Secretary Of State Research Articles

A right to live without stigma? Examining negative stereotyping, negative messages, and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine the contours of evolving jurisprudence on offensive expression and negative messages, and to suggest that it can best be understood by reference to the concept of stigma. At the European Court of Human Rights, there appears to have been an increasing willingness to recognise the harm of offensive expression through an interpretation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but the reach of this case law remains uncertain. In particular, while some cases associate negative expression with negative stereotyping, not all of these cases do, and there are potential conflicts with freedom of speech. In the domestic context, these issues recently arose in a significant case from the Court of Appeal, R (Crowter) v Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. In this case, the appellants argued that a legal provision sends a negative ‘message’, through the negative stereotyping of disabled people, but this ‘message’ is implicit, rather than explicitly articulated. While these developments raise important questions about the future evolution of case law, we propose that a focus on stigma can more clearly highlight the harms involved.

Extending Statutory Protection to Action Short of Dismissal for Participating in Industrial Action: The Supreme Court on the Right to Strike in Secretary of State for Business and Trade v Mercer

ABSTRACT The Supreme Court in Mercer v Secretary of State for Business and Trade found there was a violation of the right to strike, under article 11 ECHR, when there is no legal protection against detriment short of dismissal for taking part in industrial action. Section 146 Trade Union Labour Relations Consolidation Act (‘TULRCA’) 1992, as currently construed, does not cover this situation. While the Supreme Court agreed with the Court of Appeal that it would not be appropriate to use section 3 Human Rights Act (‘HRA’) 1998 to re-interpret section 146 TULRCA in a Convention-compliant way; unlike the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court issued a rare declaration of incompatibility under section 4 HRA. It is suggested in this note that Mercer is significant for two main reasons. First and foremost, Mercer is significant for the Supreme Court’s recognition of, and finding of, a violation of, the right to strike. Second, Mercer contributes to the wider debate about the interplay between sections 3 and 4 HRA. The final part of the note reflects on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Strasbourg case law whereby the Court in Mercer found article 11 ECHR requires stricter protection in this respect for public authority workers.

El perfil partidista de los secretarios de Estado en México

Objective/context: This article analyzes the affiliation of cabinet members in four post-transition governments in Mexico. The main goal is to contribute to the study of the role of parties in the dynamics of government formation. Methodology: The article is based on the description of an original database regarding the trajectory and partisan links of 148 secretaries of state in Mexico between 2000 and 2024. Conclusions: Our analysis shows that although alternation and divided government increased the incentives to appoint ministers with a political-partisan background, each president shaped their cabinet according to political circumstances and professional and political networks. Originality: A new proposal for categorizing the partisan profiles of ministers and their relationship with the type of cabinet appointment is tested by applying a partisanship index in ministries.

The United States and the revolution of 25 April 1974

25 April 1974 is a symbolic date not only for Portugal but also for Europe and the world. How did Washington react to this event? The White House of Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor embodied a democratic government that did not hesitate to support antidemocratic governments to defend its interests or those of the Western side in the Cold War. The aim of this article is to analyse the attitude of the United States towards 25 April and its attitude towards a movement that Kissinger described on 29 April 1974 as ‘superbly organized and well directed’.

Napoleon's Civil Code in the Political Discourse of the Alexander Era

Napoleon's "Civil Code" is a fundamental work of European legal thought. M.M. Speransky, appointed by Emperor Alexander I to the Commission for Drafting Laws, of course, could not help but refer to this text; moreover, he actively used it when drafting his famous "Draft Civil Code", but revised many of its provisions when adapting it to the class-based Russian society. Nevertheless, the influence of the Code on Speransky's "Draft" was so noticeable that it caused sharp rejection in conservative circles. The main opponents of the Secretary of State were N.M. Karamzin and A.S. Shishkov, who criticized the "Draft". When writing this article, the main method was the method of discourse analysis. This method, the subject of which is traditionally defined as "speech immersed in life", made it possible to study the extralinguistic aspects of the texts of participants in the communicative field in political disputes around the legislative initiatives of M.M. Speransky in terms of their correlation with Napoleon's Civil Code. Also used were such methods as content analysis, biographical method, comparative-historical and contrastive. Despite all the similarities, the positions of Karamzin and Shishkov differed. If Shishkov categorically did not accept any changes to Russian statehood, defending the need to preserve its absolutist inviolability, then Karamzin, who admired Robespierre in his youth, then idolized Napoleon, openly declared his republicanism. The ambiguity of his position, which has been repeatedly noted by researchers, is fully explained by the phenomenon of the development of republican thought of that time, which is shown in the article. Speransky, responding to criticism of the "Project Code", stated that all such projects are similar, since they have Roman law as their source. But this was not important for his opponents, who used all available tools to discredit him.

