Cosmopolitan law and time: Toward a theory of constitutionalism and solidarity in transition

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL P LINDEN-RETEK

AbstractThis article seeks to confront the contemporary condition in which cosmopolitan law – meant to resonate as something citizens across borders author and live together – instead is increasingly a source of detachment, confusion, and alienation. Taking the European Union’s twin crises of democratic legitimacy and social solidarity as its starting point, the article offers a critique of existing approaches to supranational constitutionalism that are insufficiently responsive to this disenchantment. The article’s purpose, in turn, is to present perspectives from philosophy and legal theory that might promisingly recast, in this new cosmopolitan frame, our thinking about law as a mode of social integration. Specifically, the article’s central claim is that time – as a seldom-examined, yet essential dimension of law – is closely linked to law’s cosmopolitan potential and, concurrently, to the motivational resources for cosmopolitan solidarity. It is through a sensitivity to time – our awareness of the past passing into the present in anticipation of a future – that citizens can meaningfully hold together cosmopolitan law’s dual, ostensibly divergent hopes: shared commitment and self-decentring plurality. Drawing on Seyla Benhabib’s ‘democratic iterations’ and its roots in the work of Jacques Derrida and Robert Cover, the article elaborates the following two concepts: ‘cosmopolitan promise-making’, a diachronic form of cosmopolitan political agency; and ‘cosmopolitan legal narrative’, a set of plural, evolving constitutional interpretations open to mutual engagement over time. These concepts, in temporalizing our understanding of political identity and constitutional law, together serve to underwrite a cosmopolitan legal order without also thinning solidarity’s social and democratic foundations. The article concludes with a critique of the contemporary role of European courts and a concrete vision for the cosmopolitan development of EU jurisprudence. Reinterpreting Article 4(2) TEU as the right to constitutional narrative, the article advances new modalities and normative aspirations for constitutional interpretation beyond the nation-state.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Escotet Espinoza

UNSTRUCTURED Over half of Americans report looking up health-related questions on the internet, including questions regarding their own ailments. The internet, in its vastness of information, provides a platform for patients to understand how to seek help and understand their condition. In most cases, this search for knowledge serves as a starting point to gather evidence that leads to a doctor’s appointment. However, in some cases, the person looking for information ends up tangled in an information web that perpetuates anxiety and further searches, without leading to a doctor’s appointment. The Internet can provide helpful and useful information; however, it can also be a tool for self-misdiagnosis. Said person craves the instant gratification the Internet provides when ‘googling’ – something one does not receive when having to wait for a doctor’s appointment or test results. Nevertheless, the Internet gives that instant response we demand in those moments of desperation. Cyberchondria, a term that has entered the medical lexicon in the 21st century after the advent of the internet, refers to the unfounded escalation of people’s concerns about their symptomatology based on search results and literature online. ‘Cyberchondriacs’ experience mistrust of medical experts, compulsion, reassurance seeking, and excessiveness. Their excessive online research about health can also be associated with unnecessary medical expenses, which primarily arise from anxiety, increased psychological distress, and worry. This vicious cycle of searching information and trying to explain current ailments derives into a quest for associating symptoms to diseases and further experiencing the other symptoms of said disease. This psychiatric disorder, known as somatization, was first introduced to the DSM-III in the 1980s. Somatization is a psycho-biological disorder where physical symptoms occur without any palpable organic cause. It is a disorder that has been renamed, discounted, and misdiagnosed from the beginning of the DSMs. Somatization triggers span many mental, emotional, and cultural aspects of human life. Our environment and social experiences can lay the blueprint for disorders to develop over time; an idea that is widely accepted for underlying psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. The research is going in the right direction by exploring brain regions but needs to be expanded on from a sociocultural perspective. In this work, we explore the relationship between somatization disorder and the condition known as cyberchondria. First, we provide a background on each of the disorders, including their history and psychological perspective. Second, we proceed to explain the relationship between the two disorders, followed by a discussion on how this relationship has been studied in the scientific literature. Thirdly, we explain the problem that the relationship between these two disorders creates in society. Lastly, we propose a set of intervention aids and helpful resource prototypes that aim at resolving the problem. The proposed solutions ranged from a site-specific clinic teaching about cyberchondria to a digital design-coded chrome extension available to the public.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098713
Author(s):  
David Martínez ◽  
Alexander Elliott

According to David Miller, immigration is not a human right. Conversely, Kieran Oberman makes a case for immigration as a human right. We agree with the latter view, but we show that its starting point is mistaken. Indeed, both Miller and Oberman discuss the right to immigration within the liberal paradigm: it is a right or not depending on the correct balance between the interests of the citizens of a given national state and the interests of the immigrants. Instead, we claim that public justification can underpin immigration as a human right. That said, the public justification of the right to immigration has several counterarguments to rebut. Before we deal with that issue, relying on Jürgen Habermas’s social theory, we examine the legal structures that could support the right to immigration in practice. To be sure, this does not provide the normative justification needed, instead it shows the framework that allows the institutional realization of this right. Then, through a combination of civic and cosmopolitan forms of solidarity, the article discusses the formation of a public sphere, which could provide the justification of the right to immigration.


