Private Member Research Articles

Jordan's principle: Editorial update

Jordan's principle: Editorial update

The Dramatic Growth of Private Legislation in Israel, 1992-2006

Very little research has been conducted on the functioning of the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) in general and on private members' legislation in particular. This article contributes to the perception of the role of the legislator as political initiator in modern parliamentarism.

The Catholic Lobby: Structures, Policy Styles and Religious Networks

This article is about the place of lobbying by the Catholic Church in contemporary Australian federal politics. It builds on some previous attention by political scientists to Catholic political campaigning (eg,Hogan 1978, 1993; see alsoByrnes 1993), but it is more comprehensive. Discussion of such lobbying uses various terminology and, like much lobbying, it can be viewed in a normative sense either favourably or unfavourably, as democratic or undemocratic. During the parliamentary debate in December 1996 on the anti-euthanasia private members bill introduced by Kevin Andrews, for instance, Nick Dondas (Country Liberal, Northern Territory) alleged that ‘the debate has been driven by the Catholic community of this country’. To which his Catholic colleague Tony Abbott (Liberal, New South Wales), alleging that Dondas had blamed the bill on the ‘Catholic lobby’, responded that ‘those comments were beneath him’.1

The Legal Environment of Salmond's Time

This paper examines through multiple lenses the world of the lawyer in early 20th century New Zealand. It considers, and places in their social and political context, the major issues with which Parliament and the courts were dealing, notably issues to do with alienation of Māori land and attempts to prohibit the liquor trade, but also looking at law reform by private members' Bills. The reported decisions of the courts are analysed to consider the areas of frequent litigation, particularly land law (including Māori land cases), administrative and public law cases thrown up by the prohibition question and the very large volume of torts cases. It then examines the position of the judiciary and the courts, paying particular attention to agitation by the profession for increased judicial salaries and to the debates about the role of the Privy Council following its judgment in Wallis's case. It concludes with a discussion of the organisation and membership of the legal profession, the state of legal education and the development of a body of locally-generated legal literature.

Reconceiving Rights and Constitutionalism

Human rights invoked in the international context are often treated as having self-evident content. The focus is on implementation and enforcement. The urge to enforcement is especially strong when...

Private Life in Stalin's Russia: Family Narratives, Memory and Oral History

For many years, we knew next to nothing about the private lives of 5 ordinary Soviet citizens during Stalin’s reign. Until very recently, the social history of the Soviet Union written by Soviet and Western historians alike was limited entirely to the public sphere – politics and ideology, and the collective experience of the ‘Soviet masses’. The individual (insofar as he or she appeared at all) featured mainly as a letter-writer to the Soviet 10 authorities (that is, as a public actor rather than a private person or member of a family). Sources were the obvious problem. Apart from a few memoirs by great writers, there was practically no reliable evidence about the private sphere of family life. For ordinary people in the Soviet Union, for the tens of millions 15 who suffered from repression, their family history was a forbidden zone of memory – something they would never talk or write about. During the Soviet period, the personal collections (lichnye fondy) built up in the state and Party archives belonged in the main to well-known public figures in the world of politics, science and culture; their documents 20 were carefully selected by their owners for donation to the state. The memoirs published in the Soviet Union were also generally unrevealing about the private experience of the people who wrote them, although there are some exceptions, particularly among those published in the glasnost

Trial and Error: Electoral Reform through Bypass and its Repeal

‘The second republic’ is how Asher Arian defined Israel's government in the 1990s, referring to the ‘new issues, new constitutional rules, new leadership’ that emerged at the beginning of that era....

Analysing Parliamentary Debate with Computer Assistance

The analysis of parliamentary debates is at the confluence of a number of developments in political science. What light can automated and semi‐automated techniques throw on such analysis? In this paper we compare two such approaches, one semi‐automated (Hamlet) and the other fully automated (Alceste). We use both approaches to identify the prominent themes in debate and to assess how far speakers who favour different positions adopt a distinct pattern of discourse. We seek to assess how far the two approaches yield convergent or divergent analyses. Selecting a second reading debate from the UK House of Commons on a private member's bill on abortion in July 1966, we are able to show similarities of analysis despite the detailed differences between the two approaches. In particular, the analysis in Hamlet al.lows identification of the extent to which individual speakers employ one type of vocabulary rather than another. Alceste is able to provide a statistical basis for the different classes of vocabulary that occur in the debate. However, the two programs rest upon quite different assumptions about the relationship between syntax and meaning, with implications for the practice of political science.

Why a resale royalty was rejected in Australia

In 2004 the Australian Opposition party introduced to Parliament a private member’s bill proposing the amendment of Australian copyright law to include an artist’s resale royalty. In response to the bill the Government released the Proposed Resale Royalty Arrangement Discussion Paper, which successfully provided a tangible foundation for discussions and stimulated the first strong academic debate regarding a resale royalty within Australia. Despite overwhelming support from respondents, in May 2006 the Government announced it would not support the adoption of a resale royalty right and the Resale Royalty Bill 2004 failed to pass through Parliament. The rejection of a resale royalty by the Australian Government illustrates the ongoing difficulty of incorporating civil law notions of creative rights, and moral rights in particular, into common law – particularly as the Australian Government’s approach to policy making is increasingly underpinned by economic rationalism.

