scholarly journals The constitution as a (non) fundamental law for the authorities and society (on the specifics of Ukraine's newest constitutional process)

Author(s):  
Mykola Tomenko

Despite the fact that the Ukrainian state since of June 28, 1996 has been living by its own Constitution, there is still a scientific discussion about optimal model of the Basic Law of Ukraine. In particular, one of the key problems is that specialists, scholars and constitutionalists are not involved in the process of discussing amendments to the Constitution and the creation of laws that would comply with the Constitution of Ukraine. It should also be noted that the Basic Law was usually changed not in the process of legislative evolution, but after the election of a new president. That can be attributed to the fact that the legal society has not formed from the very beginning due to respect for the Constitution and the need for full adaptation of legislation to it. Thus, to date, there are no constitutional laws, which are directly referred to in the Basic Law of the country. So far, there are no laws, "On the All-Ukrainian Referendum", "On the Local Referendum", "On the Imperative Mandate", "On the Procedure for Forming and Repaying Public Debt" and laws regulating the activities of the parliamentary coalition and opposition. The approval at the level of the Constitution also requires the Great State Emblem of Ukraine. It is also necessary to amend the Constitution, which will clearly regulate the procedure for entry into force of decisions adopted in all-Ukrainian and local referendums. The article states that in the process of Constitutional reform the Basic Law needs certain terminological clarifications, such as "indigenous peoples". The purpose of the article is to determinate at least three directions of the modern constitutional debate – conservative, evolutionary and revolutionary ways. It is proved that the revolutionary initiatives of the authorities in the matter of radical change of the Con\stitution have no professional justification and social legitimacy. Conservative and evolutionary approaches have been proposed and taken as their basis, which presupose, on the one hand, the importance of promoting respect for the Constitution and the need for its implementation, and, on the other, a professional and socially sensitive approach to amendments to the Constitution.

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (5) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
Талия Хабриева ◽  
Taliya Khabriyeva

The article deals with the theoretical aspects relating to reforms in the fundamental law of a State — Constitution. It is noted that the Constitution is a developing legal substance which is shaped by and dependent on the existing economic, political, social and even ideological situation; conservation of the basic law can cause both public tension, and also hamper the evolution of statehood. The author attends to the correlation of notions of “constitutional reform” and “change of the constitution”. Also analyzed are the approaches towards the definition of the term of constitutional reform which have been elaborated by the doctrine. It contains a detailed list of terminology which is used in the science of constitutional law and has a direct relevance to reformation of the constitution. Emphasis is made on the new trend in research in the science of constitutional law which reflects the two-sided approach — on the one hand, a factor of progress, and on the other hand, — may be viewed as a tool necessary to make public relations stable and dynamic. The article contains a list of model provisions for the present day constitution which potentially can be employed. It relates to the provisions of the constitution relating to the status of a person, also, economic, social and political systems, etc. Comparative law approach is applied to the contents of constitutional reforms of the XX and XXI centuries in various countries. It notes that a stable basic law of a country is a key symbol of a legal identity of a nation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 311-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edoardo CHITI

AbstractThe European responses to the financial and public debt crisis have triggered a process of administrative reorganisation and growth in the governance of the internal market in financial services and economic and monetary union. Such a process is characterised by four main tensions, referring respectively to: the powers conferred on the satellite administrative bodies established in order to tackle the crisis; the jurisdictions of the new administrations; the degree of centralisation which is sought within the new mechanisms for the implementation of EU laws and policies; and to the accountability mechanisms. The effects of such tensions are deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, they might operate as ‘fault lines’ within the EU administrative machinery. On the other hand, by pointing to a host of unsolved issues in EU administrative law, they provide an opportunity for opening a genuine institutional and scientific discussion on the ways in which the EU administrative system should be adjusted or reformed.


2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daphne Barak-Erez

Administrative law in Israel is at the crossroads. Historically, Israeli administrative law was born from English administrative law and like its English counterpart was developed against the background of two significant factors: the relative dearth of constitutional law concerning the protection of human rights on the one hand, and the power of the central government on the other. These two factors had traditionally contributed to the centrality of administrative law that underwent a radical change. First, constitutional law is now an independent source for the recognition and enforcement of human rights following the enactment of new basic laws on human rights—Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation and Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. Second, privatization has changed completely the scope and pattern of activities conducted by administrative agencies in both countries.This Article discusses the developments in Israeli administrative law as a result of these changes. In this context, it also evaluates the potential recourse to American administrative law, which has grown in the context of a well developed constitutional law and a relatively low level of government activity in the economic sphere.The Article argues that the main focus of administrative law—in contrast to constitutional law—should be on the protection of interests (that are not considered human rights), on distributive justice, on procedural justice (in the context of bureaucratic decision-making) and on a broader scope of review (not limited to the protection of human rights), with a special emphasis on the executive branch. In the context of adapting to privatization, it also argues that administrative law should strengthen its focus on the challenge of regulation, on the protection of social rights and on the duties of “mixed” bodies, which are, in many cases, the product of privatization.


