A ‘Bail-In’ of Social Rights? The Cypriot Experience of the Financial Crisis

Author(s):  
Constantinos Kombos ◽  
Athena Herodotou

The chapter first analyses the events that led to the collapse of the Cypriot banking sector and to the conclusion of the agreement with Troika to provide €10 billion in the unprecedented form of a ‘bail-in’. It also examines the uncertain legal nature of the MoU in the Cypriot legal order, in the sense that the legislator ratified it as an international treaty as per article 169 of the Constitution; yet, it is doubtful whether the MoU could come under that provision. Moreover, the chapter provides a general overview of the national social security and healthcare system and analyses in depth the structural reforms and cuts in the social system which resulted, directly or indirectly, from the financial crisis. The chapter then turns to the parliamentary process for adopting these reforms and examines whether it was affected by the MoU. Finally, the chapter examines the limited number of applications that were adjudicated by the Administrative Court (or the Supreme Court), which challenged the constitutionality of some reforms introduced due to the financial crisis.

1978 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Klein

In his case note on the famous Bergmann decision of the Supreme Court, Professor Akzin wrote: While the Court's conclusions seem to be perfectly justified and went so far as they could in the circumstances, the reasoning in its decision shows serious flaws… [others] seem to have sprung from the Court's unwillingness to look for help to the very thorough discussion of the issues by several Israeli scholars, notably Messrs. Sternberg, Akzin, Klinghoffer and Rubinstein. The dignity of the Court would not have suffered if the opinion-writing judge had taken a look at academic writing in a case where precedents offer little or no guidance.These remarks probably express the most original view ever put forward on this land mark case. They emphasize the crux of the complex constitutional problem discussed in the Bergmann case, i.e., the definition of the legal nature of the basic laws in the legal order of Israel. The extremely abstract questions involved in that discussion, indeed, the most abstract that exist in public law, concern the definition of the nature of the power which adopts the Constitution and more specifically, of the power which amends the Constitution.


2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 299-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoram Rabin ◽  
Yuval Shany

AbstractThis article addresses the constitutional discourse surrounding the status of economic and social rights in Israel. It examines the principal interpretive strategies adopted by the Supreme Court with regard to the 1992 basic laws (in particular, with respect to the right to human dignity) and criticizes the Court's reluctance to apply analogous strategies to incorporate economic and social rights into Israeli constitutional law. Potential explanations for this biased approach are also critically discussed. The ensuing outcome is a constitutional imbalance in Israeli law, which perpetuates the unjustified view that economic and social rights are inherently inferior to their civil and political counterparts, and puts in question Israel's compliance with its obligations under the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. At the same time, encouraging recent Supreme Court decisions, particularly the YATED and Marciano judgments, indicate growing acceptance on the part of the Court of the role of economic and social rights in Israeli constitutional law, and raise hopes for a belated judicial change of heart concerning the need to protect at least a ‘hard core’ of economic and social rights. Still, the article posits that the possibilities of promoting the constitutional status of economic and social rights through case-to-case litigation are limited and calls for the renewal of the legislation procedures of draft Basic Law: Social Rights in the Knesset.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan McGaughey

Abstract What explains the election of the 45th President of the United States? Many commentators have said that Trump is a fascist. This builds on grave concerns, since Citizens United, that democracy is being corrupted. This article suggests the long term cause, and the shape of ideology is more complex. In 1971, an extraordinary memorandum of Lewis Powell for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged that ‘[b]usiness interests’ should ‘press vigorously in all political arenas for support’. Richard Nixon appointed Powell to the Supreme Court, and a few years later, despite powerful dissent, a majority in Buckley v. Valeo held that candidates may spend unlimited funds on their own political campaigns, a decision of which Donald Trump, and others, have taken full advantage. Citizens United compounded the problems, but Buckley v. Valeo was the ‘Trump for President’ case. This provided a platform from which Trump could propel himself into extensive media coverage. The 2016 election was inseparable from the social ideal pursued by a majority of the Supreme Court since 1976. No modern judiciary had engaged in a more sustained assault on democracy and human rights. Properly understood, ‘fascism’ is a contrasting, hybrid political ideology. It mixes liberalism’s dislike of state intervention, social conservatism’s embrace of welfare provision for insiders (not ‘outsiders’), and collectivism’s view that associations are key actors in a class conflict. Although out of control, Trump is closely linked to neo-conservative politics. It is too hostile to insider welfare to be called ‘fascist’. Its political ideology is weaker. If we had to give it a name, the social ideal of Donald Trump is ‘fascism-lite’.


Author(s):  
Anna Moskal

Does forgiveness nullify the effects of previous disinheritance? The legal nature of forgiveness is the subject of passionate debates among the representatives of civil law doctrine. According to the dominant position in the literature, forgiveness is an act of affection or its manifested expression of forgiveness of the perpetrator of experienced injustice and related to this grudge. This institution has been applied three times in the Civil Code — once with the donation agreement, twice in regulations of inheritance law. Article 1010 § 1 provides that a testator cannot disinherit eligible for legal portion if he forgave him. The wording of the above article indicates that accomplishment of disinheritance in case if testator eligible for legal portion has previously forgiven. The legislator did not, however, determine the effects of forgiveness in relation to previous disinheritance. In the act of 1971, the Supreme Court accepted that such forgiveness would automatically nullify the effects of disinheritance, and could be made in any form. In recent years, lower courts have begun to question the Supreme Court's position, and judges increasingly refer to the critical statements of numerous doctrines. As it was rightly stated, admitting the possibility of invoking the forgiveness made after disinheritance poses a serious threat to the realization of the testator’s will, who, by forgiving, does not necessarily want to revoke the effects of his previous disinheritance. The postulate of de lege ferenda is, according to the author of the article, giving of freedom of judging the effects of forgiveness to the courts and each examination of the forgiving testator’s will on the possible abatement of the consequences of previous disinheritance.]]>


