Numerus Clausus Research Articles

Complexity in Property

This article illuminates the largely misunderstood relationship between and the regulation of property interests. Specifically, the article presents the complexity -- a novel explanatory account of the principle of numerus clausus. The principle of numerus clausus is an ancient common law rule which prohibits the customization of property interests. The thesis holds that the primary function of numerus clausus is to prevent the proliferation of highly idiosyncratic property interests. In so doing, numerus clausus provides a bulkhead against the overwhelming that would ensue if customized property interests were permitted. For the last fifteen years, numerus clausus has been the subject of a spirited colloquy in which property theorists of all methodological stripes have sought to unravel some of the mysteries that surround the principle. This article carefully engages several prominent explanatory accounts of numerus clausus, and demonstrates that while these competing accounts supply a number of important insights about the principle, the thesis does a better job of accounting for all of the salient features of the principle without sacrificing coherence or consilience. Finally, the thesis is especially instructive today, as the 2007 collapse of the housing market can largely be traced to a set of basic misapprehensions about the destructive power of in the context of highly alienable interests. The thesis demonstrates that standardization serves an essential epistemic function. Standardization makes it possible for us to better apprehend risk, and thereby avoid catastrophic miscalculations such as those that led to the housing collapse.

Souhaits de pratique des internes de psychiatrie : résultats d’une enquête nationale

For many years, the numerus clausus limiting the number of medical students has increased in France. The government wants to reform the residency process to homogenize medical studies. However, the suggested residency program changes would imply changes in the length of residency, in the mobility of residents after residency, their access to unconventional sectors, and more generally, the responsibility of the resident and his/her status in the hospital. In this context, we have investigated the future plans of all psychiatry residents in France. To study the desires of psychiatry residents in France, regarding their training, their short and long-term career plans, and to analyze the evolution of those desires over the last 40 years. A survey was carried out among residents in psychiatry from November 2011 to January 2012. An anonymous questionnaire including four parts (resident's description, residency training and trainees choice, orientation immediately after residency, professional orientation in 5-10 years) was sent by the French Federative Association of Psychiatrists Trainees (AFFEP) to all French psychiatrist trainees, through their local trainee associations (n=26) and through an on line questionnaire. The questionnaire was answered by 853 of the 1615 psychiatry residents (53%), of which 71% were women. At the end of the residency, 76% of residents reported that they would like to pursue a post-residency position (chief resident, senior physician assistant university hospitals); 22% reported wanting to work in another city. Between 5 to 10 years after completion of the residency, 71% reported wanting to work in a hospital, and 40% preferred to have their own private practice. Almost a third of the trainees wished to work in the child and adolescent psychiatry field, for some of them in an exclusive way, for others, combined with a practice in adult psychiatry.

Waves of (Dis)Satisfaction: Effects of the Numerus Clausus system in Portugal

Access to higher education in Portugal is governed by a quota system (numerus clausus).The purpose of this article is to answer two questions: First, how does the numerus clausus system shape the demand for medical studies? Second, how do non‐enrolled medical candidates influence the global allocation system and generate waves of dissatisfaction?The results show that students who do not succeed in entering medicine register in other programmes, such as pharmacy, veterinary medicine and dental studies, generating a first wave of dissatisfaction. Because students who are not placed in medicine occupy a large share of the places available in those other programmes, the wave of dissatisfaction propagates, with students being pushed to other programmes, especially biology and biochemistry. This process has also been analysed from a spatial perspective. Apparently, when students are competing to obtain a study place in a programme with prestige and good professional career perspectives such as medicine moving to a more peripheral region becomes more frequent.

Commodifying Human Life: The Numerus Clausus Principle and Unconventional Property Rights

Throughout the common law world the notion that classes of property rights are closed in number is a prevailing concept across property regimes. This closed in number, or numerus clausus, principle has served property rights well. This principle has prevented messy property arrangements from arising – such as an agreement between two people where one owns a watch on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the other owns it the rest of the week. However, as technology evolves, property is created in items that the legislature never contemplated. In this article we explore the seminal Canadian case of JCM v ANA and examine how numerus clausus and property no longer remain sufficient tools for delineating individual’s rights to tangible goods. Whether the sperm straws in question in JCM are property or not, and whether numerus clausus recognizes a category of property rights where human tissues or fluids capable of providing life or not, are contentious issues, not easily resolved. The argument is made that the numerus clausus principle is of marginal use considering such forms of unconventional property as human gametes. This is supported through a review of JCM, followed by an exploration of the optimal standardization. The second part of this work seeks to demonstrate the incompatibility of the numerus clausus principle, and the optimal standardization theory, with a critical analysis of JCM that underscores three central but overwhelming critical problems with such an application.