Variability in the diagnosis and management of adenoma-like and non-adenoma-like dysplasia-associated lesions or masses in inflammatory bowel disease: an Internet-based study

Dysplasia-associated lesions or masses (DALMs) in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are a heterogeneous group of tumors with different natural histories. Our purpose was to determine the ability of gastroenterologists (GE) to distinguish adenoma-like (ALD) from non-adenoma-like DALMs (NALD) in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) and to evaluate management practices with regard to these lesions. Randomly chosen academic and private practice members of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and a group of IBD experts. All GEs answered a series of questions related to UC-associated DALMs and were asked to classify 13 digitally transmitted endoscopic images (5 ALD, 5 NALD, and 3 inflammatory polyps [IP]). Internet-based survey. Not applicable. Not applicable. Percentage of respondents who answered management questions and classified endoscopic images correctly. ALD, NALD, and IP were correctly diagnosed by 68%, 75%, and 82% of IBD experts; 58%, 56%, and 57% of academic gastroenterologists; and 60%, 73%, and 60% of private practice GEs, respectively. Overall, there were no significant differences in rates of correct diagnosis for the 3 types of polyps (P=.603). IBD experts showed a significantly higher correct diagnosis rate (P=.048) and interobserver agreement (P<.01) compared with the other two GE groups. Many GEs were not aware of the currently recommended management guidelines for patients with IBD with DALMs. Only a single endoscopic image was used in this study. The response rate was 32%. These data suggest that academic GEs and private practice GEs have more difficulty than IBD experts do in distinguishing between and managing DALMs in patients with UC.

Interim Measures in Community Courts: Recent Trends

The Court of Justice has jurisdiction under Articles 242 EC and 243 EC to entertain in interlocutory proceedings, first, applications for suspension of the operation of an act challenged by means of an action brought before it and, second, applications for other interim measures. The purpose of the procedure for interim relief is to guarantee the full effectiveness of the definitive future decision, in order to ensure that there is no lacuna in the legal protection provided by the Court of Justice. This article examines the recent trends in the case law of both Community courts. The three conditions for granting interim relief (a prima facie case, urgency, and the balance of interests) are examined in turn, as well as other questions of substance and procedure. The case law shows a constant tension between the principle of effective judicial protection and the limitations on the powers of the judge which derive from his/her constitutional role and the need to stay within the limits of the case and not to render meaningless the main case. One of the main transformations since the end of the 1980s is that the presentation has become more standardized and the orders generally contain more detailed reasoning. Although, the introduction of expedited procedures has reduced the need for interim proceedings in certain cases, this has had a limited quantitative effect on the number of requests for interim relief. In general, obtaining interim relief is a very difficult task for private applicants and Member States.

Recent reforms to corporate legal structures for social enterprise in the UK: opportunity or confusion?

PurposeTo study the legal underpinnings of the definition of social enterprise in the context of the problems with the corporate legal structures available in the UK in the late twentieth century and the reforms of the early twenty first century to assess whether further reforms are needed to facilitate the growth of the social enterprise movement.Design/methodology/approachA definition of social enterprise is proposed and examined in light of the problems associated with twentieth century company law and the efforts to reform and develop it in the period, 2000‐2006.FindingsThree major developments may be seen to have important consequences for the continuing reform and development of company law: the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 2002 (Office of Public Sector Information 2002a) (private members bill); the Co‐operatives and Community Benefit Societies Act 2003 (Office of Public Sector Information 2003) (private members bill); the PIU Report “Private Action, Public Benefit” (Cabinet Office/Strategy Unit 2002) and the resulting Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Business) Act 2004 (Office of Public Sector Information 2004); and the Charities Act 2006 (Office of Public Sector Information 2006). Refers also to other developments impacting on company law, notably the European Co‐operative Society’s European Co‐operative Society Statute (SCE) Regulation and Directive.Originality/valueProvides a useful guide to UK legal trends likely to impact on social enterprises.

C++ benchmarks in SPEC CPU2006

In SPEC CPU2006, there are three C++ integer benchmarks and four floating-point C++ benchmarks. This paper describes the work of incorporating C++ benchmarks into SPEC CPU2006. It describes the base language standard supported and the basis for run rules adopted to maintain an even playing field for different compilers. It also describes issues that complicate porting C++ benchmarks. It describes some of the C++ Standard compliance issues that were technically interesting during the benchmark development phase, using as examples the behavior of const-correctness, nested class access of private member of enclosing class, and unneeded template instantiations.

