This article, the final part of the series, will focus on genocide. To understand the argument we need to start with some definitions. Rapheal Lemkin invented the term and promoted its adoption. As Samantha Power explains in her introduction to his primary work: “In Axis Rule he wrote that ‘genocide’ meant ‘a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the -/- aim of annihilating the groups themselves’. The perpetrators (...) of genocide would attempt to destroy the political and social institutions, the culture, language, national feelings, religion, and economic existence of national groups. They would hope to eradicate the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and lives of individual members of the targeted group. (shrink)

This article’s (Part1 of a series) main focus is on a logical analysis of Appiah’s main argument that Alexander Crummell was a racist. However to show that the implicit fraudulent scholarship involved in nature of the argument is specifically racist we need to put his claimed logical argument in the context of other claims that Appiah makes in order to show that there is a pattern of fraudulent scholarship with a specifically anti African anti- Afro American animus. A ‘prelude ‘ (...) will cover these points and then ‘Appiah’s logical analysis of racism’ will look closely at the logic of his claims. Here the issue is that a logical review simply asks if the premises can justify the conclusion and if each step of an argument can follow the earlier in a formally sound manner. Such an analysis abstracts from the issue of whether the steps are reasonable or factually correct. (shrink)

This is the second of a multi-part article on the racism in Anthony Appiah’s work. This short article will focus on his normalisation of racism in a specific instance in a specific work 'Colour Conscious' (Appiah & Guttman, 1996).

Not only in Lithuania, but also in the other countries, there is a growing tendency among young people to choose a legal education. Law is a professional sphere of immense depth and breadth and it is evident that during several years in a school of higher education, designed to grant legal knowledge and skills, it is impossible to convey all aspects and nuances of the law. Legal education in a higher school is only the beginning of a lawyer’s education, while (...) on the other hand it provides a unifying experience among practising lawyers. Consequently, university law schools preparing lawyers certainly provide an important contribution to the creation of a legal state, while providing skills, modelling values and shaping attitudes for future judges, state officials, prosecutors, attorneys and other persons responsible for the implementation of legal mechanisms necessary for the proper functioning of the state. (shrink)

The modern doctrine of the “fresh start” reflects the differences between the past paradigm of punishment of the insolvent person and the current focus on the economic effectiveness and activeness. Global practice in the field of insolvency shows that the “limited liability rule” is eminently effective in the economic and social perspective. The appending threat of abuse and misapplication of the system might be neutralized through the legal regulation of prevention and rehabilitation means, which are analyzed in this article. The (...) aim of this research is to: 1) present a summary of the paradigm of bankruptcy of natural persons; 2) evaluate the categories of prevention and rehabilitation means set in the Lithuanian concept of the bankruptcy of natural persons; 3) identify the physical factors affecting the bankruptcy of natural persons; 4) provide a conceptual model of rehabilitation after bankruptcy and insolvency prevention measures have been implemented in the field of bankruptcy of natural persons. (shrink)

The ombudsman tradition originated in Sweden in 1809 and has spread throughout the world in less than two hundred years. An ombudsman is a public official that offers people an opportunity to have their complaints heard, evaluated, and investigated by a neutral and independent body, and offers recommendations to the involved parties. The ombudsman plays an important role in strengthening democratic governance, rule of law, and civil society. Article 73 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania establishes that: ‘The (...) Seimas controllers shall examine complaints of citizens concerning the abuse of powers by, or bureaucratic intransigence of, State and municipal officials (with the exception of judges). They shall have the right to submit a motion before a court that the guilty officials be dismissed from office. The powers of the Seimas controllers shall be established by law. If necessary, the Seimas shall also establish other institutions of control. Their system and powers shall be established by law.’. (shrink)

Legal English, being among the most complex and multifaceted areas of English for Specific Purposes, has duly received considerable attention on the part of linguists, discourse and learner needs′ analysts, sociolinguists and ESP researchers. Most research has been carried out to investigate lexical, syntactic, grammatical and other communicative competences of law students in various cycles of higher education. An area that is still highly in need of examination is the development of communicative competences of Legal English among law practitioners who (...) might have had a course of Legal English in their law studies and face with an urge of revision or might have not been introduced to Legal English whatsoever. In light of these observations, the present study examines the needs and problems regarding the use of general and legal English faced by 34 law practitioners, namely lawyers and judges working at two law companies and a district court in Kaunas, Lithuania. The study assumes qualitative methodology including a semi-structured interview and a questionnaire. The results have revealed that communicative competence of legal practitioners gained during their formal education does not meet the demands of their legal practice. While skills of general English appear not to cause many problems, skills of legal English are not developed to an adequate level. Therefore, as the study shows, it is absolutely inevitable to develop and offer in-service education of Legal English carefully attuned to the diverse levels of competences and needs of legal practitioners. (shrink)

