Health care under the Taliban

The use of reasoning per analogiam in tax law in light of constitutional regulations

Interpretation of law is a central process that shapes the legal order, enables the application of legal norms and affects the functioning of state power. This paper analyses different approaches to the interpretation of law – grammatical, systemic, teleological and practical interpretation – and their significance for achieving legal certainty, fairness and efficiency. Special emphasis is placed on the interdependence of legislative, executive and judicial powers, exploring how the interpretation of laws affects decision-making, policy implementation and dispute resolution. The role of jurisprudence and constitutional law is discussed in detail through examples from the practice of the Constitutional Court of Serbia, which shows how the interpretation of the Constitution can redefine relations between different branches of government and adapt the legal order to contemporary challenges. The paper also includes an analysis of the impact of international law and its harmonization with domestic legislation, emphasizing the complexity of legal hermeneutics in a globalized legal context. Through case studies, such as flexible interpretation of the law during emergency situations (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic), the importance of adaptability of legal norms to preserve the stability and continuity of the state has been highlighted. Finally, the paper points to the need for a balanced and coherent approach to the interpretation of law in order to ensure the legal order, the trust of citizens and the legitimacy of state authority. Interpretation of law is a key instrument that enables legal norms to remain relevant and applicable in different social, economic and political contexts. The paper especially emphasizes the importance of continuous education of legal experts and the improvement of legal practice in order to ensure consistent and efficient application of law in modern conditions.

Lynn Mather as President of the Law and Society Association: A Canadian Perspective I was very pleased to see Mather address the issue of assumptions of universality that might exist in the Law and Society Association (LSA), especially as she notes the unusual of planning a joint meeting with the Canadian Law and Society Association (CLSA). Many of us can tell stories (some rather amusing) about assumptions of universality by citizens of the United States.1 Some of us have experienced it by sending articles to the Law & Society Review.2 But what I would like to focus on is Mather's role in reaching out to the CLSA. I have to confess I was initially a bit dubious about the proposed joint meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia.3 Many of my doubts were erased when Mather drove up to Quebec City in May 2001, during our annual conference, to meet with members of the CLSA regarding the planning of the 2002 conference. Despite the fact that her organization was seven to eight times larger than ours and had an office with staff (unlike the CLSA), she started from the assumption that we were on equal footing. Mather and Lou Knafla, the president of the CLSA, appointed a 16-member program committee, with six academics from the United States, five from Canada, one from each of South Korea, Japan, and Australia.4 Valerie Hans and I were asked to act as program chairs. Mather also had the foresight to realize that we might work better as a group if we actually met face-to-face. She raised funds from the John Sloan Dickey Center to bring us together at the Minary Center in New Hampshire. Due to the terrorist events of September 11, our September 14-15 meeting had to be cancelled. Undeterred, Mather (with the assistance of Rod MacDonald and Jean-Francois Gaudreault-DesBiens, two committee members from McGill) arranged for us to meet in Montreal in mid-October. Not only did we receive John Sloan Dickey's quotation about ill-founded premises in advance of the meeting (see Mather 2003:263 for the quotation), but Mather read it to us again in her opening comments at our planning meeting. Above all, Mather is a good listener, and her disarming manner and charm won us over. She has gone a long way in taking the United States out of the LSA.5 On a personal level, Mather's ability to reach out to Canadians and others was unprecedented and very much appreciated. The Impact of Institutional Structures and Power on Law and Society I was intrigued by Mather's reference to the article by Campbell and Wiles (1976) that describes and society in Britain as bifurcating into the of law and whereas the phrases are indistinguishable to most Americans (Mather 2003:272), and her discussion of the creation of LSA as a response to a wider political environment as well as an academic one (as discussed by Garth & Sterling 1998). It led me to reflect on the nature of and society research and teaching issues, and whether there are sufficient changes in societies today to anticipate another shift in focus. Campbell and Wiles distinguish between sociolegal studies, has been denigrated [by the sociology of law] as antitheoretical, concerned with social engineering through the existing legal order, and not with explaining the order or transcending it by critique, and the sociology of law, has been chastized [by sociolegal studies] as abstract theoreticians, whose speculations were divorced from reality and lacked practical relevance (1976:549). Sociolegal studies has accepted the legal order as unproblematic and worked to improve it (handmaidens of the and social order), whereas the sociology of has questioned the nature of social (including legal) order and tried to understand how laws have emerged-both the official and unofficial versions (1976:553-54). One year earlier, Cain expressed concern that the sociology of might separate too early from its sociological roots (as British criminology had done) and lose some of its ideas and theory, which alone could give it coherence and direction (1975:61). …