The United States Role of the Occurrence of Violence in Cyprus

Cyprus used to be under occupation of the foreign states for many centuries and sovereignty usually with few exceptions was not transferred peacefully. As it is well known, in the 19th century, use of force in international relations was seen as normal. In the 1878 however, transformation of sovereignty in Cyprus from the Ottoman Empire to the United Kingdom (UK) was by peaceful means. The UK ruled Cyprus mostly in peace until the uprising in 1931. The upheaval of the Greek Cypriots against the UK was to unite Cyprus with Greece (Enosis). The uprising was settled by violence and the constitutional rights suspended immediately. In 1955 when the riot of the Greek Cypriots occurred again this time the UK was successful to get support of Türkiye and the Turkish Cypriots and converted the anti-colonial struggle to the ethnic strife. Clearly, the occurrence of violence in Cyprus in 20th Century begun during the British period but it continued after the colonial period. Although the United States (US) refrained direct involvement to Cyprus problem it assisted to the formation of the Republic of Cyprus by 1960s. During the Cold War conditions, the US had to involve to the Cyprus problem because of two reasons: Firstly, in order to prevent a war between Türkiye and Greece, the two “motherlands” of the Turkish and Greek Cypriots; secondly to stop the violence between two local communities. In Washington DC the US leadership met with Greek and Turkish prime ministers in 1964 and they decided to solve the Cyprus problem forever. In Geneva the US representative had several meetings with the officials of Greece and Türkiye. There, the US former secretary of state offered his plan that included the use of violence for the dissolution of the Republic of Cyprus. The US plan could not be implemented at the time but after 10 years, its spirit became the source of the violence in Cyprus. In this study mainly the role of the US in occurrence of violence in the island will be studied.

A korai brazil-amerikai kapcsolatok

The United States of America was the first country to recognize the independence of Brazil, when, on May 26, 1824, James Monroe, the President of the US, received José Silvestre Rebello as a chargé d’affaires sent by the Emperor of Brazil to the United States. In reciprocity, on March 9, 1825, President Monroe appointed Condy Raguet to a similar position in Brazil, who presented his credentials to Emperor Pedro I on October 29, 1825. American traders developed business relations with the Portuguese colony already at the end of the eighteenth century, and the economic ties remained important through out the nineteenth century. However, the purpose of this article is to analyze the antecedents and circumstances of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The paper focuses mainly on the early period, the era of the Napoleonic Wars, the presidency of James Madison (1809–1817) and James Monroe (1817-1825), and the activity of John Quincy Adams, who was the secretary of state of the United States from 1817 to 1825 and its president from 1825 to 1829. The paper relies on official documents and the Memoirs of John Quincy Adams as its most important primary sources.

The last days of Daniel Webster: A detailed analysis of his cause of death.

Daniel Webster (1782-1852) was one of the most impactful United States political figures of the early and mid-nineteenth century. He served in Congress and as the Secretary of State for three Presidents. He died in October of 1852 and his autopsy appeared in the medical literature. Historians have reported that his cause of death was either related to a traumatic head injury he sustained in May of 1852 or from complications of alcoholic cirrhosis. In this manuscript, we will review Webster's medical history and autopsy to determine his cause of death.

R (AAA (Syria) and Others) v. Secretary of State for the Home Dep't (UKSC)

There have many developments since the publication in International Legal Materials of the initial United Kingdom–Rwanda Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in 2022, not the least being the unanimous judgment of the UK Supreme Court published below. In addition, the present government has secured the passage of several new laws, including the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, intended to both buttress its policy of removing asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing of their claims and meet the objections of the Court. It has also “translated” the MoU into a binding treaty, since ratified by both parties, and Rwanda has enacted new asylum laws, as it had agreed.

