Civic Law Research Articles

Student migration, transnational knowledge transfer, and legal and political transformation in Georgia

ABSTRACT In contrast to the other papers in this special issue, this paper reflects a specific case of co-agency between states and individual migrants, particularly students and alumni networks. Based on a qualitative case study with 29 Georgian students and 14 institutions and organizations, this paper explores the impact of Georgian alumni on polity building in Georgia. Here we can observe two phases: Firstly, the states of Georgia and of Germany act as co-agents by facilitating migration to young Georgian students by financing their studies in Germany (student scholarships) with the objective that the students return and transfer their knowledge to the country of origin. Subsequently, the Georgian alumni who studied law in Germany act as co-agents between different institutions in both countries. In doing so, they transform state institutions by themselves and contribute to the development of the legal and political system in Georgia. They do that particularly in such important legal fields like constitutional law, civic law, and criminal law, but also in the creation of parliamentarism based on a bicameral system or the promotion of separation of church and state in Georgia. That takes place after return migration as well as from Germany through transnational networks and mobility.

The Desire for Lawlessness

Jamie Luis Parra, “The Desire for Lawlessness: Law, Freedom, and the Aesthetic in The Bondwoman’s Narrative” (pp. 1–41) This essay begins by discussing Hannah Crafts’s engagement with the debates of the 1850s over the relationship between civic law and moral philosophy. In her novel The Bondwoman’s Narrative (2002), a work probably completed in 1858, Crafts repudiates written language for its capacity to enforce and define slavery in the form of law, which snakes morality into itself by virtue of seeming to represent the people’s will when it actually contributes to also producing that will. Crafts indicates the necessity for a belief in a higher law, something beyond the written. She positively defines that something in her stunning reworking of ekphrasis. Presenting evidence for her familiarity with English language translations of writings on aesthetics by Immanuel Kant and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and close reading the novel’s depictions of visual aesthetic experience, the essay argues that Crafts theorizes a freedom disentangled from the law’s implicit definition of freedom as always dialectically opposed to enslavement. The novel’s narrator-protagonist, Hannah, reconceives freedom as the lawlessness expressed by her own speculative thinking, by her imaginative, creative response to visual representations.

Philosopher-King on a Leash: Combining Plato’s Republic, Statesman and Laws in the Justinianic Dialogue On Political Science

Abstract Late antique political Platonism was not unoriginal in its thought. The paper takes as an example the Justinianic dialogue On Political Science (ca. 550), which creatively engages with Plato’s political works. It shows that the dialogue tries – and manages, as I argue – to combine two apparently inconsistent Platonic models: what I call the “divine” model, in which a philosopher-king endowed with divine knowledge rules unhindered by civic laws; and the “human” model, characterized by the rule of law. The divine model comes mostly from Plato’s Republic and Statesman; the human one, from the Laws. On Political Science demonstrates that its (anonymous) author was acquainted with these three Platonic texts, in addition to other texts. That is philologically noteworthy, but also philosophically interesting: the dialogue manages to integrate the two models into a common framework. It puts forward an original political model, in which a philosopher-king, although endowed with divine knowledge, still has to be bound by civic laws because of his human frailty. The article concludes by discussing the polemical import the dialogue could have had in its Justinianic context.

Designing the building space of a shopping street to use as a disaster evacuation shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic: A case study in Kobe, Japan

This study considers the risk of a natural hazard-induced disaster occurring during a pandemic, such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and develops the idea of utilizing a shopping street with disaster-proof buildings as a temporary evacuation shelter by incorporating countermeasures against the spread of infectious diseases. Using a case study of a shopping street in Kobe, Japan, we estimate shelter capacity by considering the requirement of 6 m2 of space allotted for each person. The shelter can accommodate 1194 evacuees and provide them with food and drinks for one day, even in the worst case of lifeline disruption. This study proposes a method of designing shelter space, and demonstrates how non-homogeneous and noncontinuous spaces within shopping street buildings can be applied to prevent the spread of infection, through the classification of evacuee types and use of space and facilities designated for each type. The study further examines the liability issue of secondary infection at the shelter with reference to civic law and the roles of government in developing a distributed evacuation framework.

