Lockdown: A Commentary

The Collins dictionary has elected lockdown as its word-of-the-yearn 2020. Defined as “the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction and access to public spaces”, decided by governments “to mitigate the spread of COVID-19”, for Collins’ lexicographers “lockdown” took the top spot because it is a unifying experience for billions of people across the world, who have had, collectively, to play their part in combating the spread of the virus. Faced with the unknown of a brand-new virus, governments all over the world reacted in a rather familiar way, by suspending the normal flow of social life through the implementation of measures that are usually categorised as a state of exception. This article is a commentary that aims at placing the practice of lockdown (as a governmental administrative measure) in the context of the theory of state and government. To the extent that emergencies are always revelatory, this paper will argue that the state of exception – of which the lockdown is a sub-category – in displaying state’s sovereign power is exposing the radical impotence in which it is grounded, and from which it takes its ultimate meaning and function.

Administrative Procedure and Judicial Review in Hungary

This chapter studies administrative procedure and judicial review in Hungary. Section (1) of Article XXVIII of the Basic Law of Hungary (the Constitution of 2011) regulates the right to a fair trial reproducing the text almost word-for-word as found in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Consequently, anyone effected by an administrative measure has the (constitutional) right to judicial review. Section (7) guarantees the right to legal remedy against decisions of the courts, the public administration, or other authorities that infringe their rights or demonstrable interests. The two regulations are effective even separately, but their combined effect is that the judicial review of administrative action is an incontestable constitutional right. Administrative courts decide on the legality of the administrative action from the point of view of substantive and procedural administrative law, the judicial review is regulated by Act I of 2017 on the Code on Judicial Review of Administrative Actions, while a lawsuit for damages is heard by the ordinary court in a civil law procedure regulated by Act CXXX of 2016 of the Code of Civil Judicial Procedures.

Administrative Procedure and Judicial Review in Belgium

This chapter evaluates administrative procedure and judicial review in Belgium. The Belgian Constitution embodies, in particular, two constitutional provisions for the judicial oversight of unilateral administrative measures. A Council of State was established pursuant to Article 160 of the Constitution. Under the Act adopted on the basis of this provision, the Council of State is responsible for judicial review, on condition that such review has not been attributed to another ordinary or administrative court. Moreover, Article 159 requires judges not to apply any unilateral administrative measure that would be unlawful in the context of a dispute that they are called upon to settle. All unilateral administrative provisions, whether regulatory or individual, may be reviewed. A procedural error does not necessarily lead to the censure of the unilateral administrative provision in question. However, the breach of a requirement that the administration has to fulfil leads not only to the censure of the provision but can, as the case may be, give rise to compensation.

Self-Ruled and Self-Consecrated Ecclesiastic Schism as a Nation-Building Instrument in the Orthodox Countries of South Eastern Europe

The Orthodox concept of autocephaly, a formerly organizational and administrative measure, has been a powerful nation-building tool since the 19th century. While autocephaly could be granted—from the perspective of the Orthodox canon law—in an orderly fashion, it was often the case that a unilateral, non-canonical way towards autocephaly was sought. This usually took place when the state actors, often non-Orthodox, intervened during the nation-building process. We investigated the effects of unilateral declarations of autocephaly (through a schism) by comparing Bulgarian, Northern Macedonian, and Montenegrin examples. We contend that the best success chances are to be expected by the ecclesiastic body that is less willing to make major transgressions of the canon law, than to radicalize the situation after the initial move. This is mostly because autocephaly’s recognition requires a global acceptance within the circle of the already autocephalous churches. We also suggest that the strong political backing of the autocephaly movement can paradoxically have a negative impact on its ultimate success, as it can prolong the initial separation phase of the schism and prevent or postpone the healing phase, and with it, the fully fledged autocephaly.