From civil servants to liberal professionals: an empirical analysis of the reform of Portuguese notaries

The use of market mechanisms has been progressively introduced as an alternative solution to public service delivery since the 1980s. This work addresses an uncommon public service function – civil law notaries – and seeks to analyse the factors that led to the formation of diverse market structures as a result of the choice of the privatization path over civil service status by public notaries. The Portuguese government gave public notaries the choice of becoming private, and regulated a numerus clausus of notaries by district. Since the reform was completed, a diversity of market structures have prevailed throughout the 278 notarial districts. Our key hypothesis is that markets with multiple agents formed in jurisdictions having a larger and more profitable number of notary and legal acts that provided financial survival and profit. In contrast, monopolies formed as a result of a perceived absence of market opportunities and demand. During the period 2010–11 we collected data from official statistics of the notary system supplemented by data on the economic and demographic features of each jurisdiction. Multinomial logistic regression is used to test the key hypothesis regarding market arrangements in the 278 notarial districts of continental Portugal. Points for practitioners The trend in the deregulation of the notary profession is likely to continue to sweep European Union countries. Lessons can be drawn from the Portuguese experience, where the change from civil service status is not yet mandatory for all notaries, but financial constraints and fiscal pressures indicate privatization as the inevitable path.

Mişcarea Legionară – De la precursorul Mişcării la ideologii revistei Axa / Legionary Movement – From the Precursor of the Movement to Axa Ideologists

Abstract In this paper we have attempted to analyze the ideology of the Legionary Movement by referring to the precursors of the Movement, namely Professor A.C. Cuza and AXA's ideologists, Mihail Polihroniade and Vasile Cristescu. One of the first political figures who expressed anti-Jewish sentiments and who gathered around a first core of anti-Semitic ideology was Professor A.C. Cuza, from the University of Iași. He was a fervent militant for the introduction in universities of a numerus clausus for Jews. In his opinion, there was no compatibility between the Romanian people and the Jews, and, consequently, the only option for Romanians to be an independent nation was to expel Jews from their territory. The same ideas were sustained by the most important ideologists of the Axa review.

Krzysztof Zanussi Revisited. A Conversation

Dorota Filipczak: Professor Zanussi, let me first thank you for your kind agreement to share your thoughts with Text Matters. I would also like to congratulate you on joining the board of the European Film Academy.Krzysztof Zanussi: If I may interrupt you, it's not a terribly great honour, because I am one of the founders of this Academy. Then I withdrew from it for many years because I was very disappointed by the way it developed. However, I have lost my battle, and I'm again ready to serve this academy. But it is not what it was meant to be. The Academy was practically formed and founded by Ingmar Bergman, and he wanted to create a very exclusive club of people whose work is known beyond the limits of their own language, and of their own culture. And he had the idea to have a numerus clausus of one hundred like, say, in the Vatican conclave, and have it like the French Academy. Unfortunately, this idea came to Ingmar Bergman too late. I was one of the first forty members whom he convoked. But an Academy of that sort did not attract enough attention and enough sponsors, so after a couple of years we had to change the profile, and now we are over a thousand people, and the members' fees are making life for the Academy possible, but it is definitely not the same Academy. So there is nothing to congratulate me on. It's rather a surrender.DF: Thank you for setting that straight. Could you comment on the challenges facing the European Film Academy then and now?KZ: Well, the Academy was born already too late, because Europe was so divided that practically no artist knew any counterpart in a neighbouring country. We didn't know each other. Bergman, for most of his career, did not know Fellini. He did not know Pasolini. He did not know Truffaut. Very few directors were multilingual. Fortunately, Bergman was, but not that many, not Fellini. Three fourths spoke some English, but that was the time when English was not so commonly spoken in this professional circle. So originally it was meant as a club to meet and talk, and try to compare markets, views, cultural traditions and roots. Today it's all different, and it is again the club where we may exchange some views and some ideas. And the European Film Academy is holding quite a few seminars and MA classes. I think this is the most important part of it. It's also awarding a European film prize, which is of very limited importance; we couldn't make it more prestigious, because not that many European films travel. They do not travel. French films are shown in France, Italian films are shown in Italy, and German films are shown in Germany. And it's only American cinema that is uniting us. It is again a great defeat, because at the time of my youth all was different. My father was sending our maid and our driver to see American films, because they were seedy. And it was a natural expectation that American films would be very popular but very simple-minded. And at the same time educated people were choosing French, sometimes Italian, sometimes Spanish, and sometimes British films. Not German, because after the war German films were almost non-existent, and it took us a long time before we recognized that Germany had an existing culture. But if we drop this limitation, then we understand that what was true forty or fifty years ago is not true any more. And now international European films are very few. There was a time in the sixties when we were trying to make co-productions that were meant to be intercultural. And the British, in this very aloof way, were calling it Europudding, because these films were shot unnecessarily in English, using English as a vehicle to bring various actors together. And a native-English-speaking audience was never ready to accept it. There is one example that is interesting for European readers; an example of Rainer Fassbinder, a German director, who made a film based on Genet (translated by Trout), and he shot this film in English with Jeanne Moreau, who is bilingual, and other actors who were quite fluent in English. …

