Penalties For Violations Research Articles

USING THE GLOBALIZATION EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD'S LEADING COUNTRIES IN THE FIELD OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION IN UKRAINE

In this scientific article, the author examines modern trends in the development of intellectual potential and protection of intellectual property based on the globalization experience of the world's leading countries – the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden and France. The author focuses on the fact that their positive experience can be used by Ukraine, because the intellectual potential and the system of protection of intellectual rights in our country in the conditions of globalization and dynamic development of information technologies are exposed to much greater risks and threats, and the current legislation has long since not covered the necessary spectrum legal regulation of intellectual property relations. In particular, the experience of the USA can be useful in the formation of reliable legislative regulation, the creation of an effective Strategy for the development of Ukrainian intellectual property for the coming years, the establishment of stricter responsibility and control over the observance of intellectual property rights. The benefit of Great Britain's experience can be obtained if we go the way of establishing partnership and cooperation of our country in the investigated area, as well as establishing a tougher penalty for violations in this area. It is also appropriate to borrow the conceptual foundations of combating crime in the field of intellectual property, to develop plans for its prevention and countermeasures. The German experience will be useful in the following aspects: borrowing the desire for reliable and simple legislation, establishing an open type of relations between the state in the form of its authorized bodies that conduct their activities in the field of intellectual property, with citizens (right holders) in the information field, increasing educational and innovative level of development of the population of Ukraine. The use of Swedish experience may take place when borrowing Swedish technologies for the protection of intellectual property, in particular, the use of blockchain technology. The French practice of dynamic and innovative updating of legislative acts can be useful in the process of revising and modernizing the national legislation of Ukraine.

Proportionality and non-oneness of confiscation for customs violations

The article argues that the legal basis for confiscation, contrary to general principles of law, international recommendations on customs administration and the experience of the most developed countries in the relevant part, does not ensure the proportionality of this administrative penalty and the possibility of its replacement on conditions both acceptable to the offender and being in the best interests of the state. According to the author, given the scale and irreversibility of the consequences of confiscation of the property of the offender, unconditional and unalterable imposition of this administrative penalty for customs rules violations, regardless of its circumstances, its severity and degree of guilt of an offender, is unfair and incompatible with the rule of law. In view of this, the interpretation of the provisions of the customs legislation on confiscation for customs rules violation for purposes of efficient law enforcement should be interpreted in a way that allows to adapt this administrative penalty to all the circumstances of the case to the greatest extent. The optimality of this decision is supported, in particular, by the experience of the most developed countries, where it is obligatory to check the existence of aggravating and mitigating circumstances when deciding on confiscation, such as taking all possible measures to prevent its use by the owner of a specially modified or adapted vehicle, the time of the breach of customs regulations or, as an another example, the possibility of returning a specially modified or adapted vehicle to its previous condition for its intended use in accordance with the recommendations of the Convention on the simplification and harmonization of customs procedures.

Demand-Side Regulation Provision of Virtual Power Plants Consisting of Interconnected Microgrids Through Double-Stage Double-Layer Optimization

This study proposes a double-stage double-layer optimization model for a virtual power plant (VPP) consisting of interconnected microgrids (IMGs) with integrated renewable energy sources (RESs) and energy storage systems (ESSs) to realize demand-side ancillary service, considering intra energy sharing among the IMGs within the VPP. In particular, the first stage, day-ahead scheduling, is carried out to predict the hourly electricity consumption baseline and regulation capacity for the next day, the latter of which results in a reward from the market operator. In the second stage, real-time power consumption control is performed by following the dynamic regulation (or RegD) signal. The second stage is further divided into two layers: the upper layer distributes demand response (DR) signals from the main grid according to the electricity unit price of each microgrid (MG) and exchanges electricity among MGs based on a new energy sharing mechanism to reduce RegD-following violations. The lower layer performs real-time power consumption control for each MG to minimize operation costs. The overall goal is to maximize the reward in the day-ahead stage and minimize the RegD-following violation penalty in the real-time stage, so as to minimize the overall operation cost of the VPP. The optimization is written in five objective functions, which are solved using mixed integer linear programming (MILP) in Gurobisolvers. Extensive simulation and comparison studies are carried out, and numerical results show that compared with traditional MG operations, VPPs comprised of IMGs can reduce operation costs and provide better frequency support for the grid through superior RegD signal following performances.