Taboos as a Cultural Cleavage Between Muslim Immigrants and Secular Western Publics: Bridging the Gaps by Viewing Integration as a Two-Way Process

A taboo is an activity that is forbidden or sacred based on religious beliefs or morals. Taboos are usually culturally specific. That which may be discussed or done in one culture (incest, abortion, out of wedlock pregnancy, forced marriage, same-sex-marriage, legalizing drugs, etc.) may be highly taboo in another culture. Arab and Islamic societies are strongly religious in their values, while in comparison most Western countries are almost always more secular, and hence religion is represented as a barrier that seems to hamper the integration and inclusion of Muslim minorities into Western societies, an element that poses a challenge to the Western lifestyle and may even encourage the legitimacy of public Islamophobic discourses. So, to what extent do Muslim immigrants carry their cultural practices with them, including taboos, and to what extent do they integrate into Western countries, where civic laws have replaced religious sanctions when taboos are broken? The knowledge of taboos and the ability to deal with them is one of the keys to successful integration as a two-way process between Muslim immigrants and the receiving society.

Spór o powołanie Kościoła narodowego w Koronie w okresie soboru trydenckiego (1545-1563)

Debate on the Creating of the Polish National Church in the Times of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) In the time of the Council of Trent, the Polish nobility often and loudly demanded the forming of the Polish National Church, which would enable them to execute state control over the clergy, its activity, and church property. Popular Protestant ideas coherent with such an idea fulfilled the role of useful weapon in their struggle against the clergy. Even though the idea of the church reform converged with many changes postulated by the contemporary noble reform movement, the state finances, homogeneity of Crown lands and the Polish-Lithuanian union took predominance over church matters. Appropriate conduct of debate, disabling discussion about a reform, was promoted by the clergy itself, which was not interested in loosening their dominant position in the society and becoming subject to civic laws. Protestant deputies to the parliament, who constituted the majority in the lower chamber, could have acquired more benefits, were it not for their reluctance to impose certain solutions on the Catholics, who still dominated in the society. The clergy, in particular bishops, sought some compromise with Protestants, until the Catholic Church itself undertook mild reforms in the third phase of the Council of Trent. The stand of the Polish monarch, Sigismundus Augustus, who – having been raised as a Catholic – opposed the forming of new church and his attitude was also important.

Breakthrough the Legal Principle of the Civic Court Procedure

The principle of law in civil law has general characteristic, meaning that it applies in any situation, not only apply or purpose for certain event. Some legal principles in civic law are in need for attention: point d’interet point d’action principle; court principle with simple, fast, and cheap way; passive judge principle; judge and assembly principle; transparency of court for public; equality principle; court principle for justice based on The Divine of the Only God; and principle of judge decision with reasons. Keywords: Legal Principles, Procedure of Law, Reformation,Civil Justice DOI : 10.7176/JLPG/91-04 Publication date: November 30 th 2019

Bodies in “Heathen” Places: Regulating Marriage without a State

In 1787 Bishop in the Moravian Church August Spangenberg drew up a set of Instructions and an official statement (Gutachten) on the problem of marriage within the “Heathen” congregations. Alarming reports from the missionaries revealed that lack of civic laws, a particular mindset cultivated by said laws, and a well‐organised state meant that the sexuality of non‐European congregants could not be regulated and ordered. The present article analyses the seemingly coherent European context, which Spangenberg uses as a contrast to the unruly native communities in the first part of the Gutachten and examines what he emphasises as the parameters within which proper marriage regulation can take place. Given the pre‐Revolution date, and the current state of the state at this point in history, the Gutachten could give us valuable insights into the process of the formation of the state and its fundamental institutions.

