At the bottom level of the hierarchical structure (Stufenbau) of the legal system, the transition from “ought” to “is” has not been given its due. I argue that an additional level, that of fully concretized norms, belongs in the hierarchy. This sheds light on precisely where and how the transition from “ought” to “is” takes place. Whereas the fully concretized norm marks the bottom level in the hierarchy of norms, the coercive act or sanction qua fact is not found in (...) the hierarchy, contrary to what Adolf Julius Merkl and Hans Kelsen would have us believe. (shrink)

An English language translation accompanies the original Greek text of Aristotle's book about the nature of the state, constitutions, revolutions, democracy, and oligarchy.

'identity' includes a family of relations and is wrongly restricted to what satisfies leibniz's law: diachronic and strict identity are related since the criteria of the former are just the criteria of continuity of stages of the strictly identical continuant. A general account can be given in terms of the preservation of a weighted preponderance of properties of the stages. Puzzle cases arise because of contextual shifts in the weightings assigned; in the case of persons this is particularly clear because (...) of change of emphasis between mental and physical, Both of which classes of predicate are applicable. (shrink)

"Using hundreds of examples from newsrooms large and small, author Ron F. Smith challenges readers to determine how they would face moral dilemmas on the job. Chapters evaluate the search for principles, accountability, truth and objectivity, errors and corrections, diversity, "faking" the news, reporters and their sources, privacy, the government watch, deception, compassion, the business of news, journalists and their communities, and financial concerns. New to this edition: a chapter on improving coverage of minorities, expanded discussion of broadcast journalism and (...) reporting on the Internet, and stories from recent front pages and TV news programs."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

This article aims to read feminist new materialisms (Barad), together with ‘postulated’ linguistic or cultural primacy of Queer Theory (Butler), to show how both are engaged in similar critical-ethical endeavours. The central argument is that the criticism of Barad and new materialisms misses Butler’s materialistic insights due to a narrow interpretation of Butler's alleged social-constructivist position. There is, therefore, a specific focus on where they both make similar ethical appeals. Moreover, the article relies on Adorno's negative dialectic to highlight an (...) interpretation of Barad and Butler as being part of the same dialectical movement, in which materialism and idealism fluctuate in their mutual criticisms, thus continuing the procession towards 'new knowledge' and emancipation, or freedom, through their motions back and forth. (shrink)

In this paper I take up aspects of the origins of the Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany, with special attention to the reasons for the aggregation of power and to the question of how far constitutional court models from abroad played a role in the development of the Court. Where the beginnings of the Federal Constitutional Court are concerned, the German tradition and the experience with the lawless regime of the national socialists played a fundamental role. To (...) a certain degree the Austrian model and to a lesser degree that of the United States figured in the deliberations of Germany's post‐War constitutional framers, too. (shrink)

Donkeys in the Biblical World: Ceremony and Symbol. By Kenneth C. Way. History, Archaeology, and Culture of the Levant, vol. 2. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011. Pp. xvi + 272, maps. $49.50.

“Ovid’s Old Age” is a sung poem written by the Polish poet and musician Jacek Kaczmarski which engages with the myth of Ovid’s exile. Kaczmarski’s works were heavily influenced both by classical culture and his experience of political emigration during the communist era. He was famed as an unofficial bard of the opposition movement, but is as yet little known to classical reception scholars. This paper presents Kaczmarski’s creative engagement with Ovid as both a deeply personal reflection on the nature (...) of exile and at the same time a universal commentary on poetry under authoritarian regimes. Our interpretation is based on a thematic analysis of the poem, including landscape, imperialism, displacement, “national” poets in exile, nostalgia, and the force of poetry. We set the reception in its social, political, and biographical context, with reference to several mediating receptions of the Ovidian exile. In Kaczmarski’s poem, the Ovidian voice helps the poet to express the trials of emigration and reveals their effect on his art. It shows how engagements with classical culture may flourish, even while the formal discipline of Classics has been undernourished. We provide a bilingual translation of “Ovid’s Old Age” to foster the understanding of migratory experiences in contemporary poetry and enrich international scholarship on the reception of Ovid with a response from communist Poland. (shrink)

Food in Ancient Judah: Domestic Cooking in the Time of the Hebrew Bible. By Cynthia Shafer-Elliott. Bible World. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2013. Pp. xiii + 239, illus. $99.95.

