conversion, which means the unlawful use of another person's property for the enrichment of the person using the thing unlawfully. The cell line produced from Moore's spleen cells was eventually patented by the (...) defendants. The potential market for products relating to that patent was estimated to be roughly $3 billion US dollars. The move from patenting hybridized plants, to genetically altered microorganisms, to human tissues and genes reflected the epitome of the fabled slippery slope. There is clearly a gap between our intuitions about the relations between our individual genomes, our identities, perceptions of privacy and personal autonomy, and the law. (shrink)

This paper seeks to investigate and assess a particular form of relationship between the State and its citizens in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, namely that of obedience to the law and its related right of protest through civil disobedience. We do so by conducting an analysis and normative evaluation of two cases of disobedience to the law: (1) healthcare professionals refusing to attend work as a protest against unsafe working conditions, and (2) citizens who use public demonstration and (...) deliberately ignore measures of social distancing as a way of protesting against lockdown. While different in many aspects, both are substantially similar with respect to one element: their respective protesters both rely on unlawful actions in order to bring change to a policy they consider unjust. We question the extent to which healthcare professionals may participate in civil disobedience with respect to the duty of care intrinsic to the medical profession, and the extent to which opponents of lockdown and confinement measures may reasonably engage in protests without endangering the lives and basic rights of non-dissenting citizens. Drawing on a contractualist normative framework, our analysis leads us to conclude that while both cases qualify as civil disobedience in the descriptive sense, only the case of healthcare professionals qualifies as morally justified civil disobedience. (shrink)

The relationship between jus ad bellum and jus in bello has been characterized differently throughout European history. There have been three main positions exemplified by Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf and Emer de Vattel. They are, first, both the cause and the conduct of warfare must be just; second, the cause must be just, but the conduct of the war is unconstrained in order to achieve the goal of peace; and, third, we must assume justice on both sides, and concentrate (...) on ensuring just conduct in armed conflict. Each attempted to distil customary practices, which they saw in some relation to Natural Law, the ultimate source of moral obligation. Customary international law now serves the function of Natural Law in that even if treatises in which it is articulated lapse the customary constraining precepts remain, and are equally obligatory. It is contended that the relationship between just war and just conduct in war during the 20th and 21st centuries has mirrored the three classic positions, and since 9/11, with the advent of new dimensions to warfare in the war against terror, the relationship is in flux. Since 9/11 there has been a growing emphasis on jus ad bellum and a relative silence on the principles of jus in bello. Implicitly, there is an informal acceptance of something like Pufendorf’s position in which outlaw combatants are deemed to place themselves outside of the protection of customary law. (shrink)

Human nature being what it is, individuals engaging in unlawful activity will often seek to avoid having their misconduct detected by law enforcement. This article provides the first legal analysis of what are termed detection avoidance measures, and evaluates whether, and how, they should be subject to criminalization.

Despite a plethora of laws prohibiting discrimination in employment, supporting and enforcing equal employment opportunity (EEO) principles has proven to be an enormous challenge for those charged with this responsibility. The question often asked is who should exercise this role in organizations. Not surprisingly, there has been a call for HRM to become the guardian of EEO in organizations but should human resource managers be male or female, and/or would line managers be better positioned to assume this responsibility? This paper (...) overviews the literature and then summarizes an empirical study that attempted to address the possible impact of these options as they exist in organizations. One hundred and eighty respondents who met the criterion of having interviewed one or more job applicants in the previous 6 months were systematically selected from business telephone listings. Based on self-reported behaviors, no significant difference was found between the expected and actual distributions of HR and line managers in respect to whether decisions were made on unlawful grounds. The percentage of each respondent category that asked unlawful questions varied from 1% to 36% depending upon the attribute (unlawful ground of discrimination) under consideration. This begs the question as to what value HR managers contribute to EEO in the selection process. The second finding was that significantly less female managers admit to making decisions on the basis of unlawful questions than male managers. Thus, support was found for female line managers as guardians of EEO but no clear justification for HRM in this role. (shrink)

