In the post-1945 world, constitutionalism has transcended the nation state, with an array of transnational arrangements now manifesting constitutional characteristics—so says a growing number of scholars. This article reveals an earlier but largely forgotten discourse of transnational constitutionalism: the constitutional theory of the British Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Focusing on the work of Albert Venn Dicey, the article shows that, when the Empire was at the height of its power and prestige, British constitutional scholars came (...) to see the Empire as a constitutional order and project. For Dicey, a committed constitutionalist and imperialist, the central dynamic of the imperial constitutional order was balancing British constitutional principles with imperial unity. This article focuses in particular on parliamentary sovereignty, a constitutional principle that, for Dicey, was both necessary for and dangerous to the Empire’s integrity. An exercise in intellectual history, the article rethinks Dicey’s work and the constitutional tradition in which Dicey has played such an integral part, seeking to reveal empire's forgotten significance. (shrink)

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Resumo Autores como os físicos Léon Rosenfeld, Gerald Holton e Franco Selleri, bem como o filósofo Miguel Reale perceberam já que, no interior da mecânica quântica, o princípio da complementaridade de Niels Bohr pode ser aproximado á noção filosófica de dialéctica. Além de buscar contribuir para robustecer tal linha de interpretaoção do famoso principío bohriano, neste paper tentaremos compreender dialecticamente a relaoção de Louis de Broglie e a de desigualdade de Werner Heisenberg. Por fim, argumentaremos a favor de um enfoque (...) realista do principío em causa. (shrink)

Industrial (“white”) biotechnology promises to contribute to a more sustainable future. Compared to current production processes, cases have been identified where industrial biotechnology can decrease the amount of energy and raw materials used to make products and also reduce the amount of emissions and waste produced during production. However, switching from products based on chemical production processes and fossil fuels towards “biobased” products is at present not necessarily economically viable. This is especially true for bulk products, for example ethanol production (...) from biomass. Therefore, scientists are also turning to genetic modification as a means to develop organisms that can produce at lower costs. These include not only micro-organisms, but also organisms used in agriculture for food and feed.The use of genetic modification for “deliberate release” purposes, in particular, has met great opposition in Europe. Many industrial biotechnology applications may, due to their scale, entail deliberate releases of GM organisms. Thus, the biobased economy brings back a familiar question; is it ethically justifiable, and acceptable to citizens, to expose the environment and society to the risks associated with GM, in order to protect that same environment and to sustain our affluent way of life? For a successful innovation towards a biobased economy, its proponents, especially producers, need to take into account (take responsibility for) such issues when developing new products and processes. These issues, and how scientists can interact with citizens about them in a timely way, are further explored in projects at Delft University and Leiden University, also in collaboration with Utrecht University. (shrink)

An undiscovered chapter in the history of architecture comes from the ex-Soviet Republic of Georgia. Poetics of Architecture is the name given to the studioworkshop at the Georgian Technical University set up by the Georgian architect Shota Bostanashvili (1948–2013). From 1990 until his death he delivered insightful, playful and rather provocative lectures on architecture at this university. He preferred to call his architectural philosophy, critical discourse on architecture. Themes ranged from poetics to metapoetics of architecture. His philosophy of architecture is (...) illustrated by some of his designs and executed projects which demonstrate a drift from existentialism to the philosophy of play. This study includes reference to his last building, a project whose demolition Bostanashvili witnessed before passing away. Based on the concept of the return of the sacred, this edifice was a sort of counter movement to technogenic architecture. (shrink)

Constitutional law in the United States is, for most practical purposes, the product of ‘judicial review’, the power of judges to disallow policy choices made by other officials or institutions of government, ostensibly because those choices are prohibited by the Constitution. This extraordinary and unprecedented power, America's dubious contribution to the science of government, has made American judges the most powerful in the world, not only legislators but super-legislators, legislators with virtually the last word. Because lawmaking power divorced from popular (...) will is tyranny, most states have attempted to reconcile the lawmaking power of judges with representative self-government by subjecting all or some judges to some form of popular election. In all but four such states, judges, encouraged and supported by their fellow lawyers in the organized bar—would-be judges and beneficiaries of judicial power—have responded by adopting codes of judicial ethics that limit what candidates for election to judicial office are permitted to say. The effect is to undermine elections as a control on judicial power by limiting criticism of judicial activism, the misuse of judicial power. (shrink)

