The problems of interpreting GATT Article XXI(b)(iii) in Russia – Traffic in Transit

Purpose This paper aims to further study the panel report in Russia – Traffic in Transit regarding the interpretation and application of 1994 general agreements on tariffs and trade (GATT) Article XXI(b). It analyses the threshold applied by the panel in applying Article XXI(b)(iii) and further discusses the potential problem that may arise in the future dispute. This study also investigates the notion of emergency and security interest and its development in international law. Design/methodology/approach This normative research uses a qualitative legal methodology. This study conducts desk analysis of primary legal materials and existing literature to assess the concept of security interest within the World Trade Organization (WTO) framework. Findings This paper finds that the panel in Russia – Traffic in Transit applied subjective and objective test in reviewing Russia’s invocation of GATT Article XXI(b)(iii). Despite the adjectival self-judging clause and the political tension of the dispute, the panel is capable to review its application. This study further finds that the term security interest and emergency in international relations still leaves the possibility of open interpretation. Research limitations/implications Because of the normative research approach, the research results lack empirical data and implications. Therefore, future research is encouraged to inquire on the empirical research. Originality/value This paper fulfils the need to study and explore security exception clause within the WTO framework as a normative rule of law and in the wider conceptual notion of security and emergency in international law.

Life Cycle Assessment to Ensure Sustainability of Circular Business Models in Manufacturing

Circular business models (CBMs) represent a path for coordinating circular economy (CE) efforts. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for quantifying environmental effects of a product or a service and can therefore evaluate the environmental sustainability of CBMs. This paper explores whether LCA can act as an enabler for manufacturing companies who want to implement a CBM. Following a case-study approach, we draw on the experiences of a specific manufacturing company during the time period 2014–2021. The paper presents key lessons on the interaction between LCA and CE. The study finds that LCA—by providing quantified results on the environmental impacts of circular strategies—limits the risk of problem shifting and challenges the normative rule of closing the loop by including a set of multiple impact categories. LCA offers a common platform and encourages communication with stakeholders. These characteristics make LCA a well-suited tool for CBM development. However, the holistic perspective on environmental problems that LCA provides can also complicate CE's clear message of 'closing the loop'. Lastly, LCA is a tool for environmental evaluation, and with the main emphasis of CE also on environmental issues, there is high risk of neglecting social and economic aspects of sustainable development.

Abandoning dishonesty—A brief German comment on the state of the law after Ivey

The debate about the two-pronged Ghosh test for dishonesty has troubled academics and practitioners alike for some time. Concerns were raised about the jury’s ability to determine both the objective honesty standards and the defendant’s personal compliance with it, which might result in non-meritorious personal views allowing her to escape a dishonesty verdict. In Ivey, followed by Barton and Booth, the subjective test was abandoned altogether. The change has brought no doctrinal improvement, but instead unacceptably broadened criminal liability. Leaving the determination of a nebulous moral concept such as dishonesty to the jury is misguided, as it means determining a normative rule in the first place, which is not the jury’s role. Looking at the German law on theft and fraud as a comparator system, the paper argues that dishonesty should be abandoned and replaced by a lawfulness element to which the rules on mistake of civil law can then be applied.

Strategi Filosofis Masyarakat Jepang Dalam Mengatasi Dilema Budaya Kerja Di Masa Pandemi Covid-19

For the Japanese people, the remote work policy which aims to break the chain of the spread of the Corona-19 Virus is a cultural dilemma, because it clashes with the work culture of the people who have a strong work ethic. But in fact, Japan's economic recession rate is not as bad as other developed countries, such as America, China, and Korea. The death rate from Covid-19 is very low. Currently, Japan has started to return to the normal national economy. The mystery behind it all in Japan is the factor of superior immunity or cultural superiority. The assumption is, if because of the cultural superiority factor, what are the basic values that underlie the formation of behavior and culture of Japanese society. This philosophical qualitative study aims to examine philosophical strategies: what are the basic values that underlie the way Japanese people think and behave in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, how to properly solve problems (epistemology), and what normative rules are used to give direction to achieve goals (axiology). Through philosophical descriptive methods, this research can reveal the philosophical values (ontological, epistemological, axiological) behind social phenomena in Japanese society. The results of the study show that Japanese people hold firmly to the value of discipline as an ontological footing, the samurai is used as a way to solve problems, the value of harmony as a normative rule that gives direction to the achievement of goals. The benefits of this research provide enlightenment for the community about understanding the basic problems in society that are often neglected, while many people only focus on the surface of the problem that causes failure to understand.