Regulatory approach to the right to abortion in Europe is diverse and basically related to the issue of when the right to life begins and how this question is reflected in national legislation. Such an approach and diversity is tolerated by the European Court of Human Rights, but only if some specific standards and criteria formulated in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights are reflected in national legislation. Research of the Lithuanian legal acts conducted in the light (...) of the jurisprudence of the Court shows that they are not in accordance with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the solutions are therefore suggested. The aim of the article is to systematically analyse the Lithuanian legal acts regulating issues of abortion and to identify the existing problems and provide suggestions as to how to solve those problems with the help of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in abortion cases. Analysis of the Lithuanian legal acts reveals that the existing legal regulation and practice is confusing and ambiguous. Abortion questions are regulated in Lithuania by means of secondary legislation, namely by order of the Health Minister which is more than 15 years old, and the classification of diseases dangerous to woman’s health and life is based on international classification that is invalid. The order is not in reconciled with the Lithuanian criminal law. Some other ambiguities and problems are identified in the article. Abortion on a woman’s request in Lithuania is possible by the end of the 12 week of pregnancy and during the entire pregnancy, if it causes danger to woman’s health and life. The Lithuanian legislator requires that both conditions – danger to woman’s health and life – are met in order to terminate pregnancy what is unnecessary and sometimes even confusing. The author suggests providing two separate bases for abortion – danger to woman’s life or health. Foetus problems – if a foetus is irreversibly damaged or suffering from an incurable life-threatening disease, it is not a separate basis for abortion in Lithuania, however those abnormalities of the foetus are related to the health and life of a pregnant woman. In the opinion of the author, looking into the practice of the other EU countries, it is better to provide a separate ground for abortion because of abnormalities of the foetus. The basic problem in Lithuania that is similar in Poland and in Ireland is that there is no clear procedure in case a pregnant woman is not satisfied with the decision of the medical commission regarding the question of her abortion or if the opinion of members of the commission is diverse – no time guidance or appeal institution is provided. (shrink)

Morality is an abstract consideration, and language is an important regulator of abstract thought. In instances of moral ambiguity, individuals may pay particular attention to matters of interactional justice. Politeness in language has been linked to greater perceptions of social distance, which we contend is instrumental in regulating attitudes toward a brand. We posit that politeness in a brand’s advertising will impact consumers who are attuned to violations of interactional justice [i.e., those with low belief in a just world ]. (...) In three studies, we demonstrate that the politeness used in advertising as well as consumers’ individual differences in BJW affect judgments and attitudes toward brands. Specifically, individuals with a low just world belief are more likely to harbor negative attitudes towards a brand with ethically ambiguous business practices if the language used in advertising is impersonal than when the language used in advertising is personal. Importantly, for individuals with a low BJW, lowered trust due to the advertisement’s language mediated the relationship between politeness and attitudes toward the brand. Theoretical and managerial implications of this research are discussed. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the main drivers of what has been described as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, as well as the most innovative technology developed to date. It is a pervasive transformative innovation, which needs a new approach. In 2017, the European Parliament introduced the notion of the “electronic person”, which sparked huge debates in philosophical, legal, technological, and other academic settings. The issues related to AI should be examined from an interdisciplinary perspective. In this paper, we examine (...) this legal innovation—that has been proposed by the European Parliament—from not only legal but also technological points of view. In the first section, we define AI and analyse its main characteristics. We argue that, from a technical perspective, it appears premature and probably inappropriate to introduce AI personhood now. In the second section, justifications for the European Parliament’s proposals are explored in contrast with the opposing arguments that have been presented. As the existing mechanisms of liability could be insufficient in scenarios where AI systems cause harm, especially when algorithms of AI learn and evolve on their own, there is a need to depart from traditional liability theories. (shrink)

While implementing Directive 2009/52/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 June 2009 providing for minimum standards on sanctions and measures against employers of illegally staying third country nationals (hereinafter referred to as ‘Directive’), Lithuania supplemented the Lithuanian Criminal Code with an additional Article 292-1, entitled “Labour of illegally staying third country nationals in the Republic of Lithuania”, which came into force on 6 January 2012. The author of this article aims to find out whether the main (...) goals and objectives of the Directive regarding criminal liability of the employer have been fully transposed into national law, and by using various scientific methods and the objectives of the Directive, to reveal the objective and subjective attributes of Article 292-1 of the Criminal Code. The second aim is to discuss the criteria distinguishing criminal liability from administrative liability enshrined in Article 41-3 of the Lithuanian Code of Administrative Offences, in particular that that article was not changed at the time of establishing criminal liability. The detailed scientific analysis revealed that Lithuania has essentially transposed all the basic requirements and obligations of the Directive, even though it was somewhat late (the Member States were obliged to implement the Directive by 20 July 2011, and Article 292-1 has come into force on 6 January 2012, while the Law Prohibiting Illegal Work has not yet been enacted). In addition, only four of the five criminal offences enumerated in Article 9 of the Directive have been fully implemented. The Lithuanian legislators have not established criminal liability for an infringement committed by employer using work or services of an illegally staying third country national, with the knowledge that he or she is a victim of trafficking in human beings. This infringement is partially criminalised in Articles 147-1 and 147-2 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania, but in order to punish the employer one needs either to establish one of the alternative means by which the will of the third country national has been affected (e.g. coercion, force or threat, deceit or fraud, abuse of authority or abuse of a vulnerable position and etc.), which is not required by the Directive and, in the author’s opinion, makes practical application of criminal liability in this respect rather difficult. Another problem related to the implementation of the Directive is that we still do not have the respective Law and no systemic approach exists, while in the Criminal Code none of the terms used in Article 292-1 are defined and the law enforcement authorities might encounter practical difficulties in applying that Article, in particular considering that some of the definitions could be found only in the Directive itself. Possible difficulties could arise while deciding on whether criminal or administrative liability should arise in cases of continuous or persistently repeated infringements, because in the Criminal Code this feature is defined as “for business purposes”, which is rather subjective and should be established in every single case after thorough evaluation of factual data. (shrink)

