Background How often does refractory suffering, which is suffering due to symptoms that cannot be adequately controlled, occur at the end of life in modern palliative care? What are the causes of such refractory suffering? Should euthanasia be offered for refractory suffering at the end of life? We sought to shed light on these questions through interviews with palliative care specialists. Methods Semi-structured interviews with six nurses and six doctors working in palliative care in five Norwegian hospitals. Transcripts were analysed (...) with systematic text condensation, a qualitative analysis framework. Results Informants find that refractory suffering is rare, and that with palliative sedation satisfactory symptom control can nearly always be achieved at the end of life. However, the process of reaching adequate symptom control can be protracted, and there can be significant suffering in the meantime. Both somatic, psychological, social and existential factors can contribute to refractory suffering and potentiate each other. However, informants also place significant weight on factors pertaining to the organization of palliative care services as contributing to insufficient symptom control. Conclusions If refractory suffering is indeed rare, then this arguably weakens a common prima facie argument for the legalization of assisted dying. However, the process of reaching adequate symptom control can be protracted and involve significant suffering. The experiences of palliative care clinicians constitute important empirical premises for the assisted dying debate. The study points to several areas in which palliative care can be improved. (shrink)

We are women, we are men. We are refugees, single mothers, people with disabilities, and queers. We belong to social categories and they frame our actions, self-understanding, and opportunities. But what are social categories? How are they created and sustained? How does one come to belong to them? Ásta approaches these questions through analytic feminist metaphysics. Her theory of social categories centers on an answer to the question: what is it for a feature of an individual to be socially meaningful? (...) In a careful, probing investigation, she reveals how social categories are created and sustained and demonstrates their tendency to oppress through examples from current events. To this end, she offers an account of just what social construction is and how it works in a range of examples that problematize the categories of sex, gender, and race in particular. The main idea is that social categories are conferred upon people. Ásta introduces a 'conferralist' framework in order to articulate a theory of social meaning, social construction, and most importantly, of the construction of sex, gender, race, disability, and other social categories. (shrink)

The author of Categories We Live By replies to critics Linda Martín Alcoff, Judith Butler, and Abraham Sesshu Roth.

Conferralism about race is a version of social constructivism about race, where the agents of construction seem to be individual agents. However, an important aspect of racism is systemic or structural, and seemingly not about the behavior of individual agents. Can conferralism account for that? In this paper, I begin to address that question by focusing on recent criticism of conferralism by Linda Martín Alcoff and Aaron Griffith.

We are living in times where there is considerable debate over what sex and gender are and who gets to be of what sex and what gender. These are questions that impact people’s lives greatly, some more than others. They are metaphysical questions, but they also concern what principles we should be guided by when allocating resources, services, and protections to people with potentially different needs. There are also methodological questions in the vicinity. In this essay, I draw on my (...) work in Categories We Live By (2018) to suggest a certain approach to navigating some of these thorny issues. I call this approach “ontic descent”. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

After the London bombings in July 2005, the concern of terrorism scholars and policy makers has turned to “home-grown” terrorism and potential for political violence from within the states. “Radicalization” became a new buzz word. This article follows a number of reviews of the literature on radicalization and offers another angle for looking at this research. First, it discusses the term “radicalization” and suggests the use of the following definition of radicalization as a process by which a person adopts belief (...) systems which justify the use of violence to effect social change and comes to actively support as well as employ violent means for political purposes. Next, it proposes to see the theories of radicalization focusing on the individual and the two dimensions of his/her motivation: whether that motivation is internal or external and whether it is due to personal choice or either internal or external compulsion. Though not all theories fall neatly within these categories, they make it possible to make comparisons of contributions from a variety of different areas thus reflecting on the interdisciplinary nature of the study of terrorism in general and radicalization as a part of it. (shrink)

Social construction theorists face a certain challenge to the effect that they confuse the epistemic and the metaphysical: surely our conceptions of something are influenced by social practices, but that doesn't show that the nature of the thing in question is so influenced. In this paper I take up this challenge and offer a general framework to support the claim that a human kind is socially constructed, when this is understood as a metaphysical claim and as a part of a (...) social constructionist debunking project. I give reasons for thinking that a conferralist framework is better equipped to capture the social constructionist intuition than rival accounts of social properties, such as a constitution account and a response-dependence account, and that this framework helps to diagnose what is at stake in the debate between the social constructionists and their opponents. The conferralist framework offered here should be welcomed by social constructionists looking for firm foundations for their claims, and for anyone else interested in the debate over the social construction of human kinds. (shrink)