2007 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 313-319
Author(s):  
Benedikt Buchner

AbstractIndustry-sponsored medical education is a much disputed issue. So far, there has been no regulatory framework which provides clear and definite rules as to whether and under what circumstances the sponsorship of medical education is acceptable. State regulation does not exist, or confines itself to a very general principle. Professional regulation, even though applied frequently, is rather vague and indefinite, raising the general question as to whether self-regulation is the right approach at all. Certainly, self-regulation by industry cannot and should not replace other regulatory approaches. Ultimately, advertising law in general and the European Directive 2001/83/EC specifically, might be a good starting point in providing legal certainty and ensuring the independence of medical education. Swiss advertising law illustrates how the principles of the European Directive could be implemented clearly and unambiguously.


2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
JÖRG KAMMERHOFER

AbstractHans Kelsen is known both as a legal theorist and as an international lawyer. This article shows that his theory of international law is an integral part of the Kelsenian Pure Theory of Law. Two areas of international law are analysed: first, Kelsen's coercive order paradigm and its relationship to the bellum iustum doctrine; second, the Kelsenian notion of the unity of all law vis-à-vis theories of the relationship of international and municipal law. In a second step, the results of Kelsenian general legal theory of the late period – as interpreted and developed by the present author – are reapplied to selected doctrines of international law. Thus is the coercive order paradigm resolved, the unity of law dissolved, and the UN Charter reinterpreted to show that the concretization of norms as positive international law cannot be unmade by a scholarship usurping the right to make law.


Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kivisto

Conservatism refers to one of the constituent political positions found in all contemporary democracies. It can be construed as a philosophy, an ideology, a political party, a movement, a disposition, a mode of discourse, performance style, and an emotional relationship to the political. Since the birth of modern democracies in the aftermath of the French Revolution, it has become commonplace to describe the range of political options available to the citizenry as occupying a spectrum from left to right, with a range of alternatives between the extreme poles, including a centrist position in the middle that straddles the divide. The left was associated with promoting challenges to established authorities and existing hierarchies, along with calls for increased economic equality and expanded social and political rights to all citizens, including the heretofore marginalized. This contrasts with the right, which was defined as defending inequalities and differential entitlements, concentrating matters involving rights around preserving property rights, shoring up public and social order, and promoting traditional values and conventional social relations. In this context, liberalism became a mark of political identity associated with the left, as did socialism, while conservatism, broadly construed, represented the right. This framing of politics also includes the possibility of underminings by extremism on both the left and right. For the former, the main threat since the Russian Revolution has been posed by revolutionary communism, while right-wing extremism has manifested itself in reactionary movements, including fascism and illiberal populism. Since liberalism and conservatism must be understood in relational terms, the spatial and temporal settings for the politics of opposition will vary considerably. It is impossible to do justice to the vast literature on conservatism in a bibliography such as this. What follows is a more delimited, and thus manageable examination of work on conservatism. First, it focuses on conservatism in the United States, and not elsewhere. Second, it is chiefly concerned with conservatism since the end of World War II. Third, it concentrates on the study of conservatism by sociologists and those working in cognate disciplines; while not all the authors are card-carrying sociologists, their works reflect a sociological character, although the exception to this third point is the overview section, which presents key readings by advocates of conservatism, and thus offers insider depictions of the meaning of conservatism. Fourth, this article does not concentrate solely on extremist right-wing movements; rather, in surveying the relevant literature on American conservatism broadly construed, it points to a growing consensus that the radical right wing has pushed mainstream conservatism increasingly further to the right.


Legal Studies ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Luther

When the topic of severance of a beneficial joint tenancy is discussed, most judges and academics start with the case of Williams v Hensman. The judgment of Sir William Page Wood V-C is the ‘locus classicus’, the ‘starting point for any discussion of the modem law’. One paragraph of Page Wood's judgment is quoted in case after case:‘A joint tenancy may be severed in three ways: in the first place, an act of one of the persons interested operating on his own share may create a severance as to that share. The right of each joint tenant is a right by survivorship only in the event of no severance having taken place of the share which is claimed under the jus accrescendi. Each one is at liberty to dispose of his own interest in such a manner as to sever it from the joint fund - losing, of course, at the same time, his own right of survivorship.