Safety-Aware Semi-End-to-End Coordinated Decision Model for Voltage Regulation in Active Distribution Network

Prediction plays a vital role in the active distribution network voltage regulation under the high penetration of photovoltaics. Current prediction models aim at minimizing individual prediction errors but overlook their collective impacts on downstream decision-making. Hence, this paper proposes a safety-aware semi-end-to-end coordinated decision model to bridge the gap from the downstream voltage regulation to the upstream multiple prediction models in a coordinated differential way. The semi-end-to-end model maps the input features to the optimal var decisions via prediction, decision-making, and decision-evaluating layers. It leverages the neural network and the second-order cone program (SOCP) to formulate the stochastic PV/load predictions and the var decision-making/evaluating separately. Then the var decision quality is evaluated via the weighted sum of the power loss for economy and the voltage violation penalty for safety, denoted by regulation loss. Based on the regulation loss and prediction errors, this paper proposes the hybrid loss and hybrid stochastic gradient descent algorithm to back-propagate the gradients of the hybrid loss with respect to multiple predictions for enhancing decision quality. Case studies verify the effectiveness of the proposed model with lower power loss for economy and lower voltage violation rate for safety awareness.

Understanding the New Dimensions and Implications of Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019

The Motor Vehicle Amendment Act 2019 is a significant piece of legislation that aims to reform and strengthen the laws governing road safety and motor vehicles in India. The Act was introduced as an amendment to the existing Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and has been implemented with the objective of reducing road accidents, improving traffic management, and ensuring greater accountability among road users. The Motor Vehicle Amendment Act 2019 introduces several key provisions that have far-reaching implications for motorists, passengers, and other stakeholders. One of the major highlights of the Act is the substantial increase in fines and penalties for traffic violations, such as over-speeding, drunk driving, not wearing a seatbelt or helmet, and using a mobile phone while driving. The Act also introduces stricter provisions for driving without a valid license, allowing underage driving, and dangerous driving, with higher penalties and imprisonment in certain cases. Another significant aspect of the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act 2019 is the focus on improving road safety measures. The Act mandates the use of electronic enforcement, such as speed cameras and red-light cameras, to catch traffic violators. It also emphasizes the importance of road engineering and design, making it mandatory for road authorities to follow guidelines for road construction and maintenance. The Act also introduces provisions for protecting vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists, and sets guidelines for their safety.

A Self-Learning Based Dynamic Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm for Resilient Scheduling Problems in Steelmaking Plants

Scheduling is one of the most important missions for plant-wide optimization in steelmaking manufacturing systems. In the context of dynamic scheduling, the decision-maker should simultaneously minimize economic objectives within the decision space and violation penalty out of the decision space. In this study, we introduce a resilient scheduling model in steelmaking plants, which provides flexible decisions, including buffering times in between stages and controllable processing speeds in the casting stage, to enable the solution to absorb random disturbances and recover quickly. We formulate the dynamic steelmaking scheduling problem with resilient responding strategies, which is a variant of dynamic multi-objective optimization problems (DMOP), and propose a resilient scheduling optimization framework to solve it over time. First, we employ a vector with problem-specific knowledge to map the whole decision space to sub-schedules in the casting stage, which contains casting priority, casting speed and scaling ratio. Next, we form a multi-objective linear programming model to evaluate these problem-specific vectors. Last but not least, we develop a self-learning based dynamic multi-objective differential evolutionary algorithm to solve the variant DMOP, in which a hypothesis-testing technique is used to detect and identify environmental changes. The sensitivity analysis and algorithm comparisons are performed on a wide range of problem instances under dynamic environments. Experimental evidence validates that the proposed resilient model and the optimization framework is effective to solve the dynamic scheduling problem in steelmaking plants. Note to Practitioners—This paper investigates a dynamic scheduling problem that comes from steelmaking manufacturing systems and is extensively studied in existing works. Because a decision-maker only has incomplete knowledge about the realistic environments, this paper simultaneously considers that both the decision and objective space of a scheduling problem dynamically changed over time. We develop a resilient scheduling model which can absorb the different types or scales of disturbances caused by unforeseen events, and recover rapidly to the original state. We formulate the resilience scheduling model and propose a dynamic multi-objective algorithm based on the self-learning differential evolutionary algorithm to solve it. The effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm is validated via sensitivity analysis and comparison to other well-known algorithms. Furthermore, the resilient scheduling model and its optimization framework can also be applied to dynamic scheduling problems in other industries.

