A Socio-Ecological and Multilevel Approach to the Role of Honour Cultures on Violence Justification: Resource Scarcity and Ineffective Law Enforcement

This paper contemplates the state of drift in the public’s feeling and trust in the justice system that has the authority to interpret the law using the World Values Survey data from 1981 to 2013. This study will show that the trust in the justice system as an institution has changed over time and over geographic region. Citizens trust judges when they feel they get a good return on their tax dollars and when the rule of law is upheld such that liberties they hold dear are preserved. While involvement per person varies, the justice systems rulings can still be measured and experienced. News of legislation rather than interpretation and application of the law creates a perception of inferior performance on the part of the courts. The purpose of the judicial system is to preserve the liberties and rights of citizens. This is carried out through processes that achieve outcomes from various court hierarchical structures that help citizens to seek justice, that deter citizens from engaging in unlawful activities, and that provide constraints regarding the treatment of other citizens. By leveraging the World Values Survey data, this study shows trends in trust over time in the justice system across generations and geographies.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly able to autonomously detect suspicious activities (‘smart’ law enforcement). In certain domains, technology already fulfills the task of detecting suspicious activities better than human police officers ever could. In such areas, i.e. if and where smart law enforcement technologies actually work well enough, legislators and law enforcement agencies should consider their use. Unfortunately, the German Constitutional Court, the European Court of Justice, and the US Supreme Court are all struggling to develop convincing and clear-cut guidelines to direct these legislative and administrative considerations. This article attempts to offer such guidance: First, lawmakers need to implement regulatory provisions in order to maintain human accountability if AI-based law enforcement technologies are to be used. Secondly, AI law enforcement should be used, if and where possible, to overcome discriminatory traits in human policing that have plagued some jurisdictions for decades. Finally, given that smart law enforcement promises an ever more effective and even ubiquitous enforcement of the law—a ‘perfect’ rule of law, in that sense—it invites us as democratic societies to decide if, where, and when we might wish to preserve the freedom to disobey the rule(s) of law.

This study examined associations between income inequality and mortality in 282 US metropolitan areas. Income inequality measures were calculated from the 1990 US Census. Mortality was calculated from National Center for Health Statistics data and modeled with weighted linear regressions of the log age-adjusted rate. Excess mortality between metropolitan areas with high and low income inequality ranged from 64.7 to 95.8 deaths per 100,000 depending on the inequality measure. In age-specific analyses, income inequality was most evident for infant mortality and for mortality between ages 15 and 64. Higher income inequality is associated with increased mortality at all per capita income levels. Areas with high income inequality and low average income had excess mortality of 139.8 deaths per 100,000 compared with areas with low inequality and high income. The magnitude of this mortality difference is comparable to the combined loss of life from lung cancer, diabetes, motor vehicle crashes, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, suicide, and homicide in 1995. Given the mortality burden associated with income inequality, public and private sector initiatives to reduce economic inequalities should be a high priority.

Динамічний розвиток суспільних відносин, зокрема на транспорті, вимагає негайних та вчасних нормативно-правових удосконалень. Це необхідно перш за все для недопущення порушення правоохоронними органами Конституції та законів України в процесі правозастосовної діяльності. Досить часто судді через нормативну неврегульованість аспектів суспільних відносин застосовують наявні в законодавчій базі норми права, які за певних безпрецедентних обставин справи не підлягають застосуванню, хоча є, на перший погляд, правильними. Наявні прогалини в нормативно-правових актах порушують основоположні принципи відповідальності винуватих осіб, зокрема перестає діяти принцип «невідворотності покарання», що є началом формування в суспільстві нігілістичних настроїв, стереотипів аномії. У цій роботі розглянуто факти недотримання судами завдання провадження у справах про адміністративні правопорушення у сфері забезпечення безпеки дорожнього руху, головним із яких є недотримання вирішення справи чітко відповідно до закону, а також шляхи вирішення цієї проблеми. Проаналізувавши ситуації щодо відриву (пошкодження) заправного пістолета на автозаправній станції водіями транспортних засобів через життєві фактори (неуважність, квапливість та ін.), ми виявили вади в правозастосовній діяльності поліцейських, які на місці пригоди кваліфікують дії винуватця як дорожньо-транспортну пригоду. Після процесуального оформлення цього делікту матеріали адміністративної справи, за підвідомчістю, направляються на розгляд до суду першої інстанції, де судді, неправильно оперуючи правилами чинного законодавства, помилково застосовують норми матеріального права та порушують процесуальну норму. Наслідком цього є порушення основоположного принципу «верховенства права», положення якого закріплені в ст. 8 Конституції України.

