scholarly journals The Legal Balance Between Liberty and Equality

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 675-689
Author(s):  
Isabel Trujillo

The paper explores the specific legal balance between liberty and equality, distinguishing it from political theories and constitutional settings, where they are often considered in opposition. In order to find the specific legal balance between liberty and equality, and after identifying some of their relevant meanings for the purpose, it becomes necessary to focus on the rule of law, and to examine the relationship between liberty and equality in its different versions. Once the core meaning of the rule of law in terms of liberty and equality is enucleated, it is possible to consider extending it to the international field.

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511878781 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Suzor

Platforms govern users, and the way that platforms govern matters. In this article, I propose that the legitimacy of governance of users by platforms should be evaluated against the values of the rule of law. In particular, I suggest that we should care deeply about the extent to which private governance is consensual, transparent, equally applied and relatively stable, and fairly enforced. These are the core values of good governance, but are alien to the systems of contract law that currently underpin relationships between platforms and their users. Through an analysis of the contractual Terms of Service of 14 major social media platforms, I show how these values can be applied to evaluate governance, and how poorly platforms perform on these criteria. I argue that the values of the rule of law provide a language to name and work through contested concerns about the relationship between platforms and their users. This is an increasingly urgent task. Finding a way to apply these values to articulate a set of desirable restraints on the exercise of power in the digital age is the key challenge and opportunity of the project of digital constitutionalism.


2019 ◽  
pp. 143-163
Author(s):  
Anne Dennett

This chapter assesses the rule of law. The rule of law is a constitutional value or principle which measures good governance, fair law-making, and applying law in a just way. It acts as a protecting mechanism by preventing state officials from acting unfairly, unlawfully, arbitrarily, or oppressively. These are also key terms in judicial review. The rule of law is also regarded as an external measure for what a state does; if the rule of law breaks down in a state, it will fail to function in an internationally acceptable way. Ultimately, the core meaning of the rule of law is that the law binds everyone. This includes those in government, who must obey the law. Moreover, any action taken by the government must be authorised by law, that is, government needs lawful authority to act.


2021 ◽  
pp. 166-187
Author(s):  
Anne Dennett

This chapter assesses the rule of law. The rule of law is a constitutional value or principle which measures good governance, fair law-making, and applying law in a just way. It acts as a protecting mechanism by preventing state officials from acting unfairly, unlawfully, arbitrarily, or oppressively. These are also key terms in judicial review. The rule of law is also regarded as an external measure for what a state does; if the rule of law breaks down in a state, it will fail to function in an internationally acceptable way. Ultimately, the core meaning of the rule of law is that the law binds everyone. This includes those in government, who must obey the law. Moreover, any action taken by the government must be authorised by law, that is, government needs lawful authority to act.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0067205X2199313
Author(s):  
Michael Legg

The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing mandated health protections saw courts turn to communications technology as a means to be able to continue to function. However, courts are unique institutions that exercise judicial power in accordance with the rule of law. Even in a pandemic, courts need to function in a manner consistent with their institutional role and their essential characteristics. This article uses the unique circumstances brought about by the pandemic to consider how courts can embrace technology but maintain the core or essential requirements of a court. This article identifies three essential features of courts—open justice, procedural fairness and impartiality—and examines how this recent adoption of technology has maintained or challenged those essential features. This examination allows for an assessment of how the courts operated during the pandemic and also provides guidance for making design decisions about a technology-enabled future court.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Jaffe ◽  
Antonio Canova ◽  
Jose Gregorio Contreras ◽  
Ana Cecilia Soares ◽  
Juan Carlos Correa ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Gabdrakhman H. Valiev ◽  
Sergey V. Kondratyuk ◽  
Natalia A. Prodanova ◽  
Irina A. Babalikova ◽  
Kermen I. Makaeva ◽  
...  