The French writer, explorer, and historian Constantin-François de Volney (1757–1820) has been interpreted as embracing a Eurocentric Orientalism and a typically Enlightenment progressivist historical understanding. In this article, however, I argue that, far from simply offering yet another rationalistic or teleological historical narrative, Volney set out to refound the historical discipline by erecting historiography on a firmly empirical basis in order to repudiate the idea of historical design altogether. In this respect, his best-known work, The Ruins, or Meditations on the (...) Revolutions of Empires (1791), seems to occupy a special status in his oeuvre in that it did not confine its analyses to the epistemological realm and historiographical practice, but explicitly linked historical narratives and practice to historical developments themselves, ascribing civilizational decline and devastation predominantly to ignorance and blind faith in religion or myths of the past. According to this reasoning, a new, more critical historical practice – akin to social anthropology – would, by making people conscious of their historical agency, liberate historical development itself and ideally bring an end to seemingly unending cycles of political tyranny and social destruction. (shrink)

The book challenges the values of much of contemporary bioethics and health care policy by confronting their failure to secure the moral norms they seek to apply.

Gustav Radbruch war Deutschlands beruhmtester Rechtsphilosoph im 20. Jahrhundert. Seine gehaltvollen, aber auch spannungsreichen Schriften pragen die deutschsprachige Rechtsphilosophie bis heute. Im Zentrum von Radbruchs Lehre steht sein neukantianisch gepragter Rechtsbegriff, der im Laufe der Zeit eine Reihe von Veranderungen erfahren hat. Die Beitrage in diesem Band sind Radbruchs Rechtsbegriff im Allgemeinen und den Wandlungen dieses Rechtsbregriffs im Besonderen gewidmet. Nach der orthodoxen Lesart vertrat Radbruch vor dem Kriege eine rechtspositivistische Lehre, wurde unter dem Eindruck der nationalsozialistischen Grauel jedoch zum (...) Naturrecht bekehrt. Zunehmend wird gesehen, dass diese 'Bekehrungsthese' zu Ungereimtheiten fuhrt. Verschiedene Beitrage dieses Bandes betonen demgegenuber die Kontinuitat nichtpositivistischer Elemente in der Entwicklung von Radbruchs Rechtsbegriff. Mit Beitragen von: Hidehiko Adachi, Martin Borowski, Horst Dreier, Ralf Dreier, An dreas Funke, Ulfrid Neumann, Stanley L. Paulson, Joachim Renzikowski, Hubert Rottleuthner, Marc Andre Wiegand. (shrink)

Provability, Computability and Reflection.

O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar um panorama do percurso que levou ao esclarecimento da Síndrome de Down, principalmente a partir da segunda metade do século XX, no que diz respeito à sua caracterização e etiologia enquanto uma condição genética. Para isso, nos baseamos em fontes primárias e em fontes secundárias, levando também em conta os aspectos sociais envolvidos. Esta pesquisa mostra como o conhecimento sobre a Síndrome de Down foi sendo construído e seu impacto no tratamento pela sociedade, levando-a (...) reconhecer os indivíduos com a síndrome a partir de uma condição genética e não como doentes. Esperamos que este estudo possa contribuir para a compreensão das ideias atuais sobre o assunto. (shrink)

In a recently published article, R. N. McLaughlin argues for what he calls an “open form” of bill of rights, in preference to the standard closed form. Such an open form would consist of a directive to the courts “to invalidate laws which offend fundamental morals by depriving citizens of basic rights, or by forcing them to deprive others of basic rights.” A standard form consists, of course, of a list of rights which are not to be violated. His reason (...) for making this proposal is that he does not think the standard form is capable of keeping pace with the changing moral codes which such a bill is supposed to reflect, whereas the open form would by its very nature do so. I should like, in what follows, to argue that the open form presents a number of serious problems which the standard form does not, and that a standard form is in the end to be preferred, both because it does not present these new problems and because it need not be as inflexible in the face of changing moral standards as McLaughlin thinks. (shrink)