scholarly journals The Effects of Constitutional Changes on the Judiciary System in Albania: The Process of Vetting

2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Evis Garunja

The adoption of laws in Albania is often achieved through consensus among legislators, declaring it as the best solution for a certain political or legal situation, which resulted ineffective in many cases. The focus of law improvements was concentrated on control/Vetting, that is, the exclusion from the judicial system of individuals who do not meet one of the three constitutional criteria (wealth, moral integrity, and professionalism). Vetting, control per se, is not a reform of justice, but only one of its constitutive phases. The Albanian Constitution changes aim to restructure the justice institutions to achieve the standards requested for the Albanian EU integration. The paper goes through the different constitutional reforms, focusing on the judicial system changes especially on the recent results of the vetting process in Albania. The questions like: How is the Vetting process affecting judicial standards, how are the new Albanian justice institutions reacting, what is the public opinion on this progress and the benefits of society, are essential to understand how this process was conducted in Albania, its problems and difficulties. The results are explained through underlining different studies, media interventions, and recent political and public statements of involved institutions.   Received: 19 August 2021 / Accepted: 1 November 2021 / Published: 3 January 2022

China Report ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-345
Author(s):  
Qian Qin ◽  
Ziyu Li ◽  
Xiaotong Jiao

Mainland China and Taiwan are two significant regions currently executing the death penalty; especially, Mainland China alone is believed to implement an amount of executions even larger than the total of all other countries. However, although Mainland China and Taiwan share the Chinese language, as well as traditional culture, the public’s opinions on the death penalty diverge. There is no evidence showing that more people are becoming abolitionists, albeit different social groups, domestic and overseas, are trying to propel the process of abolitionism. The public’s opinions on the death penalty are highly influenced by various factors, including cultural and historical ones, which are considered to be fundamental. Besides, the media, the public’s confidence in the judicial system, nationalism and international pressure also impact the public opinion. The governments of both Mainland China and Taiwan should take further actions in terms of the judicial system.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauro Cerbino ◽  
Francesca Belotti

Constitutional reforms in Ecuador and Bolivia and the subsequent laws on communications have opened up the media space to new social and political actors: public and community media. While the former tend to be associated with the state in form and with governments in substance, the latter are not clearly defined and occupy a place in the midst of the hegemonic struggle between the public and private sectors to enable citizens to actively intervene in the competition for shaping public opinion. It is therefore necessary to lay the groundwork for a definition of “community media” that includes both its legal and sociopolitical dimensions. Indeed, operationalizing such a definition might allow community media to recognize themselves in it and to take the measures required to fully project themselves as subjects of the law. Las reformas constitucionales de Ecuador y Bolivia, y las siguientes leyes de comunicación, han abierto el espacio mediático a nuevos actores sociales y políticos: los medios públicos y los comunitarios. Si los primeros tienden a ser referibles al Estado en la forma y a los gobiernos en la sustancia, los segundos se quedan indefinidos e irrumpen en la lucha hegemónica entre los sectores público y privado, para que la ciudadanía intervenga de forma activa en la disputa por la generación de opinión pública. Por lo tanto, es necesario sentar las bases para una definición del concepto de “medio comunitario” que sepa mantener unidas las dimensiones de significado legales y socio-políticas. Traducir en términos operativos esta definición podría permitir a los medios comunitarios reconocerse en los rasgos observables del concepto y, por ende, tomar medidas para proyectarse plenamente como sujetos de derecho.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 249
Author(s):  
Dr.Sc. Azem Hajdari ◽  
MSc. Shpresa Ibrahimi ◽  
MSc. Albulena Hajdari

