Interim measures are procedural means that allow persons or States to have their rights preserved when a case is pending. Application of these measures especially in environmental cases is very important. In many of these cases (e.g. cases dealing with territorial planning, IPPC permits, environmental impact assessment, etc.) the claims deal with the protection of environment or its components (water, air, soil, etc.) as well as with the protection of public interest. Legal regulation of application of interim measures (...) provided by Lithuanian Law on Administrative Proceedings is not optimal. That is why the first part of the article is dedicated to the analysis of the possibilities and problems of application of interim measures in the administrative proceedings in Lithuania, paying special attention to environmental cases. The second part of the article reflects the findings of a workshop of the Association of European Administrative Judges on „Interim relief in environmental matters” held in Vilnius on 22 September 2011. It briefly describes various national rules on interim relief procedures, especially in the German and the French legislation, with an assessment from the German point of view. This part of the article focuses on provisional legal protection where a permit is challenged by a third party whose rights are allegedly afflicted. In such a constellation the rights of the plaintiff compete with the rights of the operator. The article concludes that, when deciding on the necessity of interim measures, it is vital to ensure the balance of interests: both by ensuring effective access to justice and by protecting the respondent and the third party (in environmental cases - usually the operator) from the violation of their rights and the damage caused by the abuse of the right to request interim measures. In such cases short time limits for procedural steps both of the parties and the court are not advisable and a prima facie prognosis on the outcome in the main proceedings meets the interests of the parties. (shrink)

If definitive evidence concerning treatment effectiveness becomes available from an ongoing randomized clinical trial, then the trial could be stopped early, with the public release of results benefiting current and future patients. However, stopping an ongoing trial based on accruing outcome data requires methodological rigor to preserve validity of the trial conclusions. This has led to the use of formal interim monitoring procedures, which include inefficacy monitoring that will stop a trial early when the experimental treatment appears not to (...) be working. For participants, inefficacy monitoring is especially important as it ensures that they are not being treated worse than if they had not enrolled on the trial. We discuss the importance of reporting with trial results the formal interim inefficacy monitoring guidelines that were utilized, and, if none were used, the reasons for their absence. A survey of two leading medical journals suggests that this is not current practice. (shrink)

Confronting the challenges of the 20th century, from modernity and the Great War to the Holocaust and postmodern culture, Jewish thinkers have wrestled with such fundamental issues as redemption and revelation, eternity and history, messianism and politics. From the turn of the century through the 1920s, European Jewish intellectuals confronted alienation and the challenges of modernity by seeking secure grounds for a meaningful life. After the Holocaust and the fall of Nazism, the rich results of their thinking—on topics such as (...) transcendence, redemption, revelation, and politics—were reinterpreted in an atmosphere of increasing disillusion and fragmentation. In Interim Judaism, Michael L. Morgan traces the evolution of this shift in values, as expressed in the work of social thinkers, novelists, artists, and poets as well as philosophers and theologians at the beginning and end of the century. Focusing on the problem of objectivity, the experience of the transcendent, and the relationship between redemption and politics, he argues that the outcome for contemporary Jews is a pragmatic style of religiosity that has abandoned traditional conceptions of Judaism and is searching and waiting for new ones, a condition that he describes as "interim Judaism." Published with the generous support of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati. (shrink)

In international arbitration, timely application and enforcement of interim measures can have a substantial effect on the possibility of the enforcement of final arbitration award, especially when issues relating to the protection of assets or evidence arise before or during the course of arbitration proceedings. Though the substantive amendments to the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration concerning the application and enforcement of interim measures in international arbitration were made in 2006, the legal regulation of these matters (...) in Lithuania by the Law on Commercial Arbitration remained as previous. Hence, the purpose of this article is to provide a brief analysis of the contemporary universal legal doctrine and international practice regarding the availability, application and enforcement of interim measures in international arbitration; to examine and evaluate the Lithuanian law and court practice, their compliance with the analyzed contemporary universal legal doctrine and international practice on the application and enforcement of interim measures in international arbitration. (shrink)

Between States is the first book that assesses systematically the broad implications of interim governments in the establishment of democratic regimes and on the existence of states. Based on historical and contemporary democratisation experiences, the book presents four ideal types of interim government: opposition-led provisional governments, power-sharing interim governments, incumbent-led caretaker governments, and international interim government by the United Nations. The first part explores the theoretical problems of each of these models from a broad comparative perspective. (...) It uses as illustrations historical and contemporary cases that present a wide spectrum of contexts for comparison. The second part provides extensive case studies that are intended to illustrate, appraise, amplify and criticise the analysis in volume one. These include Iran, East Germany, Portugal, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia. (shrink)

Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor develops an inclusive theory that integrates psychological, aesthetic, and ethical issues relating to humor Offers an enlightening and accessible foray into the serious business of humor Reveals how standard theories of humor fail to explain its true nature and actually support traditional prejudices against humor as being antisocial, irrational, and foolish Argues that humor’s benefits overlap significantly with those of philosophy Includes a foreword by Robert Mankoff, Cartoon Editor of The New Yorker.