This paper provides a discussion of Jacques Rancière’s former teacher at École Normale Supérieure, then famous for fashioning Marxism with the philosophical gauge of structuralism, Louis Althusser. Perhaps a brief discussion on the relation between the two would render context to the origins of Rancière's philosophico-political praxis, specifically the humble beginnings of conceptualizing an egalitarian method out of his philosophical rupture with Althusserianism. Meanwhile, to reduce the philosophical enterprise of Althusser into its practical shortcomings and silence during the revolutionary events (...) of May 1968 in France would do an injustice to the magnitude of his contribution to contemporary French political theory and his major revisions in the theoretical direction of the Parti communiste français. Thus, the following discussions focus on sketching Althusser's theoretical foundations, which possibly clarifies the political decision he has made during May '68: a demand for organization over spontaneous revolutionary activity based on the authority of theoretical practice over the ideological activities—a decision that became the point of departure for Rancière's subversion of both mastery and the structural inequality Althusserianism entail. The whole piece is guided by the following two-fold question—a question, perhaps, akin to Badiou's inquiry: What were the philosophico-political interventions of Louis Althusser, and why did Rancière move away from his direction? (shrink)

International law lacks many of the standard features of domestic law. There are few legislative or judicial bodies with exclusive authority over particular jurisdictions or subject matters, the subjects regulated by international law typically must affirmatively consent to be bound by it, and supranational authorities with the power to coerce states to comply with international obligations are rare. How can a legal system with these features generate changes in state behavior? For many theories, the ability of international law to inform (...) and change individual preferences provides the answer. When voters care that treaty commitments be kept, or that international norms be honored, the theory goes, leaders are more likely to be able to make choices consistent with international obligations. Over the last decade, a literature has emerged testing these theories using surveys and experiments embedded in surveys. Multiple U.S. studies find that international law and international norm arguments shift public opinion in the direction of greater compliance by 4 to 20 percentage points. However, studies in foreign contexts are more mixed, with some backlash reported in countries in which international law is highly politicized. This Article describes the state of current knowledge about whether international law actually does change preferences, explains the limitations with existing research, and proposes avenues for future study. (shrink)

Tras descartar el acercamiento metodológico a la historia de Doñana como un paso hacia la “conservación de la Naturaleza” con mayúscula, este artículo sitúa la historia del Parque en los contextos políticos, personales y científicos que lo hicieron posible. Estos contextos nos colocan en la escala internacional del desmantelamiento del imperio británico y de la transformación de la ornitología y la ecología como disciplinas. Las rutas migratorias de las aves de Doñana contribuyeron a la dimensión internacional en la que se (...) fraguó el acuerdo entre el World Wildlife Fund (WWF) y el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) que llevó a la inauguración de la Reserva Biológica de Doñana en 1965. La posterior creación del Parque abrió la puerta a nuevos desencuentros entre diversos modos de entender el conservacionismo y entre diferentes categorizaciones científicas del territorio de Doñana. La resolución de estos conflictos dependió de fuerzas y alianzas, lo que permite concluir afinando el argumento metodológico de partida. (shrink)

Hier wird die folgende Frage gestellt: gibt es überhaupt irgendeine unengagierte Philosophie? Nämlich, jede Philosophie, die überhaupt als echte Philosophie bewertbar ist, und nicht etwa als Ideologie, Dophistik oder Schwindel, sollte als Denken, das der Wahrheit treu bleibt, beschrieben werden, d. h. als eine im Dienst der Wahrheit engagierte Philosophie. Dagegen, diejenige Philosophie, die im Dienst einer weltlicher oder jenseitiger Macht antritt, darf man keineswegs als eine Philosophie bewerten. Doch, es wird noch eine Frage gestellt: Wäre es erlaubt, eine Parallele (...) mit der sog. engagierte Kunst zu stellen? Die Antwort wird ermöglicht durch die Definition der Philosophie als die Tätigkeit des unnachsichtigen Dienstes zur Wahrheit. (shrink)