A Theoretical Case for Standardized Vesting Documents

Practitioners, real estate professionals, and lay people throughout the country rely on the recording system to provide critical information regarding ownership rights and claims. Indeed, the recording system acts as a virtually mandatory repository and disseminator of all potential parties’ claims. This system, in turn, relies on these claimants and their agents to publicize their claims: property purchasers, lenders, lien-claimants, title companies, attorneys - these parties interact, make deals, make claims, order their affairs, and then record. The information system available to us, then, is only as good as what we make of it and what we put into it. As such, it is surprising how little thought has been put into exactly what it is that we record. Should the mortgage of a lender in Ohio look like that of a lender in Florida? Should a deed from an individual in Texas differ from that of a corporation in Nevada? As it stands now, no one familiar with real estate law or commerce would expect different parties in different jurisdictions to record identical, or even similar, instruments. In an immediate sense, this heterogeneity of the recorded documents (“vesting heterogeneity”) does not seem a good thing: parties utilizing the recording system generally seek to make known, or to discern, the same generic type of information – that is, evidence of claims upon property – so why are different forms and types of documents utilized all over the country? This article analyzes this vesting heterogeneity from a new perspective and concludes that it is, in fact, cause for significant concern. Vesting heterogeneity has arisen organically, growing with the recording system as they both evolved over time. This historical explanation does not, however, excuse the cost associated with such a lack of uniformity. Anyone seeking information with respect to any piece of property must navigate the complexities and uncertainties that arise because all such information is heterogeneous and, as a consequence, difficult to understand and utilize. This represents both a immediate transactional cost and an increased risk of ill-informed behavior. This is particularly troublesome because this sort of cost-based concern arising from variability has a well-established analogue in property law that the law clearly desires to avoid. That analogue is the cost that would arise if property law were to permit unlimited property forms and gives rise to what is known as the numerus clausus theory. This theory explains the law’s hostility toward new, or different, types of property and holds that such heterogeneity is not generally permitted because of the extremely high informational costs associated with such creativity. This article suggests that this common law concept can, and should, inform our analysis of vesting heterogeneity and that it precipitates strongly against such lack of uniformity. This is because the costs that drive the numerus clausus to hold that variability should be limited are strikingly similar to those created by variability of vesting documents. As such, this theory is relevant here such that the same analysis should be applied to vesting heterogeneity by asking whether a different (or “new”) document is helpful enough to outweigh the informational costs inherent therein. Based on this reasoning, this article concludes that the law is wrong to systematically ignore heterogeneity in vesting documents. Instead, a numerus clausus type of analysis should be applied to new or different vesting documents to determine whether any inherent lack of uniformity is defensible. Where it is not, uniformity should be imposed.

Education and training for hospital pharmacists in Portugal

In Portugal the integrated degree of Master in Pharmaceutical Sciences allows pharmacists to work in diverse professional areas including community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, clinical biology, the pharmaceutical industry and regulatory...