As a result of the long historical evolution on the international arena, a society of the states has been created, whose relations the international law is called to regulate. The main significance of the existence and functioning of this company shows the aspects of maintaining a certain legal and social order. At the same time, for the international community, the issues related to maintaining that order are of greater importance for international law than for the national legal order, or, in the international life, supranational universal bodies are lacking, having authority before the sovereign states. Due to the diversification of this field, the emergence of new subjects of law and new fields of application, in the development of international law, a series of tendencies have been manifested: first, categorically, there has been a metamorphosis of classical international law into a right of the entire international community. Today, international legal regulation is expanding on the newer areas of human activity, and international law is progressively developing. Older methods are being consolidated, as well as new methods are created to comply with the requirements of international law and to maintain the contemporary legal order based on the collective and individual measures of the states. At the same time, on the nature of contemporary international law and on the international legal order, as never, the activity of international organizations and the activity of social-political currents, as well as of nongovernmental organizations, is imposed.

В статье обосновывается представление о правовом порядке как ценности гражданского общества и правового государства, обусловливающей благоприятные условия для значительной части членов общества добиваться реализации своих приоритетных интересов, потребностей, прав и свобод. Подчеркивается конституционно-правовая природа правового порядка. Обращается внимание на взаимообусловленность правового и общественного порядка. Указывается на естественную взаимосвязь режима правовой законности и правового порядка. Делается вывод, что правовой порядок является важной основой функционирования и развития гражданского общества и правового государства и обретения личностью параметров достойного образа жизни. The article substantiates the idea of the legal order as a value of civil society and the rule of law, which determines favorable conditions for a significant part of the members of society to achieve the realization of their priority interests, the needs of rights and freedoms. The constitutional and legal nature of the legal order is emphasized. Attention is drawn to the interdependence of legal and social order. The natural relationship between the regime of legal legality and the legal order is pointed out. It is concluded that the legal order is an important basis for the functioning and development of civil society and the rule of law and the acquisition by the individual of the parameters of a decent way of life.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the relationship between the key categories of modern social and legal reality, in general, and constitutional law, in particular - social order, legal order and constitutional order. The last category, despite the fact that it is represented in the legal literature by a wide range of views, does not have a clear explanation. This is due, among other things, to its scientific and practical distance from the concept of social order. Overcoming this obstacle is associated with the growing need to expand the sphere of manifestation of constitutional law to the entire social order, exceeding the sphere of legal relations. Social order, legal order and constitutional order are in a dialectical unity, where each subsequent element is a condition for the existence of the previous ones in their ideal axiological and ontological perception. At the same time, constitutional order is not a mandatory attribute of the constitution, since the constitution itself may not meet the criteria for having a constitutional order. On the contrary, the orderliness of social relations built on the principles of constitutionalism, general principles of law, values of law and legal values indicates the presence of a constitutional order even in the absence of a formal constitutional act. The constitutional order fixes the social and value basis to which the formed legal order must comply. The presented concept of interaction between social order, legal order and constitutional order leads to the need to introduce into scientific circulation a concept, a category that ensures the connection between these phenomena. It is proposed to call it “the constitutional order of society (constitutional social order).”

In sociology, the interest in order is determined, among other things, by the identification of various factors that labilize and determine it. The factor under consideration, as a subject, is objectively difficult for social analysis and practical application of its results. Among the trigger reasons are legal culture and legitimacy, which are studied in this theoretical work from heuristic and analytical perspectives. It is assumed that legal culture, as a set of values aggregated by society and the state, can itself act as a factor of legitimacy for such an order. The disclosure of heuristic interest is carried out through legal consciousness of a person, a conscious choice of the model of rational (for oneself or the state) behavior, and the work of socio-legal institutions. Identifying the immanent signs of legal culture, we come to a conclusion that the critical mass of socially accumulated and legal knowledge provokes a qualitative leap in the development of both social and legal orders. This development determines the formation of an architecture of not only social but also nomological values, which creates the necessary conditions for the stability of social relations according to the objective rules provided by the legislator. The author emphasizes the impossibility of predetermining the primacy of the values under consideration since social and normative actions ensure the necessary balance of interests that are corresponding in nature, where unsatisfied frustrating expectations are considered as the main problems. Such expectations are associated with the violation of this balance, expressed in the permanent conflict between law and law enforcement, as the quintessence of the penetrating clash of social and legal orders, where society insists on defeating part of the monopoly on violence in the case of citizens’ deviant behavior and demilitarization of the work of legal institutions that is related to the condemnation of non-conformity, and where the state protects the objectivity of the rules of conduct and the extension of their sphere of influence by giving them legitimacy. The considered social order is seen as the basis for such an organization of life in society where the state acts as a moderator, introducing norms as irreducible standards of responsibility of each individual, correcting his behavior model towards rationality through legal culture that ensures legal awareness, conformity and legitimacy of socio-legal institutions. Legal culture laid down by society and supported by the state makes it possible to adopt a rational model of behavior in society and to make it resistant to destructive social phenomena.