In this chapter I offer an interpretation of Judith Butler’s metaphysics of sex and gender and situate it in the ontological landscape alongside what has long been the received view of sex and gender in the English speaking world, which owes its inspiration to the works of Simone de Beauvoir. I then offer a critique of Butler’s view, as interpreted, and subsequently an original account of sex and gender, according to which both are constructed—or conferred, as I would put it— (...) albeit in different ways and subject to different constraints. (shrink)

The present study investigates how laughter features in the everyday lives of 3-5-year old children in Swedish preschools. It examines and discusses typical laughter patterns and their functions with a particular focus on children’s and intergenerational (child-adult/educator) laughter in early education context. The research questions concern: who laughs with whom; how do adults respond to children’s laughter, and what characterizes the social situations in which laughter is used and reciprocated. Theoretically, the study answers the call for sociocultural approaches that contextualize (...) children’s everyday social interaction, e.g., in different institutions or homes, to study the diverse conditions society forms for learning, sociality and socialization and development of shared norms. Methodologically, the study makes use of mixed methods: it uses descriptive statistics that identify prevalent patterns in laughter practices and, on the basis of these results, examines social-interactional situations of children’s laughter in detail. It was found that children’s laughter tended to be directed to children and adults’ laughter tended to be directed to adults. 87% of children’s laughter was directed to other children, and adults directed their laughter to other adults 2,7 times as often as to children. The qualitative interaction analysis shows that children and adults exhibited different patterns of laughter. Children primarily sought and received affiliation through laughter in the peer group, and the adults were often focused on the institutional and educational goals of the preschool. Overall, the study shows that intergenerational reciprocal laughter was a rare occurrence and suggests that laughter between generations is interesting in that it can be seen as indicative of how children and adults handle alterity in their everyday life. By deploying multiple methods, the present study points to the importance of viewing emotion and norm sharedness in social interaction not just as a matter of communicating an emotion from one person to another, but as an intricate process of inviting the others into or negotiating the common emotional and experiential ground. (shrink)

What is social construction? This essay offers a survey of the various ways in which something could be socially constructed and then addresses briefly the questions whether social constructionism involves an untenable anti-realism and what, if anything, unifies all social construction claims.

In this article I introduce a certain kind of anti-realist account of what makes a property essential to an object and defend it against likely objections. This account, which I call a ‘conferralist’ account, shares some of the attractive features of other anti-realist accounts, such as conventionalism and expressivism, but I believe, not their respective drawbacks.

Supervision is widely acknowledged as influencing the quality of postgraduate theses, and thus, by implication, of postgraduates. Despite this, the literature on conducting research offers little guidance in respect of managing the supervision relationship. This paper opens a window onto the relationship - and particularly the power relationship - between a particular supervisor of postgraduate research, Howard, and his Master's student, Ray. It draws on research that explores how contemporary influences in the university domain intersect with individual agency and with (...) power relations to produce knowledge on two levels: the thesis as an extrinsic product of processes of education, and the person as an intrinsic product of processes of learning.Selections of Michel Foucault's insights are used to explore the notion of power and how it operates through rules of discourse to construct knowledge and identity. Accordingly, the research describes and tracks the functioning of two discourses pivotal to Howard and Ray's experience of supervision: anarchic educational leadership discourse, and humanistic discourse. The research on which the paper is based is constructivist, and as such it is underpinned by the assumption, or rather belief, that the discursive construction of reality is mediated by individual agency. In order to analyse how power operates between individuals, and between them and their broader educational contexts, a conceptual tool capable of accommodating manifest strategic processes - identified along a positional continuum as ‘push',' allow' and ‘pull' - was devised.The case study yields several thematic correlations in interpersonal and institutional power. These are: the significance of supervisor-student matching; links between expectations, abilities, the way participants negotiate power, and the quality of professional and pastoral care they experience; the impact of personal affinity on supervision; and the influence of ontology on thesis-as-product and person-as-product. (shrink)