The problem of the relationship of law and order is relevant to any modern society. The article tries to analyze this relationship, taking into account judicial, police and other activities. The named concepts are closely interconnected, but are not identical. They are correlated as cause and effect: there is a rule of law, there is no rule of law. One suggests the other. The rule of law as concrete reality logically precedes the rule of law as a doctrine, the connection here is hard, causal. The process is one. Law and order: a real indicator of the state of legality, reflects the degree of compliance with the laws, the requirements of all legal regulations. It is concluded that the rule of law is the end result of the implementation of legal requirements and, at the same time, the objective of legal regulation, since it is for the formation and maintenance of the rule of law that laws are issued, thus like other regulatory legal acts, various institutions and bodies and, above all, the justice system, the control system, various human rights organizations and social movements.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlatka Bilas ◽  
Mile Bošnjak ◽  
Sanja Franc

The aim of this paper is to establish and clarify the relationship between corruption level and development among European Union countries. Out of the estimated model in this paper one can conclude that the level of corruption can explain capital abundance differences among European Union countries. Also, explanatory power of corruption is higher in explaining economic development than in explaining capital abundance, meaning stronger relationship between corruption level and economic development than between corruption level and capital abundance. There is no doubt that reducing corruption would be beneficial for all countries. Since corruption is a wrongdoing, the rule of law enforcement is of utmost importance. However, root causes of corruption, namely the institutional and social environment: recruiting civil servants on a merit basis, salaries in public sector competitive to the ones in private sector, the role of international institutions in the fight against corruption, and some other corruption characteristics are very important to analyze in order to find effective ways to fight corruption. Further research should go into this direction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 1072-1097
Author(s):  
Atina Krajewska

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between reproductive rights, democracy, and the rule of law in transitional societies. As a case study, it examines the development of abortion law in Poland. The article makes three primary claims. First, it argues that the relationship between reproductive rights and the rule of law in Poland came clearly into view through the abortion judgment K 1/20, handed down by the Constitutional Tribunal in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. The judgment and the context in which it was issued and published are interpreted as reflections of deep-lying processes and problems in Polish society. Consequently, second, the article argues that analysis of the history of reproductive rights in recent decades in Poland reveals weak institutionalization of the rule of law. This is manifest in the ways in which different professional groups, especially doctors and lawyers, have addressed questions regarding abortion law. Therefore, third, the article argues that any assessment of the rule of law should take into account how powerful professional actors and organizations interact with the law. The Polish case study shows that reproductive rights should be seen as important parts of a “litmus test,” which we can use to examine the efficacy of democratic transitions and the quality of the democracies in which such transitions result.


Author(s):  
Stefano Civitarese

The article revolves around the doctrine of precedent within the so-called European legal space, wondering whether and to what extent we can speak of a convergence towards a stare decisis model boosted by the harmonizing role of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The article argues that although there are still some differences between civil law and common law legal systems they regard more the style of reasoning and the deep understanding of the relationship between the present decision of a court and past judicial decisions than the very existence of the constraints of the latter upon the former. The article concludes that a sort of mechanism of stare decisis has in fact been created, even though, on the one hand, uncertainty remains as to the way in which the binding force of a precedent concretely operates in the system, and on the other hand, this mechanism relates exclusively to the relationships between past and future decisions of higher courts (horizontal effect). This change, far from being a shift towards a truly judge-made law system or a consequence of the final abandonment of the dictates of the rule of law, enhances legal certainty contributing to the fundamental requirement of stability of law as a feature of the ideal of the rule of law.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 21-29
Author(s):  
Alexander Vladimirovich Konovalov ◽  

The article is devoted to the analysis of the general principle of law — ensuring guarantees of individual rights and the inalienability of his legal status. According to the author, they are provided by the synergistic action of private and public law regulation. The article convincingly shows that private and public law is a single system of values with different levels of generalization of terms and different methodology. At the same time, it is the private legal mechanisms that are the basis, the core of the rule of law.


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