Volume 24, Issue 10, October 2024, Page 113-114.

This article deals with the ordering of interim measures in the arbitration process. Under the Lithuanian law, only one interim measure can be applied by commercial arbitration courts. It involves granting an order to pay the established amount as a deposit. This measure cannot be enforced unless the party acts in good faith and agrees to pay the deposit. However, if a party ignores the decision of the arbitration court, a third party court may apply to the state (...) court with a request to order interim measures provided for in the Lithuanian Code of Civil Procedure. Under the existing Lithuanian legislation, state courts have the exclusive right to order enforceable interim measures. The present situation is not satisfactory and should be changed. The legislator is now considering a new draft law on the Lithuanian commercial arbitration. The draft law provides for changes in ordering interim measures. The proposed regulation is in compliance with the goals of Article 17 of UNICITRAL Model Law on Commercial Arbitration. However, compliance with the rules of UNCITRAL is not the main goal of the proposed regulation. With the new regulation, the legislator aims for more efficient commercial arbitration with more extensive scope that will allow the commercial arbitration court to order interim measures independently. By allowing the commercial arbitration court to order interim measures independently, the legislator extends credibility of arbitration and makes it more inviting for the parties. Under the draft law on the Lithuanian commercial arbitration, state courts and commercial arbitration courts as discretionary institutions shall be entitled to order interim measures. On the other hand, a decision or a ruling of the commercial arbitration court shall be enforced if an execution order is issued by the state court. In this case, the state court shall be entitled to review whether the content of the decision or ruling of the commercial arbitration court complies with the imperative rules of law or public order. According to the proposed draft law on the Lithuanian commercial arbitration, both state and commercial arbitration courts shall have an independent right of discretion to order interim measures. However, some differences exist. In cases heard by commercial arbitration courts interim measures shall be ordered, whereas state courts acting under applications for interim measures filed by the parties or commercial arbitration courts, irrespective of the location of the arbitration process, shall be entitled to order interim measures. (shrink)

This paper analyzes statistical decisions during the interim analyses of clinical trials. After some general remarks about the ethical and scientific demands of clinical trials, I introduce the notion of a hard-case clinical trial, explain the basic idea behind it, and provide a real example involving the interim analyses of zidovudine in asymptomatic HIV-infected patients. The example leads me to propose a decision analytic framework for handling ethical conflicts that might arise during the monitoring of hard-case clinical trials. (...) I use computer simulations to show how the framework can assist in reconciling certain ethical conflicts. The framework is partial, lacking the precision of a complete systematization of statistical monitoring procedures in practice. (shrink)

‘Purism’, the claim that I is a pure indexical, is a contradictory position which requires the truth of three doctrines that have been shown to be myths: ‘rule theory’, ‘independence’, and ‘the guarantee’. A rash craving for simplicity explains its almost-universal support. ‘Purism’ is false for reasons that create a presumption in favour of a sharply diverging conception: that I is a deictic term. Thus, it is now necessary to establish what a ‘deictic term’ is, and whether I counts as (...) one. (shrink)

Gogineni, Babu Ravulapally village in Nalgonda District of Andhra Pradesh was enrolled in the 'Adopt a Dalit Village project' as it received generous support from the Council of Australian Humanist Societies in 2012.