MISQUOTING SOPHOCLES’ OEDIPVS TYRANNVS. A NEW PROOF OF THE INAUTHENTICITY OF PS.-ARISTOTLE, ON THE COSMOS

Chapters 6 and 7 of the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise On the Cosmos (Περὶ κόσμου = De mundo) display ‘a series of well-crafted and carefully organized analogies’ in order to represent the power of god pervading the whole universe. The last analogy (400b14–28), which is by far the most important in this section, compares the rule of god over the world to the rule of the law in a Greek city (ὁ τῆς πόλεως νόμος). As shown by the author in the previous analogies, the perfect order of the universe is the result of the continuous creation and dissolution of single things: this process—based upon the harmony of opposites—is the keystone of the eternity and equilibrium of our world. Similarly, the law is the unmoved (ἀκίνητος) mover of every activity and experience in the city: both positive and negative situations involving single citizens contribute to the supreme order and stability of the city. Positive examples include the activity of rulers, officials and members of the assemblies (ἄρχοντες, θεσμοθέται, βουλευταί, ἐκκλησιασταί), whereas negative examples include those who go to trial defending themselves (ὁ δὲ πρὸς τοὺς δικαστὰς ἀπολογησόμενος) and those who are imprisoned and destined to capital punishment (ὁ δὲ εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον ἀποθανούμενος). In spite of their difference, all of these actions are due to one single order (κατὰ μίαν πρόσταξιν), that is, the civic law, which ensures the stability of the city. To stress and illustrate this concordia discors, which characterizes both the city and the universe, the author of the treatise closes the passage with a quotation from Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (lines 4–5):πόλις δ' ὁμοῦ μὲν θυμιαμάτων γέμει,ὁμοῦ δὲ παιάνων τε καὶ στεναγμάτωνThe author reads these verses as a perfect example of a context characterized by opposite situations: in fact, the city is full of paeans (παιάνων), which are interpreted as ‘songs of joy and relief’, and, at the same time, it is also full of laments and mourns (στεναγμάτων). The same interpretation can be found in the Latin translation of the treatise, which gives even more emphasis to the opposition between life and death: uideasque illam ciuitatem pariter spirantem Panchaeis odoribus et graueolentibus caenis, resonantem hymnis et carminibus et canticis, eandem etiam lamentis et ploratibus heiulantem.

La formation des cités grecques (XIVe s. - VIIe s. av. n. è.) : approche archéologique à partir de quelques cas crétois

Between the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system and the recording of the first civic laws in the Greek alphabet, writing disappears from the Aegean world. Consequently this paper proposes to explore the formation process of the Greek cities that characterises this transitional period by studying contemporary archaeological sources. The study focuses in particular on an area in Eastern Crete and considers economic, social and political components of the changes that are attested by settlement patterns and site typologies, as well as by residential, funerary and religious remains. The evidence suggests that the emergence of poleis in the beginning of the 7th c. BC in this area of the island is primarily an economic process, and, although this represents a major political break in regional history, it is based on previous social structures which were inherited

Evidence and Attestation Conflicts with Other Cases to Prove Litigation in Iran

Conflicts of cases to prove litigation is that between the two reasons that is presented to magistrate in legal disputes have had conflicts and these two reasons are not also retractable. Cases to prove litigation in civic law and Code of Civil Procedure has been described in detail in accordance with Article of 1258 of the Civil Code of cases to prove litigation include: Confession, written documents, attestation, dominion and oath. Evidence and attestation has been emerged as the most important cases to prove litigation and other cases to prove litigation conflicts between those two together and other cases to prove litigation will be responsible for important effects and results to votes and court verdicts. In this paper we investigate the Conflict of Evidence and attestation together and other cases of proving.

Assessing Social Value in Open Data Initiatives: A Framework

Open data initiatives are characterized, in several countries, by a great extension of the number of data sets made available for access by public administrations, constituencies, businesses and other actors, such as journalists, international institutions and academics, to mention a few. However, most of the open data sets rely on selection criteria, based on a technology-driven perspective, rather than a focus on the potential public and social value of data to be published. Several experiences and reports confirm this issue, such as those of the Open Data Census. However, there are also relevant best practices. The goal of this paper is to investigate the different dimensions of a framework suitable to support public administrations, as well as constituencies, in assessing and benchmarking the social value of open data initiatives. The framework is tested on three initiatives, referring to three different countries, Italy, the United Kingdom and Tunisia. The countries have been selected to provide a focus on European and Mediterranean countries, considering also the difference in legal frameworks (civic law vs. common law countries).

