Occasional Conflicts Research Articles

Hong Kong´s Democratic Challenge

The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration stipulates that China will resume sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997. Yet, democratization in Hong Kong poses a serious challenge to the exercise of Chinese sovereignty. On the one hand, it weakens the Chinese leadership on the island and, on the other, it threatens the communist regime on the mainland. Mutual distrust between the leaders of China and Hong Kong will certainly retard or even kill the development of democracy. Mutual restraint could perhaps provide a chance for democracy to develop in Hong Kong. This means that China has to restrain itself from exercising too much control over Hong Kong in exchange for economic prosperity. By the same token, Hong Kong has to restrain itself from in/luencing the political affairs of the communist regime on the mainland in exchange for gradual democratization in Hong Kong. In the political context of Hong Kong, rapid democratization seems to he impossible. Rather, the path for democratization in Hong Kong will be slow and characterized by occasional conflicts between Hong Kong and its future sovereign master.

The Role of Forensic Jurisprudence in the Judicial Process

Abstract The intent of this paper is a clarification of the role of forensic jurisprudence in the judicial process. Confronted with this task, one is left feeling rather like the man who has been persuaded to wrestle with an octopus: uncertain how best to begin. The question is most relevant to lawyers already engaged in that branch of the law which deals with evidence derived from the sciences and the scientifically based arts of our technological society. It seems therefore appropriate to focus initially on the confusion of roles and terminology, and the occasional conflicts of interest which are the inevitable lot of the lawyer who calls himself a forensic jurisprudent, and whose professional concerns include the conflicts of a society in collision with its technology.

Health Challenges of the Future

Health challenges of the future include: scientific advances and their social consequences, delivery of medical ser vices to all mankind and achievement of technical solutions to concrete problems. Social control of medicine-codified in the remote past—became less necessary in recent times. In many parts of the world, it is being reapplied in the delivery of health care and will be applied even more as scientific advances of awesome proportions raise ethical questions. There will be occasional conflicts between possible legal solutions and tradi tional duties of the physician. Potential conflicts exist in the application of eugenic programs, genetic alterations, popu lation control and ecological influences on life and death. New methods of health care delivery actually may require fewer, rather than more, physicians. Albeit relatively ne glected at the present time, the crippling diseases present more of a problem than do the increasingly controlled killer diseases. Solutions to all these problems should include the contributions of physicians; by virtue of their training, they are able to weigh alternatives more objectively than anyone trained in pure, natural or social sciences.