Yet Another Function for the Numerus Clausus Principle of Property Rights, and a Useful One at That

In recent years increased attention has been paid to the numerus clausus principle – the recognition of a limited, though not fully closed, set of property entitlements. An impressive number of rationales (eight by my tally) for that principle have already been offered. In this paper I claim that these arguments are incomplete. I argue that the presence of impediments to the termination of property rights suggests the need for caution in their initial recognition, because doctrinal mistakes cannot easily be corrected. On that view, numerus clausus serves as an instantiation of what is sometimes called the precautionary principle: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Introducing the Numerus Clausus of Property Rights

This is the presentation held prior to the defense of the PhD Thesis 'The Principle of Numerus Clausus in European Property Law' defended in Maastricht, the Netherlands, on 17 October 2008. It is customary in the Netherlands to hold a 15 minute presentation to the audience of colleagues, family members and friends, explaining the topic and content of the PhD thesis. This short presentation explains the principle of numerus clausus in property law in terms of menu choices in restaurants.

PROPERTY AND COLLECTIVE UNDERTAKING: THE PRINCIPLE OF NUMERUS CLAUSUS

In this article, I seek to reclaim for property theory the legitimation concern that is the kernel of the principle of numerus clausus (which is a restriction that means that it cannot be up to private persons to create new forms of property right, but only to trade rights that take existing forms). I advance two general claims. First, functional accounts of this principle cannot but fail adequately to explain it. Second, the numerus clausus can be cast into sharp relief by elaborating the legitimation question that captures its moral centre – that is, a concern about how political authority is possible in the context of legislating new forms of property right. I insist, in this regard, that the conception of political legitimation that characterizes the creation of novel forms of property right is that of democratic self-governance.

Ventures into the minefield: Equity, fairness and no defence for restraint of trade

The constitution of the Republic of South Africa 108 of 1996 has an influence on the development of private law and specifically the law of contract. The Constitution imposes on every court, tribunal or forum a positive duty. The court must develop the common law in accordance with the Bill of Rights and the values underlying it, and that means that the common law must be tested against those values. Our present law of contract, for instance, still adopts an individualistic free market view as its point of departure. The emphasis placed on the law of contract on the rule that in principle contracts are concluded on the basis of consensus points to the recognition of private autonomy as the basis for contractual liability. Our present law of contract still accepts as its point of departure the presumed independence, economic equality, autonomy and responsibility of contactants. In principle, that on which the parties agreed, actually or constructively, is enforced without further ado. No other topic in the law of contract received as much attention during the last ten years in our case law as restraints. Any litigant who ventures into this minefield should treat it very carefully. The research questions are; is there an interest of one of the party which deserves protection after termination of the agreement? Is such an interest endangered by the other party? If so, does such interest weigh up qualitatively and quantitatively against the interest of the other party not to be economically inactive and unproductive? There is a scant opportunity for a contactant to avoid liability. He can do so only if he can rely on one of the numerus clausus of available defences. This paper will prove that general considerations of equity and fairness cannot as such provide a defence and that those policies in the corporate arena must be changed. Key words: Defences, party autonomy, contract, restraints and free market.

When Sexism Meets Racism: the 1920 Numerus Clausus Law in Hungary

In this paper I argue that the Hungarian Numerus Clausus edict, introduced in 1920, was aimed at restricting not only the number of Hungarian Jews, but also the number of women in higher education. What is more, university admission policies, often applied beyond the legal framework of this law, reinforced and reproduced the male, nationalist, Christian and conservative hegemony. However, while the Numerus Clausus edict lived on in Hungarian common memory as the first step towards the later introduced anti-Jewish laws and the subsequent extermination of the majority of Hungarian Jews, the consequences of the law regarding women’s exclusion from higher education and thus from the intellectual elite remains mainly unknown to date. Moreover, since “gendered memory” still does not exist in Hungary, there is no way to remember the introduction of the Numerus Clausus law as one of the historical moments that marked women’s place and role in Hungarian society until well after the Second World War and as the symbolic moment when anti-Semitism and sexism met.