“In the Choir with the Clerics”: Secularism in the Age of Inquisition

This essay argues that the effort to define and police the shifting boundaries of Christianity in early modern Spain produced a counter-intuitive peninsular logic of secularization. Hoping to stem the extension of ecclesiastical power over everyday cultural life, New Christians and religious reformers defended the authority of civic tribunals to regulate the social conditions of faith. This attempt to secularize the crime of heresy was not simply a call for the Crown to execute a coercive religious agenda. On the contrary, by turning late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century inquisitorial regimes of discipline and dissimulation to critical pastoral and political ends, New Christians such as the negotiator Francisco Núñez Muley and reformers such as the court historian Pedro de Valencia sought to transform both Christian orthodoxy and civic identity. This social and intellectual history troubles conventional scholarship on secularization, which tends to focus on the legacy of the Protestant Reformation and Northern European Enlightenment while either lamenting an apparent theological backwardness south of the Pyrenees or ignoring the peninsula altogether. It is not my goal to trace an alternative genealogy of late modern secularism to the various coercive discourses and practices associated with early modern inquisition. I argue rather that the candidness with which Spanish intellectuals justified the pastoral and disciplinary features of civic law can serve as a guide for untangling the complex relationship between secularism and religion in other times and places.

Two Responses to Paul Bourget: Henry James and Thomas Mann

In Homi Bhabha’s introduction to The Location of Culture, he argues that we need to think beyond concepts such as nationality, historical period, class and gender and consider the interstices or spaces between them, in order to explore what identity really means. Taking a cue from Benedict Anderson’s work on the ‘imagined communities’ of nationality, Bhabha suggests that there is evidence of what he calls ‘a more transnational and translational sense of the hybridity of imagined communities’.1 Although one might think that the term ‘cosmopolitan’ could denote such a hybrid imagined community, Bhabha does not use it here, possibly because of its social connotations, or possibly because he does not wish to attach these interstices to one particular label. He does however refer to it in two overlapping articles from 1996, ‘Unpacking My Library. . . Again’ and ‘Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism’.2 In these pieces he criticizes Martha Nussbaum’s essay ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’ on the grounds that her ‘universalist model’ of cosmopolitanism does not address questions of ‘humanness’, agency or the position of the subject.3 Bhabha takes specific issue with her spatial model of cosmopolitan identity, where the self is at the centre of a series of concentric circles from family, to ethnic and communal groups, to humanity per se. Nussbaum’s universalist view of cosmopolitanism, based mainly on her reading of the Stoic philosophers and Kant, owes an acknowledged debt to Kant’s two essays that might be seen as the founding texts of modern cosmopolitan theory: ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’ (1784) and ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’ (1795).4 In the latter, Kant conceives a tripartite model of national or civic law, international law and cosmopolitan law, based on a loose global federation of nation states. Where Nussbaum suggests that universal cosmopolitanism is the outermost circle of this model,

언론의 자유와 명예훼손 구제방법에 관한 연구

Freedom of speech is indispensable in Democracy. It is rink among government agencies. Mass media as institutionalized means which forms public opinion impacts quite few to society. Mass media as life media in our daily lives has characteristics of speed and prompt report. It is difficult to measure the effect on society. Mass media is lifeline in democracy because it has freedom of opinion for seeing, listening, speaking, and criticizing about the people`s right to know in an information society. Our Constitution also guarantees freedom of the press, information(peoples`s right to know), report, the collection of news, and edition. Because an unnecessary thing about privacy is reported by mass media, it can violate defamation. This study seeks to be unbiased in reporting and what the principles of the Constitution for minimizing an invasion of person`s privacy is. This study also seeks freedom of speech and the right to know. In case that personal honor is invaded by mass media and publication, this study provides the Constitution basis, Criminal Law basis, and Civic Law basis for remedy violation. A report for apology on newspaper and by television was widely used as a proper punishment for honor in the past. The constitutional court had decided that including the report of apology for a proper punishment of honor recovery in the article 764 of the Civic Law as reason of freedom of conscience and the violation of personal rights was against the Constitution. Therefore, this study examples what is legal remedy in practical?, where is legal basis of special remedy in the Civic Law, and what is method by the Press Arbitration Law compared with the examples of other countries. On the other hand, because mass media may injure person`s honor and infringe person`s privacy, if the report is categorized as malicious press, the true role which mass media has to do may not demonstrated. In conclusion, this study was to minimalize infringement of mass media to person and to seek realistic alternative of legal remedy.