Law no. 03/L-199 on Courts1 represents a law of significant importance which regulates the organisation, functioning and jurisdiction of courts of the Republic of Kosovo. This law has made numerous reforms in the judicial system of the country. It has set the bases of a modern and sustainable judicial system. In fact the Law on Courts in addition to having changed the judiciary of Kosovo in the aspect of organisation, it has opened the paths in the aspect of ensuring an efficient functioning thereof. Moreover, this law has repealed the application of the Law of former SAP of Kosovo on Regular Courts which in some aspects did not correspond to the trends of contemporary developments in this field. Law on Courts in its solutions embeds the bases of an independent and impartial justice, further on being multiethnic, non-discriminatory, efficient and in principle having an advanced approach of the opportunity for the public opinion to follow the judicial activities. Consequently, within this work, the background of the development of judicial system in Kosovo shall be discussed, some aspects of its reforming and challenges currently the judicial system of the country faces.In the course of preparation of this work, legal-historical method has been applied, the dogmatic method too, method of comparison and the method of analysis and synthesis. Through the legal-historical method, the manner of organisation and activity of the judicial system in Kosovo has been reflected covering the time of Turkish rule up to 2013 basing it on the laws and the Albanian customary law.The dogmatic method has helped on reflecting the manner of organisation and activity of the judicial system in Kosovo, viewing it in the context of regulating these matters through the Law on Courts presently applicable.The comparative method has reflected the features of the new judicial system in Kosovo and a comparison has been undertaken to the characteristics of earlier judicial system. The method of analysis and synthesis has been applied to elaborate in detail specific articles of the Law on Courts, they were commented and in some cases concrete proposals have been given for solution, considered as advanced.


2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Ola Hnatiuk

The subject of this text is integration with the West in Ukrainian public debate in the period between the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan (2004–2014). The author suggests that the gradual shift in public opinion after 2006, from an EU orientation toward Ukraine’s integration with the Eurasian Customs Union (since 2014 the Eurasian Union, the EAU), was connected with the passivity of pro-Western intellectuals. Having allowed themselves to be pushed out of the newspapers and national television channels, which belong to oligarchs, they found a communications niche in new media forums, where contact with the public is much more limited in terms of numbers. The author also points out the manipulation of public opinion by state services during Janukovych’s presidency for the purpose of marginalizing the national-democratic camp. The author analyzes the changes in opinions expressed by Jurii Andruchovych: from articulating openness to the European project and a civil concept of the Ukrainian nation, through doubting in the possibility of integration with the EU, to accenting the ethnic qualities of Ukrainianness and an elite exclusiveness. In the author’s opinion, another cause of the lack of stability in public opinion on EU integration was EU policy, which was devoid of a long-term strategy in regard to Ukraine.


2012 ◽  
pp. 24-47
Author(s):  
V. Gimpelson ◽  
G. Monusova

Using different cross-country data sets and simple econometric techniques we study public attitudes towards the police. More positive attitudes are more likely to emerge in the countries that have better functioning democratic institutions, less prone to corruption but enjoy more transparent and accountable police activity. This has a stronger impact on the public opinion (trust and attitudes) than objective crime rates or density of policemen. Citizens tend to trust more in those (policemen) with whom they share common values and can have some control over. The latter is a function of democracy. In authoritarian countries — “police states” — this tendency may not work directly. When we move from semi-authoritarian countries to openly authoritarian ones the trust in the police measured by surveys can also rise. As a result, the trust appears to be U-shaped along the quality of government axis. This phenomenon can be explained with two simple facts. First, publicly spread information concerning police activity in authoritarian countries is strongly controlled; second, the police itself is better controlled by authoritarian regimes which are afraid of dangerous (for them) erosion of this institution.