What does effective poverty relief entail? How are we to assess the capacity of advanced industrialized societies to solve the problem of poverty? What role, if any, is left for the welfare state? This chapter argues that poverty relief, far from being primarily a matter of post hoc redistribution, primarily consists in a Hayekian-Schumpeterian discovery (or innovation) procedure whereby the problems of the poor are continuously discovered, identified, and eventually solved from the bottom up. This suggests new avenues (...) for reform. I argue, from the point of view of complexity theory, that governments must overcome knowledge and governance problems that limit their competence in the realm of solving the problems of the poor. As a result, any efficient system of poverty relief is unlikely to emerge from imposing an efficient and equitable top-down delivery of given goods and services based on established practices or preferences. The knowledge of what goods and services are required, and what practices should be modified to produce them, is not given to policy makers; it needs to be discovered. And this discovery is best modeled as an entrepreneurial, inquisitive, and experimental process. This process is best understood by applying complexity theory and the Austrian (Hayekian) epistemic paradigm. (shrink)

ArgumentThe article builds a case for the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population (Obshchestvo Okhranenia Zdorov’ia Evreiskogo Naselenia [OZE]) as a project of medicalized modernity, a mass politics of Jewish self-help that relied on a racialized and medicalized vision of a future Jewish nation. Officially registered in 1912 in St. Petersburg, it created the space for a Jewish politics that focused on the state of the collective Jewish body as a precondition for Jewish participation in (...) any version of modernity. OZE futurism survived the years of World War I and the Russian Civil War, when the organization had to concentrate on rescue and relief rather than on facilitating the development of new bodies and souls. New archival evidence reveals how race science, medical statistics, and positive eugenics became composite elements of the Jewish anticolonial message and new subjectivity. (shrink)

Our emotional lives are full of temporal asymmetries. Salient among these is that we tend to feel differently about painful or unpleasant events depending on their temporal location: we feel anxiety or trepidation about painful events we anticipate in the future, and relief when they are over. One question, then, is whether temporally asymmetric emotions such as relief have any ramifications for the metaphysics of time. On what has become the standard way of finessing this question, the asymmetry (...) of relief is an instance of the phenomenon of future-bias, a tendency to prefer painful events to be located in the past than in the future. The main question then posed is whether this pattern of preferences can be justified in the light of different metaphysical theories of time. In this paper I argue that this whole dialectic is misconceived. While many people may have future-biased preferences and these are a legitimate object of psychological study, this should be distinguished from the more basic phenomenon of relief that an unpleasant experience is over. Acknowledging the distinctness of these phenomena has two main consequences. First, if relief is not a manifestation of a time-biased preference, it is unclear what it would be for it to be justified or unjustified. This, in turn, should lead us to reassess how the psychology of relief bears on our metaphysical commitments. As I shall suggest, the real significance of the temporally asymmetric emotions for the metaphysics of time is that they manifest, and so reflection on them serves to draw our attention to, a structural feature of our awareness of the passage of time that resists re-articulation in other terms. (shrink)

Artworks at Lascaux and other late Palaeolithic caves integrate geological features or “relief” of the cave wall in a way that suggests a symbiotic relation between nature and culture. I argue this qualifies as “receptivity to a situation,” which is neither fully active nor merely passive and emerges as a necessary element of the intentions made apparent by such cave art. I argue against prominent interpretations of cave art, including the shamanist account and propose a structural interpretation attentive to (...) particular cases. Seen in this way, cave art displays intentions that are analyzable as having a tripartite structure: mentally directed, embedded in actions and receptive to a situation. Moreover, the latter is the medium through which the other two elements are conjoined. Drawing on a range of archaeological and philosophical resources from both analytical philosophy and phenomenology, I argue that what I call cave art’s “intentional story” is important for the philosophy of intentions more generally. (shrink)

This article gives a new explanation for the phenomenon of subcontracting. A model in which a principal contracts two agents who work in a sequence on a project, have soft information and can collude is considered. Side-contracts between agents can be signed at any stage of the game. It is shown that in this setting both a decentralized contracting structure, in which contracting of the agents at the initial production stage is delegated to the agent at the final production stage, (...) and a centralized structure, in which the principal directly contracts both agents, can be superior for the principal. The article derives the conditions under which this holds. The results give an explanation for recently observed tendencies in public procurement of design and construction activities. (shrink)

This article presents a quantitative way of modeling the interim decisions of clinical trials. While statistical approaches tend to focus on the epistemic aspects of statistical monitoring rules, often overlooking ethical considerations, ethical approaches tend to neglect key epistemic dimension. The proposal is a second-order decision theoretic framework. The framework provides means for retrospective assessment of interim decisions based on a clear and consistent set of criteria that combines both ethical and epistemic considerations. The framework is broadly Bayesian (...) and addresses a fundamental question behind many concerns about clinical trials: What does it take for an interim decision (e.g., whether to stop the trial, or continue) to be a good decision? I provide simulation illustrating the modeling of interim decisions counterfactually using the framework. (shrink)

"Relief. Some Un-theory of Categories," given as one of two Hanna Lectures at Hamline University, April 22, 1999.