The article deals with the issues of creative society’s environment. The theses have been developed as follows. 1. Creative venture enters unknown environment concerning consuming. 2. Outstanding society is hardly recognized in consuming environment, which has been forced to change. 3. Creative society is outstanding as much as by arising in consumi+ng environment does not regard consuming logic and blocks communicative channels of the consumers. 4. A creative worker is rich not by having a lot of things to be consumed (...) but by satisfying things for realization of his (her) creative aspirations. 5. The concept of happiness is a mobility factor of both an individual and the society. 6. Happiness is to be created together with beneficial for it social environment, the creator of which is both an individual and the society. 7. Averageness does not mean inauthenticity, on the contrary, it is an environment of outstandingness nurturance while the creative phenomena canalize this environment into the identity whole. 8. Creation and creative life art is prophylaxis of moderation and ipso facto happiness. 9. Technology is a factor of new social environment. 10. Consumer society wastes natural and social environment by orienting to as bigger as possible comfort and, as a result, causes total discomfort. 11. Quality of ecosphere as well as being affected by environmental pollution becomes an important challenge for the creative society. (shrink)

The paper aims to analyze the scope of female leadership (deanship) at public and non-public law faculties in selected countries from the region of Central and Eastern Europe: Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Montenegro. The paper will explore the engagement of women in the administration of law schools operating within public (and non-public) schools (universities) across the region in the latest years. The paper aims to show the number of (...) female deanships at law faculties in the analyzed states. This analysis will be based on statistical data obtained from the available public sources (including national databases as well as the European Union resources) providing the number of female deans and vice-deans appointed or elected by the academia at all higher education institutions within the country. The initial hypothesis states that gender inequality has been present in the deanship of analyzed law schools and reflects general trends in gender equality in Europe. Comprehensive analysis of the central and eastern European states will allow formulating the key conclusions and answering the following research questions concerning the differences in the numbers of women on the key positions within the law faculties in terms of public versus non-public institutions and in the light of the general gender equality trends in the continent. The research methods used for the analysis include a dogmatic method, statistical method as well as comparative method. (shrink)

To prevent ordinary people from being harmed by natural language processing (NLP) technology, finding ways to measure the extent to which a language model is biased (e.g., regarding gender) has become an active area of research. One popular class of NLP bias measures are bias benchmark datasets—collections of test items that are meant to assess a language model’s preference for stereotypical versus non-stereotypical language. In this paper, we argue that such bias benchmarks should be assessed with models from the psychometric (...) framework of item response theory (IRT). Specifically, we tie an introduction to basic IRT concepts and models with a discussion of how they could be relevant to the evaluation, interpretation and improvement of bias benchmark datasets. Regarding evaluation, IRT provides us with methodological tools for assessing the quality of both individual test items (e.g., the extent to which an item can differentiate highly biased from less biased language models) as well as benchmarks as a whole (e.g., the extent to which the benchmark allows us to assess not only severe but also subtle levels of model bias). Through such diagnostic tools, the quality of benchmark datasets could be improved, for example by deleting or reworking poorly performing items. Finally, in regards to interpretation, we argue that IRT models’ estimates for language model bias are conceptually superior to traditional accuracy-based evaluation metrics, as the former take into account more information than just whether or not a language model provided a biased response. (shrink)

Seit dem 2. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert werden die Schriften von Aristoteles kommentiert. Diese Ausgabe enthält griechische Kommentare zu seinem Werk vom 3. bis 8. Jahrhundert n. Chr., u. a. von Alexander von Aphrodiensias, Themistios, Joh. Philoponus, Simplicius in griechischer Sprache.

Seit dem 2. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert werden die Schriften von Aristoteles kommentiert. Diese Ausgabe enthält griechische Kommentare zu seinem Werk vom 3. bis 8. Jahrhundert n. Chr., u. a. von Alexander von Aphrodiensias, Themistios, Joh. Philoponus, Simplicius in griechischer Sprache.

v. 1. Opera Latina B. M. Raimundi Lulli. Studia magistrorum et professorum Maioricensis Scholae Lullisticae.