Legitimate Objectives Research Articles

Selectivity as discrimination: lessons from the case law on fiscal measures for identifying State aid

Abstract Article 107(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union was originally designed to regulate the grant of subsidies by Member States, but it has been applied increasingly in recent years to regulate tax measures. Attempts to apply the State aid rules in this way have been met with controversy as they have been applied in unpredictable ways that have introduced significant changes to the existing tests in the case law for identifying State aid. These changes include a broader interpretation of the concept of selectivity, one of the criteria used to identify aid, which has been reoriented around the discrimination standard, whereby a measure is selective if it differentiates between categories of undertakings without being capable of justification by some legitimate public policy objective. Most controversially, this has facilitated the enforcement of the State aid rules against a wider range of State interventions. This article argues that the discrimination standard represents the most plausible and effective way of understanding selectivity among the alternative tests which have been proposed in the case law and academic literature. However, it goes on to identify a significant deficiency in the discrimination standard in the manner in which it is currently applied by the Union courts. The test inevitably requires certain value judgments to be made, but these are not made explicit by the existing case law. This article then proceeds to give further reflections on options for the refinement of the framework for assessing selectivity based on the discrimination standard and the existing logic of the case law and the objectives of the State aid control regime, which indicates how principled and coherent boundaries to the notion of State aid might be assessed in an individual case.

Issues in China's Alignment with DEPA Data Cross-Border Regulation

In the global digital governance game, the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA) features innovative designs for digital trade, aligning with China's goals of internal data sharing openness and external breaking of "rule locks". However, China currently exhibits significant legislative differences in the "Data Issues" section of DEPA's fourth module, adopting stricter regulatory measures for cross-border data flow and data localization. Addressing DEPA's "principle & exception" regulatory standards, this paper argues that legitimate public policy objectives can be aligned with DEPA through proportionality principles, WTO general exception clauses, etc. By innovating customs supervision methods and following the path of the Hainan Free Trade Port trial, connecting international trade new rules, orderly implementing law enforcement systems and supporting mechanisms to ensure data security and orderly flow, China can gradually align with DEPA.

Characterising the low-tech approach through a value-driven model

AbstractIn this article, we argue that the low-tech narrative redefined by a French low-tech movement in recent years can be considered as a legitimate research object for design research. Based on the French low-tech movement's literature, we present the definitions of the low-tech concept as an approach driven by principles and highlight two theorical limitations of this type of definition. Based on a value-sensitive design approach, we present transdisciplinary research results through a value-driven low-tech model and discussed its limitations and possible use as a tool for engineers.

When Victors Claim Victimhood: Majoritarian Resentment and the Inversion of Reparations Claims

ABSTRACTFrom the mid‐20th century onwards, diverse groups — whether formerly enslaved populations or victims of mass atrocities — have demanded reparations as part of a wider struggle for justice. However, in the current global climate of right‐wing resurgence, both the recognition of victimhood and demands for justice are in danger of being subverted and hijacked. These developments create additional obstacles to addressing genuine reparations demands. This manifests in at least three ways. First, there is a selective application of victimhood status and recognition, often along old fault lines of race or religion. In this way, the oppression of some groups is no longer recognized as a legitimate object of reparations; indeed, their claims to justice are seen as unfair demands against dominant groups. Second, we see the blatant continuation of the very practices that the reparations movement has sought to establish as wrongs. Third, not content with negating existing demands for reparations from below, powerful groups are going a step further and, as part of supremacist projects, asserting their own right to reparations. In doing this, they use the language and moral claims of reparations and decolonization that have emerged through the global reparations movement. This article seeks to illustrate these developments through the examples of India and Israel, including the demand for ‘restoration’ of sacred sites to Hindus and Jews.