Green Persona vs Reality

Green Persona vs Reality

Complaints about Violations of Voluntary and Pharmaceutical Industry-Run Medicine Promotion Codes in Canada.

Although regulation of pharmaceutical promotion in Canada is covered under the Food & Drugs Act and Regulations, in practice it is regulated by two codes, one a code administered by the Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board and a second one controlled by Innovative Medicines Canada, the lobby organization for the large majority of the Canadian and foreign-owned pharmaceutical companies operating in Canada. This study examines complaints about code violations between 2012 and 2021 and puts those complaints and their outcomes into the context of the stringency of the codes, their governance, monitoring, penalties for violations, and compliance by companies. It combines the findings from this analysis with international experience with industry-run codes and concludes that overall, the Canadian codes are ineffective in controlling promotion. Finally, it offers recommendations for how regulation can be improved and how doctors' reliance on information from pharmaceutical companies can be reduced.

Application of Customary Criminal Penalty On Cases Involving Women

Introduction: Violence against women is still taking place. Nowadays, issues involving women are increasingly becoming one of the crucial issues in society, not only at the national level, but also at the global level.Purposes of the Research: The purpose of this study is to find out about the application of customary criminal penalties to cases involving women.Methods of the Research: Normative legal research is carried out by examining laws and regulations, jurisprudence and values that lives in society.Results of the Research: The application of penalties for violators in Negeri Amahai, Negeri Haruru, Negeri Nua Nea, Negeri Rutah, and Negeri Souhoku, Negeri Tamilouw highly respects traditional values, which always protect their regions. The customs of their ancestors, until now still exist in people's lives. In fact, until now, the existence of indigenous peoples in several countries in Central Maluku is still maintained, and customary law is maintained by the people of Central Maluku because customary law is pure and can reduce conflicts and erase the stains contained in society.

Loopholes for Underage Access in E-Cigarette Delivery Sales Laws, United States, 2022.

Objectives. To comprehensively catalog and review state e-cigarette delivery sales laws as well as capture their scope and dimensions. Methods. We conducted an in-depth review to determine whether states had at least 1 form of e-cigarette delivery sales law. We coded laws for 5 key policy domains: (1) delivery terminology used in laws, (2) age verification requirements, (3) packaging label requirements, (4) permit or registration requirements, and (5) fines and penalties for violations. Results. Overall, 34 states had e-cigarette delivery sales laws with varying scopes and dimensions. In 27 states, these laws required at least 1 form of age verification requirements. We identified mandatory packaging labels in 12 states, and 7 states where permits were required. There were considerable differences among states on the scale of fines and penalties for violations. Conclusions. Our findings reveal extensive heterogeneity in e-cigarette delivery sales laws among states, particularly regarding the scope and dimensions of these laws. Public Health Implications. The mapping of e-cigarette delivery sales policies showed several potential loopholes that may diminish their effectiveness. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(5):568-576. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307228).

Restrictions during the Intermediate Licensing Phase: A Content Analysis

Introduction: This study analyzed the content of intermediate licensing restrictions of all 50 US states and examined the variation in strictness and language of four restriction categories: minimum age, nighttime driving restrictions, passenger restrictions, and traffic violation penalties.
 Methods: We analyzed state intermediate licensing restrictions using data from four online sources (AAA Guide to Teen Driver Safety, National Conference of State Legislatures, Teen Driving Laws, and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety). Two trained coders independently coded the content of the restrictions, identified four restricted categories and subthemes for each category, and scored each subtheme from 0 to 2, with a higher score indicating a stricter restriction. Direct quotes from state laws were identified to support each subtheme.
 Results: All 50 states included a minimum age for obtaining an intermediate license. Of 50 states, 49 (98.0%) contained nighttime driving restrictions, 46 (92.0%) contained passenger restrictions, and 43 (86.0%) included traffic violation penalties. Variations existed in the minimum age for an intermediate license and length required in the learner permit phase, the starting time and length of the nighttime driving restrictions, the number and age of passengers in passenger restrictions, the minimum time the driver needs to be violation-free before obtaining a full license, and the type and severity of traffic violation penalties.
 Conclusions: Although all states have intermediate licensing restrictions, variations exist in the strictness and language of these restrictions. Future research should assess how these variations impact driving safety among teens when they first start driving unsupervised.