Challenges in physician supply planning: the case of Belgium

IntroductionPlanning human resources for health (HRH) is a complex process for policy-makers and, as a result, many countries worldwide swing from surplus to shortage. In-depth case studies can help appraising the challenges encountered and the solutions implemented. This paper has two objectives: to identify the key challenges in HRH planning in Belgium and to formulate recommendations for an effective HRH planning, on the basis of the Belgian case study and lessons drawn from an international benchmarking.Case descriptionIn Belgium, a numerus clausus set up in 1997 and effective in 2004, aims to limit the total number of physicians working in the curative sector. The assumption of a positive relationship between physician densities and health care utilization was a major argument in favor of medical supply restrictions. This new regulation did not improve recurrent challenges such as specialty imbalances, with uncovered needs particularly among general practitioners, and geographical maldistribution. New difficulties also emerged. In particular, limiting national training of HRH turned out to be ineffective within the open European workforce market. The lack of integration of policies affecting HRH was noteworthy. We described in the paper what strategies were developed to address those challenges in Belgium and in neighboring countries.Discussion and evaluationPlanning the medical workforce involves determining the numbers, mix, and distribution of health providers that will be required at some identified future point in time. To succeed in their task, health policy planners have to take a broader perspective on the healthcare system. Focusing on numbers is too restrictive and adopting innovative policies learned from benchmarking without integration and coordination is unfruitful. Evolving towards a strategic planning is essential to control the effects of the complex factors impacting on human resources. This evolution requires an effective monitoring of all key factors affecting supply and demand, a dynamic approach, and a system-level perspective, considering all healthcare professionals, and integrating manpower planning with workforce development.ConclusionTo engage in an evidence-based action, policy-makers need a global manpower picture, from their own country and abroad, as well as reliable and comparable manpower databases allowing proper analysis and planning of the workforce.

Property and Collective Undertaking: The Principle of Numerus Clausus

In this article, I seek to reclaim for property theory the legitimation concern that is the kernel of the principle of numerus clausus (which is a restriction that means that it cannot be up to private persons to create new forms of property right, but only to trade rights that take existing forms). I advance two general claims. First, functional accounts of this principle cannot but fail adequately to explain it. Second, the numerus clausus can be cast into sharp relief by elaborating the legitimation question that captures its moral centre - that is, a concern about how political authority is possible in the context of legislating new forms of property right. I insist, in this regard, that the conception of political legitimation that characterizes the creation of novel forms of property right is that of democratic self-governance.

Crisis of the Universities in Europe – What Next? (Krise Der Universitäten in Europa – Was Nun?)

This article attempts to develop a perspective for radical reform of the Austrian and European universities. The article takes up anew a simple idea, already presented in an article in the widely circulated European political magazine “Die Zukunft” (Vienna) in 1991, proposing full University democracy, implying free elections of the university governing bodies, combined with a net household income per capita income weighted fully-fledged and credit supported tuition system. Another pillar of a European university reform would imply stronger rewards for publications in peer-reviewed international journals. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the continental European university has become the last bastion of the inefficient command economy. Only a thorough Anglo-American reform perspective can nowadays save the continental European University from the abyss of the implosion of the system. A alternative, based on a government-taxation-funded reform would be possible only in principle, but under the present political economic conditions in continental Europe, too many special interests of small stakeholders in the political system block such an alternative. The harsh and bitter predictions of the 1991 article came true all too quickly - the empty “shelves” in the European command economy University system remind us of the all too well-known economics of shortage, Janos Kornai style. Our empirical multiple regressions, based on OECD and standard international higher education data show that the introduction of tuition fees would have a major impact on the performance criteria of the University system according to different operationalizations of the University of Shanghai global rankings. Our empirical calculations also show that tuition fees and a strong role of the private sector and its contributions to university life are the most efficient strategy to achieve a high number of class universities and high number of University graduates per age cohort, controlling for the effects of development level. Additional partial correlations (again keeping constant the development level) also show that the level of annual tuition fees are also highly and significantly associated with other societal performance criteria, like the predictable recovery from the current crisis (based on IMF data), indicators of a liberal society, and indicators of avoiding passive globalization. It is also true that a high level of social protection (as measured by the OECD statistics on public social expenditures per GDP), does not impede a higher proportion of public educational expenditure on tertiary education. But it is also true that the political culture of social protection almost automatically tends to regard the university system as a preserve of the State, and culturally excludes new models of private funding, oriented at the best-practice Anglo-American model. Our data also analyse current global entrance examinations regimes to universities around the world, as well as the efficiency ratios of the amount of the estimated purchasing power of salaries of researchers and scientists to the status of a country as a headquarter of global universities (per capita number of world class Universities). While the author personally believes that numerus clausus regimes, knock-out tests in the studies orientation phase, and other access restrictions are the wrong way to guarantee a proper university landscape in a mature capitalistic society, the list of international tests and filtering by state authorities already in existence is really impressive, and – paradoxically enough for the proponents of a Scandinavian state oriented alternative higher education policy – includes many Scandinavian countries. So in effect, there is no alternative to the Anglo-Americanization of our continental European universities. Free access, functioning capitalist universities, paid at least partially by their consumers – the students - are essential to the normal functioning of a free, capitalist society. The continental European failure to reform its Universities deepens the societal inertia, parochialism, xenophobia and racism in our continent. The present command economic University system, in addition, excludes an atmosphere of social responsibility, and creates a mentality of the command economy and party cadres. The reorganization of the continental European and outdated “habilitation procedure”, creating an intellectual climate of serfdom of assistant professors to their masters – the professors - and its substitution by an innovation oriented impact analysis of the intellectual production of candidates in leading peer reviewed journals or international book publishing would be also a major step towards a solution of the continental European University crisis.