Rule of law and CO2 emissions: A comparative analysis across 65 belt and road initiative(BRI) countries

The subject of the study is historical method of interpretation in law, its capacities and types. Despite the recognition of historical interpretation by legal science, there are no specialized works and there is no consensus on the content of this method of interpretation. Historical interpretation is considered both as an interpretation based on a previous rule of law, as an interpretation considering the conditions for the adoption of the norm, and as an interpretation based on the practice of applying the interpreted norm.The purpose of the study is to substantiate the authors' hypothesis that historical interpretation in law is an intellectual activity that involves clarifying the content of a legal prescription, achieved based on identifying legal and non-legal factors that both precede the creation of the norm and accompany its adoption. In addition, the authors set the task to identify those factors that should be taken into account in historical interpretation, as well as to classify the types of historical interpretation. The analysis of historical interpretation is made using scientific methods: induction and deduction, formal legal, comparative legal synchronous and diachronic methods.The main results, scope of application. Historical interpretation considers political, economic, social, and legal factors. Legal factors include the rules of law that preceded the interpreted norm, repealed acts, official and unofficial documents of law-making entities, draft laws, acts and the norms contained therein that accompanied the interpreted regulation, i.e. were adopted simultaneously with the interpreted norm, as well as other factors, such as the level of development of legal science and legal technique.The authors suppose that historical interpretation cannot be considered as a homogeneous way of interpretation. In reality, the historical interpretation in law can be carried out using different techniques and methods, in relation to heterogeneous legal prescriptions, and carried out by subjects with different legal status. Therefore, several grounds for classifyinghistorical interpretation are proposed. First, it is a classification that considers the connection of historical interpretation with the other ways of interpretation. According to this criterion, it is possible to divide it into a proper historical and a complex historical interpretation. Complex historical interpretation includes historical-systematic, historical-functional, historical-teleological, historical-legal, and historical-linguistic interpretation. Second, the basis may be the sources of law that contain the rules of law. On this basis, historical interpretation is divided into the interpretation of prescriptions of normative legal acts, legal customs, normative contracts, etc. Third, it is possible to classify the historical interpretation, depending on whether the rule of law is valid or not, into the historical interpretation of the rules that have lost their legal force and the historical interpretation of the rules of the current law. The latter, in its turn, is divided into the interpretation of the current legal norms of the current content and those legal norms that have not lost their force but are outdated in content. The fourth classification is based on subjects and includes historical official interpretation and historical unofficial interpretation.Conclusions. Correct approach to the concept and process of historical interpretation of the content of legal norms, as well as the choice of the type of historical interpretation helps in law enforcement, allows you to put forward scientific hypotheses, predict the further development of law based on historical knowledge of the interpreted norm, assess the possibility of reviving canceled acts in recurring socio-economic and political-legal situations.