Since at least as far back as the infamous Derek Bentley case of the 1950s in which an unarmed 19-year-old was convicted and executed for murder based on his alleged uttering of the words _let him have it_ to his gun-wielding accomplice, the issue of incitement has been positioned firmly as an object of interest for forensic linguists. An example of a language crime—i.e. an unlawful speech act (as reported by Shuy in Language crimes: The use and abuse of (...) language evidence in the courtroom, Wiley Blackwell, Hoboken, 1993) the features of incitement—formalized as _intentionally encouraging or assisting others to commit an offence_ in the law of England & Wales under section 44 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2007/27/contents)—have been widely debated by linguists and legal scholars alike. This paper draws on two webinars hosted by The Hunting Office in August 2020, which were subsequently leaked by the Hunt Saboteurs Association. Featuring senior figures from the hunting community addressing a nationwide audience of hunt masters, the webinars led to a police investigation and subsequent prosecution and conviction of one of the main speakers, Mark Hankinson, for _encouraging or assisting others to commit an offence under the Hunting Act 2004_. In this paper I explore what, linguistically, is meant by _encouraging or assisting_. Through corpus-assisted pragmatic and discourse analyses I interrogate the webinars to address the question of how precisely Hankinson implied his encouragement of illegal hunting with dogs. The phenomena of collocation and semantic prosody are crucial for understanding how such meanings came to be attached to the contributions Hankinson makes to the webinars. Moreover the paper will examine the contributions of other speakers and demonstrate that the same incriminating linguistic patterns in Hankinson’s talk are also evident in that of those who were not prosecuted. (shrink)

The question is: How is a global peace order possible in the shape of an international legal system? The article focuses on the problems of international law within the present system of the UN and tries to actualise the Kantian concept of perpetual peace (1795), with regard to positions of international lawyers. A peaceful international order must have the means to protect against unlawful violence, even by armed forces, e.g. to intervene against gross violations of fundamental human rights. It (...) is necessary that even the great powers are obliged to act only within this legal framework. Unilateralism must be abolished in a continuing process. ‘Good leadership under law, not above the law’ (J. Delbrück). (shrink)

Through the prism of republican theory, the paper discusses the nature of environmental protests and the judiciary’s responses to the related cases. The text argues that climate protesters act not solely to realise their freedom of assembly but also to understand their obligations to the environment and the community of citizens. An argumentation grounded in their belief that they were obliged to protest against climate change and even commit certain unlawful acts due to the state of necessity could give (...) their defence more strength, on the one hand, and inspire the courts to be more active in forcing governments to act on the climate cause, on the other hand. The paper consists of two sections, with the first discussing theoretical approaches to environmental citizenship, the alleged duty to protest against climate change, and their relationships with republicanism. The second section scrutinises case law from selected domestic and international courts dealing with climate protests. Specifically, it analyses the justifications for the right to protest against climate change presented in the submissions of applicants or defendants before the courts and the reasoning employed by the courts. (shrink)

A long-standing common-law policy holds that anyone may lawfully use force to repel or arrest a criminal threatening property, and a fortiori that force may be used to defend one’s own property. But there are limits to these powers. In cases where some amount of violence is justified but excessive force is used, some common-law jurisdictions will deny any defence to murder. Killing through excessive force is neither justified nor excused. Other jurisdictions will allow a partial defence, excusing from the (...) fullest penalty and reducing the offence to manslaughter or unlawful homicide, on the ground that the actor should be punished for a grievous miscalculation. By analyzing the relationships between persons and property and investigating the historical development of self-help doctrines, the principles defining excessive force here may be reduced to four. First, property cannot easily be conceived as a value worth protecting by force where there is no accompanying threat to the person. Second, the law may nonetheless see a presumptive identity between an owner’s person and his property which is external to his person, so that violent defence of property becomes justified even without a threat to bodily or personal safety. Third, intentionality and purpose play an important role in attributing legal blame for excessive force in protecting property, and the test of allowable quantum of force is not objective. Finally, the legal and ethical issues are transformed when we move from individual to collective property. Judgments concerning state and international legality regarding excessive force may derive only limited guidance from the contours of criminal law and private law. Yet, much of international conflict today is carried out by private actors who do not wear uniforms or wrap themselves in the shield of state immunity, and the domestic legal dimension thus begins to have purchase on issues of excessive force in war and communal conflict. (shrink)

The use of machine learning algorithms has become ubiquitous in hiring decisions. Recent studies have shown that many of these algorithms generate unlawful discriminatory effects in every step of the process. The training phase of the machine learning models used in these decisions has been identified as the main source of bias. For a long time, discrimination cases have been analyzed under the banner of disparate treatment and disparate impact, but these concepts have been shown to be ineffective in (...) the context of AI. This paper examines the possibility of studying algorithmic discrimination from the perspective of negligence law. Negligent selection and validation of datasets and classifiers is a salient cause of improper training in machine learning. It is a breach of an employer’s duty to protect others, a failure of its exercise of due care in the manner of choosing employees. Adopting negligence to algorithmic discrimination requires a reformulation of what is foreseeable and reasonable within the context of black box algorithms, and a shift in the burden of proof to the employer, who must present evidence of its efforts to avoid bias. (shrink)