Legal procedure of official interpretation of legal texts

The scientific article is devoted to the substantiation of the procedural nature of the official interpretation of legal texts. The author emphasizes that it is on the official interpretation that legally significant decisions are based, which establish the specific rights and obligations of the subjects. However, today there are no systematized methodological recommendations, requirements, officially established legal procedure and principles of interpretive activity, which could determine common standards of official interpretation. The procedure of interpretation consists in the sequence of actions of the authorized subjects within separate stages.The article formulates the author’s definition of legal interpretation procedure as a system of successive legally significant actions of authorized entities, which are aimed at clarifying, constructing and explaining to other legal entities the meaning and scope of legal norms formulated in legal texts. Taking into account the latest methodological approaches to interpretation and the requirements of the rule of law,the author reveals the content of legal interpretation, which consists of separate stages, which in turn include a number of successive procedures. In particular, the stage of clarifying the content of the legal text involves the following procedures: initial study of the legal text and the form of its consolidation in the provisions of the legal act, comprehensive analysis of the legal text, analysis of the received interpretation in terms of justice, human rights, rule of law, design normative rule. The explanation, according to the author, includes the following procedures: preparation of a draft interpretative act, namely a legal document that contains an explanation of the content and application of the legal norm, formulated by the authorized body within its competence; adoption of a legal interpretation act, making it universally binding for all those who apply the clarified rules of law; promulgation of an interpretative act, namely, bringing its content to the attention of society or law enforcement agencies; control over the use of the act of interpretation of the law by the subjects of its application; generalization of legal interpretative acts in order to systematize them. Given the importance of official interpretation of legal texts, the feasibility of determining at least the general principles of legal interpretation at the regulatory level is considered. Keywords: interpretation of law, official interpretation, legal procedure, legal interpretation activity.

Normative Rule Extraction from Implicit Learning into Explicit Representation

Normative multi-agent research is an alternative viewpoint in the design of adaptive autonomous agent architecture. Norms specify the standards of behaviors such as which actions or states should be achieved or avoided. The concept of norm synthesis is the process of generating useful normative rules. This study proposes a model for normative rule extraction from implicit learning, namely using the Q-learning algorithm, into explicit norm representation by implementing Dynamic Deontics and Hierarchical Knowledge Base (HKB) to synthesize useful normative rules in the form of weighted state-action pairs with deontic modality. OpenAi Gym is used to simulate the agent environment. Our proposed model is able to generate both obligative and prohibitive norms as well as deliberate and execute said norms. Results show the generated norms are best used as prior knowledge to guide agent behavior and performs poorly if not complemented by another agent coordination mechanism. Performance increases when using both obligation and prohibition norms, and in general, norms do speed up optimum policy reachability.

