Affairs Of Society Research Articles

On the conservation of human suffering

Affairs of society which in the past were largely governed by traditions or norms have been taken over by technology in modern times. One can observe, however, that whatever the means of governance, the overall human suffering remains the same, though its domain and intensity gets transformed. This leads to the proposition that a principle of the conservation of human suffering is in operation in some form. Various issues leading to and arising out of it are discussed.

Gogo Habiba of Bida: The Rise and Demise of a nineteenth Century Nupe Merchant Princess and Politician

Since the rise of the Nupe kingdom in Central Nigeria region in the fifteenth century, women have played a prominent role in the socio-economic development of the area. Notwithstanding the traditional values of the society that restricted them from active politics. it is a well known fact that Nupe women have continued to dominate the trade and commerce of the region. Indeed, until the end of the nineteenth century, there was hardly any Nupe settlement where a cluster of wealthy women traders did not exist. Nonetheless. this position did not give them any functional role in the political affairs of the society. However, the situation changed in the nineteenth century to give women specific and well­ defined functions in the society. This served as a spring board on which a woman of note, Princess Gogo Habiba. rose to the limelight in the political and economic affairs of the Nupe society. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, she dominated Nupe politics and distinguished herself as an accomplished slave merchant with trading links spreading outside Nupeland to Lagos slave coast. Towards the end of the century, her career was brought to an end through the combined efforts by various interest groups, principal amongst whom were the British.

Local and Topical Pervasive Public Figures after Gertz

Determining who is a public figure under the actual malice rule of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan1 has troubled courts more than 20 years, despite the guidance provided by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Curtis Publishing Co. v. Bulls,2 public figures were said to be intimately involved the resolution of important public questions or [who], by reason of their fame, shape events areas of concern to at large. After Bulls, distinguishing public from private persons sometimes was as difficult as trying to nail a jellyfish to the wall,3 and Gertz v. Roben Welch, Inc.,4 the Supreme Court provided a more elaborate discussion of the public figure concept. For the most part, the Gertz court reasoned, public figures have assumed roles of especial promience the affairs of society. Some occupy positions of such persuasive power and influence that they are deemed public figures all purposes. More commonly ... public figures have thrust themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies order to influence the resolution of the issues involved. Therefore, under Gertz, a plaintiff a defamation action may be classified as a public figure on either of two bases. Someone who voluntarily injects himself or is drawn into a particular public controversy becomes a limited-purpose public figure discussion relating to that controversy. But if the plaintiff has fame or the community, and pervasive involvement the affairs of he becomes a public figure for all purposes and all contexts. This division of public figures still left some questions unanswered. In discussing pervasive (also known as all-purpose and general-purpose) public figures, example, the Gertz court referred to community and society without defining those terms. Is national fame required or is enough? What is meant by society? If, as one court has reasoned, the plaintiff must be a celebrity or a household word,5 the question becomes in which household? The Supreme Court has done little to clarify those issues, other than to express a preference the limited-purpose classification over the all-purpose designation,6 and to indicate that only a small group of individuals should be general-purpose public figures.7 A few cases support the view that an all-purpose public figure must have great prominence.8 After Gertz, however, lower courts have ruled consistently that national is not required. Decisions discussed below indicate that a plaintiff could become a or a topical pervasive public figure. 1) The Local Public Figure. In examining the plaintiffs status Gertz, the Supreme Court observed that he was not well known to the local population.' Therefore, lower courts have concluded that an all-purpose public figure need not have national fame. Instead, they have focused on whether the plaintiff had achieved general fame or where the defamation was published or where the events relating to the lawsuit occurred. Thus, plaintiffs have been pervasive public figures within states and even counties. In Williams v. Pasma,16 example, a political figure and author brought suit over a press release accusing him of having been federally indicted a variety of misbehavior. The Supreme Court of Montana found clear evidence that Williams had general fame or notoriety that state. In Steere v. Cupp,l] a prominent attorney, accused of having been censured by the State Board of Law Examiners, was an all-purpose public figure because of his activities one Kansas county. No case could be found which a plaintiff was held to be an all-purpose public figure within a city,12 although at least one court seemed willing to consider that possibility. In Durham v. Cannon Communications, /nc.,n an attorney brought suit against a television station over an allegation that he was connected with a club used as a front prostitution. …

Emerging privacy issues

Because of the essential nature of information in the affairs of society, governments, and institutions, computer- and communications-based systems are creating new aspects of personal privacy threats. Because people and organizations will tend to carry forward established expectations derived from old systems and their characteristics to new systems and their procedures, it can be expected that new privacy threats will frequently not be perceived, (e.g. the transition from physical mail to electronic mail). Moreover, things which are not a privacy threat in the small (e.g. a single telephone number) can pose threats in the large (e.g. a year's worth of telephone billings). The networking of information systems will tend to aggregate information invisibly and create privacy threats (e.g. automatic check verification information blended with financial transaction information). Matching of computer files and the diversification of established industries (e.g. banks providing general accounting services to small business) also will create new dimensions of privacy. The future world will be so tightly stitched together by its information threads that a combination of approaches to protecting privacy will be essential. Technical security safeguards can contribute; privacy laws will surely afford protections. But for some situations, perhaps many, the individual will have to take care of himself. To do so, he will have to be well-informed about information systems and their impact on himself; and he must have a legal standing to recover damages and compel remedial actions by offending organizations.

