There are many different criteria that can be used to assess the state of a political regime. One, if not the most important criterion is whether the regime respects and actively protects the fundamental human rights of its subjects. Women’s rights are human rights. Women, like men, have a human right to pursue happiness. Like men, they have the right to physical and mental self-determination, to decide for themselves who and what they want to become and what kind of life they want to lead. The right to self-determination includes the right to make life-defining decisions such as choosing a partner and whether or not to have children. And a woman also exercises her freedom of self-determination when she chooses what job she wants to do or decides what to do with her free time and how to dress when she goes out. Continue reading
Category Archives: Regular posts
These regular posts on LawLog.eu are written by our affiliated authors.
The Public Uses of Coercion and Force from Constitutionalism to War
War is barbaric and wrongful—at least for Kantians. For Kantians, there are no just causes for war as such. War is permissible only when it is the only way to secure peace, in self-defense. A Kantian theory of war is thus particularly interesting as it fleshes out the constitutive tensions of the use of violence. It may be seen as an alternative normative theory of war, similar but not identical to the just war theory tradition. This is interesting as in the last decades, the main dividing line among normative theorists of war has been between two wings of just war theory: Continue reading
Free and Fair Elections: The European Minimum Standards
In 2021, Germany faces important general elections both at the state and the federal level. Holding elections in the middle of a pandemic is challenging. Organizing free and fair elections is even more so. But when is the election free and fair? This piece presents the answers given by the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention) and its authoritative interpreter, the European Court of Human Rights (Court). It devotes special attention to Article 3 Protocol 1 of the Convention, which stipulates that ‘The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.’
Wait a Minute – Is China Really the Winner?
A response to Jürgen Gerhards and Michael Zürn
The systemic competition between China and liberal democracies has reached a new level. In addition to economic growth and development, managing the COVID-19 crisis has become a new benchmark for comparing the performance of alternative scripts. Jürgen Gerhards and Michael Zürn have called out China as the winner in containing the pandemic and mastering its economic and social consequences. They do not attribute China’s success to its autocratic system and to state capitalism. Pointing to the exceptional performance of Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, Gerhards and Zürn argue that it is the shared approach of “testing, tracking, and isolating,” which explains the East Asian success.
And the winner is… China
Does the management of the coronavirus crisis show the superiority of a technocratic autocracy?
For a long time, social scientists have assumed that the liberal model of society consisting of individual self-determination, democracy, capitalist market economy, and welfare state was the ideal way to social development and modernization. This belief was not only based on the claim of normativ superiority, but also on the claim of superior performance. The last decades however, liberal democracies proved to be far more unstable and at risk, as autocratic developments in the United States, Poland or Hungary have shown. And existing autocracies, such as the communist China, turned out to be enormously successful. Continue reading
An Irish Claim to Rockall
Due to Brexit, dispute has again arisen between the UK and Ireland over Rockall, a small rock in the North-East Atlantic Ocean, and its surrounding waters. On January 4th a Marine Scotland patrol boat stopped and boarded an Irish fishing trawler, forcing it to leave waters within 12 nautical miles of the rock. Scotland asserted the UK claim to Rockall in anticipation of Brexit and sent patrol boats to the area immediately upon formally exiting the EU legal order on January 1st. In response the Irish Ministers for Foreign Affairs and for Agriculture, Food and the Marine issued a joint statement saying they were engaging with Scottish authorities but that “there remains an increased risk of enforcement action being taken by Scottish fisheries control authorities against Irish vessels operating in the waters around Rockall at present.” Continue reading
Lockdown Fatigue: Pandemic from the Perspective of Nudge Theory
Some governments have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by developing policies based on ideas from behavioural psychology, especially ‘nudge theory’. But the pandemic has highlighted two important failings of ‘nudging’ – its libertarian opposition to state intervention; and its lack of any theory of psychological interiority.
First popularised by Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein and University of Chicago behavioural economist Richard Thaler, nudge theory has been credited for many policies that are common-sensical – positioning hand sanitisers in prominent locations in receptions of buildings accompanied by colourful signage will increase usage; citizens should be advised to sing happy birthday while washing their hands as this will ensure their handwashing lasts for the recommended duration; tissues might be placed within easy reach of office workers to discourage unprotected face touching; etc. Continue reading