Exploring the penumbra of punishment under the ECHR

Administrative sanctions can be said to dwell in the periphery of punishment because they do not require setting the wheels of criminal procedure in motion. This allows States to save public resources as well as helps them to escape closer scrutiny at the judicial level. At the same time, the imposition of administrative sanctions usually curtails individual guarantees. Against this background, this article examines where the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) draws the line between measures belonging to the ‘hard core of criminal law’ and the periphery. After a presentation of gradual broadening of the ‘criminal limb’ guarantees of Article 6 European Convention on Human Rights to administrative measure of a punitive nature, it explores where do these guarantees meet their limits by taking the approach adopted in the landmark Jussila judgment as a point of departure. Subsequently, a structured analysis of the selected ECtHR case law in which this approach has been applied or – at least – invoked is provided. The article is finished with a reflection on the current interpretation of the said penumbra of punishment, which, among other things, identifies the possible gaps of individual protection, and the outlook for the future.

Development, Distribution, and Maintenance of Application Security Controls for Nuclear

The generic concept of security controls, as initially deployed in the information security domain, is gradually used in other business domains, including industrial security for critical infrastructure and cybersecurity of nuclear safety instrumentation & control (I&C). A security control, or less formally, a security countermeasure can be any organizational, technical, or administrative measure that helps in reducing the risk imposed by a cybersecurity threat. The new IAEA NST036 lists more than 200 such countermeasures. NIST SP800-53 Revision 4 contains about 450 pages of security countermeasure descriptions, which are graded according to three levels of stringency. In order to facilitate and formalize the process of developing, precisely describing, distributing, and maintaining more complex security controls, the application security controls (ASC) concept is introduced by the new ISO/IEC 27034 multipart standard. An ASC is an extensible semiformal representation of a security control (extensible markup language or javascript object notation-based), which contains a set of mandatory and optional parts as well as possible links to other ASCs. A set of ASCs may be developed by one company and shipped together with a product of another company. ISO/IEC 27034-6 assumes that ASCs are developed by an organization or team specialized in security and that the ASCs are forwarded to customers for direct use or for integration into their own products or services. The distribution of ASCs is supported and formalized by the organization normative frameworks (ONFs) and application normative frameworks (ANFs) deployed in the respective organizational units. The maintenance and continuous improvement of ASCs is facilitated by the ONF process and ANF process. This paper will explore the applicability of these industry standards based ASC lifecycle concepts for the nuclear domain in line with IEC 62645, IEC 62859, and the upcoming IEC 63096. It will include results from an ongoing bachelor thesis and master thesis, mentored by two of the authors, as well as nuclear-specific deployment scenarios currently being evaluated by a team of cybersecurity Ph.D. candidates.

Development, Distribution and Maintenance of Application Security Controls for Nuclear

The generic concept of Security Controls, as initially deployed in the information security domain, is gradually used in other business domains, including industrial security for critical infrastructure and cybersecurity of nuclear safety I&C. A Security Control, or less formally, a security countermeasure can be any organizational, technical or administrative measure that helps in reducing the risk imposed by a cybersecurity threat. The new IAEA NST036 lists more than 200 such countermeasures. NIST SP800-53 Rev. 4 contains about 450 pages of security countermeasure descriptions, which are graded according to three levels of stringency. In order to facilitate and formalize the process of developing, precisely describing, distributing and maintaining more complex security controls, the Application Security Controls (ASC) concept is introduced by the new ISO/IEC 27034 multipart standard. An ASC is an extensible semi-formal representation of a security control (e.g. XML or JSON-based), which contains a set of mandatory and optional parts as well as possible links to other ASCs. A set of Application Security Controls may be developed by one company and shipped together with a product of another company. ISO/IEC 27034-6 assumes that ASCs are developed by an organization or team specialized in security and that the ASCs are forwarded to customers for direct use or for integration into their own products or services. The distribution of ASCs is supported and formalized by the Organization Normative Frameworks (ONF) and Application Normative Frameworks (ANF) deployed in the respective organizational units. The maintenance and continuous improvement of ASCs is facilitated by the ONF Process and ANF Process. This paper will explore the applicability of these industry standards based ASC lifecycle concepts for the nuclear domain in line with IEC 62645, IEC 62859 and the up-coming IEC 63096. It will include results from an ongoing bachelor thesis and master thesis, mentored by two of the authors, as well as nuclear specific deployment scenarios currently being evaluated by a team of cybersecurity PhD candidates.