Étude comparative des facultés de médecine en France : premiers résultats

AERES has achieved the first comparative study of the French medical schools based on the analysis of both teaching performance and research activity. The human resources considered in the evaluation are full-time, tenured, university hospital teaching staff (TUHT), professors or lecturers, and are meaningful only if the number of students is considered. The estimated number of students is based on the Numerus Clausus (NC), number of students allowed each year to enter in the second year of medical studies. Teaching performance of each faculty is based on the success of their students in a national ranking examination (Examen Classant National - ECN), at the end of their second cycle of medical studies which allows them to choose, for their third specialising cycle of medical studies, the specialty and region of practice. Research activity is estimated on the SIGAPS score of the medical school based on the number and impact factor of the scientific papers produced for five years running by the full-time professors and lecturers of each medical school, the number of national clinical research projects (PHRC) they have conducted during the three past years and the number of research units headed by these professors labelled by CNRS and INSERM. French medical school characteristics are markedly different in the number of university-hospital teaching staff, teaching performances and research activities. Numerous teaching staff and labelled research units have a beneficial influence on research activity and teaching results. The impact on teaching results is less statistically significant than that on research activity. A medical school mapping is then outlined. More precise analysis of the observed differences between medical schools will allow propose recommendations.

Lawyers and the Early Modern State: Regulation, Exclusion, and Numerus Clausus

This article investigates the ways in which entry to the legal profession in early modern Europe was regulated and the nature of the various interests, from the state to the judges and societies of lawyers, who sought to limit the size of the practising bar and also the lower branch of the legal profession. In part exclusionary categories were universal, having been inherited from the tradition of the ius commune, but some were very specific to particular courts and regulated at the local or national level. At the same time, such limitations and exclusions as were maintained had an effect in directing law graduates away from legal practice and towards employment in other spheres, including the butgeoning bureaucracies of western Europe. This was particularly exacerbated during periods when the level of litigation in the courts fell, as it seems to have done in a number of jurisdictions in the early eighteenth century. The tendency of lawyers to combine to protect their interests is reflected in the monopolies that sometimes arose in relation to practice in particular courts. Sometimes a highly restricted number of advocates or procurators had the right to practise in a court, and this could create practical problems which, it was argued, affected the quality of the legal decisions produced.

Can Research Universities Survive without Control over Admission? Reflections on Austria's Exceptionalism in Higher Education Policy

Austria prides itself on its ‘open admission’ policy which is contrary to the selective admission procedures at Anglo-Saxon universities or the Numerus Clausus system in most European countries. All Austrian citizens who have completed the Gymnasium - the elite track of the secondary school - and hold a ‘Matura’ - the Austrian equivalent to the German ‘Abitur’ - are entitled to enrol in any programme at any Austrian university. This paper explains the logic of this policy and its historical roots, demonstrates the implications of this policy under the conditions of mass higher education, and discusses how this policy has triggered a conflict between Austria and the European Union.