This study investigates the factors that affect the home-ownership propensity of households using a modified two-period equilibrium model. In particular, the study examines the impacts of some social, political and economic factors that in theory should affect housing tenure choice but have limited empirical evidence so far. To test the impacts of these factors, five sets of Hong Kong Census and By-Census cross sectional data over the period from 1991 to 2011 were used to estimate Binary Logit Models. Further robustness tests were conducted using sub-sample of the entire dataset.
\n
\nThere are three key empirical findings that contribute to the existing body of knowledge in housing tenure choice. First, it is found that the positive income effect on home-ownership propensity found in previous studies can be reversed by political risk. There is strong evidence which suggests that income has negative impact on home-ownership propensity during periods of high political uncertainty. The handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 was used as an event to study how political uncertainty would influence the effect of household income on housing tenure choice. Before the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, risk-averse households with high income in Hong Kong tended to be tenants rather than owner-occupiers so as to reduce their moving cost and increase mobility. High income households tended to be more internationally mobile and could migrate to other countries more easily, while households with low income were less internationally mobile and hence their housing tenure choice was less affected by political risks. The income effect on home-ownership propensity turned positive after the handover in 1997, when most of the political uncertainties were removed.
\n
\nSecond, this study shows that policies that encourage inflow of capital to Hong Kong has an unintended consequence of depressing the home-ownership rate of local households. Empirical results in this study suggest that local households are less likely to be owner-occupiers after the implementation of Capital Investment Entrant Scheme (CIES) and the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) in Hong Kong in 2003. These policies have increased non-local demand for housing. Even after temporary suspension of housing as a class of Permissible Investment Assets (PIA) on 14 October 2010, successful applicants under the scheme, who are usually very rich, could afford and tend to buy their own housing units in Hong Kong. Due to the inelastic supply of developable land in Hong Kong, increased demand from immigrants had driven up housing prices, making housing less affordable to many local people. In addition, the IVS implemented at about the same time have also contributed to the surging demand for housing from non-local buyers, since the IVS has made visiting Hong Kong for people from Mainland China much easier than before. Due to the limited supply of developable land and appreciation of the RMB, some visitors from Mainland China find it attractive to buy housing units in Hong Kong for investment or self-consumption purposes. 
\nFinally, the impact of local language proficiency on tenure choice is another major finding in this study that was not investigated in the past. Compared to non-Chinese speakers in Hong Kong, Chinese speakers, especially Cantonese speakers, are more likely to be owner-occupiers. There are two potential explanations – cultural fit and transaction costs. The cultural fit hypothesis proposes that an individual who is proficient in local language can culturally fit to the society better and therefore has a higher home-ownership propensity. The transaction cost hypothesis suggests that the transaction costs of an individual’s the daily life and economic activities are higher if he/she is not proficient in local language, which made him/her less willing to have longer term commitments to live in Hong Kong. The higher transaction cost applies to all economic activities that involve bargaining, matching and searching. Home purchase is an example of such activities. However, due to the large sum of money involved in buying a housing unit, risk-averse individuals who are not proficient in local language would prefer renting to buying when making a decision on housing tenure choice. Empirical results in the study suggest that transaction cost is more important than cultural fit in explaining the local language proficiency effect on home-ownership propensity. 
\nThe above empirical findings are robust across different methods of controlling the effects of other factors that affect housing tenure choice using restricted sub-samples.

Some studies have found that people become more respectful of authority and the rule of law as they get older. However, other studies have had contrary findings. The next few pages analyze the relationship between age and attitudes toward the ethics of tax evasion, using the World Values survey data.

Social pathology is a social disease suffered by young people today are happening in the land of shari’a. The type of social pathology that is mixing young people who have the freedom, do not appreciate the values and norms, and attitudes of young people who are far from the religious values in the code of conduct rules of Islamic law in Aceh Barat district based on the rule of law. This is a consequence of globalization is a world without borders, so that globalization also transfused to the westernization of Islamic youth in today's world. With the westernization of today's young generation to generation, the social pathology easily occur. The authors of this research focuses on the West Aceh district as a district known as the Islamic Shari'a. This study used a qualitative descriptive analysis methodologies for being able to respond to the social pathology that is happening today. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the West Aceh district government in enforcing Islamic law in the Islamic Shari'a, which was valid as the rule of law to enforce strict Islamic law. The results showed enforcement of Islamic law in Aceh Barat district special because the younger generation is often weak and apathetic to the rules of Islamic law until the reign of West Aceh Regent reiterated in Rule Number 5 of 2010 on the Enforcement of Islamic Law in Aceh Barat district in the application of Islamic dress in Regency West Aceh.Keywords: Social Pathology, Youths, Islam.