2020 ◽  
pp. 316-328
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Susca

Contemporary communicative platforms welcome and accelerate a socio-anthropological mutation in which public opinion (Habermas, 1995) based on rational individuals and alphabetic culture gives way to a public emotion whose emotion, empathy and sociality are the bases, where it is no longer the reason that directs the senses but the senses that begin to think. The public spheres that are elaborated in this way can only be disjunctive (Appadurai, 2001), since they are motivated by the desire to transgress the identity, political and social boundaries where they have been elevated and restricted. The more the daily life, in its local intension and its global extension, rests on itself and frees itself from projections or infatuations towards transcendent and distant orders, the more the modern territory is shaken by the forces that cross it and pierce it. non-stop. The widespread disobedience characterizing a significant part of the cultural events that take place in cyberspace - dark web, web porn, copyright infringement, trolls, even irreverent ... - reveals the anomic nature of the societal subjectivity that emerges from the point of intersection between technology and naked life. Behind each of these offenses is the affirmation of the obsolescence of the principles on which much of the modern nation-states and their rights have been based. Each situation in which a tribe, cloud, group or network blends in a state of ecstasy or communion around shared communications, symbols and imaginations, all that surrounds it, in material, social or ideological terms, fades away. in the air, being isolated by the power of a bubble that in itself generates culture, rooting, identification: transpolitic to inhabit


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Ormston ◽  
John Curtice ◽  
Stephen Hinchliffe ◽  
Anna Marcinkiewicz

Discussion of sectarianism often focuses on evidence purporting to show discriminatory behaviour directed at Catholics or Protestants in Scotland. But attitudes also matter – in sustaining (or preventing) such discriminatory behaviours, and in understanding the nature of the ‘problem of sectarianism’ from the perspective of the Scottish public. This paper uses data from the Scottish Social Attitudes survey 2014. The survey fills a gap in the evidence base by providing robust evidence on what the public actually thinks about sectarianism in modern Scotland. It assesses public beliefs about the extent and nature of sectarianism and its perceived causes. Tensions in public opinion and differences in the attitudes of different sections of Scottish society are explored.


Resonance ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-327
Author(s):  
Shuhei Hosokawa

Drawing on Karin Bijsterveld’s triple definition of noise as ownership, political responsibility, and causal responsibility, this article traces how modern Japan problematized noise, and how noise represented both the aspirational discourse of Western civilization and the experiential nuisance accompanying rapid changes in living conditions in 1920s Japan. Primarily based on newspaper archives, the analysis will approach the problematic of noise as it was manifested in different ways in the public and private realms. In the public realm, the mid-1920s marked a turning point due to the reconstruction work after the Great Kantô Earthquake (1923) and the spread of the use of radios, phonographs, and loudspeakers. Within a few years, public opinion against noise had been formed by a coalition of journalists, police, the judiciary, engineers, academics, and municipal officials. This section will also address the legal regulation of noise and its failure; because public opinion was “owned” by middle-class (sub)urbanites, factory noises in downtown areas were hardly included in noise abatement discourse. Around 1930, the sounds of radios became a social problem, but the police and the courts hesitated to intervene in a “private” conflict, partly because they valued radio as a tool for encouraging nationalist mobilization and transmitting announcements from above. In sum, this article investigates the diverse contexts in which noise was perceived and interpreted as such, as noise became an integral part of modern life in early 20th-century Japan.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 266-273
Author(s):  
Ivan S. Palitai

The article is devoted to the modern Russian party system. In the first part of the article, the author shows the historical features of the parties formation in Russia and analyzes the reasons for the low turnout in the elections to the State Duma in 2016. According to the author the institutional reasons consist in the fact that the majority of modern political parties show less and less ability to produce new ideas, and the search for meanings is conducted on the basis of the existing, previously proposed sets of options. Parties reduce the topic of self-identification in party rhetoric, narrowing it down to “branded” ideas or focusing on the image of the leader. In addition, the author shows the decrease in the overall political activity of citizens after the 2011 elections, and points out that the legislation amendments led to the reduction of the election campaigns duration and changes in the voting system itself. The second part of the article is devoted to the study of the psychological aspects of the party system. The author presents the results of the investigation of images of the parties as well as the results of the population opinion polls, held by the centers of public opinion study. On the basis of this data, the author concludes that according to the public opinion the modern party system is ineffective, and the parties don’t have real political weight, which leads to the decrease of the interest in their activities and confidence in them. The author supposes that all this may be the consequence of the people’s fatigue from the same persons in politics, but at the same time the electorate’s desire to see new participants in political processes is formulated rather vaguely, since, according to the people, this might not bring any positive changes.


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