The Hamas massacre of Oct 7, 2023, and its aftermath, medical crimes, and the Lancet commission report on medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust

BackgroundThe report of the Lancet Commission on medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust, released in November 2023, calls for this history to be required for all health professions education, to foster morally courageous health professionals who speak up when necessary.Main bodyThe report was released a month after Hamas’ October 7 invasion of Israel, with the accompanying massacre of over 1200 people, taking of civilian hostages, and gender-based violence. These acts constitute crimes against humanity including genocide. Post-October 7, war in Gaza resulted, with a legitimate objective of Israel defending itself within international law. The authors discuss an accompanying Statement to the report condemning Hamas crimes and denouncing the perpetrators’ use of their own civilians as human shields, including in healthcare facilities, and with the Hamas attack unleashing immense and ongoing suffering in Israel and beyond. With some exceptions, the medical literature shows a marked absence of condemnation of Hamas atrocities and includes unsubstantiated criticisms of Israel’s military. A significant surge in global antisemitism including on university campuses since October 7, 2023, has occurred; and health professionals, according to the Commission, have a special responsibility to fight antisemitism and discrimination of all kinds. In this context, the authors discuss the controversy and criticism regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion education programs (“DEI”) including such programs failing to protect Jews on campuses, especially as the U.S. President Biden’s “The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,” released in May 2023, calls for the inclusion of issues of antisemitism and religious discrimination within all DEI education programs. The authors support an evidence-based approach to the Hamas massacre, its aftermath and its relevance to health professionals both within medicine and their global citizenship, including refuting the international community accusations and anti-Israel libel.ConclusionsThe report of the Lancet Commission on medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust has striking relevance to the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath. This is further conveyed in an accompanying Statement, that describes the report’s implications for contemporary medicine, including: 1) provision of skills required to detect and prevent crimes against humanity and genocide; (2) care for victims of atrocities; (3) upholding the healing ethos central to the practice of medicine; and (4) fostering history-informed morally courageous health professionals who speak up when necessary.

The Obligation to Establish and Uphold Judicial Independence under Article 19(1) TEU

This article explores the obligation of Member States, under Article 19(1) TEU, to uphold the judicial independence of all national courts who ‘may’ rule on Union law. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) first set out this obligation in their seminal ruling in Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses and has since developed an extensive case-law. This article explores and discusses that case-law with the purpose of setting out, in a general manner, the key obligations Member States have under Article 19(1) TEU. Furthermore, where the ECJ has only set out general requirements without detailing their content, this article expands on the case-law by supplementing and contrasting solutions provided to similar issues in the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the recommendations of the Venice Commission and in wider International Human Rights Law. Finally, this article discusses whether judicial independence can be balanced against other aims, concerns and goals, and what room that leaves Member States to justify potential restrictions on judicial independence by the pursuit of (other) legitimate objectives.

International Standards for Regulatory Deference Relating to National Food Control Systems: More to Do?

AbstractThis paper describes how the development of texts on regulatory deference by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) addresses relevant recommendations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and supports Member countries of CAC in their negotiation and implementation of equivalence agreements. We consider the role and function of CAC within a rules-based multilateral framework, particularly in relation to the development and implementation of equivalence concepts. We then consider whether, through use of equivalence agreements, trade facilitation outcomes have been realised. Our hypothesis is that international standards on regulatory deference promote fair but aspirational standards and support fair practices in the trade of safe food – both vital outcomes for global food security and the achievement of many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We test this hypothesis against the framework provided by decisions of the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Committee. We argue that the equivalence concepts and guidelines developed by CAC are appropriate but underutilised tools available for Member countries to strike a balance between their right to regulate to protect human, animal or plant life and health and to fulfil legitimate objectives whilst meeting their WTO obligations to avoid measures that constitute unnecessary barriers to trade.

Trauma as the ‘Belief That the World is a Dangerous Place’: The Obfuscation of Systemic Violence in Social Work’s Discourses of Trauma

Abstract The concept of psychological trauma has been taken up widely in popular culture and in diverse academic fields including social work. In this work of poststructuralist discourse analysis, we used methods of close reading to examine a random sample of thirty social work articles on trauma (published 2010–2020). Our aim was not to refute the salience of the concept nor to establish its true meaning and correct usage, but to critically examine its discursive functions; what does ‘trauma’ do in social work? In our analysis, the progressive aims of the discourses of trauma—to counter pathologisation and confer legitimacy to harms that have been marginalised—are unrealised. ‘Trauma’ is deployed in multiple, often contradictory ways and the slippages between intent and function work to construct the trauma-laden as non-normative, damaged subjects, and legitimate objects, thus, of social work scrutiny and intervention. Social work’s discourses of trauma undermine their own efforts to centre a structural analysis. If ‘to perceive the world as a safe place’ is a signifier of normative, non-traumatised functioning, then what does ‘trauma’ do when applied to the racialised, gendered, colonised and marginalised, for whom the world is not a place of safety but of material and psychical violence?

