The article analyses the regulation for premature termination of the Parliament in Latvia. The introductory part of the article provides a short characteristic of the Constitution of Latvia - the Satversme adopted in 1922, and outlines the basic principles of legal regulation of the Parliament, i.e. the Saeima. Further chapters of the article analyse historic development of the premature termination of the Parliament. On 15 February, 1922, when the Satversme was adopted, only one mechanism for the premature termination of (...) the Parliament was established there: dissolution of the Saeima. However, relatively recently, in 2009, after a prolonged public discussion another mechanism for the premature termination of the activity of the Saeima was established, which was the recall.1 Both models of the termination of the activities of the Parliament are analysed in the article by specifying the principal differences between them. Along with the analysis of the provisions of the Constitution and theory, the practice of dissolution of the Saeima is characterised as well, because in 2011 the Parliament (the Saeima) was dissolved in a constitutional way for the first and so far the only time in the history of Latvia and extraordinary elections were held. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this volume, we include four commentaries to Larry Minear's important article ‘Conscience and Carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan’ from our 2014 volume, as well as a response from the author. The commentaries and the author's response ponder various aspects of the challenge of conscientious objection to military service. Is there room for such objection within an all-volunteer force? Do such objectors serve an important role in our society – and in the military? May one object to some wars conscientiously, (...) but not all? And where are these discussions headed today? The debates on conscientious objection arguably form an important part of the discipline of military ethics, and thus an important part of the conversations carried on in this journal. (shrink)

What are the ethics of child genital cutting? In a recent issue of the journal, Duivenbode and Padela (2019) called for a renewed discussion of this question. Noting that modern health care systems...

The Institute of Social Research, from which the Frankfurt School developed, was founded in the early years of the Weimar Republic. It survived the Nazi era in exile, to become an important centre of social theory in the postwar era. Early members of the school, such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, developed a form of Marxist theory known as Critical Theory, which became influential in the study of class, politics, culture and ideology. The work of more recent members, and in (...) particular Habermas, has received wide attention throughout Europe and North America. Tom Bottomore's study takes a new and controversial look at the contributions of the Frankfurt School to modern sociology, examining several issues not previously discussed elsewhere. He discusses the neglect of history and political economy by the critical theorists, and considers the relationship of the later Frankfurt School to the radical movements of the 1960s and the present time. His critical analysis makes the school's writers accessible, through an assessment of their work and an exploration of the relationship of Critical Theory to other forms of sociological thought, especially positivism and structuralism. (shrink)

Chinese Annals in the Western Observatory: An Outline of Western Studies of Chinese Unearthed Documents. By Edward l. Shaughnessy. Library of Sinology, vol. 4. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2019. Pp. xx + 485. $69 ; open access: https://www.degruyter.com/document/ doi/10.1515/9781501516948/html?lang=en.

This is the first complete translation into English of the Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, which covers the period AD 284-813 and is one of the most important sources of Byzantine history, that of the Arabs under the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties and of other neighbouring peoples. The Chronicle is a compilation of earlier sources, many of them now lost: in order to use it critically the historian needs to know what texts Theophanes had in front of him and how he (...) handled them. These have consequently been indicated in the text in so far as they can be indentified. Full annotation has also been provided on points of historical and topographical interest. The career of Theophanes, the character of the Chronicle, its manuscript tradition, and the use of earlier sources are discussed in the Introduction. (shrink)

It has long been the habit of philosophers, and is still a common failing of ordinary playgoers, to see tragedy through the coloured spectacles of an acquired philosophical or religious outlook, and to commend or condemn rather from the standpoint of partiality for a certain view about life in general than from that of one assessing the intrinsic merits of a work of art. Because we all, whether laymen or specialists, theorize about the nature and destiny of that mysterious universe (...) which, for a brief span, our minds illumine, and because the working hypothesis so engendered is inevitably tinged by our personal idiosyncrasies of temperament and taste, there have been—and, building on such a foundation, there must be—almost as many different theoretical explanations of the tragic as theoreticians speculating on this high theme. Besides introducing that personal equation which has always been anathema to science, the distorted vision for which philosophical preconceptions are responsible brings with it minor illusions that are scarcely less injurious; the reading into a play or a novel of notions that had never entered the poet's brain, or the interpolation of history with incidents that never really occurred, the discarding of much that is genuinely tragic because it happens not to fit into the mould shaped by our own ideas, and the acceptance of much that is not merely untragic, but actually inartistic—pacifist, or communist, or feminist, or religious propaganda—because it happens to display the native hue of our own convictions. (shrink)

Europe: The Space and Time of ReflectionOn the Complutense Research Group La Europa de la Escritura.