Land, Food, and Biodiversity

Introduction. In the latest practice of law enforcement in financial law, the institution of discretion is widely used for taxation and public financial policy in terms of exercising the powers of regulatory authorities and taxpayers. At present, there is no standard procedure for exercising discretion in applying the provisions of financial law: 1) how and on the basis of what discretion is to be exercised; 2) criteria and sequence of analysis; 3) comparison of facts with the rule of law; 4) consequences of coincidence of fact / norm; 5) evaluations by criteria; 6) interpretation; 7) justification; 8) formation of conclusions; 9) giving similar legal positions; 10) how to make decisions within the discretion. The main problems with the improper exercise of discretionary powers to apply the rules of financial law are related to the insufficient quality of public administration instruments through which law enforcement and influence on private law entities are exercised. Additional research requires the formulation of clear limits on applying the provisions of financial law in the procedural dimension. A mechanism for exercising discretion in the application of financial law is to be developed in the dimensions of procedure and legal proceedings. The goal of the article is to reveal the essence of the tools of public administration on discretion in applying the provisions of financial law. Summary of the main results of the study. Firstly, the types and features of the tools of public administration regarding discretion in applying the provisions of financial law have been outlined. Within the relevant legal regimes and dispositive procedural dimension of discretion in applying the provisions of financial law, the instruments of public administration are a means of public legal influence on the subject of financial law in order to ensure stability and unity of law enforcement practice. Secondly, the supporting role of the procedural instrumental measurement of the public administration activity has been clarified. For law enforcement in financial law, only the interfering component is not enough to properly ensure the rights of a person to property, the exercise of the legitimate interests of taxpayers, participants in customs, anti-dumping and other legal relations. The implementation of public financial policy is associated with purposeful structuring influence on the subject of law within specific legal relations with the observance of public interest in maintaining law and order. Thirdly, the prospects of automating decision-making in discretionary relations, in particular, through the digitalization of processes. Conclusions. The instruments of public administration influence financial relations, creating a basis for satisfying the public interest of the state and private interests of taxpayers, as well as the supranational European integration interest. Via such tools, the regulatory function of financial law is embodied in the practice of law enforcement and the task of implementing discretionary relations in compliance with the principle of the rule of law is achieved. The tools of public administration on discretion in applying the provisions of financial law include: basic (regulations and administrative acts); auxiliary or facilitating (acts-actions, acts-plans, administrative agreements). In their unity and interaction, lawful and effective law enforcement is possible, taking into account the public interest of the state, public needs and private interests of subjects of private law.

Before it collapsed in 1948, Czechoslovakian democracy had faced erosion for decades. At the dawn of the first Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the nation was positioned for democratic success, with relatively high incomes, high education levels, low inequality, and a well-developed civil society. The democracy that took shape, however, was contorted by Czechs’ desire to dominate the political system in a multiethnic state. When democracy was reconstituted after World War II, it retained a nationalist bent, but with Communists within the National Front government. The trauma of Munich in 1938 and the war itself had turned allegiances away from the West and toward the Soviet Union. Despite receiving only 10% of the vote in 1930s elections, Communists met no resistance from the National Front. Their coalition government trampled over individual rights, rule of law, and human decency. This culminated in the coup in 1948, when Communists seized full control without firing a shot.