Проблема гражданско-правовой интеграции поздней Российской империи: в русском общественно-политическом дискурсрсе (вторая половина XIX - начало ХХ вв.)*

In the Russian empire, the elaboration of a universal civic law code was a reflection and a factor of imperial self-modernization. Aleksei Gorin traces how the idea of building a common civic legal space was constructed in Russia's public, professional (legal), political, and administrative discourses of the second part of the nineteenth-early twentieth centuries. He concludes that by the early twentieth century, the idea of unitary structure of the imperial legal space became dominant among the participants of these discourses, but it never became a reality in the Russian empire. Only Soviet modernization allowed for the implementation of this ideal.

The problematic nature of religious autonomy to minorities in democracies – the case of India's Muslims

This article focuses on the ambivalent effect of religious autonomy in India and the outcome for democracy in the country. The Indian constitution guarantees autonomy to its religious minorities, and promises the minorities the freedom independently to manage their religious affairs in addition to a proportional share of the budget. At the same time, the constitution emphasizes the aspiration to legislate ‘uniform personal laws’ for all the citizens of India in accordance with the principles of secularism, equality and with India's self-definition as a civic nation. This recommendation has however remained a ‘dead letter’ until today. In this domain, the state has constituted a civic law for Hindus, which adjusts Hinduism to democratic principles. In this sense, the state has nationalized Hinduism, and the government has assumed authority and reformed Hindu civic and marriage laws. However, although they have tried, the state's legal and political institutions have not interfered thus far with Muslim marriage and religious laws. Muslims are committed to the Sharia while Hindus must obey the state's civic laws. By avoiding enforcement of affirmative action for Muslims in the spheres of political representation or public employment, while simultaneously prohibiting Hindus' group rights, and providing religious autonomy to the Muslim minority, the Constitution, which stresses so-called secularism as well as minority protection, intensifies the conflict between these two governance principles. The conclusion is that this situation not only leads to ideological conflicts and resource competition but also, overall, threatens the stability of India's democracy.

From Passivity to Potentiality: The <em>Communitas</em> of Stillness

From Passivity to Potentiality: The <em>Communitas</em> of Stillness

Cultivating Virtue: Moral Progress and the Kantian State

After examining the ethical and political writings of Immanuel Kant, one finds an apparent paradox in his philosophy as his perfectionist moral teachings appear to be linked to his anti-perfectionist political theory. Specifically, he writes that the perfection of moral character can only take place for an individual who is inside of civil society, a condition where no laws may legitimately be implemented expressly for the purpose of trying to make individuals moral. Kant believes that living in civil society is a necessary condition for an individual to refine his talents and reason completely, a process required by morality. I believe, however, that the connection between his moral and political theory runs much deeper than simply facilitating the refinement of talents. Kant's moral theory focuses on an individual's cultivation of virtue, but this cultivation cannot be most satisfactorily completed unless that individual is a member of civil society. Put differently, civil society plays a necessary role in cultivating an individual's character so that he is able to act from maxims consistent with the moral law, out of the respect for the law itself. However, because he believes that civic laws primarily intended to encourage moral cultivation cannot be implemented legitimately, it seems curious that this condition should play such a significant role in Kant's moral philosophy. Through this examination of Kant's moral and political theory, it will be shown that Kant's political society establishes a condition necessary for an individual's complete cultivation of virtue, not by implementing laws that make men moral but by weakening the forces of heteronomy, thereby removing barriers to moral action.

Enforcing Environmental Ethics: Civic Law and Natural Value

How much environmental ethics should we write into law? Politically, 'command and control' solutions are out of vogue; what we need instead, many cry, are 'incentives'. But incentives operate against a background of required compliance. Ethically, what we need is 'caring,' not law-like forms of ethics. Others emphasise 'virtues'. Caring, virtuous persons need no rules. That may be true in later stages of personal moral development; but in public life, caring in concert needs regulation. The virtuous ahead, up front, may need no laws; but those at the rear, and most of us along the way, need enforcement, reinforcement – which helps us move along. Rules channel caring and discipline virtuous intentions.