Supervision is widely acknowledged as influencing the quality of postgraduate theses, and thus, by implication, of postgraduates. Despite this, the literature on conducting research offers little guidance in respect of managing the supervision relationship. This paper opens a window onto the relationship – and particularly the power relationship – between a particular supervisor of postgraduate research, Howard, and his Master’s student, Ray. It draws on research that explores how contemporary influences in the university domain intersect with individual agency and with (...) power relations to produce knowledge on two levels: the thesis as an extrinsic product of processes of education, and the person as an intrinsic product of processes of learning.Selections of Michel Foucault’s insights are used to explore the notion of power and how it operates through rules of discourse to construct knowledge and identity. Accordingly, the research describes and tracks the functioning of two discourses pivotal to Howard and Ray’s experience of supervision: anarchic educational leadership discourse, and humanistic discourse. The research on which the paper is based is constructivist, and as such it is underpinned by the assumption, or rather belief, that the discursive construction of reality is mediated by individual agency. In order to analyse how power operates between individuals, and between them and their broader educational contexts, a conceptual tool capable of accommodating manifest strategic processes – identified along a positional continuum as ‘push’,’ allow’ and ‘pull’ – was devised.The case study yields several thematic correlations in interpersonal and institutional power. These are: the significance of supervisor-student matching; links between expectations, abilities, the way participants negotiate power, and the quality of professional and pastoral care they experience; the impact of personal affinity on supervision; and the influence of ontology on thesis-as-product and person-as-product. (shrink)

Many studies have highlighted a substantial "bureaucracy domination" in procedures relating to migrants’ access to territory. This form of domination is marked by highly discretionary and arbitrary practices, enacted by the administrative authorities of the state. Only minor attention, however, has been devoted to the arbitrariness of judicial decisions and to the judicial role in general in the numerous proceedings that increasingly affect the path of migrants. This path is the main object of this paper. The study focuses on Italian (...) case law in expulsion and detention proceedings of irregular third country national citizens and asylum seekers and presents qualitative empirical research on decisions issued by the competent national authorities. The results have been analysed using a selection of theoretical tools, all referable to the general concept of the rule of law. The judicial decisions on pre-removal detention proceedings in two case studies are examined: the jurisprudence on detention of irregular migrants, in different offices of the Justice of the Peace in Italy; and the case law on detention of asylum seekers in the Ordinary Tribunal of Rome. The assumption underlying the research is that various conceptions of the rule of law may have different explanatory power when it comes to explaining the empirical results. To verify this hypothesis, the study proposes an overview of the main rule of law doctrines in the Western tradition of political and legal thought and applies the method of historical-conceptual analysis. As a result, the explanatory power of six theoretical models of the rule of law was verified against the data with the view to highlight the virtues and vices of the respective explanatory frameworks. This article reaches a two-fold conclusion. First, as far as the explanatory frameworks are concerned: the results of the two case studies cannot be fully explained by any of the models considered in this study. This fact alone casts doubts on the explanatory power of these theories and calls for further research on judicial decision-making more generally. Secondly, a key finding of the study regarding the notions of discretion and arbitrariness is that the judicial approach which assures the highest protection of rights is also the one that is most easily influenced by arbitrariness. The author argues that this paradox can be easily dissolved by paying attention to the plural dimensions of arbitrariness. If we consider arbitrariness from a legal point of view, i.e. as an illegal decision, it is unsurprising that the authority that most uses its discretionary powers is also the one most at risk of abusing these discretionary powers and hence of exercising arbitrary power. However, if we consider arbitrariness from the point of view of philosophical-political theory, i.e. as a form of domination characterised by the absence of sufficient justification, it is unsurprising that the judicial approach which assures the highest protection of rights is also the one that takes its own role as guarantor of these rights and of the constitutional democratic legal order as such most seriously. This judicial approach thus most often risks exercising its power in criticisable ways, as compared to an authority much more in line with the requirements of law enforcement agencies. Keywords: migration, discretion, justice, arbitrariness, civil rights, Rechtsstaat, expulsion, mixed constitution. (shrink)