Automatic and Efficient Detection of Loess Landslides Based on Deep Learning

Frequent landslide disasters on the Loess Plateau in northwestern China have had a serious impact on the lives and production of the people in the region due to the fragile ecological environment and severe soil erosion. The effective monitoring and management of landslide hazards is hindered by the wide range of landslide features and scales in remotely sensed imagery, coupled with the shortage of local information and technology. To address this issue, we constructed a loess landslide dataset of 11,010 images and established a landslide detection network model. Coordinate Attention (CA) is integrated into the backbone with the aid of the YOLO model to capture precise location information and remote spatial interaction data from landslide images. Furthermore, the neck includes the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM), which prompts the model to prioritize focusing on legitimate landslide objectives while also filtering out background noise to extract valid feature information. To efficiently extract classification and location details from landslide images, we introduce the lightweight Decoupled Head. This enhances detection accuracy for landslide objectives without excessively increasing model parameters. Furthermore, the utilization of the SIoU loss function improves angle perception for landslide detection algorithms and reduces the deviation between the predicted box and the ground truth box. The improved model achieves landslide object detection at multiple scales with a mAP of 92.28%, an improvement of 4.01% compared to the unimproved model.

The Faithfulness to Fact

Abstract W.E.B. Du Bois regarded social reform as a legitimate object for the scientist. This paper argues that he gave a place to nonepistemic values in scientific reasoning and, to counter the effects of scientific racism, he constructed his approach around the belief that scientists must adopt an assumption or scientific hypothesis that African Americans are human. His engagement in scientific research was a way to reform the society in which he lived, which in turn, led him to defend the faithfulness to fact as his conception of scientific objectivity. This essay examines his sophisticated theory of facts, account of the difference between the natural and human sciences, and the unique instantiation of a pragmatist theory of truth.

Legitimate Objectives in Antitrust Analysis The FIFA Regulation of Agents and the Right to Regulate Football in Europe

Legitimate Objectives in Antitrust Analysis The FIFA Regulation of Agents and the Right to Regulate Football in Europe

The Legacy of a Feminist Philosophy: An Interview with Michèle Le Dœuff

AbstractMichèle Le Dœuff has devoted several decades to the exploration of the relations between women, philosophy and feminism. With this in mind I went to meet the philosopher, who generously accepted to establish a correspondence with me during my doctoral research. My questions all aimed at understanding how a woman, in the 1970s, had come to devote herself to the problematical relations between women and philosophy, and to consider such a question as a legitimate philosophical object that should be explored. It was thus a question of better knowing the feminist line that runs through her whole work, based on a displacement of this problematic from the margins to the center of the philosophical thought.

Overview of Regulations on Cross Border Data Flow

The high importance and immense power of data, coupled with a lack of consensus on the definition of this term, have led to multiple challenges in this field. Data protection legislation can be traced back to the Enlightenment era, which explains why the EU has always regarded personal data protection as a fundamental human right. As the third generation of personal information protection legislation, GDPR not only expands the extraterritorial application effectiveness, but also strengthens the administrative sanctions function of DPA. The EU has considered commitments regarding cross-border data flows in recent trade agreement negotiations, indicating a trend towards repositioning its considerations between data protection and trade interests. The primary issue facing the regulation of cross-border data flow under the WTO framework is to clarify the applicability of GATS commitments to digital trade and cross-border data flow. At the FTA level, few trade agreements explicitly address the issue of data localization requirements. For the first time, CPTPP sought to explicitly restrict the use of data localization measures, with the exception of "legitimate public policy objectives", and this template was subsequently followed by FTA. In response to the regulation of cross-border data flow in China, scholars have put forward their own opinions from different perspectives, from the objects of learning and reference to specific suggestions.

