The Evolution of a European Perspective on Disability Legislation

1994 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 343-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresia Degener ◽  
Aart Hendriks

AbstractIn this article a comparison is made between various disability theories and their impact on European disability and health legislation. The official disability theories focus on the individual with disabilities. Legislation that emanates from these medically inspired theories has been shown to be inaccurate and inadequate in finding appropriate solutions for disability issues. Alternative theories have developed in response. These theories emphasize the importance of the interrelationship between individuals and their environment. In parallel, new disability legislation and programmes have evolved that acknowledge the social and human rights aspects of disability issues. Up until now health lawyers have played a minor role in the disability debate. They are strongly invited to join the many ongoing discussions. It is felt that their input is particularly needed with respect to a number of issues presently at the forefront of medicine, ethics and law.

Author(s):  
Bohdan Gulyamov

The concept of human rights and the dignity of the individual, contained in the new social doctrine of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, proposes to recognize modern theories of human rights and their implementation in today's democracy as self-evident truths. These truths are quite legitimate in religious discourse, because the personal dignity of man as capable of mystical communion with God is absolute. The Orthodox Church presupposes that the dignity and freedom of the individual, his vocation and perfection are much higher than all the many values and norms offered by modern secular moral and legal consciousness, relevant international acts and constitutional norms. In the field of social doctrine, this leads to the requirement of absolute recognition of classical human rights and freedoms. No conclusions are drawn about the need to accept today's expanded interpretation of human rights, because the absolute dignity of the individual is not protected for the sake of approving ideas and practices that show signs of totalitarian coercion.


Author(s):  
Bogdan Gulyamov

Orthodox social doctrine as a discipline is formed without the elements of scholastic thinking that are characteristic of Catholicism. This is due to the fact that social doctrine in Orthodoxy is thought of as an expression of tradition, not the teaching of the church. Also, the methodology of the social doctrine of the Ecumenical Patriarchate was significantly influenced by the fact that the initial principle for all reflections was the value of the dignity of the individual. The absolutization of this value has made it possible to create a Christian humanism that opposes the ideological extremes of modern cultural wars, including the abuse of the idea of human rights. The ROC uses methodological anti-scholasticism in the construction of social doctrine to legitimize the ideas of Orthodox fundamentalism. Against this background, the social doctrine of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is becoming a worldview alternative, critical to the development of Ukrainian theology and education.


Author(s):  
Ipsen Knut

This chapter examines the regulation of combatant status in treaty law and the many challenges for combatant status in recent armed conflicts. The primary status under international law of persons in an international armed conflict will be one of two categories of persons: ‘combatants’ and ‘civilians’. Combatants may fight within the limits imposed by international law applicable in international armed conflict, that is, they may participate directly in hostilities, which members of medical or religious personnel and ‘non-combatants’ may not do because they are excluded—by international law and by a legal act of their party to the conflict—from the authorization to take a direct part in hostilities. The chapter then discusses ‘unlawful combatants’, or what may be considered the better term: ‘unprivileged belligerents’. The term ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ was particularly used after 11 September 2001, to introduce a third category of persons which under existing law may be either combatants or civilians, but are denied such status as not fulfilling essential conditions. To use this third category in order to reduce the individual protection below the minimum standard of human rights is under no circumstances legally acceptable.


Idi Amin ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 276-309
Author(s):  
Mark Leopold

This chapter studies Idi Amin's downfall. It begins by detailing how the death of Anglican Archbishop Janani Luwum led to wide international condemnation and galvanised the many competing opposition groups among the exiles. Between February 28 and March 3, 1978, a closed session of the UN Commission on Human Rights finally agreed to launch a formal investigation of human rights abuses in Uganda. By the end of 1978, the Tanzanian army, with a considerably smaller number of Ugandan refugee fighters, had massed in force near the border. In January of 1979, they crossed into Uganda. The key factor in the Tanzanians' victory was the overall weakness of the Ugandan troops. The chapter then explains how Amin's regime had destroyed much of the social solidarity and national feeling which had just about held the country together in the face of ethnic rivalries under the first Obote administration. This became evident in the chaos that followed the Tanzanian invasion, and especially under Milton Obote's second regime. Finally, the chapter describes Amin's retirement and analyses how he survived in power for so long.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-522
Author(s):  
Megan C Kurlychek

New York State is one of only two states in the nation that processes all 16- and 17-year-old defendants as adults. Contrary to this seemingly punitive stance, the state also maintains a Youthful Offender Statute that requires mitigated punishments for youths up to their 19th birthday upon court designation of youthful offender status. This study empirically examines the individual and combined impact of the social status of being a “minor” and the legally awarded status of being designated a youthful offender, upon adult court sentencing decisions framing the discussion within broader conceptualizations of youthfulness, culpability, and punishment. Utilizing a population of all youths ages 16–21 whose cases were disposed in New York between 2000 and 2006, this study finds the legally defined status of youthful offender to provide much greater mitigation at sentencing than the more general social status of being a minor. Findings are discussed as they relate to categorical and individualized assessments of culpability. In addition, as the study finds individualized assessments of culpability to be related to factors such as gender and race, broader implications for the role of court assigned statuses and mitigation of punishment are offered.