The present study examines 1- to 5-year-old children’s emotion socialization in an early childhood educational setting (a preschool) in Sweden. Specifically, it examines social situations where teachers respond to children’s negative emotional expressions and negatively emotionally charged social acts, characterized by anger, irritation and distress. Data consist of 14 hours of video observations of daily activities, recorded in a public Swedish preschool, located in a suburban middle-class area and include 35 children and five preschool teachers. By adopting a sociocultural perspective (...) on children’s development and socialization, the study examines the communicative practices through which the expressions of negative emotions are responded to and the norms and values that are communicated through these practices. The data are analysed by using multimodal analysis of interaction that provides a tool for detailed analysis of participants’ verbal and embodied actions and sense-making. The analyses show that teachers responded to children’s negatively charged emotional expressions as social acts (that were normatively evaluated) and the adults instructed children how to modify their social conduct (rather than deploying explicit discussions about emotions). The teachers used communicative genres that prioritized general moral principles and implemented the non-negotiability of norms over individual children’s emotional-volitional perspectives and individual preferences. The teachers’ instructive socializing activities were characterized by movement between multiple temporal horizons, i.e., general (emotional) discourse that transcended the here-and-now, and specific instructions targeting the children’s conduct in a current situation. The study discusses how emotion socialization can be related to the institutional characteristics and collective participatory social conditions of early childhood education. (shrink)

The project of Categories We Live By is to offer a metaphysics of social categories. The strategy is to give a theory of social properties of individuals. The main components of the theory are a conferralist framework for properties; an account of social meaning; and an account of social construction; accompanying is also an account of social identity. This theory can be applies to offer concrete conferralist proposals of categories such as sex, gender, race, disability, religion, and LGBTQ categories. This (...) précis describes the main components (conferralist framework, social meaning, social construction, social identity) briefly, but leaves discussions of applications for another time. (shrink)

This is a response to the critical comments by Åsa Burman, Esa Díaz-León, Aaron Griffith, and Katharine Jenkins.

Realist essentialists face a prima facie challenge in accounting for our knowledge of the essences of things, and in particular, in justifying our engaging in thought experiments to gain such knowledge. In contrast, conferralist essentialism has an attractive story to tell about how we gain knowledge of the essences of things, and how thought experiments are a justified method for gaining such knowledge. The conferralist story is told in this essay.

I argue that a response‐dependence account of a concept can yield metaphysical results, and not merely epistemological or semantical results, which has been a prevalent view in the literature on response‐dependence. In particular, I show how one can argue for a conferralist account of a certain property by arguing that the concept of the property is response‐dependent, if certain assumptions are made.

La peinture de Caravage occupe une position stratégique entre l'art religieux du XVIe siècle, dont le naturalisme, ainsi chez Carracci, est imprégné de présence divine, et le réalisme sécularisé qui triomphera au XIXe siècle. Aussi a-t-elle été l'objet d'incessants conflits d'interprétation, commencés déjà de son temps. Elle ne paraissait pas d'accord, en effet, avec les consignes d'orthodoxie données aux artistes par les théologiens de la Contre-Réforme, et clairement rappelées à Caravage dans le contrat qui lui avait été fixé en 1565 (...) pour représenter les scènes de la vie de S. Matthieu dans l'église S. Louis des Français à Rome. Il interpréta ce contrat selon des critères tout nouveaux et personnels. La composition de l'espace et de la lumière, la disposition des personnages et des clairs-obscurs sont significatives de la vision moderne du monde et de l'homme qui commence à se mettre en place à cette époque. Le rayon de lumière qui traverse une scène sans noblesse plongée dans l'obscurité immobilise un instant de vérité et de choix, l'événement de la rencontre de Jésus et de Matthieu, l'instant d'une communication de parole entre Dieu et l'homme, l'heure où chacun est appelé à décider du sens de son existence personnelle, sans autre intervention divine, dans la banalité de sa vie quotidienne. Ce monde n'est pas vide de Dieu, mais Dieu ne fait qu'y passer ; il se retire, pour laisser le monde à son autonomie, et l'homme à la conscience de sa liberté.Caravaggio's painting holds a strategic position between the religions art of the sixteenth century, the naturalism of which is pervaded by divine presence – e.g. in Carracci's art –, and the secularized realism which is to flourish in the nineteenth century. It has therefore been the subject of unceasing controversies in its interpretation, beginning in Caravaggio’s times already. Indeed, Caravaggio’s painting did not seem in line with the instructions given to the artists by Counter-Reformation’s theologians, urging them to follow the Orthodox line. Caravaggio had been clearly reminded of those instructions in the contract he had signed in 1565 to portray the scenes of Saint Matthew’s life in Saint Louis des Français’Church in Roma. He interpretated this contract according to very innovative and personal criteria. The composition of space and light, the layout of characters and chiaroscuros are revealing of the modern vision of the world and of the man that was emerging in those times. The light ray that crosses a scene devoid of nobleness and plunged into darkness, immobilises a moment of truth and choice : the event of Jesus meeting Matthew, the instant of an oral communication between God and man, the time when everyone is called to decide his of her personal existence in the triviality of his or her daily life, without God intervening in the process. This world is not void of God’s presence, but God only passes through it. He withdraws to let the world face its autonomy, and man face the awareness of his freedom. (shrink)