All relations between persons require their reciprocal acceptance as legal subjects, which is only possible if they trust that the law will bind them together. One cannot have a democratic and legitimate EU if the Rule of Law is absent or fading. The Rule of Law is more than a rule or even a principle (which can be balanced against other principles). Article 2 TEU rightly calls it a founding value. National and international political credibility and social cohesion depend on the acceptance of this principle. The Rule of Law in the EU is however continuously challenged by tensions between the realisation of the values enshrined in Article 2, as well as the human rights norms and principles confirmed in Article 6, and ‘contemporary understandings of “law as a means to an end”’. In view of its relationship with reciprocal respect among institutions and citizens for human dignity, the close relationship between the Rule of Law and human rights should also become a part of our understanding of the Rule of Law. In other words: what counts is not the rule of any ‘law’, irrespective of its content, but law in a democratic constitutional framework which contributes to the realisation of human rights. The Rule of Law is not only a condition for trust among citizens, but also for trust in economic life. Strengthening and upholding the trust of the citizens requires much more than the enforcement of European law in the courts, and breaching their trust cannot wait to be cured until the conditions for application of Article 7 TEU are met. It is, as Article 2 TEU rightly says, a question of values: ‘the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the Rule of Law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities’. The question of how a public authority can promote its values – such as the Rule of Law – has been discussed in different contexts. This paper discusses a number of initiatives and proposals that the EU has put forward for the promotion of the Rule of Law, including the ‘Justice Scoreboard’, a peer review procedure, a ‘pre-Article 7 procedure’ and the Council Conclusions on the Rule of Law of December 2014 proposing a ‘political dialogue’ on the matter. The Rule of Law initiative is meant to prevent situations of serious shortcomings or disregard for the foundational values of the EU by Member States, but is no alternative to political or legal sanctions. Once a political system has drifted away from the Rule of Law, it is too late to rely on dialogue between justice systems representatives. However, if we wish to prevent such situations and reverse negative developments, it remains worthwhile to strive for the enculturalisation of Rule of Law principles in the attitudes and practices of professionals and officials. Ultimately, these professionals and officials are those who can make a difference, for the citizens of their own state but also for other European citizens who – as a result of the mutual recognition of judicial decisions and arrest warrants, or when they avail themselves of the economic freedoms of the Union – have to rely on the Rule of Law in other Member States. Bringing a value to life is first a matter of developing attitudes and virtues. The Rule of Law depends on reciprocal respect and mutual trust, which could very well start with how we promote it.

Any rule of law contains a rule and the legal energy necessary for its implementation in the process of rulemaking, law enforcement, and scientific research. The rule of law is material. It is a system that consists of two elements. In the rule of law, the legislator fixes the rules of conduct. Its implementation assumes a certain dynamics that ensures the movement of the law enforcement process. Without this element, it is difficult to explain the law enforcement activity, its stages and their effectiveness. A rule of law is not a monolith, but a complex material system, the study of which can positively affect the effectiveness of rulemaking, current legislation and the practice of its application. Thus, a rule of law consists not only of one rule, but also of that part of it that prompts the rule to be realized, i.e. legal energy, without which it (the norm) is dead, i.e. it is not able to "work", act. A rule of law is an accumulator of legal energy, which in its scope and impact depends on the type of norm, its belonging to a certain branch of law and the form of its implementation: fine, reprimand, detention, imprisonment, etc. Legal energy provides the dynamics of the rule of law, its implementation. The forms of implementation of the rule of law are the application, the use of legal energy, ensuring its dynamics. In science, four forms of implementation of the norms of legal matter are defined, therefore, it is necessary to talk about four forms of manifestation of legal energy: compliance, execution, use, application. This is manifested in detail in the implementation of the norms of any branch of Russian law, including labor law. At present, it is necessary not only to investigate the legal energy, not only to explain this element of the legal norm, but also to investigate the dynamics of its use, formulate a general approach to the movement, dynamics of the legal norm, a unit or a set of units of its measurement, use.

The article critically examines the European Commission’s conceptualisation of the rule of law in enlargement. Three main arguments are advanced. First, regarding the Commission’s understanding of the rule of law in the pre-accession process, it will be argued that it predominantly concentrates on legal-institutional reform. The article asserts that, although important, this particular focus fails to recognise that the rule of law is not only about the functioning of the (broader) legal sector, and the application and enforcement of law per se, but also about formal rule of law elements related to the quality of laws and regulations, as well as about societal orientation towards the rule of law and the will to respect it. Secondly, it will be argued that the EU’s pre-accession process does not sufficiently address the rule of law’s core formal elements, to the extent that its main focus is alignment with the acquis and changes made to domestic legislation are measured in terms of quantity and not quality. Thirdly, although the recent enlargement strategies and monitoring reports increasingly acknowledge the importance of societal transformation needed for the rule of law to take root in the applicant states, it will be demonstrated that this soft rule of law element has not (yet) been incorporated in the Commission’s understanding of and approach towards the rule of law.