Today, one must state that most women in Afghanistan find themselves in a similar repressive situation as during the Taliban regime. Besides some initial positive developments in the fields of education, political participation, health care and employment thanks to the armed intervention of the international community, not many aspects have improved in a substantial manner for most Afghan women and girls. According to several observers and human rights organisations, women in Afghanistan continue to be among the worst off within and beyond South Asia. Despite relevant commitments of the former Karzai government, women are facing all kinds of social atrocities, political limitations and sufferings from traditional practices, which are neither in line with the Afghan constitution, nor with national and international laws. The situation further deteriorated after the withdrawal of the bulk of international troops, which paved the path for the comeback of the Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalist groups, as well as the growing influence of religious clerics within the Afghan state and society. Having this in mind, the article attempts to shed some light on the most significant trajectories contributing to the worsening of the status of Afghan women.

Protection of constitutional identity in light of the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Poland – a comparative study

The purpose of the efficient development of municipal social areas is to ensure a stable growth of the gross regional product (economic growth) due to satisfaction of social needs of the population of oil and gas extraction areas. Development of the oil and gas industry in the Eastern Siberia is one of the priorities of the Russian energy strategy. To identify an efficient business development strategy, SWOT analysis and analysis of Michael Porter’s five competitive forces industry are used. The first method aims to assess internal potential of the company and allows identification of development areas by comparing competitive environment (external threats, favorable possibilities, internal weaknesses, and advantages). SWOT-based strategy development involves several stages. To analyze activities of oil and gas producing companies of the Eastern Siberia, three leading enterprises were selected: a private oil company INK; a private vertically integrated oil company JSC Surgutneftegaz; a partially government-owned company VCNG. The article deals with methods applied to increase municipal and regional financial resources required for satisfying social needs of the population. Strategic issues of economic survival and prosperity of oil and gas producing companies and population of the territories should be solved. It can be possible due to development of markets and diversification of activities of enterprises (Ermilov et al, 1998). Differentiation of approaches to assessing the efficiency of social programs helps to identify possible changes of the component in the coordination of economic and social policies when introducing education, health care, non-for-profit entrepreneurship in northern territories with low-income budgets.

Since personal data is key information, that is, sets of information on the basis of which the privacy of each individual in society is preserved, the question of their protection is extremely important. It is necessary, therefore, to emphasize the need to devote ourselves to this topic in an appropriate way, precisely bearing in mind its complexity. In this regard, the author's attention will be focused primarily on normative and institutional mechanisms through which the protection of personal data is achieved, both in international legal frameworks and in the law of the Republic of Serbia. A special emphasis will be placed on describing the mechanisms of legal protection that have been established in selected countries in the surrounding area. In addition, the subject of the paper will be an analysis of the right to privacy, its definition, determination of the place, as well as the importance of the mentioned term in the legal order. In the aforementioned work, the determination of the position of human rights in the legal and social order, as well as the determination of their relationship with personal data and the right to privacy, will have a special place.

The article analyses the church legal order as a component of the general social legal order. It is determined that the unique nature of ecclesiastical law and ecclesiastical legal order is the basis for a new reading of the problem of the relationship between the spiritual and legal principles of society. With the help of a set of modern methodological approaches, the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition, codes of canons and social concepts of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, works of theologians, national legislation and international legal acts, sociological data, press materials are analyzed. The ecclesiastical legal order, and the general social one, is combined with spirituality in that the sphere of the spiritual includes all the intellectual and moral forces of man, his desire for freedom and order. Comprehending the spiritual origins of law and the legal order, the authors assume that they are, above all, spiritual value. The functioning of the church legal order is an argument in opposition to those doctrinal positions that derive the legal order from the law and legality, and emphasises the appeal to the law as its real and reliable basis. Therefore, the concepts of legal order and church legal order are correlated as interrelated, but at the same time different phenomena. Legal regulation of church relations has a dual nature. It is carried out both by legal acts of the church and by the legislation of the state. Such a double dependence creates a vulnerability of the church legal order to the nature and quality of secular law. The subjective structure of the church legal order is also ambivalent. In Ukraine, as in a multi-confessional society, a separate (autonomous) church legal order is inherent in each denomination. Relationships, differences between denominations, interaction or contradictions between them in one way or another affect the state of the church legal order in society, including – the general legal order