The article deals with the issue of initial impossibility of performance of an obligation and the influence of such impossibility of performance on the validity of the legal transaction that establishes such an obligation. The legal doctrine convincingly demonstrates that for Roman lawyers the rule Impossitionbilium nulla obligatio est merely meant that nobody can be obliged to perform something that cannot be performed; however, it did not necessarily follow that a contract establishing such an obligation was void. Modern civil codifications (...) overlook another significant feature of the Roman law – the uncontested application of the principle Impossibilium nulla obligatio est only in case of stipulatio, whereas modern contract law has its origins in the Roman law of consensual contracts. (shrink)

The article outlines some aspects of the civil law in Lithuania, an Eastern European country, which underwent an essential transformation in the last decades. The author outlines the development of the Lithuanian civil law from the oldest written sources up to the adoption of the new Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania in 2000. The author is critical about the denomination of Lithuania as a “new” state and draws attention to the history of Lithuanian law, which spans hundreds of (...) years. The article emphasizes the continuity of the legal tradition and the heterogeneity of law – the coexisting of several legal systems in the territory of one state. The article discusses the role of Roman Law in the legal system of Lithuania. Even though Roman Law has never been applied in Lithuania, the author argues that it nevertheless had an indirect influence on Lithuanian private law. Roman Law and Canonical Law were among the main sources while drafting the three codified acts, the Statutes of Lithuania, in 1529, 1566 and 1588. The knowledge of Roman Law acquired by lawyers at universities in other European countries was transmitted through drafting of the laws and the jurisdictional and administrative practices. (shrink)

The article deals with a specific type of contract that an heir is entitled to conclude—the transfer (or sale) of the rights of succession. As a starting point, the author of the article analyses the formation and further development of the transfer of succession as a whole (hereditas) in the Roman law. Two major proceedings used by Roman lawyers for the purposes of the alienation of hereditas are analysed, one being in iure cessio hereditatis and the second taking the form (...) of emptio venditi hereditatis. The interrelations between this kind of transfer and the recognition of the possibility of the assignment of rights (cessio) under the Roman law are pointed out. The author traces the impact of the principles developed by the Roman law on the legal regulation of the contract in question in modern codification by drawing attention to the French Civil Code and the Civil Code of Quebec. The author states that the legal rules on the sale of the rights of succession contained in the new Lithuanian Civil Code adopted in 2000 have been transposed, to a large extent, from the two abovementioned codes. After analysing the object of this contract, the author concludes that it is the sale of a certain incorporeal property (res incorporales) that is meant by the terms ‘succession’ (hereditas) or the ‘rights of succession’. This feature distinguishes the analysed contract from the ordinary contracts that an heir may conclude for the purposes of the alienation of specific objects making part of the succession. (shrink)

This exciting new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the contemporary state of the field in feminist philosophy. The editors' introduction and forty-five essays cover feminist critical engagements with philosophy and adjacent scholarly fields, as well as feminist approaches to current debates and crises across the world. Authors cover topics ranging from the ways in which feminist philosophy attends to other systems of oppression, and the gendered, racialized, and classed assumptions embedded in philosophical concepts, to feminist perspectives on prominent subfields (...) of philosophy. The first section contains chapters that explore feminist philosophical engagement with mainstream and marginalized histories and traditions, while the second section parses feminist philosophy's contributions to numerous philosophical subfields, for example metaphysics and bioethics. A third section explores what feminist philosophy can illuminate about crucial moral and political issues of identity, gender, the body, autonomy, prisons, among numerous others. The Handbook concludes with the field's engagement with other theories and movements, including trans studies, queer theory, critical race, theory, postcolonial theory, and decolonial theory. The volume provides a rigorous but accessible resource for students and scholars who are interested in feminist philosophy, and how feminist philosophers situate their work in relation to the philosophical mainstream and other disciplines. Above all it aims to showcase the rich diversity of subject matter, approach, and method among feminist philosophers. (shrink)