Relief after Hardship: The Ottoman Turkish Model for The Thousand and One Days. By Ulrich Marzolph. Series in Fairy-Tale Studies. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017. Pp. viii + 151. $39.99.

Un relief mélien en terre cuite a été trouvé lors de la fouille d'un cimetière d'époque classique à Trézène. Mesurant 0,218 x 0,185 m, il est bien conservé et garde des traces d'engobe blanc et de polychromie. Il représente Héraklès, Déjanire et le centaure Nessos, à l'instant où la femme est sauvée du rapt dont elle était menacée, sur le bord du fleuve Euhénos en Étolie, selon une version du mythe transmise par un fragment de poème lyrique attribué avec (...) beaucoup de vraisemblance à Bacchylide. Cette œuvre en terre cuite, petite mais néanmoins ambitieuse, allie la difficile réalisation d'une composition à trois personnages conforme aux habitudes des 2e et 3e quarts du Ve siècle av. J.-C, à un rendu iconographique des figures qui renvoie à une esthétique plus ancienne : celle de la fin de l'archaïsme et de la lre moitié du Ve s. av. J.-C. (shrink)

Advocates of extended cognition hold that the physical machinery of mind sometimes extends beyond the skull and skin. In the first part of this paper, I explain why, and more specifically the precise sense in which, consciousness presents such theorists with an extra hurdle to be cleared. The key challenge is posed by phenomenal consciousness, the what‐it's‐like‐ness of experience. I consider two arguments for the claim that the physical machinery of phenomenal consciousness sometimes extends beyond the skull and skin. The (...) first – the argument from sensory substitution – suggests that acceptance of extended phenomenal consciousness should follow from a careful analysis of the phenomenon in which technological augmentation enables one sensory modality, for instance touch, to support the kind of environmental access and interaction ordinarily supported by a different sensory modality, for instance vision. The second argument – the argument from the relational character of experience – suggests that acceptance of extended phenomenal consciousness should follow from a particular conception of conscious experience that is mandated by sensorimotor contingency theory. I conclude that neither argument is decisive. (shrink)

Scholarship has intrinsic value, of course; but when good scholarship can stimulate change for the better in an area as fundamental to human dignity as health care and the relief of suffering, there is a special satisfaction. This has been our experience since 1996, when the first of now four special issues of this journal focused on legal, regulatory, ethical, professional, and financial issues in medical treatment for pain.With the generous and steadfast support of the Mayday Fund, the American (...) Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics has generated a significant body of scholarship published in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. This research has proven absolutely essential in changing public policy to support better care for those who suffer pain.Over these years, the Mayday Project at ASLME has tackled many of the real and perceived barriers to effective pain relief. In pain management, both real and perceived obstacles can have a powerful negative effect. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present and evaluate a specific critical discussion of Peter Singer's view on philanthropy. This critique of Singer's position takes several forms, and here we focus on only two of these. First of all, it is claimed that philanthropy (based upon the giving up of luxury goods) should be avoided, because it harms the poor. As we shall see this is a view defended by Andrew Kuper. However, philanthropy is also accused of harming the (...) poor by being sub-optimal and standing in the way of the more effective and lasting poverty relief brought about by changes in the political and economic system. This second complaint is defended by, among others, Paul Gomberg, Anthony Langlois and David Schweickart, as well as Kuper. To our knowledge, little systematic work has been done on the presentation and evaluation of theses objections to philanthropy. In what follows, the objections are dealt with in connection with private donations made by individuals, as this is the focus, and target, of the philosophers/scientists we wish to discuss. (shrink)

The present paper explores the moral psychology of fiction conceptually through the paired concepts ‘fictional relief’ and ‘reality check’. I suggest that the spectator of fictional films and television series sees himself as relieved from some of the moral obligations the spectator of nonfiction films sees himself as subject to, such as considering the consequences of a character's actions and attitudes. A fictional attitude is disturbed when elements of nonfiction are inserted into the fiction, such as the documentary photographs (...) in Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003), or when the fiction otherwise reminds the spectator of the moral and political consequences of his engagement. I call this reality check, and explore how Dr Melfi often reminds the spectator of The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007) of the consequences of having a sympathetic attitude towards the main character and gangster Tony Soprano. The related notion fictional relief captures the relief from considering such consequences, and finally I discuss how Omar Little exemplifies fictional reliefs at work in a socially realistic setting in The Wire (HBO, 2002–08). (shrink)