Lex Russica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (10) ◽  
pp. 137-146
Author(s):  
I. N. Spitsin

The active development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology poses the question of how to integrate this phenomenon into legal reality, about the limits of using this technology in social practices regulated by law, and ultimately about developing an optimal model of legal regulation of AI. The paper focuses on the problem of developing the legal content of the concept of AI, including some methodological and ontological foundations of such work. The author brings to the scientific discussion certain constant characteristics of AI that are significant for legal regulation, which, if adopted by the legal scientific community, could be used as a scientifically sound basis for constructing specific variants of legal regulation that meet the needs of a particular sphere of social practice. The author believes that the scientifically based legal concept of AI is largely able to determine the direction and scope of applied legal research on the multidimensional problems of using AI technology in social interaction practices, including in the administration of justice, to distinguish the legal issues and problems related to this from ethical, philosophical, technological and other issues.According to the author, the task of forming the legal concept of AI is not limited to the formulation of specific legal definitions and cannot be solved at this level. The result of the juridification of the concept of AI should be a set of unchangeable (constant) legal characteristics, while specific definitions of this term in regulations may differ depending on the needs of legal regulation practice. In the work on the formation of a legally significant concept of AI, it is proposed to abandon the descriptive essentialist approach aimed at identifying the essence of AI in favor of an ascriptive constructivist approach, which involves attributing to the content of the concept of AI those legal properties that, on the one hand, are significant for the purposes of legal regulation, and on the other hand, limit the limits of legal regulation.


2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byung Sook de Vries ◽  
Anna Meijknecht

AbstractSoutheast Asia is one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world. Nevertheless, unlike minorities and indigenous peoples in Western states, minorities and indigenous peoples in Asia have never received much attention from politicians or legal scholars. The level of minority protection varies from state to state, but can, in general, be called insufficient. At the regional level, for instance, within the context of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), there are no mechanisms devoted specifically to the protection of minorities and indigenous peoples. In December 2008, the ASEAN Charter entered into force. In July 2009 the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the ASEAN Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights were adopted. Both the Charter and the ToR refer to human rights and to cultural diversity, but omit to refer explicitly to minorities or indigenous peoples. In this article, the extent to which this reticence with regard to the protection of minorities and indigenous peoples is dictated by the concept of Asian values and ASEAN values is explored. Further, it is analysed how, instead, ASEAN seeks to accommodate the enormous cultural diversity of this region of the world within its system. Finally, the tenability of ASEAN's policy towards minorities and indigenous peoples in the light of, on the one hand, the requirements of international legal instruments concerning the protection of minorities and indigenous peoples and, on the other hand, the policies of the national states that are members of ASEAN is determined.


Author(s):  
Nedas Jurgaitis ◽  

The present article deals with the genesis of the notion “concept” in German cognitive semantics. The aim of the study is to present the origin and development of the notion “concept” from a diachronic perspective. The genesis of the notion “concept” in linguistics, particularly cognitive semantics, is an object of discussion. It reveals a connection between ancient ideas about word meaning and trends in modern linguistics. The roots of the notion can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy – the concept debuts as a primal notion of mental experiences in Aristotle’s writings. However, the controversial translation of ancient works leaves room for scientific discussion regarding the prototype of the notion. In the Middle Ages, the word concept originated in European languages from Latin, later establishing itself in scientific discourse through the influence of Neo-Scholasticism, Frege’s conception of logic and the semiotic triangle, as well as the principle of the arbitrariness of linguistic signs. Finally, the notion concept gains importance in the transition from objective to the subjective perception of the meaning of linguistic units (the shift from structuralism to cognitivism) and becomes under the influence of cognitive psychology, the central term in cognitive linguistics in the 1970s and 1980s. The unconventional use of the notion in linguistic studies, on the one hand, makes meta-analyses of the semantics of certain concepts more difficult; on the other hand, it favours disciplinary and methodological diversity in today’s linguistic research.