Author(s):  
Weiam Hussein ◽  
Fawaz Alheibshy ◽  
Farhan Alshammari

The coronavirus pandemic is a modern social emergency and the biggest global challenge since the Second World War. Since the pandemic began in China at the end of 2019, the disease spread to every landmass except Antarctica. The effect of antiviral drugs on the new corona virus has been tested, but no basic and complete cure has been found, although there are many drugs such as  interleukin-6 inhibitor,  monoclonal antibody and corticosteroid which remarkably reduced mortality of critically ill COVID-19 patients in a major clinical trial. Although not enough experimental data has been released yet, many researchers have hailed the result as a step in the right direction. In this review, a series of the newly chemical derivatives were synthesized and evaluated against human coronavirus. Many derivatives found to be active in inhibiting the cellular infection of human coronavirus which causes the SARS-CoV-2pandemic. This mini- review summarizes the synthesis of these new antiviral derivatives that target coronaviruses and describes general current strategies and models for developing antiviral drugs. The review aims to provide a starting point for medicinal chemists to synthesize necessary and effective drugs against coronaviruses.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-127
Author(s):  
Silvia Alves

This article draws a reconstruction of Thomas Hobbes’ philosophy of crime and punishment. In Leviathan or Philosophical rudiments (De Cive) political science, legal theory and philosophy of crime and punishment compose a coherent unity. This scenario where power and law emerge allows to erect an extraordinarily modern theory that shelters preference for statutory law and suspicion of judicial discretion; consistency and predictability of the legal system; preventism and utilitarianism on punishments; prohibition of ex post facto laws and, in general, defense of strict legality. Boldness and the disconcerting frankness of Hobbes’ thinking coexist with some defiant antinomies. The duty to obey never eclipses the inalienable right to self-preservation. And the theorist of absolute sovereignty can present himself as an unexpected liberal. But perhaps the most disturbing is the permanent reminder that punishment remains brutal violence. The right to punish and the right to resist are the brutal remains of the state of nature.


Author(s):  
Mabrouk Shneeb Zarrouk Nafkha Mabrouk Shneeb Zarrouk Nafkha

Medical treatment is mutual consent between two parties, the doctor on the one hand, and the patient on the other, to conduct a therapeutic intervention, which is initially the main goal of this research. By adopting an analytical and descriptive methodology for legal texts, opinions of jurisprudence, and judicial jurisprudence, the physician is free, in principle, to select and contract with his patients. This is what the study aims to clarify. The physician has the right to consent to contracting with or rejecting a specific patient, regardless of the nature of the motive. A doctor, like other people, has complete freedom to practice his profession in the manner that he pleases. As he has the right to accept or reject the invitation for treatment, he is not obligated to answer the patient's request. A critical reading of these texts and a comprehensive look at the opinions reveal that the doctor's refusal of treatment could come as a result of professional reasons and/or personal reasons. Others add the cases of religious convictions and the inability resulting from his lack of specialization in treating the disease. However, considering the concept of social justice, the freedom to practice the medical profession is no longer an absolute freedom exercised in that traditional individual spirit that entitles those with free professions to practice it or refrain from practicing it as they please, which is what the researcher seeks to explain. Medicine in general is nothing but a social function in which the practitioner must seek the spirit of social solidarity. As a result of these social views, the physician must commit to performing them according to the best interests of society. The doctor is not entitled to refrain from helping or answering the call of a patient. On the other hand, the study aims to clarify that medical treatment requires the patient's consent as well. It was found that there was a difference of jurisprudence regarding this, but it does not prevent the doctor from making obligations towards the patient. While some jurists believe that the doctor or surgeon has the right to impose a medical decision whose necessity he assesses in the light of his conscience and experience, even against the will of the patient, others maintain that he cannot treat the patient without taking his free and enlightened consent. Still others see that the patient must be satisfied specifically in certain cases. In this sense, the doctor is allowed to tell white or open lies. The study concluded that the doctor must, at all stages, show the patient the feasibility of the required treatment and surgery and the extent of their success before each medical or surgical intervention. The result of the recognition of the patient’s right to maintain his physical sanctity must also work on the principle of the doctor’s obligation to provide the patient with this information and inquiries until the patient’s satisfaction comes enlightened or insightful despite the emergence of realistic problems related to obtaining the patient’s satisfaction The study generally recommends: 1- Enacting new laws that override the jurisprudential differences over consent, define its cases and arrange responsibility for it. 2- Assigning a substitute to the doctor to enlighten the patient and search for his consent in specific cases 3- Appraising the creative role of jurisprudence in the article of medical contracting and resolving the related problems.


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