In Singapore, the law holds that one person may constitute an illegal assembly. This makes each person, individually and at all times, latently assembled if not actually so. But where exactly does the permissible, non-assembled one end and the unlawful, gathered one begin? How and when does one become more than one, that is, some? For here an excess of one is not many, but rather an indeterminate some. Of what does this someness consist? This essay draws on Foucault (...) and Lacan’s discussion of the liar paradox and set theory’s concept of the “not-all” via Bateson and Kordela to make a few observations about the political subject’s constitution under illiberal democracy. (shrink)

In this article, I contribute to the debate between two philosophical traditions—the Kantian and the Aristotelian—on the requirements of criminal responsibility and the grounds for excuse by taking this debate to a new context: international criminal law. After laying out broadly Kantian and Aristotelian conceptions of criminal responsibility, I defend a quasi-Aristotelian conception, which affords a central role to moral development, and especially to the development of moral perception, for international criminal law. I show than an implication of this view (...) is that persons who are substantially and non-culpably limited in their capacity for ordinary moral perception warrant an excuse for engaging in unlawful conduct. I identify a particular set of conditions that trigger this excuse, and then I systematically examine it as applied to the controversial case of former-child-soldier-turned leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Dominic Ongwen, who is currently at trial at the International Criminal Court. (shrink)

ChatGPT launched in November 2022, triggering a global debate on the use of artificial intelligence (AI). A debate on AI-enabled lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) has been underway far longer. Two sides have emerged: one in favor and one opposed to an international law ban on LAWS. This essay explains the position of advocates of a ban without attempting to persuade opponents. Supporters of a ban believe LAWS are already unlawful and immoral to use without the need of a (...) new treaty or protocol. They nevertheless seek an express prohibition to educate and publicize the threats these weapons pose. Foremost among their concerns is the “black box” problem. Programmers cannot know what a computer operating a weapons system empowered with AI will “learn” from the algorithm they use. They cannot know at the time of deployment if the system will comply with the prohibition on the use of force or the human right to life that applies in both war and peace. Even if they could, mechanized killing affronts human dignity. Ban supporters have long known that “AI models are not safe and no one knows how to reliably make them safe” or morally acceptable in taking human life. (shrink)

Advancement of modern agricultural biotechnology has brought various potential benefits to humankind, but at the same time ethical concerns regarding some applications such as genetically modified foods have been raised among the public. Several questions are being posed; should they utilize such applications to improve quality of their life, or should they refrain in order to save themselves from any associated risk? What are the ethical principles that can be applied to assess these applications? By using GMF as a case (...) study, this paper discusses possible answers to these questions from Islamic perspective. Such answers are based on the understanding of the Islamic concept of maslahah and mafsadah as well as the Islamic principles of priority. There is no specific GMF that has been declared as unlawful by Muslim scholars thus far. Nevertheless, they generally state that any GMF that contains unlawful substance is prohibited in Islam. Such statement can be understood since Islam puts highest priority to preserve shari’ah which prescribes the lawful and unlawful things in human life. Priorities have also been given to preserve human health and environment therefore any GMF that may inflict harm on both entities is also considered as unlawful. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In ‘Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm: An Overview and an Application’, Mary Kate McGowan argues that some racist speech in public places should be made unlawful in the United States for the same reason that sexist behaviour in the workplace is already legally actionable—namely, to protect individuals from a hostile discriminatory environment. While McGowan may be correct that some public racist speech may constitute an act of discrimination in some morally significant sense, I present several reasons (...) for doubting that such speech constitutes a hostile discriminatory environment in the relevant legal sense. (shrink)

There are at least three core principles that define the chance role: ill the Principal Principle, l21 the Basic Chance Principle, and l31 the Humean Principle. These principles seem mutually incompatible. At least, no extant account of chance meets more than one of them. I ofier an account of chance which meets all three: L~-chance. So the good news is that L~-chance meets ill — l31. The bad news is that L~-chance turns out unlawful and unstable. But perhaps this (...) is not such bad news: L~-chance turns out to at least approximate plausible additional core principles concerning lawfulness and stability. And perhaps there is better news: one may treat 'chance' as vague, in a way that allows every core principle of chance to be met. (shrink)

On a charge of murder or manslaughter it must be shown that the person killed was one who was in being. It is neither murder nor manslaughter to kill an unborn child while still in its mother’s womb although it may be the statutory offences of child destruction or abortion. If however the child is born alive and afterwards dies by reason of an unlawful act done to it in the mother’s womb or in the process of birth, the (...) person who committed that act is guilty of murder or manslaughter according to the intent with which the act is done. [Halsbury’s LAWS OF ENGLAND, 4th ed. reissue, Vol. 11 (1). London: Butterworths, 1990.]. (shrink)