The present paper looks at the intersection of juridical and biopower in the U.S. Supreme Court’s school desegregation cases. These cases generally deploy “equitable relief” as a relay between the juridicially-specified injury of segregation and the biopolitical mandates of integration, allowing broad-based biopolitical remedies for juridically identified problems. This strategy enabled the Courts to negotiate between these forms of power. The analysis here thus suggests the continued relevance of juridical power, and also the limits of Foucault’s own analysis, which (...) suggested that biopower tended to fully colonize juridical power by way of norms. (shrink)

The present study proposes a new reconstruction and a new interpretation of a quite singular piece of sculpture with relief decoration, discovered on Melos at the beginning of the last century. It belongs to the permanent collection of Roman sculpture of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. After a detailed presentation and iconographical analysis of its relief decoration, we proceed to a new interpretation of its function, always in connection with the social, historical and artistic context of the (...) Cyclades in Late Antiquity. (shrink)

McGovern, Kevin Physician and ethicist Professor Paul Komesaroff and former judge Stephen Charles QC have proposed legislation to protect health professionals from the risk of criminal prosecution when in appropriate circumstances they provide pain relief which may shorten a patient's life. For this protection, they recommend that four conditions must all be satisfied: the patient has a terminal illness; the intention is to relieve pain and suffering; the treatment is reasonable in terms of current medical practice; and the treatment (...) is necessary to relieve pain and suffering. This article examines their proposal, supports it, and joins in the call for Victorian legislation which achieves this purpose. (shrink)

A study of fifteen Middle Byzantine reliefs — ten of them unpublished — from the ruined church of Saint-Donat at Glyki makes it easier to understand material at present in the Byzantine Museum at Ioannina. It tells us first of all about the working conditions of the sculptors in a peripheral region of the Byantine Empire. Faced with the lack of marble quarries, these sculptors were obliged to find a solution to the problem. An examination of this material led us (...) to distinguish two groups of reliefs. The first is characterised by a decoration subject to two sorts of influence: on the one hand they show a decoration very similar to that used in the reliefs in Macedonia, and on the other, reminders of Early Christian formal and decorative art. We can thus identify the different sources of inspiration of the sculptors and better understand their manner of organisation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present and evaluate a specific critical discussion of Peter Singer's view on philanthropy. This critique of Singer's position takes several forms, and here we focus on only two of these. First of all, it is claimed that philanthropy (based upon the giving up of luxury goods) should be avoided, because it harms the poor. As we shall see this is a view defended by Andrew Kuper. However, philanthropy is also accused of harming the (...) poor by being sub-optimal and standing in the way of the more effective and lasting poverty relief brought about by changes in the political and economic system. This second complaint is defended by, among others, Paul Gomberg, Anthony Langlois and David Schweickart, as well as Kuper. To our knowledge, little systematic work has been done on the presentation and evaluation of theses objections to philanthropy. In what follows, the objections are dealt with in connection with private donations made by individuals, as this is the focus, and target, of the philosophers/scientists we wish to discuss. (shrink)

I have two goals in this paper. First, I want to determine whether Kant’s justification for state programs for poverty relief in The Doctrine of Right is based on 1) Kantian duties of virtue, 2) Kantian duties of right, or instead merely on 3) instrumental arguments regarding the preservation of a State as such. I claim that the last alternative is the correct one. Second, I will argue, against Kant himself, that even his merely instrumental arguments for public programs (...) for poverty relief are ruled out by his doctrine of right. My conclusion is that, perhaps surprisingly, the only genuinely Kantian way to provide poverty relief is privately, just as Libertarians have argued. (shrink)

In the Chinese stock market, special treatment (ST) firms are the firms listed as facing imminent danger of delisting, unless they return to profitability after reporting two consecutive annual losses. Some ST firms voluntarily pay substantial fees to their external auditors to conduct interim audits, which are not required by regulations. In this study, we investigate and find that ST firms that pay for voluntary interim audits report greater discretionary accrued earnings, higher non-operating earnings, and higher returns on (...) assets in ensuing annual reports. As a result, these firms are more likely to return to profitability and reduce their delisting risk. Our results, which contribute to the current debate on auditor independence, appear to be consistent with the possibility that ST firms “buy” external auditors’ cooperation to manipulate earnings when faced with the threat of delisting. (shrink)