: I argue that a response‐dependence account of a concept can yield metaphysical results, and not merely epistemological or semantical results, which has been a prevalent view in the literature on response‐dependence. In particular, I show how one can argue for a conferralist account of a certain property by arguing that the concept of the property is response‐dependent, if certain assumptions are made.

The subject of this chapter is to what extent a feminist should embrace naturalist commitments. I characterize naturalism as involving two commitments: a rejection of normativity and a commitment to philosophy as a descriptive discipline consisting of empirical questions to be answered by empirical methods. I argue that a feminist should not be a naturalist about normativity, because feminists need to engage in an inherently normative enquiry. On the other hand, a naturalist move, wherein one offers a causal explanation to (...) undercut a normative claim, is an essential part of a good ideology critique, which is a feminist staple. As feminists believe that our lived experiences and social and material conditions are relevant to our theorizing, empirical questions should play an integral role in normative enquiry, but since philosophy is not exhausted by such empirical enquiry, philosophy isn't an empirical science. (shrink)

This article analyses implementation of freedom of assembly within Lithuania and in some other States of the European Union. Attention is paid to the differences in the implementation practices for this freedom while analysing probability of restriction of freedom of assembly in the light of legal, political and social factors. The article aims to substantiate that the quality of decision while adopting spreading ideas and expressed views during peaceful meetings, or adopting them later, or dismissing in general, is determined by (...) the democratic society being formed in the state during a particular period. On the other hand, although physical restriction of diffusion of ideas while implementing freedom of assembly is legitimate, it should not become the main control tool, since the development of the state in this direction is absolutely opposite to the expansion of democratic ideas in the society. Legal education should become the priority area of the policy conducted by the state. Particularly since this priority provides the security for the spread of best practices in democratic states, thus laying the grounds for effective prevention of expression of illegal behaviour. Such illegal behaviour may occur in the form of incitement of hatred and aggression in respect of persons who have different faith, race, nation or sexual orientation. The article substantiates that the real challenge faced by the modern democracy is security for practical implementation rather than the formal recognition and regulation of rights and freedoms. It has been found in practice that the implementation of freedom of assembly can be faulty restricted by the procedural justice. After evaluating experience of the States of the European Union and the way in which their national legal system is structured, the recommendations are made enabling a timely dispute settlement concerning the right of assembly, i.e., in order to prevent decision making process from becoming an obstacle for the implementation of freedom of assembly. It is pointed out that settlement of the dispute concerning the permission to hold a peaceful assembly after the date of the assembly is pointless and denies social importance of right of the assembly. (shrink)

The article analyses enforcement of freedom of assembly, draws attention to faults of legal regulation of dispute settlement, and revises a possibility of restriction of freedom of assembly. The authors provide evidence that restriction of freedom of assembly by refusing to grant permission to hold a peaceful assembly, is not an effective measure, therefore, it is suggested to educate the public on legal issues in order to enlighten the society about detrimental effect of publicly expressed ideas that provoke national or (...) racial discord, to disclose actual intentions of people who instigate aggression, force and violence so that they do not attract and rally a sufficiently large part of the public. People usually believe that the society enjoys freedom of knowledge and the right to obtain all information, as well as all news that originate and spread across the market, as it creates a pre-requisite for strengthening the best and most useful culture projects resulting in the development of culture and, alongside, the law. (shrink)

Repetition is often associated with traditional teaching drills. However, it has been documented how repetitions are exploited by learners themselves. In a study of immersion classroom conversations, it was found that playful recyclings were recurrent features of young learners’ second language repertoires. Such joking events were identified on the basis of the participants’ displayed amusement, and they often involved activity-based jokes and meta pragmatic play, that is, joking about how or by whom something is said. Two types of recyclings: intertextual (...) play and role appropriations were both important features in informal classroom entertainment and in the formation of a community of learners. In a broad sense, both types of joking contained subversive elements in that they created play zones or ‘time-out’ within classroom activities. Moreover, role appropriations were subversive in that they inverted classroom hierarchies. (shrink)