A just transition for labour: how to enable collective voice from the world of work

This article addresses the ways in which domestic, regional and international collective labour norms may need to be revisited, if those at work are to have any meaningful voice in the design of "just transitions". It is argued that these transitions can be understood as dynamic pro-cesses, the outcomes of which cannot be simply pre-determined or their justice merely as-sumed. It therefore makes sense for associated procedures and mechanisms to be as inclusive as possible, representing interests of the wider "world of work" in the project of recrafting the manufacture of goods and delivery of services to meet environmental needs, including the re-duction of carbon emissions. Participatory engagement is likely to lead to better policy design, ensuring effectiveness and commitment. This approach also follows from appreciation of the dignity of labour and the legitimate concerns of those at work with the welfare of the commu-nities in which they work and live. Moreover, the nature of ecological harms require attention to not merely one locality (the workplace or the community) but potential for transborder ef-fects. The case for labour representation in just transitions is now accepted in many quarters, including the European Union (EU), and receives international recognition in the Paris Agreement, but is only likely to be realisable if national level collective labour law is changed accordingly. In Europe, that may require prompts from the International Labour Organization (ILO), but also the European Court of Human Rights. This article argues that an appropriate beginning for any process of revision and remodelling would have three dimensions. Firstly, I advocate addressing the identity of collective voice at work, reconsidering the legitimate objec-tives of collective bargaining and industrial action, and rethinking the methods by which col-lective voice can be exercised in the realisation of sustainable development. The potential im-plications of such changes are considered here.

Limitation Period for Irregular Payments from the EU Budget and NextGenerationEU Funds in the Post-Covid Era

In the EU, as in life, money is a motivator for change. On the one hand, the funds regularly allocated to Member States from the EU budget finance diverse activities, ranging from rural development and environmental protection, investments supporting sustainable economic development and new technologies, to the protection of external borders and the promotion of human rights. On the other hand, the extraordinary financial assistance provided by the EU to Member States from the NextGenerationEU should help their economies and societies to recover from the COVID-19 crisis, and more recently from the effects of the war in Ukraine. In contrast, the threat of suspending or losing funds from the EU budget and the NextGenerationEU is aimed at urging Member States, and in particular Hungary and Poland, to respect the rule of law. In an ideal world, EU money goes to the right recipients, meets properly identified and legitimate objectives, and is spent lawfully. In the real world, EU funds are sometimes spent incorrectly, with the result that under EU rules they must be recovered from those responsible for infringements, and in some cases sanctions must also be imposed on them. It is only in exceptional cases that irregular expenditures of EU funds may not be recovered and sanctioned. This is the case, inter alia, when a legally defined period has elapsed since the irregular expenditure was made, ie, the irregularity is time-barred. The limitation period for irregular payments means that the offender is exempt from the obligation to repay the EU funds irregularly spent to the EU budget and cannot be sanctioned. This article analyses EU legislation governing the statute of limitations for irregular expenditures paid from the EU budget and NextGenerationEU. Its aim is to determine whether these provisions provided effective protection for these funds during the COVID pandemic, as well as now in the post-COVID era.

Community‐oriented policing (COP): An empirical study of its effectiveness on fear of crime

AbstractBackgroundCommunity‐oriented policing (COP) has been a central tenet in policing for the past three decades. Accordingly, studies have examined its effectiveness in reducing citizen's fear of crime, one of the legitimate objectives of COP. However, the results of studies are somewhat unclear about the effectiveness.Objectiveshis study attempts to disclose how COP program affects citizens' fear of crime using two waves of survey data collected from citizen participants of the COP program in Houston, Texas.MethodsStructural equation modeling is employed for analysis in this study.ResultsThe findings of this study reveal that COP contributed to reducing fear of crime. In particular, the crime prevention‐related information learned at the COP program increased the participants' sense of collective efficacy, which shows a positive impact on reducing fear of crime.ConclusionsThis study suggest that providing crime prevention information at COP program is important to strengthen volunteer's informal social control, which contribute to reducing their fear of crime.