Lawfulness by design – development and evaluation of lawful design patterns to consider legal requirements

ABSTRACT New political objectives, emerging regulatory regimes for the digital sphere, and higher penalties for violations have intensified the pressure to develop lawful IT artefacts. As the adaptation of existing IT artefacts to new regulations can be expensive and arduous, a more attractive approach would be to design IT artefacts lawfully from the beginning. A major challenge is that the law is generally technology-neutral, and lawful design requires legal expertise throughout the development, which is costly and time consuming due to communication challenges between legal experts and developers. One possible approach to proactively consider IT regulations in the systems development is design patterns that convey legal design knowledge and support developers in determining the appropriate design options. Consequently, we develop a framework for lawful design patterns and demonstrate their feasibility and advantages using the example of developing AI-based assistants and the regulation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Using the design pattern framework, we develop design patterns for lawful AI-based assistants and evaluate them using (a) an experimental approach to show the usefulness of the patterns for developers and (b) rely on a legal simulation study to holistically evaluate how design patterns contribute to lawful IT.

Zero tolerance for DWI arrestees reduces driver mortality: RAND

It is known that 24/7 sobriety — the abstinence requirement for people convicted of DWI, commonly known as zero tolerance — reduces re‐arrest, but until the release of a RAND report last week, the associations with improved health outcomes were not known. The study provides the first evidence that such programs, which include frequent alcohol testing and immediate punishment for violations, reduce mortality. However, there are variables in the magnitude of the improvements, probably based on whether participants received treatment or how they were selected for review — data to which the researchers did not have access. In addition, the approach by the researchers focused on individual‐level observables and selection, but not on variation in county‐level implementation or some other variables. In addition, the researchers could not assess the extent to which deterrence — the main tool of 24/7 sobriety programs — vs. other mechanisms drove the results. It's possible that the deterrence protocol in combination with other methods would be effective.

Review of Abolition. Feminism. Now

Review of Abolition. Feminism. Now Barbara Ransby (bio) Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie's Abolition. Feminism. Now., Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2022 Written by four of the sharpest and most respected scholar activists around, Abolition. Feminism. Now. gives us a powerful genealogy of the feminist roots of the twenty-first-century abolitionist movement and its urgent call to action. Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth E. Richie have the cumulative experience that covers a great swath of contemporary radical movements. The amalgam of that work, over many decades, deeply embedded in the work of many organizations, collectives, campaigns, and networks, has led all four coauthors to the place of "abolition feminism." In this book, they trace their collective journey and acknowledge all the "co-conspirators" they have embraced and worked with along the way. "Abolition feminism," the book reminds us, is both a "mode of analysis and a political practice." It insists that an end to state or interpersonal violence cannot occur without a larger feminist politics of justice, and conversely, feminists cannot rely upon oppressive carceral institutions to make women, LGBTQ, and especially trans folks, safe or free. The three major sections of the book address three questions implicit in its title: Why abolition? Why feminism? Why now? Abolition of prisons and the apparatuses of the prison industrial complex is what the new anti–state violence movement calls for. Why abolition? This book insists that reforms alone cannot end the harm caused by policing and prisons. Making nicer, kinder prisons and nicer, kinder police just has not worked. Reform after reform has failed, and even the more robust reforms have been co-opted. The very logic and purpose of the "punishment industry," as Angela Davis calls it, is to harm, coerce, violate, and diminish those with whom it comes into contact. Moreover, the system doesn't do much to heal or help the survivors and victims of harm either. The only real solution, Abolition. Feminism. Now. argues, is [End Page 227] the dismantling of prisons and the building of alternative mechanisms to ensure safety and accountability. The "building" aspect of abolition is underscored by the authors. They are not ignoring the importance of safety, but rather demanding that we think beyond guns and cages for ways to realize it. Holding up Black Youth Project 100's "Building Black Futures" campaign, and its corollary demand, "Invest/Divest," abolitionists have consistently foregrounded the need to allocate more resources for health care, affordable housing, quality public education, and jobs as critical ingredients for crime and violence prevention. They quote Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who insists abolition has never been only about "absence" but also about "presence" of critical resources and alternatives. Violence prevention is better than violent punishment, for everyone involved, and a plethora of restorative and transformative justice programs point to repair and healing as more ethical responses to "crime" than jails and prisons. In the case of poor and working-class women and femmes of color, often police intervention results in those women and femmes being further traumatized, jailed, or killed, even when they are the ones initially reaching out for help. The cases of Marissa Alexander, CeCe McDonald, Eisha Love, and Chicago's Bettie Jones are only a few examples. Why feminism? The introduction traces the roots of abolitionist politics to a number of feminist thinkers and feminist-led organizations from Critical Resistance (CR) to INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence. CR was formed in California in the early 2000s in response to the growing and insatiable prison industry in the state and nation. A feminist politics was there from the beginning, insisting on a holistic approach: inclusion of incarcerated women and the families of incarcerated men and women, and a feminist analysis of violence as systemic and not simply an amalgam of individual cases. The Color of Violence conferences hosted by INCITE built upon this feminist praxis. They insisted that violence against women and femmes was not simply a domestic issue but had to be understood in the context of state violence, settler colonial violence, and violence caused by wars and occupations, as well as economic violence. Their perspective, as...