2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-58
Author(s):  
Emilio Dabed

This article sheds new light on the political history of legal-constitutional developments in Palestine in the fourteen years following the Oslo Accord. It examines the relationship between the unfolding social, political, and economic context in which they arose, on the one hand, and PA law-making and legal praxis, on the other. Focusing on the evolution of the Palestinian Basic Law and constitutional regime, the author argues that the “Palestinian constitutional process” was a major “battlefield” for the actors of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Thus, changes in the actors' political strategies at various junctures were mirrored in legal-constitutional forms, specifically in the political structure of the PA. In that sense, the constitutional order can be understood as a sort of “metaphoric representation” of Palestinian politics, reflecting, among other things, the colonial nature of the Palestinian context that the Oslo process only rearticulated. This perspective is also essential for understanding the evolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after Oslo.


Author(s):  
Oksana Krushnitska

This article discusses the relationship between legal, legal aid and legal assistance. The lack of a clear distinction between the term "legal assistence" and the terms "legal aid" and "legal" has led, in our observations, to the conclusions of individual authors and entire institutions that Ukraine's law enshrines in fact a triple system legal aid. Studies have shown that the legislator distinguishes between "legal aid" and "legal" (or legal) assistance, depending on the subject of assistance. Positive trends in the replacement of legal aid terminology with professional legal aid have been identified and shown. At he article notes that the development and establishment of independent professional legal assistance continues in the future. A large number of reforms and changes, especially at the constitutional level, on the one hand, contribute to improving and improving the development of the institution of professional legal assistance, and on the other hand, there are many contradictions and inconsistencies in this regard, because the introduction of new terms is always a supporter for its introduction and against it. Legal aid is the most successful term and should be interpreted as a multidimensional legal practice aimed at ensuring the rule of law and the realization of the rights of each person who enters into a specific legal relationship, the content of which is the implementation of legally defined means, including legal advice and clarification of the rights and procedures for their implementation, assistance in the preparation and filing of applications, petitions, complaints and other legal documents, initiation and participation in procedural actions and proper recording of their course and results, assessment of the adherence, validity and admissibility of evidence, analysis of the legality of legal decisions, taking measures to remedy infringed cases. to, damages caused offense. It also includes some of the problems that need to be addressed by further consolidating professional legal assistance in other regulations to ensure their compliance with the Basic Law of Ukraine.


JAHR ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
Elena Vvedenskaya

The article discusses the bioethical aspects of robotics in surgery and assesses the impact of this process on the relationship between the physician and the patient. An engineering model is gradually replacing the traditional paternalistic model of the physician-patient relationship. If paternalism implies the doctor’s attitude to the patient as his sick child, which requires compassion, help, and great responsibility on the part of the doctor, then when implementing the second model, the doctor, like a technical executor, performs only the responsibilities provided by the job description. On the one hand, the dominance of a technical-type model carries the threat of depersonalizing the patient and eliminating contact between the physician and the patient. On the other hand, this contributes to a radical change in the concept of medicine. Why people usually go to doctors? For establishing a diagnosis, prescribing a course of treatment, a prescription, and performing medical manipulations? Machines, leaving a human with a completely different role in the relationship between the physician and the patient, will increasingly perform these actions. The release of doctors from routine tasks will allow them to pay more attention to patient care, fully demonstrating their human qualities. The article analyzes the surgeon’s place in modern medicine and makes an attempt to determine which category the surgery belongs to, “machine territory” or “human territory”.


Politik ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Jacobsen ◽  
Jeppe Strandsbjerg

By signing the Ilulissat Declaration of May 2008, the five littoral states of the Arctic Ocean pre-emptively desecuritized potential geopolitical controversies in the Arctic Ocean by confirming that international law and geo-science are the defining factors underlying the future delimitation. This happened in response to a rising securitization discourse fueled by commentators and the media in the wake of the 2007 Russian flag planting on the geographical North Pole seabed, which also triggered harder interstate rhetoric and dramatic headlines. This case, however, challenges some established conventions within securitization theory. It was state elites that initiated desecuritization and they did so by shifting issues in danger of being securitized from security to other techniques of government. Contrary to the democratic ethos of the theory, these shifts do not necessarily represent more democratic procedures. Instead, each of these techniques are populated by their own experts and technocrats operating according to logics of right (law) and accuracy (science). While shifting techniques of government might diminish the danger of securitized relations between states, the shift generates a displacement of controversy. Within international law we have seen controversy over its ontological foundations and within science we have seen controversy over standards of science. Each of these are amplified and take a particularly political significance when an issue is securitized via relocation to another technique. While the Ilulissat Declaration has been successful in minimizing the horizontal conflict potential between states it has simultaneously given way for vertical disputes between the signatory states on the one hand and the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic on the other.


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