Social harvest control rules for sustainable fisheries

AbstractFisheries are supposed to be for the benefit of society, producing food, providing livelihoods and enabling cultural continuity. Biological productivity goals for fish stocks operationalised through Harvest Control Rules (HCRs) are central to contemporary fisheries management. While fisheries policies often state socio‐economic objectives, such as enhancing the livelihoods of coastal communities, those are rarely, if ever, incorporated into operationalised management procedures. The lack of articulation of social objectives and lack of monitoring of social outcomes around HCRs amounts to poor public policy. In this article, we explore the potential for social HCRs (sHCRs) with reference points and agreed predefined actions to make the social dimensions of fisheries explicit. sHCRs cannot cover all social dimensions, so should be considered as one tool within a broader framework of fisheries governance. Moreover, successful sHCRs would require sound deliberative and participatory processes to generate legitimate social objectives, and monitoring and evaluation of fisheries management performance against those objectives. We introduce two potential types of sHCRs, one based on allocation of catch within biological limit reference points, and one for when fishing exceeds biological limit reference points. The application of sHCRs, we argue, can foster accountability and help avoid non‐transparent negotiations on size and distribution of the catch. Our proposal is a call to action for policy makers and fisheries managers to properly integrate social criteria into fisheries governance, and for both biophysical fisheries scientists and social scientists to do better in practical collaboration for methods and knowledge development to support this integration.

Intimate Archives

This article activates an archive of love letters written during the Second World War, using practice-as-research techniques to explore resilience and intimacy in periods of invasion. Originally found in a cardboard box in the house of the author’s deceased grandmother, the correspondence was archived at the Archive for Autobiography in France. It contains one letter for each day of the war between the newly-wed Marguerite and Alfred Bucquet, who was sent to the warfront. Spurred by the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the archive was activated as part of a seminar on performing memory, hosted by artist-scholar María José Contreras Lorenzini in New York University. In devising an embodied response to the archive, questions on who within a familial lineage can engage with war-trauma arose, leading to reflections on Marianne Hirsch’s scholarship on post-memory. Interviews, personal archives and oral recounts allowed the creation of a rich study of the two protagonists, as well as a sense of the zones of oblivion that reside within the second and third generation. This paper also expands on the little-known anglophone scholarship of French scholar and founder of the Archive, Philippe Lejeune, who penned the ‘autobiographical pact’. This article engages with Lejeune’s ideas of truth-telling within an intimate repertoire and through a close reading of the letters, an opportunity to complexify the ‘pact’ by reading between the lines of highly mediated recounts of war trauma. This article aims to use memory as a method to engage with the present, generating strategies of resistance and resilience. It emphasizes the importance of the autobiographical archive as a legitimate object of study, and how intimate objects create cartographies of care and persist within the archive a way for the past to be remembered through resilience.

The legitimate objectives in what the Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, intended and did not do: selected examples


 
 
 
 This paper deals with selected examples from the texts that came in matters that the Prophet, may God bless be up on him and grant him peace, did and did not do.
 The approach used is deductive and inductive one. The importance of the research shows its significance in clarifying the legitimate purposes in those selected texts. For the purpose of understanding them they should be according to what should be their purposes.
 Among the most important results of the research are the following: firstly: the legitimate purposes are the will of the legislator in his legislation of provisions in order to achieve servitude to God Almighty and to achieve the interests of the people in both worlds.
 Secondly From the intentions of anxiety in the language, the first two meanings are grief and sadness, and the second is intention, will and determination..
 Thirdly: the concern of the Prophet, may God blesses him and grants him peace, is an argument for the majority of scholars, and some fundamentalists such as Al-Qarafi and Al-Shawkani.
 
 
 
 
 Fourthly: Through the selected models in the purposes of concern, it is clear that one of its purposes is the adherence to the limits of God and the application of his law, diversifying the means and discourse of calling to God Almighty in a way that is consistent with the spirit of the texts, and its application on the real status.

Guarantees for Protection of Inviolability of Private Life during Conduct of Covert Investigation Activities

A thorough investigation of the criminal case is largely dependent on correct planning and conducting of investigation activities. This includes, in some cases, covert investigation activities, without which, it is practically impossible to find circumstances surrounding the case. However, any investigation activities are somehow related to the restriction of human rights, specifically, restriction of the privacy rights: conducting such investigation activities is allowed only when there is a legitimate objective to be achieved in the democratic society, prescribed by the constitution. The relevance and applicability of these issues triggered the drafting of legislative amendments back in 2014, which aimed at enhancing the legislation, focusing on the prevention of unlawful interference in privacy rights and this precess is still ongoing today. Furthermore, the emphasis is made on selecting the important mecganism  for control, which can ensure the protection of the private lives of humans. the paper discusses the significanceof covert investigation activities, historical developments, and the pros and cons of the mentioned legislative amendments  and  mechanisms for control.