Conflicting Norms, Values, and Interests: A Perspective from Legal Academia

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Oeter

AbstractThe analytical tension between legal norms, moral values, and national interests seems no uncharted territory in political science, but has found very little interest in legal academia. For lawyers, moral values and national interests are largely “unknowns,” dealt with by other disciplines. Looking a bit deeper, the picture becomes more nuanced, however. As part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay argues that norms, values, and interests are not different universes of legal normativity, morality, and specific interests, but are interrelated concepts. Values clearly influence norms and often underpin them, while seemingly concrete norms (rules) are themselves often fragile constructs trying to balance competing interests. Value systems are quite diverse within societies, and this is even truer for interests; each society is a dynamic system of social interaction where conflicting interests are constantly playing out. In a way, underlying conflicts of values and interests are constantly being renegotiated in the legal system, with the norms enshrined in the text of statutes and treaties serving to constitute transitory reference points.

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Bradley

AbstractWorldwide, growing numbers of refugees are pushed from their homes. At the same time, fewer and fewer are able to access so-called “durable solutions” to their displacement. This has prompted a flurry of efforts to repair the foundering refugee regime. Many such efforts attempt, implicitly or explicitly, to resolve tensions between legal principles, moral duties, and national interests surrounding refugees. As part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay questions the drive toward oversimplification that has characterized these debates, recognizing that some such tensions are “baked into” the problem of refugeehood. While debates have typically focused on the obligation to admit refugees, and on “responsibility sharing,” I advance the conversation by exploring how law, morality, and national interests are entangled in efforts to support durable solutions for refugees, focusing on voluntary repatriation. What does recognition of the intrinsic and in some senses irreconcilable tensions in the refugee regime mean for efforts to support solutions? I argue that advancing durable solutions, however imperfect, for refugees does not mean definitively overcoming these tensions, but rather navigating them to identify context-specific opportunities to reposition refugees as full and equal citizens as a critical step toward reducing their precarity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Slim

AbstractAs part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay describes the humanitarian diplomacy of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by comparing it conceptually with other forms of advocacy and illustrating it with the ICRC's recent experience in the Yemen crisis. Humanitarian diplomacy is examined as one particular way of balancing legal norms, moral values, and national interests in the pursuit of greater respect for international humanitarian law (IHL) and principled humanitarian action in armed conflicts. The essay looks back to ancient history for archetypal forms of humanitarian advocacy in various cultural traditions. It then describes humanitarian diplomacy's practice of discreet diplomacy and confidential dialogue with all parties to a conflict, and compares its relatively “quiet” approach with the “loud” approach of outrage activism focused on “naming and shaming,” which tends to be the norm today. The essay argues that there is an important and complementary place for the ICRC's style of humanitarian diplomacy alongside other forms of advocacy even in the face of criticism that the ICRC is sometimes publicly silent about what it knows of atrocities and avoids naming and shaming.


Author(s):  
L. S. Voronkov

On the basis of analysis of integration processes between Nordic, Benelux countries and post-soviet states in Europe the author expresses hesitations in accepting the integration experiences gained by the EU as the criterion of efficiency and the pattern for the post-Soviet space. He does not consider that an involvement of all countries with market economy into processes of regional integration, if they do not try to achieve certain political aims through integration, is the universal regularity in the globalized world. In these cases neither free trade zones nor custom unions can be considered as integration stages, but they continue to be the tools for further development of trade. The author proposes to assess the EU evolution with regard to the legal norms of international organizations, where state sovereignty of members is strengthened, not given up to supernational bodies. In case the idea of reestablishment of an unified state on the remains of the former USSR, linked to the necessity to hand over the recently acquired sovereignty to it, is laid down to the ground for practical measures of integration, this kind of integration will hardly be attractive to the potential post-Soviet participants. This perspective is hardly desired for Russia either. The integration path of the EU reflects the peculiarities of the European situation and specific interests of its member states. Many details of the EU activity are not applicable to other integration groupings in Europe and membership criteria in every of them is not universal. Any efforts to construct integration processes in the post-Soviet space in accordance to the EU model without proper consideration to integration experiences of other countries and to political, economic, social, cultural, demographic, military peculiarities of the countries concerned seem to be not acceptable and founded.


2020 ◽  
pp. 23-27
Author(s):  
A.A. Oschepkov ◽  
◽  
V.V. Friauf

Presented is study in the problem of leadership in youth environment, in frames of which theoretical analysis of scientific works was conducted. The analysis showed, that the most actual in the present time is the value approach to leadership development for verification of which is experimental study is conducted. Results of the experiment showed dynamics of changes in values systems of both girls and boys during the period of conducting psycho-pedagogical program of values development. The analysis of experimental study results showed, that values orientations system of girls with high level of leader’s ability is oriented to social interaction, and values orientations system of boys with high level of leader’s ability is oriented to inner-group interests.


Author(s):  
ANTON B. DIDIKIN

In his paper "The Influence of Normative Reasons on the Formation of Legal Concepts", German legal philosopher Lorenz Kähler attempts to give a theoretical and philosophical understanding of the legal normativity in terms of disclosure of normative reasons that determine the choice and definition of the legal concepts. Despite the broad context of substantiating the problem under study and ways to solve it, the author formulates a number of controversial and disputable provisions. Among them, we can note the ambiguity and uncertainty of the content of legal concepts that are projected by the author exclusively on the field of legal norms, which does not allow us to correctly distinguish the process of cognition of legal phenomena and the application of legal norms. The analysis of the problem of normativity is carried out from the position of separating the normative legal order from the field of empirical facts without the possibility of correlating normative prescriptions with factual circumstances and actions (the normative grounds of which are the main point of L. Kähler, s research). The paper offers a number of critical arguments that demonstrate the methodological incorrectness and unreasonableness of certain judgments of L. Kähler, as well as conceptual decisions about the relationship between facts and norms in the context of the boundaries of normative and factual law.


