Conventionalism and Legitimate Expectations

To be a conventionalist about a specific obligation or right is to believe that the obligation or right is dependent on the existence of a social practice. A conventionalist about property, for example, believes that a moral right to property is generated by conventional norms rather than by any natural right. One problem with dominant conventionalist theories is that they do not adequately justify conventional moral claims. They can justify why it is wrong to steal, for example, but they do not justify the claim that you have on me to not steal from you. As a remedy, this article develops and defends the Principle of Legitimate Expectations. Suggested by John Rawls, this principle grants individuals a moral claim to what the rules of morally justified practices entitle them. This article addresses common objections to the principle to show how it can ground a wide range of conventional moral claims.

The Principle of Open and Competitive Recruitment to Official Posts in Local Government Units in Poland

This article is to present the principle of open and competitive recruitment for official positions, applicable under the Polish Act on local government employees. The point of departure for the discussion on the provisions of the Act is the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Not only has the analysis covered the regulation contained in the Act on employees of local government , but also addressed the relationship between the employer's specific obligation to re-employ the employee on the basis of the provisions of the Polish Labour Code and the rule of general recruitment for official positions applicable under the Law on local government employees. These considerations are largely of a practical nature, based in particular on the relevant case-law and on the professional experience of the author herself, who is a local government staff member employed as an attorney-at-law in a local government unit of the regional level.

Part VI Other Procedures Related to the Application of the Antitrust Rules, 16 Infringements of the Antitrust Rules by the EU Member States

This chapter looks at the procedure for the enforcement of antitrust rules in case of infringements by Member States. The ability of Member States to distort competition has been accordingly reflected in the EU legal system. Member States are subject to a specific obligation to respect the provisions of the Treaty under Article 106 TFEU; they are obliged to adhere to the principle of sincere cooperation as reflected in Article 4(3) TEU; and any support to companies they wish to grant is subject to state aid control. Furthermore, the general infringement procedure pursuant to Article 258 TFEU can be used to hold a Member State liable for any breach of the Treaty rules. The chapter deals with procedural rules relating to the former two forms of state behaviour captured by Article 106 TFEU and Article 4(3) TFEU—in conjunction with Articles 101 or 102 TFEU.

Intergenerational Communities

Under the human flourishing theory of property, owners have obligations, positive as well as negative, that they owe to members of the various communities to which they belong. But are the members of those communities limited to living persons, or do they include non-living persons as well, i.e., future persons and the dead? This Article argues that owners owe two sorts of obligation to non-living members of our generational communities, one general, the other specific. The general obligation is to provide future generations with the basic material background conditions that are necessary for them to be able to carry out what I call life-transcending projects that their forebears have transmitted to them. The specific obligation is project-specific; that is, its purpose is to enable successive generational community members to whom particular life-transcending projects have been forwarded to be carried out in their way. The future generational members to whom the project is transferred must also be given whatever resources or goods are necessary to carry the project forward in its intended way. I argue further that each generational community owes its predecessors the obligation to accept life-transcending projects transmitted to them by their forebears and make reasonable efforts to carry those projects forward into the future. The obligation is based on the past generational community members’ dependency on their successors for the projects to continue into the future, a matter that is constitutive of the project creators’ flourishing. This obligation is defeasible, rather than absolute, however.

Restorative Justice and Transitional Justice at the ECHR

The entire jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights contains just one reference to ‘restorative justice’, in the 2010 case of Đokić v. Bosnia and Herzegovina. The case concerned housing restitution after the conflict in former Yugoslavia and the reference to restorative justice was a quotation from the UN’s ‘Pinheiro Principles’. In its admissibility decision on 31 May 2011 in the case of Sfountouris and Others v. Germany, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed that the Convention imposes upon Contracting States no specific obligation to redress injustice or damage caused by their predecessor. Likewise, the Convention imposes no duty upon states to restore property which was transferred to them before they ratified the Convention (Kopecky v. Slovakia), or even to establish legal procedures in which restitution of property may be sought (Beshiri v. Albania). Yet restorative justice has real potential in transitional contexts, and means far more than property restitution. This article seeks definitional clarity and tracks the relationship between restorative justice and transitional justice in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, encompassing not only property restitution cases but also cases on successor trials, amnesties, truth and memorialisation, and lustration. The analysis draws upon recent scholarship on the sometimes antagonistic relationship between successor regimes’ transitional justice policies and their human rights obligations.

Prawo do śmierci

Contemporary medical practices based on new technical inventions make it possible to prolong the patient’s life and his coma as well. Even if we assume that the patient has a specific obligation to stay alive it does not follow that it is the doctor’s duty to prolong his life indefinitely by using all possible techniques of resuscitation. The time has come to reformulate the proper objectives of medicine in order to make them compatible with the right to die. (Editors)