Unification of Marriage Law and Its Problems

Abstrak Law is a normative rule that govern human behaviors. The development of law as rule is not stagnant in one situation. But, its grew out from the awareness of society that requires the existence of law. Therefore, law always adopts the values that grow in society like; customary law, traditions and religions law. The consequences of laws as social and cultural products, even products of political ideology, making law is always contextual with the reality of society. This article try to understand the unification of marriage law in Indonesia and the problems that arise in the unification process. Unification is process of unify the laws in sociey or unify the national law in society. The article finds that there are many problems arising from the unification of marriage law in Indonesia, especially those related to interfaith marriages. So, it is not surprising that there are so many products of the marriage law probide the interfaith marriage in Indonesia, especially if interfaith marriage involves woman and man Muslims. Keyword: Interfaith Marriage, National Law, Islamic Law Abstrak Hukum adalah aturan-aturan normatif yang mengatur pola perilaku manusia. Hukum tidak tumbuh di ruang yang vakum, melainkan tumbuh dari kesadaran masyarakat yang membutuhkan adanya suatu aturan bersama. Karena itu, hukum selalu mengadopsi nilai-nilai yang tumbuh dan berkembang dimasyarakat; nilai-nilai adat, tradisi dan agama. Konsekuensi hukum sebagai produk sosial dan kultural, bahkan juga produk politik yang bernuansa ideologi, menjadikan hukum selalu bersifat kontekstual. Tulisan ini berusaha untuk mengungkap tentang unifikasi hukum perkawinan di Indonesia dan problematika yang muncul pada proses unifikasi tersebut. Unifikasi merupakan penyatuan hukum yang berlaku secara nasional atau penyatuan pemberlakuan hukum secara nasional. Penulis menemukan adanya banyak persoalan yang muncul dari unifikasi hukum perkawinan di Indonesia, khususnya yang terkait dengan perkawinan beda agama. Maka, tidak heran jika begitu banyak produk undang-undang perkawinan yang menjadi penghalang terjadinya nikah beda agama di Indonesia, khususnya jika melibatkan orang Islam. Kata Kunci: Pernikahan Beda Agama, Hukum Nasional, Hukum Islam

Dopamine and beta-band oscillations differentially link to striatal value and motor control

Parkinson’s disease is characterized by decreased dopamine and increased beta-band oscillatory activity accompanying debilitating motor and mood impairments. Coordinate dopamine-beta opposition is considered a normative rule for basal ganglia function. We report a breakdown of this rule. We developed multimodal systems allowing the first simultaneous, chronic recordings of dopamine release and beta-band activity in the striatum of nonhuman primates during behavioral performance. Dopamine and beta signals were anticorrelated over seconds-long time frames, in agreement with the posited rule, but at finer time scales, we identified conditions in which these signals were modulated with the same polarity. These measurements demonstrated that task-elicited beta suppressions preceded dopamine peaks and that relative dopamine-beta timing and polarity depended on reward value, performance history, movement, and striatal domain. These findings establish a new view of coordinate dopamine and beta signaling operations, critical to guide novel strategies for diagnosing and treating Parkinson’s disease and related neurodegenerative disorders.

Can cognitive biases be good for entrepreneurs?

PurposeWhile some studies have found that cognitive biases are detrimental to entrepreneurial performance, others have conjectured that cognitive biases may stimulate entrepreneurial action. This study uses a typology of availability and representative heuristics to examine how two patterns of biases affect entrepreneurial performance. Drawing on ideas from cognitive science, this study predicts that various levels of biases in each pattern stimulate entrepreneurial behavior and performance.Design/methodology/approachA profile-deviation approach was employed to analyze data from 253 entrepreneurs and zero-truncated Poisson regression and the zero-truncated negative binomial regression to test hypotheses.FindingsThis study finds some positive associations between a particular level of cognitive biases in each of the two patterns and entrepreneurial behavior and performance. Results show that the patterns of biases often stimulate and never hurt entrepreneurial behavior and performance. The opposite holds for a lack of cognitive biases, which hurts and never stimulates entrepreneurial behavior and performance.Originality/valueThis study examines patterns of cognitive biases of entrepreneurs instead of single biases. The study broadens the perspective on the heuristics and cognitive biases of entrepreneurs by examining patterns of biases emanating from the availability and the representativeness heuristic that make a difference for entrepreneurial behavior and performance. The study also brings the “great rationality debate” closer to the entrepreneurship field by showing that a normative rule based on statistics and probability theory does not benefit entrepreneurial behavior and performance.

Godność człowieka w otoczeniu administracji publicznej — wybrane zagadnienia

HUMAN DIGNITY IN ENVIRONMENT OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION — SELECTED ISSUESEnvironment of public administration is built by many subjective and objective elements among which the most important is human being and communities created by him/her. They are the reason of public administration existence which is establish in order to fulfill social needs resulting from the people’s coexistence in communities. The concept of human dignity, consider as normative rule or value which always should be taken into consideration by public administration, is insep­arably linked with the concept of human being treated as an individual or as apart of community. Public administration cannot act where human dignity is violated and is obliged to act when human dignity is in danger. Protection of human dignity should always be fundamental feature of public administration activities.