Unter dem Begriff Biologismus verstehen wir die Anwendung strikter wissenschaftlicher biologischer Maßstäbe und Begriffe auf die Gebiete, die nicht durch die Dominanz biologischer Verhältnisse bezeichnet werden. Die Annahme des biologistischen Determinismus resultiert notwendigerweise mit der Auffassung, dass die Kultur durch die biologischen Gesetze determiniert wird. Als Antithese zu einem solchen Reduktionismus stellt sich der Kulturalismus heraus, d. h. die Betonung des Vorrangs kultureller Determinanten im Prozess der Bildung der Kultur und der menschlichen Welt überhaupt. In diesem Beitrag wird bewiesen, dass (...) ein solcher Kulturalismus nur die falsche Alternative zum Biologismus ist. Die menschliche Welt kann auf angemessene Weise nur dann begriffen werden, wenn alle relevanten Dimensionen ihrer Gestaltung in Betracht gezogen werden. Die Voraussetzung dafür ist die Befreiung von allen reduktionistischen Versuchungen. (shrink)

The notion of freedom was in ancient philosophy formed in the sense of the privileges belonging to adult free citizens, and thus foreigners, minors, women, and slaves were deprived of the possibility of freedom. This definition of freedom was also adopted by Roman law, unlike Stoic philosophy and the New Testament Christianity, where freedom was extended to belong to all human beings. In comparison, the Stoics condemn slavery, while Christianity eschatologises freedom. The Middle Ages built on such a concept of (...) freedom. Still, in that period the secular concept of freedom was formulated, which especially comes to the fore in the Magna charta libertatum. The modern concept of freedom was shaped in the Modern Age, from Locke’s definition of life, freedom, and property as inalienable civil rights, through Voltaire’s request for the freedom of thought and Rousseau’s identification of freedom with the essence of human being, to Kant’s understanding of freedom that is possible only through the mind. The ideals of French Revolution, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, are concretised in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. John Stuart Mill formulated the classical liberal concept of freedom. Today freedom is discussed, on the one hand, at the level of questions about individual freedom, and on the other hand, at the level of the problematisation of social presumptions regarding the freedom of human being. (shrink)

In this paper the author tries to explore the problem of the social function of philosophy in the contemporary world. This world is characterized by universal modernization and in the last decades by globalization and unification, but at the same time also by controversies and contradictions which reveal tendencies of human regression and degeneration. Philosophy must remain a study of general and fundamental nature of a human-produced world. As such philosophy produces potentialities of critical thinking, provides social investigations, and—at least (...) in principle—gives people the power of an adequate understanding of our world, its fundamental characteristics and main tendencies. Thus philosophy is a ground for a reasonable social practice and adequate policies. (shrink)

Die politischen Entwicklungen in den Staaten der islamischen Welt beeinflussen seit einigen Jahrzehnten maageblich das Weltgeschehen. Doch wahrend die deutschsprachige Literatur zum Staatsdenken im europaisch-nordamerikanischen Raum kaum noch uberblickt werden kann, ist die Zahl der politikwissenschaftlichen Veroffentlichungen zum Staatsdenken muslimischer Intellektueller bisher sehr uberschaubar. Diese Lucke soll der vorliegende Band schlieaen, der sich an Regional- und Sozialwissenschaftler ebenso wie an interessierte Laien wendet. Der Begriff des Staatsdenkens ist dabei bewusst weit gefasst, um auch die politische Ideengeschichte des Mittelalters und auch (...) die modernen politischen Theorien berucksichtigen zu konnen, bei denen der Staatsbegriff im engen Sinne zwar keine zentrale Rolle spielt, zugleich aber doch standig als Bezugsrahmen prasent ist. (shrink)