Dynamics of decline in industrial injuries

Introduction. The authors analyze the dynamics of decline in industrial injuries in 2000 to 2021. According to the Federal Service for Labor and Employment, accidents at work became more frequent in 2021 relative to 2020. In the processing industry, construction, transportation and storage sectors, the largest number of fatalities was registered in the workplace, reaching 52.2 % of the total number of all fatal accidents. The purpose of the work is to study the set of parameters, affecting
 the level of industrial injuries, and to identify the factors that contribute to reducing the number of violations of labor law requirements in occupational safety.
 
 Materials and methods. Provisions of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and Federal Law “On Special Evaluation of Working Conditions” No. 426 dated December 28, 2013, which set the occupational safety requirements and the procedure for the special evaluation of working conditions, are the basis for verifying statistical data on industrial injuries.
 
 Results. Unsatisfactory production and workplace arrangements were the main causes of accidents in 2021 (31 % of the total number). 16 % of accidents, that involved grave consequences, occurred through the fault of employees (violation of work performance procedures and discipline of labor — 10 %, violations of the technology process — 6 %). More than 6,000 violations of the law were revealed as a result of a special evaluation of working conditions, and the total amount of charged penalties reached 2,641,900 rubles.
 
 Conclusions. The dynamics of decline in industrial injuries in Russia in the context of 2000–2021 has a positive trend, but it is irregular. There was a slight increase in the number of fatalities at industrial facilities in 2007, 2010 and 2021. The main reason for an increase in industrial injuries in 2021 was a ban imposed on scheduled inspections due to the coronavirus infection. To reduce industrial injuries, it is necessary to toughen penalties for violations by employers of the requirements of the labor legislation, including those regulating the special evaluation of working conditions.

MSC-CSMC: A multi-objective semi-supervised clustering algorithm based on constraints selection and multi-source constraints for gene expression data.

Many clustering techniques have been proposed to group genes based on gene expression data. Among these methods, semi-supervised clustering techniques aim to improve clustering performance by incorporating supervisory information in the form of pairwise constraints. However, noisy constraints inevitably exist in the constraint set obtained on the practical unlabeled dataset, which degenerates the performance of semi-supervised clustering. Moreover, multiple information sources are not integrated into multi-source constraints to improve clustering quality. To this end, the research proposes a new multi-objective semi-supervised clustering algorithm based on constraints selection and multi-source constraints (MSC-CSMC) for unlabeled gene expression data. The proposed method first uses the gene expression data and the gene ontology (GO) that describes gene annotation information to form multi-source constraints. Then, the multi-source constraints are applied to the clustering by improving the constraint violation penalty weight in the semi-supervised clustering objective function. Furthermore, the constraints selection and cluster prototypes are put into the multi-objective evolutionary framework by adopting a mixed chromosome encoding strategy, which can select pairwise constraints suitable for clustering tasks through synergistic optimization to reduce the negative influence of noisy constraints. The proposed MSC-CSMC algorithm is testified using five benchmark gene expression datasets, and the results show that the proposed algorithm achieves superior performance.

