scholarly journals Professional Self-Regulation and the Public Interest in Canada

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey L. Adams

The regulation of professional groups has often been justified as being in the public interest. In recent decades, policymakers in Anglo-American countries have questioned whether self-regulating professions have truly served the public interest, or whether they have merely acted in their own interests. This paper draws on legislative records and policy reports to explore meanings attached to professional self-regulation and the public interest in Canada by state actors over the past 150 years. The findings point to a shift in the definition of the public interest away from service quality and professional interests, towards efficiency, human rights, consumer choice, and in some contexts business interests. Changing views of the public interest contribute to regulatory change.

1996 ◽  
Vol 17 (8) ◽  
pp. 279-283
Author(s):  
Kathi J. Kemper

Over the past 50 years, health care has grown more complex and specialized. Health-care institutions now are staffed with an array of specialist physicians, social workers, psychologists, therapists, and nutritionists as well as general practitioners and nurses. The types of providers outside of the hospital are even more numerous and diverse: physicians; nurses; nurse practitioners; chiropractors; counselors; acupuncturists; herbalists; spiritual healers; and purveyors of nutritional supplements, aromatherapy, crystals, and more. Intent on distinguishing their "products," providers focus on differences, polarizing into distinct camps such as "mainstream or traditional" versus "alternative or unconventional." Although these dichotomies are simple, they also can mislead. The definition of "alternative" is very dependent on the definition "mainstream"; acupuncture may be an alternative in one setting, but it clearly is traditional within Asian communities. Therapies that once were considered unconventional, such as hypnosis and meditation, have moved into many mainstream medical settings. (See Sugarman article "Hypnosis: Teaching Children Self-regulation" in the January 1996 issue of Pediatrics in Review.) The public wants health care that is low-cost, safe, effective, and personalized. Practitioners of "natural" therapies often are viewed as more humanistic and less technological than busy physicians. According to one study, in 1990, alternative medical therapies were used by nearly one third of Americans.1


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stan Lester

Professional self-regulation is often conceptualised as involving the delegation of state powers to professional groups.  An examination of four groups in the United Kingdom provides examples of self-regulation that have developed, with one partial exception, without the support of any statutory framework. Some common aspects of self-regulation are identified along with some differences that relate to how the professions have evolved, and to their operating contexts. Significant influences include how the profession is situated among adjacent groups, the degree of demand from clients and employers for qualified practitioners, and potentially whether the occupation is suitable as an initial career or requires  a measure of maturity and prior experience. An argument is made for greater recognition, both through practical examples and in academic discourse of self-regulation that is initiated and furthered voluntarily through negotiation between professions, their members and their clients rather than via legislative powers. 


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 149-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Trabucco

Law societies in Canada have long been granted the privilege of self-regulation by the state – a privilege that comes with a statutory duty to govern in the public interest. There exists an access to justice crisis in this country. More must be done to address unmet legal needs. There is nothing new in this, but law societies across Canada are reluctant to implement at least one ready solution. Ontario introduced paralegal regulation over ten years ago with the promise that it would increase access to justice. Evidence suggests that it has done so. Yet no other Canadian jurisdiction is prepared to regulate paralegals as independent providers of legal services. Law societies’ continued resistance to the regulation of paralegals is contrary to the public interest. This paper argues that to alleviate the access to justice crisis, it is time to regulate paralegals.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marija Karanikić Mirić ◽  
Tatjana Jevremović Petrović

The subject of this paper is the special legal regime for administrative contracts under the recently enacted Serbian Law on General Administrative Procedure of 2016. We offer a comprehensive analysis of the new statutory rules, and examine their relationship to the general rules and principles of Serbian contract law. In addition, we identify the main shortcomings of the new regime, especially in the context of the lack of any statutory, scholarly and judicial typology of administrative contracts in Serbia. Furthermore, we highlight the lack of references to the notions of public interest, public purpose or public needs in the statutory definition of administrative contracts. This is cause for concern, since only the need to protect the public interest could justify the new statutory provisions, which significantly improve the contractual position of a public body as a contracting party in relation to the position of a private entity as the other party in administrative contracts. There is as yet no case law pertaining to administrative contracts in Serbia. This is why we turn to practical experience in the Croatian legal system, which is sufficiently similar and historically connected to Serbia via a shared Yugoslav heritage. We also consider German and French legal models, since they traditionally serve as comparative points of reference for Serbian legal scholars, judges and law makers.


Author(s):  
Alison Harcourt ◽  
George Christou ◽  
Seamus Simpson

The conclusion situates the book’s findings in academic debates on democracy and the Internet, global self-regulation, and civil society, and international decision-making processes in unstructured environments. It assesses whether current standards-developing organization (SDO) decision-making is able to bridge historical representation gaps and deficiencies. A nuanced pattern is emerging with increasing inclusion of a wider number of actors within SDO fora. The first part of the chapter returns to the Multiple Streams (MS) framework applied to the case studies on a comparative basis. It identifies key processes under which SDO rules of interaction are established at the international level and explains which interests have come to the fore within decision-making highlighting the occurrence of policy entrepreneurship, forum shopping, and coupling. The final part explores additional frameworks for SDO regulation where spaces for public interest consideration might occur in the future. These are opportunities for inserting public interest considerations into international and national Acts, certification programmes, and the move towards open source solutions for Internet management. The book concludes that, although the literature is expansive on the interaction of corporate sector actors within SDOs, the study of other actors, such as digital rights groups, civil society, academics, policy entrepreneurs and the technical community as a whole, has been underdressed in the literature on international self-regulatory fora to date. In this respect, the book raises important questions of representation of the public interest at the international level by having addressed the actions of actors within SDO fora who promote public interest goals.


2021 ◽  
pp. 44-46
Author(s):  
Xiaowei Sun

This chapter focuses on administrative procedure and judicial review in China. Despite its willingness to adapt to the rules of the global market, China does not accept the direct applicability of international standards in administrative litigation. Judicial review of administration is based on a set of legislative texts and judicial interpretations by the Supreme People's Court. Among these texts, the Administrative Litigation Law regulates the judicial review of administrative acts. There are two lists in its chapter concerning the scope of judicial review: one includes the administrative acts that are open to judicial review, another the acts that are not reviewable. In any case, it is up to the courts to examine the following two combinations of criteria: the degree of the seriousness of the infringement with the definition of the state interest and that of the public interest; and the degree of procedural breach with the definition of the real impact on the rights of the plaintiff. According to Article 76 of the ALL, in the case of annulment and/or declaration of unlawfulness of an administrative act, a court may order the administration to take measures to compensate the damage inflicted on the plaintiff.


Author(s):  
Gloria González Fuster

Article 4(9) (Definition of ‘recipient’); Article 12 (Transparent information, communication and modalities for the exercise of the rights of the data subject); Article 16 (Right to rectification), Article 17(1) (Right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’)); Article 18 (Right to restriction of processing); Article 58(2)(g) (Powers of supervisory authorities); Article 89(3) (Safeguards and derogations relating to processing for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes).


2014 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 116-117
Author(s):  
Andrew Montgomery

The commonly used definition of a professional is someone who is educated and trained to a standard that has certain strict codes of both ethical and moral responsibility and is often applied to someone working in the public interest for the good of society. The agreed relevant professional associations lay down ethical and moral standards.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document