Better regulation by new governance hybrids? Governance models and the reform of European chemicals policy

The EU is presently in a transition phase from environmental policy-making by law towards other governance approaches based upon networking, voluntary commitments, benchmarking and other forms of “soft law”. Those new governance approaches often claim to lead to “better regulation”, while adopting a more consensus-oriented and participatory style, taking economic aspects more seriously into account, allowing for more flexibility and autonomy for the private sector and Member States alike, mobilising a broader knowledge base or adopting more integrated and holistic approaches than previous sectoralised and compartmentalised policies. While the limitations of traditional regulatory approaches are widely accepted and cited, it is far from evident, that “new modes of governance” have greater capacity to solve problems than the old ones. There is an argument, that “better regulation” might by synonymous to a withdrawal and weakening of the regulatory state and hence effectively of the aspirations and objectives of environmental policies. An interesting case for an approach, combining the strengths of the old and the new approaches is the ongoing reform of chemicals policies. While some observers claim, that the proposed directive, “REACH” might belong to the outdated category of overcomplex and bureaucratic regulation, a closer look shows that there are many new forms of governance in REACH. This mixture or old and new may open a more realistic and promising perspective on the reform of European policy-making. In our paper we assess the effects and the interplay of the combination of different modes of governance using the example of REACH. We are particularly concerned with the question in how far the representation of interests may change when new modes of governance are introduced.

Our (not so) polyglot pollies

The present article reports on research conducted during late 2004 on the language abilities of Australia’s parliamentarians and a parliamentary debate in 2005 on languages in Australia. A small questionnaire was administered to all members of the nine legislative structures of Australia comprising six states, two territories and the one Federal parliament. This is the first such survey in Australia. While the response rate was uneven, from good to poor, the survey does shed light on the range and number of languages other than English spoken by Australia’s parliamentary representatives, where their language capabilities were gained, how proficient they estimate themselves to be, and in what settings their language skills are used. The paper includes a comparison between these Australian data and equivalent, though slightly less sketchy, data from the UK. The article concludes with the text and debate of a recent private members’ bill on languages and makes comments on the responses in light of the language abilities of the parliamentarians.

Our (not so) polyglot pollies

The present article reports on research conducted during late 2004 on the language abilities of Australia’s parliamentarians and a parliamentary debate in 2005 on languages in Australia. A small questionnaire was administered to all members of the nine legislative structures of Australia comprising six states, two territories and the one Federal parliament. This is the first such survey in Australia. While the response rate was uneven, from good to poor, the survey does shed light on the range and number of languages other than English spoken by Australia’s parliamentary representatives, where their language capabilities were gained, how proficient they estimate themselves to be, and in what settings their language skills are used. The paper includes a comparison between these Australian data and equivalent, though slightly less sketchy, data from the UK. The article concludes with the text and debate of a recent private members’ bill on languages and makes comments on the responses in light of the language abilities of the parliamentarians.

News and Notes

News and Notes

‘Putting Animals into Politics’: The Labour Party and Hunting in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

This article will discuss the background to opposition to hunting within the Labour Party before the Second World War, and in particular the role of the Humanitarian League and its successor the League Against Cruel Sports. It will highlight internal tensions of class and ideology that are still current today. It will examine the fate of two private members bills introduced in 1949 designed to prohibit hunting and coursing. Both bills were heavily defeated after the intervention of the Labour Government. This article will examine the reasons the post-war Labour Government used to oppose the bills before drawing some general conclusions about the Labour movement and blood sports. It will be argued that the primary reason why the bills were defeated was the strong desire of the Government to preserve its relationship with the farmers and the wider rural community.

Better Regulation by New Governance Hybrids? Governance Models and the Reform of European Chemicals Policy

The EU is presently in a transition phase from environmental policy making by law towards other governance approaches based upon networking, voluntary commitments, benchmarking and other forms of soft law. Those new governance approaches often claim to lead to better regulation, while adopting a more consensus oriented and participatory style, taking economic aspects more seriously into account, allowing for more flexibility and autonomy for the private sector and Member States alike, mobilising a broader knowledge base or adopting more integrated and holistic approaches than previous sectoralised and compartmentalised policies. While the limitations of traditional regulatory approaches are widely accepted and cited, it is far from evident, that new modes of governance have greater capacity to solve problems than the old ones. There is an argument, that better regulation might by synonymous to a withdrawal and weakening of the regulatory state and hence effectively of the aspirations and objectives of environmental policies. An interesting case for an approach, combining the strengths of the old and the new approaches is the ongoing reform of chemicals policies. While some observers claim, that the proposed directive REACH might belong to the outdated category of overcomplex and bureaucratic regulation, a closer look shows that there is lots of new forms of governance in REACH. This mixture or old and new may open a more realistic and promising perspective on the reform of European policy making. In our paper we will assess the effects and the interplay of the combination of different modes of governance using the example of REACH. We are particularly concerned with the question in how far the representation of interests may change when new modes of governance are introduced.

Roses for nonsmokers' hearts

For the first two weeks of February shops and the media are full of references to Valentine's Day. Even the British Heart Foundation (BHF) have used the opportunity as part of their recent fundraising campaign for more BHF heart nurses. This year, however, Valentine's Day was marked by the vote in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, which is due to come into effect in England in the summer of 2007. The British Heart Foundation described this decision as ‘the best possible Valentine gift from MPs to bar workers in pubs, bars and private members’ clubs, across England’ (British Heart Foundation, 2006).