Stan Hochman, Unfiltered: 50 Years of Wit and Wisdom from the Groundbreaking Sportswriter

Stan Hochman, Unfiltered: 50 Years of Wit and Wisdom from the Groundbreaking Sportswriter

АУТСТАФІНГ: ДІЄВИЙ ІНСТРУМЕНТ УПРАВЛІНСЬКОГО ОБЛІКУ В ОПТИМІЗАЦІЇ ВИТРАТ І ПОДАТКІВ ТА МІНІМІЗАЦІЇ РИЗИКІВ ПІДПРИЄМСТВ

The article discusses current issues regarding the advantages and disadvantages of using various types of outstaffing to optimize costs and taxes and minimize enterprise risks. It is noted that the main task of outstaffing is the reorganization of the economic model of the enterprise, which will lead to a decrease in money and labor costs, which will stimulate the efficiency of business processes. In accordance with this, the content of outstaffing, possibilities and problems of its use in modern conditions of Ukraine are revealed. The impossibility of using it at state-owned enterprises was noted. And the difference in the motivation of the service for citizens of Ukraine and foreign nationals is also emphasized. That is, for employees of Ukrainian subjects, outstaffing is used to minimize costs and optimize taxes, or to preserve a simplified taxation system, and for foreign employees, these are additional prerogatives in the form of protection against all personnel and migration risks, as well as from financial penalties for violation of migration legislation. Outstaffing services are classified in the article according to structural and formal features and information and content load. The stages of process-by-process implementation of outstaffing, depending on the option, are considered. The specifics of the contract conclusion scheme have been clarified. Depending on the type of contract, the types of outstaffing are presented: classic outstaffing – the company de jure reduces staff, but de facto – works in the usual mode; temporary staffing – temporary employment of an employee, which is associated with problems in the market or seasonality of production; leasing is a long-term contract.The article details and substantiates the advantages and disadvantages of the specified management accounting tool. The imperfection of the legislation regulating due processes is emphasized, as the specified legal acts provide only a brief definition, a description of the features and limitations of the investigated process, as well as obtaining a special permit by the service provider. That is, the activity of providing outstaffing services is currently not regulated by law in Ukraine.

Protection of the rights and interests of the parties in recovery from the developer for the breach of the terms of transfer of the object of sharing construction to the shareholder

The article describes a variety of approaches to determining the amount of a penalty for violation of the terms of transfer of an object of shared construction that exist in practice. It is noted that the lack of uniformity in the methodology for calculating the size of such a penalty reduces legal certainty and, as a result, trust in the judicial system. It is proposed to adhere to a literal interpretation of the law when setting the date on which the size of the key rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation should be determined for calculating such penalties, namely, to proceed from the day of signing the act of acceptance and transfer of the shared construction object. The use of a different size of the discount rate often leads to infringement of the rights of equity holders, and the penalty ceases to be a tool to protect the weak party in the relationship of equity participation in construction. If the amount of the penalty with this method of calculation turns out to be clearly disproportionate to the consequences of the violation, to restore the balance of interests of the parties, you can use the mechanism for reducing the penalty on the basis of Art. 333 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, taking into account the peculiarities of each specific situation.

By Double Standards, the African Union, and ECOWAS Threatens the Continent’s Political Stability

From the analysis of the relevant literature review described as the methodology, this paper has advanced the argument that indicts the African Union (AU) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for their double standards in dealing with both military coups and institutional or constitutional coups that threaten the political stability of the continent. The paper argued that both the AU and ECOWAS policy instruments or normative frameworks that prescribe penalties for violations that threaten Africa’s political stability are not only applied to military coups but equally to constitutional or institutional coups conceptualized in this paper. Therefore, the paper concludes that AU and ECOWAS courageousness to denounce military coups quickly and openly without regard to constitutional or institutional coups that often provoke popular uprisings serving as the incentives or grounds for military coup is tantamount to the concept of double standards that threaten the continent political stability. The paper recommends equal treatment for both military coup and constitutional or institutional coup will protect the political stability of Africa.