1989 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-33
Author(s):  
Tamäs Földesi

To create a state-theory that can answer the social problems of today, to break away from the theses that merely interpret the classics – as the sciences dealing with the economy managed to do during the past 15–20 years – is the main task of social sciences dealing with the theoretical issues of the state these days. If they fail to do so, their work will be forced to the periphery of the social movements, will not be able to assist the processes of society. It is my conviction that this is a vast responsibility of the social sciences in our age.


1998 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 1388-1394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian A. Beyaert ◽  
Janeen M. Hill ◽  
Brock K. Lewis ◽  
Marc P. Kaufman

Airway dilation is one of the many autonomic responses to exercise. Two neural mechanisms are believed to evoke these responses: central command and the muscle reflex. Previously, we found that activation of central command, evoked by electrical and chemical stimulation of the mesencephalic locomotor region, constricted the airways rather than dilated them. In the present study we examined in decerebrate paralyzed cats the role played by the hypothalamic locomotor region, the activation of which also evokes central command, in causing the airway dilator response to exercise. We found that activation of the hypothalamic locomotor region by electrical and chemical stimuli evoked fictive locomotion and, for the most part, airway constriction. Fictive locomotion also occurred spontaneously, and this too, for the most part, was accompanied by airway constriction. We conclude that central command plays a minor role in the airway dilator response to exercise.


2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Arnold

In the alternative fairy tale The Princess Bride, as William Goldman's character Miracle Max reanimates the apparent corpse of the hero Westley, he tells the anxious group observing the procedure: ‘There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive’ (Goldman 2007, 313). Only a select group of the dead can be characterized as being ‘slightly alive’, in the post-mortem agency sense, however, and the case studies presented here explore the many ways in which this subcategory of mostly dead individuals have engaged with and continue to impact the living in the past as well as today. Several themes emerge as especially salient: the iteration in the death-scape of the dynamic tension between the individual and the social group, which can result in transgression as well as conformity in the disposition of the body and its effects on the living; the symbolic capital represented by some dead bodies and the ways in which their potency may be affected by various forms of contextual association; and the ways in which the manipulation of the dead for political purposes is subject to constraints specific to the cultural contexts in which these interactions take place.


2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 534-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Cassidy

In this article it is contended that state practice, as evidenced in the declarations of the judiciary and the many treaties and conventions guaranteeing human rights, reveals a consensus of opinion acknowledging the individual to be an international juristic entity. So extensive is this practice that it could be seen as marking the emergence of a new customary international norm; or at least a general principle of international law, yet to crystallise into a custom; acknowledging the individual as the beneficiary of international rights. This is important for individuals and minority groups because if they possess international rights independently of the State, enforcement of their rights will no longer depend on the interests of the State. Where the State is often the offender of human rights, international law will not effectively confer any real rights unless the individual is so recognised as an inter- national juristic entity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 1529-1535
Author(s):  
Rumiana Budjeva

Stigma is a powerful tool for social control. It can be used to differentiate, exclude or exert pressure on certain individuals or groups of people who have certain characteristics. Stigma does great harm to both the individual and society as a whole. The main objective of stigma is to maintain visible the negative qualities of the individual in order to place them in a disadvantaged position and lasting social and psychological isolation. However, stigma goes beyond the level of the individual and becomes a social problem when it affects wider categories of people. The main purpose of the report is to seek adequate scientific approaches and methods to understanding and study of the phenomenon social stigma. Stigmatized people are often subject to rejection and social exclusion. In its extreme forms stigma turns into discrimination which directly violates their civil and human rights. Stigma and discrimination, seen as violations of fundamental human rights, can occur at different levels: political, economic, social, psychological and institutional. As social processes through which social control is created and maintained, generating, legitimizing and reproducing social inequality, stigma and discrimination are at the heart of the vicious circle in which some groups of people are underestimated and others feel superior and untouchable. To illustrate the process of stigmatization, we will use the example of people living with HIV / AIDS. Theory of stigmatization plays an important explanatory role in the experience of a comprehensive understanding of the social relations of phenomena such as HIV / AIDS. The deep understanding of the mechanisms by which stigma and discriminatory attitudes affect the overall life of people living with HIV / AIDS will help us not only to treat adequate them, but to form a workable and effective action against the spread of the disease. From the moment when scientists are confronted with HIV and AIDS, the social response to fear, denial, stigma and discrimination has accompanied the epidemic. It can be said that HIV and AIDS are more of a social phenomenon than a pure biological or medical problem. It leads to an unfounded sense of shame and guilt and a sense of futility. Stigma incites depression and despair, causes lack of self-esteem. It pushes people to mental and social isolation and deprives them of support and care, increasing their vulnerability. In this way, stigma exacerbates the negative impact of the disease and increases the risk of its spread.


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