Author(s):  
Miren Jasone URKOLA IRIARTE

LABURPENA: Auzitegi Gorenari indultu partzialaren gaian Gobernuak garatutako jardunaren izaera juridikoa zehazteko aukera eman dio bere Hirugarren Salaren Osokoak 2013ko azaroaren 20an adostutako Epaiak. Izaera juridiko hori oinarritzat harturik, administrazio-auzien jurisdikzioak gara dezakeen kontrola aztertuko du ondoren: bereziki, elementu arautuen teknikaren bidez gauza dezakeena [LJren 2(a) art.]. Eremu honetan, Indultu Legeari buruz Auzitegi berak egin izan duen interpretazioa iragazi, eta joera berria ezarriko du, gai berean jarraian argitaratutako epaietan berretsia dirudiena. RESUMEN: La Sentencia del Pleno de la Sala Tercera del Tribunal Supremo de 20 de noviembre de 2013 ofrece al Tribunal Supremo la oportunidad de precisar la naturaleza jurídica de la actuación del Gobierno en materia de indulto, para analizar posteriormente la extensión del control practicable en sede contencioso-administrativa, de modo especial, a través de la técnica de los elementos reglados [art. 2(a) LJ], un ámbito en el que tamiza la lectura de la Ley de Indulto que venía realizando el propio órgano judicial. Marca, así, una nueva tendencia que parece confirmada en sentencias posteriores. ABSTRACT: The judgment by the Third Section plenary of the of the Supreme Court from November 20th of 2013 gives the Supreme Court the chance to establish the legal nature of the Government action regarding the pardon, in order to analyze subsequently the extension of the control to be carried out by the contentious-administrative jurisdiction, specially by means of the technic of the regulated elements [art. 2(a) LJ], a field where it weights up the reading of the Act of Pardon that used to do the same judicial body. It marks therefore a new tendency that seems to be confirmed in later judgments.


2021 ◽  
pp. 240-243
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld

Chapter 18 describes social science research of the 1940s and 1950s that showed how segregation harmed both minority and majority populations and thereby played a role in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. Between 1896, when the Supreme Court endorsed segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson to 1954, when the Supreme Court rejected segregation, social science had built a consensus about the many harms and costs that racial segregation imposed on Black and on White children. Like school desegregation, marriage equality’s victories in the courts were built on a social science consensus, specifically the social science consensus that children raised by same-sex couples have good outcomes.


Author(s):  
Yseult Marique

Analysing the administrative case law of the Belgian Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, this chapter shows that the Supreme Court applied the main features of a positivist legal thought (based on the assumption of clarity, coherence, and completeness of the formal law) to administrative action and its legality. It equipped the central and local institutions of the State with functioning powers, allowing an operational state to develop despite social unrest. As the social and technological context changed at the end of the nineteenth century, the statute book became more confused, however. This gave the Supreme Court ample room to interpret the law creatively and pragmatically. The ‘administrative miracle’ in Belgium is that the Supreme Court did not shackle social forces and unbridle the administration so much that the very course it wanted to avert actually happened. This may be down to the creative judicial genius that the Belgian judiciary developed a formal approach whilst deciding pragmatically on the substance of cases.


2017 ◽  
Vol 865 ◽  
pp. 667-671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Antonio Coelho Lopes ◽  
Mara Telles Salles

This work proposes and appreciates the use of content analysis techniques on dilemmas involving economic growth and environmental sustainability. To achieve this purpose, uses the asbestos issue, through the exam of specialists’ communications in a public audience on the Federal Supreme Court, in which the unconstitutionality of the State law that forbids the utilization of this material. The specialists who were called by the Supreme Court are divided between those who admit the possibility of its safe use and the ones who preach its ban and their speeches are studied based on the differences between the different kinds of asbestos, serpentine and amphibole. Additionally, are considered the social costs of its maintenance in terms of health and social security and the costs involved in its substitution in terms of job positions, income and derivative products’ prices. The content analytical techniques proved adequate to the evaluation of speeches and communications between currents with distinct positioning in terms of sustainability and development.


1986 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 358-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mordechai Kremnitzer

In recent years a new trend has appeared in decisions of the Supreme Court concerning the interpretation of criminal prohibitions. According to this trend – which will be analysed in the course of this article – a penal statute must be interpreted in the same way as every other statute, there being no rule of restrictive interpretation particular to criminal law. The interpreter must choose that interpretative option which best realizes the objective of the legislation, even when that option is based on the irregular and secondary meaning of the words. The legislative objective is often identified by the Court as the broadest possible defence of the social interest protected by the norm. It is this trend that we wish to discuss, or rather, to criticize.


1958 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 1026-1029 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Roche

I want to dissent initially from the rather constricting frame of reference that Schubert has established in his paper. He has every right in the world to set rhetorical snares, but I have no intention of walking into them. If I may summarize, Schubert asserts that he is a spokesman for a radical new direction in the study of public law, claiming that the old ways are moribund. He further urges that we should look with envy at the creative function of the social psychologists who supplied the Supreme Court with the banners it carried in Brown v. Board of Education while we were bumbling around with historical and philosophical trivia. He concludes that instead of wasting our time with talmudic disputations on whether the Supreme Court reached the “right” or the “wrong” decisions in specific cases, we should settle down to build a firm “scientific” foundation for our discipline.Not the least amusing aspect of this indictment is that I find myself billed as the defender of the ancien régime, as the de Maistre of public law. Therefore, for the benetfit of the young and impressionistic, let me break loose from Schubert's rhetorical trap: I too think that much of the research done in public law—and, for that matter, in political science generally—has been trivial.


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