Tocqueville’s Reflections on Safeguarding Freedom in a Democracy

To many Americans the ideas of freedom and democracy are inseparable if not synonomous. But students of liberal democracy have been hesitant to conjoin the two values as one property. Tocqueville was clearly one of those students. To be sure, he understood that a link between freedom and democracy could be established. But he did not see the tie as being axiomatic. Freedom for Tocqueville, meant individual independence, individual initiative and the right to participate in the affairs of government and society.

Physics and the APS in 1979

We physicists are a diverse group. Some teach, some work in industry, others in national or other private laboratories. Our work ranges from basic to applied, and perhaps more important, many of us have exploited the power of physics to open up new fields of science, which then take on a disciplinary identity of their own. Physics is too useful and too interesting to exist in isolation from the mainstream of modern life. The work of physicists has done much to shape the world around us, and we have a major responsibility to be not only aware of the revolutionary effect of scientific ideas but to participate in the application of those ideas toward constructive purposes. We must do this, however nervous we may be about the corrosive effect of that mainstream on the principles we hold dear, principles that sustain the personal, intellectual and aesthetic rewards inherent in the practice of good physics. Indeed, only by active engagement in the affairs of society can we protect these principles and thus the ...

Protection of the Rights of the Individual Through Civil Law in Light of the USSR Constitution

The Constitution of the USSR is the basis for the further improvement and development of all branches of law. One of the most important lines of development of the political system of Soviet society is the strengthening of the legal foundation for the affairs of government and society (Article 9, Constitution of the USSR). This provision expresses the need for further elevating the role of law and strengthening legality in the developed socialist society. (1)

Politics and the Nation, 1450-1660: Obedience, Resistance, and Public Order

This book is an exploration of the pivotal role of the monarchy in the affairs of society and State in England from the middle of the 15th century to the middle of the 17th. The main theme of the book is that there was an implied compact between the crown and the aristocracy which broke down in the 15th century when the king failed in his public obligations. It claims that the Tudors restored and renovated that relationship and that the early Stuarts by contrast withdrew within the increasingly narrow context of the royal court until Charles I gave the opposition no alternative but revolution and war.

Relationships between the Political Orientation of Superintendents and their Leader Behavior as Perceived by Subordinates

AbstractThe purpose of the study was to determine if relationships exist between dimensions of the political orientation of public school superintendents, as measured by the Florida Scale of Civic Beliefs (FSCB), and dimensions of their leader behavior, as measured by the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire-Form XII (LBDQ-XII). Twenty-five superintendents in northwestern Indiana answered the FSCB, and one hundred members of their central office staffs responded to the LBDQ-XII. Data were analyzed through the use of Pearson product-moment coefficients of correlation and multiple regression equations constructed by a tear down procedure. The statistical analyses indicated that certain dimensions of political belief, particularly Foreign Affairs and Nature of Man and Society, are related to certain dimensions of leader behavior.

On the Establishment of Standing Committees of the Council of the Union and the Council of Nationalities

Comrade deputies! The Communist Party is undeviatingly pursuing a policy of strengthening the Soviet state and of achieving the consistent development of socialist democracy in our country. This policy is determined by the fact that solution of the complex tasks of building communism can be successful only on the basis of a steady increase in the labor and political activity of our entire people and the involvement of ever broader masses in managing the affairs of society and the state.

Religion: Healthy and unhealthy

When Alexis de Tocqueville, a hundred and fifty years ago, ob served the American scene with such perceptive eyes, he declared that nowhere had he seen so much lunacy in religion as in America. Cer tainly in the beginning, America was as violent in its religious behavior as it was in most other aspects of life. Now that the continent has been conquered and the frontier has disappeared (at least in its geographical sense), one may wonder what de Tocqueville would say to the kind of religion to be found in the quiescent respectability of the contempo rary church. Adjustments have been made; compromises between holy zeal and worldly wisdom have been effected; a general refinement and acculturation have smoothed over the jagged conflicts. That the power and intensity of religion have suffered a considerable diminution can scarcely be argued, and that there has occurred an increasing conform ity to the social mores of an extra-Christian derivation is equally plain. In that sense, American religion is less lunatic and perhaps more norma tive; but its creative influence in the large affairs of society remains much in doubt.

Every Higher School Graduate should Learn to Lead a Community Activity

Among the tasks given to the Party for the next two decades by those outstanding documents of our time - the reports by N. S. Khrushchev and the Resolutions of the 22nd Party Congress - are the development of the well-rounded individual and the upbringing of a new man who will harmoniously combine spiritual wealth, moral purity and physical perfection. Every Soviet citizen must become an active participant in managing the affairs of society! - this is our slogan, our task. These words of N. S. Khrushchev could not more accurately define the direction of educational work during the period when, as our society advances towards communism, the state becomes a state of the entire people, the role of the Party and of public organizations in the life of the country steadily increases, and the Leninist principles of socialist democracy develop further.

On the Mortality of Assured Lives in the West Indies (chiefly Barbados)

The Institute of Actuaries has always been ready to welcome contributions from members able to give information regarding the mortality found to prevail among special classes of lives, and among lives resident in other parts of the world than Great Britain. The authors of the present paper having had occasion to look closely into the subject of West Indian mortality, chiefly in connection with the financial affairs of the Barbados Mutual Life Assurance Society, have therefore willingly responded to an invitation to lay before the members of the Institute some account of the statistics which they have been able to gather, and of the conclusions at which they have arrived. They desire, in the first place, to express their thanks to the directors of the Barbados Mutual Society for permitting them to publish the results of the society's mortality experience, and to Mr. Spencer C. Thomson, the manager of the Standard Life Office, for some valuable statistics relating to the experience of that office regarding West Indian mortality.