2016 ◽  
Vol 104 ◽  
pp. 91-104
Author(s):  
Marzena Kordela

AXIOLOGICAL COHERENCE OF LAWLaw, qualified as a system, is characterized as such not only due to formal and content relations but also due to axiological relations. The assumption of legislator’s rationality predetermines that by establishing legal norms the legislator is guided by a cohesive, hierarchical and relatively stable system of values axiological rationality. By introducing a given value into a system of law the legislator makes it a value in legal force with all the consequences, e.g. one that regulations of a inferior legal force may not be in disagreement with it. Legal values themselves constitute a system and this coherence is recreated in narrower areas, as e.g. in branches hence value systems in criminal law or in civil law.


2021 ◽  
pp. 144-183
Author(s):  
Mark Knights

This chapter explores the abuse of trust when an official’s interest conflicted with that of the entrusting power or beneficiary of the trust, or where an agent’s multiple roles conflicted with each other so that the performance of a trust was compromised. Trust and interest were, it is argued, intertwined, since entrusted power demanded disinterestedness. The chapter relates the emergence of the ‘language’ of interest in the seventeenth century to debates about the competing and conflicting interests. Over the period, measures were put in place in both commercial and political office to go some way to separating competing interests and to subordinate the pecuniary self-interests of officials to the trusts from their companies or the public. Long before 1850 ‘conflict of interest’ had become an established lexicon and concept, used to debate, define and tackle corruption in office.


Author(s):  
Carolina Dos Santos Saucedo ◽  
Everton Bedin

A prática pedagógica em sala de aula, quando desenvolvida em meio a competências, habilidades e diferentes ações docentes, relacionada aos contextos sociocultural, científico e ambiental do aluno se torna significativamente satisfatória para a constituição de um ser ético e reflexivo consigo e com o seu contexto? A problematização deriva da ideia de que há a necessidade de transformar o ensino tradicional, aquele pautado em práticas pedagógicas descontextualizadas e sem nexos à vivência do aluno, em um ensino vinculado a transformação deste, enquanto sujeito do seu próprio saber. Nesta perspectiva, o presente artigo tem o objetivo de apresentar e refletir sobre díspares atividades pedagógicas realizadas à luz do Meio Ambiente, dando-se ênfase à ação dos sujeitos como suporte para a construção de uma aprendizagem teórico-prática de cunho problematizador. Os dados coletados por meio da observação participante, do diário de bordo e das aplicações de práticas pedagógicas e projetos de pesquisa foram analisados e interpretados a partir de teóricos da área. No término, constatou-se que o desenvolvimento das atividades propostas foi suficiente para emergir a interação social e qualificar o desenvolvimento cognitivo dos sujeitos, assim como aperfeiçoar os saberes destes em relação ao Meio Ambiente e os valores éticos e morais da cidadania. Ademais, sugere-se aos professores a adoção da metodologia aqui descrita, pois esta foi significativa o suficiente para que os conhecimentos científicos de química se entrelaçassem de forma contextualizada a vivência do aluno à luz do tema Meio Ambiente.Palavras-chave: Formação Docente. Meio Ambiente. Estágios.AbstractThe pedagogical practice in the classroom, when developed in the midst of competences, skills and different teaching actions, related to the socio-cultural, scientific and environmental contexts of the student, becomes significantly satisfactory for the constitution of an ethical and reflexive being with himself or herself and with his or her context.The problem arises from the idea that there is a necessity to change the traditional way of teaching, which is related to non-contextualized pedagogical practices and with no connection to the student’s experiences of life, into a teaching bond on the transformation of students while subject of their own knowledge. In this sense, the article has as objective to present reflection about different pedagogical activities done underneath Environmental light, giving emphasis to the subjects’ actions to support the construction of theoretical-practical learning process with problematic character. The data were collected by the participant observation, throughout logbook, application of pedagogical practices and research projects, and after, they were analyzed and interpreted based on pedagogical literature. At the end of the work, it was verified that the development of the proposed activities was enough to reach social interaction and to qualify the subject’s cognitive development. Besides, it increased the student’s knowledge about the Environment, ethical and moral values of citizenship. Thus, it is suggested to the teachers the application of the methodology described here, considering that it was effective enough to embrace Chemical scientific knowledge and student’s life experiences beyond the Environmental perspective.Keywords: Teacher Training. Environment. Traineeship


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 857
Author(s):  
Chao Zhang ◽  
Lei Hong ◽  
Ning Ma ◽  
Guohui Sun

Development of measures for mitigating public emerging infectious diseases is now a focal point for emergency management legal systems. COVID-19 prevention and containment policies can be considered under the core goal of social and individual interests. In this study we analyzed the complexity between individual and public interests as they conflict when implementing disease preventative measures on an epidemic scale. The analysis was used to explore this complex landscape of conflicting social, public, and legal interests to quantify the potential benefits of public acceptance. Here we use the large-scale COVID-19 epidemic backdrop to examine legal norms of the emergency management legal framework. We find that the implementation of emergency management legal system measures involves the resolution of both direct and indirect conflicts of interest among public groups, individual groups, and various subsets of each. When competing interests are not balanced, optimal policies cannot be achieved to serve and safeguard shared social and community stability, whereas effective social outcomes are obtainable through the development of targeted policies as defined within the emergency management legal system. A balanced legal framework in regards to emergency management legal norms can more effectively serve to mitigate and prevent the continued spread of emerging infectious diseases. Further developing innovative procedural mechanisms as a means to ensure emergency response intervention should take into account the weighted interest of the different social parties to determine priorities and aims to protect legitimate public interests.


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