An ironic ramification of the tragedy of September 11 and the subsequent demise of the Taliban government in Afghanistan seems to be an unprecedented rise in the international prominence of issues concerning the rights and status of women in the Islamic world. This increased international attention to women's quest for equal civil and human rights and a better appreciation of women's agency in the modernization and democratization of the Islamic world can be a welcome development. The significance of this potentially positive turn is better appreciated when we bear in mind that if it were not for the outrage and protest widely expressed by international feminist groups, especially Afghan women activists and American feminists, the US government, prompted by some oil companies, would probably have recognized the Taliban government. Perhaps it would have taken no less than the September 11 wake up call for many officials to speak out against the blatant violations of women's rights in Afghanistan. The worldwide outcry against the Taliban's destruction of a few historic statues in Bamiyan was indeed much louder and wider than those raised against their daily abuse of women and blatant violations of women's/human rights in Afghanistan. The increased attention of Western leaders towards the rights of Muslim women will probably be short-lived, but advocates of women's rights can work to turn this development into long-lasting progress. This problem must be approached on two fronts. On the one hand, how can we transform interest in Muslim women's rights into an effective and long-term foreign policy (including foreign aid) on the part of Western governments? On the other, how can we mobilize new resources in support of Muslim women's grassroots activism, which can exert effective pressure on the governments and ruling elites of Muslim societies and force concrete legal reforms and policy change? First, we need to turn this increased and at times "otherizing" attention into a deeper awareness of the complexity of the "Muslim women question," its commonalities as well as its differences with the "women question" in non-Muslim countries, its historical roots and present interconnectedness to broader national and international socio-economic and political problems in the global context. Starting with a brief review of the global state of women's rights in general and a comparative historical background of Muslim women's rights in particular, this paper will attempt to make the following arguments and policy recommendations: 1. Historically speaking, sexism has not been peculiar to the Islamic world or to the Islamic religion; 2. What is peculiar is that a visible gap has emerged in modern times between the Islamic world and the Christian West with regard to the degree of egalitarian improvement in women's rights; 3. This gap has been due to the legacy of colonialism, underdevelopment, defective modernization, the weakness of a modern middle class, democratic deficit, the persistence of cultural and religious patriarchal constructs such as sharia due to failure of reform and secularization within Islam, and weakness of civil society organizations - especially women's organizations - in the Muslim world; 4. The recent surge in identity politics, Islamism and religio-nationalist movements is in part due to socio-economic and cultural dislocation, polarization and alienation caused by modernization, Westernization and globalization, and in part is a "patriarchal protest movement" in reaction to the challenges that the emergence of modern middle class women poses to traditional patriarchal gender relations; 5. Processes of democratization, civil society building, consolidation of civil rights and universal human/women's rights are intertwined with reformation in Islam, feminist discourse and women's movements. Gender has become the blind spot of democratization in the Islamic world; 6. In terms of national and international policy implications, it should be recognized that women and youth have become the main forces of modernization and democratization in the Islamic world. Democracy cannot be consolidated without a new generation of Muslim leaders and state-elites who are more aware of the new realities of a globalized world and more committed to universal women's/human rights; 7. To win the war against terrorism and patriarchal Islamism, we need more than military might. In the short- and medium-term, a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can alter the present social psychological milieu that has allowed the growth of extremism and male-biased identity politics; and 8. In the long-term, democratization and comprehensive gender-sensitive development seems to be the only effective strategy. A significant component of this strategy has to be Islamic reformation, which requires international dialogue with and support for egalitarian and democratic voices in the Muslim world.

When I was invited to talk about the interpretation of the Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region (Macao SAR), I soon realised the relevance and extension of the topic. I chose to approach one part within the myriad of issues that one could explore under the title of the paper that I was given. The scope of this paper reflects this approach. The paper aims to determine the legal system, web of values and legal traditions to which the courts of the Macao SAR ought to refer to when carrying out interpretations of provisions of the Basic Law “which are within the limits of the autonomy of the Region” (as mentioned in Article 143 of the Basic Law). Although it includes a section on Article 143 and the Standing Committee, the paper is essentially about the interpretation of the Basic Law by the Macao SAR Courts. 1 The reader will therefore not find in this article answers to many other questions posed when discussing the interpretation of the Basic Law. I will start this paper by quoting a Judge from the Court of Second Instance (or Court of Appeal) who in his dissenting opinion to a recent ruling made the following statement: …the Basic Law being a law of the PRC’s legal order enacted in ‘accordance with the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China’ – cfr. § 3 of the Preamble – it ought to be interpreted in accordance with the aforesaid Constitution and the remainder of its legal order, notwithstanding the specificities stemming from the ‘principle of one country, two systems’.… 2

Interpreting the Model Law: Methodology and the Singapore Experience