The article analyses, in a comparative perspective, the phenomenon of the evolution of the protection of surviving spouse’s inheritance rights in France and Lithuania, the two legal systems historically having some points of interaction. The protection of the surviving spouse is one of the major preoccupations of married couples of today, the couple occupying a central role within the contemporary family. Comparative analysis reveals certain points of convergence between these two legal systems inasmuch the surviving spouse is considered by both (...) legislations as an heir ab intestat and whose protection over the years has been considerably strengthened. The surviving spouse is called to inherit alongside with the heirs of the first or second order and is entitled to the proportions in assets that have not ceased to increase. Lithuanian law seems to have been innovative at an earlier stage than French law, as it is only in the beginning of the 21st century that significant reforms were carried out in this area of law in France. Analysis has also revealed apparent differences in the scope of protection of the surviving spouse, both in regards to the protection provided by law (statutory protection), as well as protection organised by the will of the spouses (voluntary protection). In some respects the statutory protection is more extensive in France (for example, complementary statutory rights of the spouse in regards to the dwelling place or the quality of héritier réservataire) and the instruments of this protection seem to be more varied (for example, the possibility for the spouses to organise their matrimonial regime by inserting specific clauses into the nuptial contract, mechanisms outside the nuptial contracts, such as donations, wills or life insurance contracts). However, this protection might appear to be more extensive under Lithuanian law as far as the voluntary protection is concerned taking into account the introduction, by the new Lithuanian Civil Code of 2000, of the joint will of spouses under which the whole property of the deceased spouse shall be inherited by the surviving spouse (except the mandatory share of succession). The article raises some doubts as to the desirability or even feasibility of aligning the two models of protection given the fact that each of the two countries has its own history and traditions. Nevertheless, a proposition resurges from the analysis in regard to the possible improvement of the protection of the rights to the dwelling place of the surviving spouse under Lithuanian law. Some elements from the existing French model could be transposed given that the dwelling place is an essential family element providing some stability for the surviving spouse. (shrink)

The article attempts to present a thorough analysis of intelectual property, as main property of a modern company, from the perspective of private law. The article anlyzes the essence of the intangible resources that form the intellectual capital and discusses whether the modern institutes of law allow the universal protection of companies‘ intellectual capital. The first part of the article analizes the conception of intangible resources and provides their qlassification. The second part of the article discusses the understanding of intellectual (...) capital and importance thereof to modern companies. In the third part of the article, the possibility to financially account all intellectual property of a company is analyzed. The forth and fifth parts of the article reveal the possibilities of legal protection of intellectual capital. The law on intelectual property is not sufficient to protect all intelectual capital because it protects only that part of intangibles, which become the onjects of the intelectual property. (shrink)

In a legal sense, a proprietary complex is comprehended as a totality of the objects of civil rights having common purpose which is referred to as a self-sufficient object having separate monetary value. In contemporary doctrine of private law, wherein the pluralistic theory of civil relationship is prevalent, the object of the civil relationship as well as the object of civil rights is considered the values regarding which of the civil relationship emerged. Proprietary complexes as the multipartite objects of civil (...) rights are comprised of various units of asset. In a legal sense, assets are considered as the objects of civil rights having economic value and capacity to participate in civil turnover, i.e. the owner is able to transfer such object to another person. While forming proprietary complexes, different units of assets (tangible and intangible) are united into a totality which is considered as one object of civil rights. So, if the positive law constitutes a possibility to form proprietary complexes and to participate in civil turnover, it becomes possible to capitalize assets, whereas proprietary complexes are formed in order to gain additional monetary value. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to analyse the formation of proprietary complexes, the genesis and theoretical grounding of proprietary complexes and different kinds of proprietary complexes. The subject matter of the research is the analysis of the concept of proprietary complex, the identification of the features of proprietary complexes and the analysis of particular proprietary complexes. The main methods used in this research are document (content of source), linguistic, systematic and critical analyses as well as historical, comparative and teleological analyses. (shrink)