The extinction inventories of convents in 1834

In 1834, by Decree of 30 May and as part of the general ecclesiastical reform undertaken by Joaquim António de Aguiar, Minister and Secretary of State, and carried out by the Commission for the General Reform of the Clergy (1833-1837), all convents, monasteries, colleges, hospices and religious houses of all religious orders were extinguished, with the female houses remaining subject to their respective bishops until the death of the last nun, the date of their definitive closure. The process of extinction of religious houses involved the drawing up of hundreds of inventories currently in the Torre do Tombo National Archive. This wealth of information makes it possible to carry out countless archival, history, and art history studies associated with economic and sociological studies. In this study, we intend to focus on the inventories of the Santo André de Rendufe monastery and the Convent of Christ in Tomar. The fact that both institutions have a Benedictine character (in the first case, black monks and in the second, friars of the Order of Christ) but are located in different places in the kingdom will allow us to make comparisons, propose hypotheses and draw conclusions that may help us to understand better how the above-mentioned processes of extinction of religious houses and the collection of their archives and documentary collections were conducted.

Making Net Assessment Work: Evaluating Great-power Competition

Under conditions of intensifying strategic competition, great powers and less-than-great powers alike are reappraising their national-security strategies. Central to such reviews are assessments of power and strategic advantage – in an era of great-power competition, states need to know who is winning. This is the function of strategic net assessment, recently revived in the United Kingdom through the Secretary of State’s Office for Net Assessment and Challenge. This paper sets out the conceptual challenges involved in making assessments of power, considers the main historical efforts to do so, and offers some practical guidance as to how strategic net assessment may be used to inform strategy.

Fusion decommissioning and regulation (UK-STEP perspectives)

A Funded Decommissioning Programme (FDP) is submitted to the secretary of state for approval as a requirement for a nuclear site licensee to install or operate a nuclear power station. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) reactor will not require a nuclear site licence and therefore a FDP is currently not a legal requirement under Section 45 of the Energy Act 2008, (HMG 2008 Energy act 2008). However, it is expected that in line with the UK energy sector the UKAEA STEP programme needs to understand what is required both technically and financially to decommission the STEP reactor and associated facilities. This considers the initial summary level documents to support the FDP, which sets out the steps to decommission STEP at the end of its operational life. These documents are not fully developed as the STEP programme is currently in the concept design stage and is expected to be revised as more information becomes available and the Funding Arrangements Plan (FAP) and Decommissioning and Waste Management Plan (DWMP) are developed further along with the Detailed DWMP (DDWMP) which underpins the DWMP is also developed. Ultimately the DWMP, DDWMP and references should demonstrate UKAEA’s plans for the decommissioning of the West Burton site and for the management and disposal of waste 3 3Waste in this paper includes both primary and secondary waste arisings. arisings are realistic, clearly defined and achievable. Although this work has been done within the context of the UK and for a spherical tokamak a lot of the designated technical matters and technical matter that are not designated will be applicable to decommissioning outside of the UK as the work for decommissioning is still required, irrespective of the legal framework for funding of the decommissioning. This work is also applicable for other forms of fusion devices, especially as they develop into commercial scale for energy production, as the drivers are associated with the hazards from ionising radiation.

A nearly perfect marathon: the United States and the Baltic states’ accession to NATO

ABSTRACT Ron Asmus, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, liked to say that the Baltic states had to run a marathon to join NATO but could rely on the support of their American ‘coaches.’ Estonian diplomats have used the word ‘babysitter’ to describe their American colleagues. While it is true that the result of NATO enlargement was never inevitable, the uncertainties of the process were diminished by cooperation between candidate countries and the forces inside the US who pushed for enlargement. Without delving into their motives, this article traces the role of the US as ‘coaches’ and ‘babysitters’ in making the Baltic states’ ‘run’ toward NATO a nearly perfect marathon, despite all the pitfalls and doubts along the way.

The United States as a ‘Pacific Nation’: Imaginary, Performance, and Spatialisation

ABSTRACT In 2012, then United States (US) Secretary of State Hilary Clinton attended the leaders’ meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, the region’s pre-eminent politics and security-focused multilateral institution. At the meeting, Clinton remarked that: ‘I have said that the 21st century will be America’s Pacific century, with an emphasis on Pacific’, as the US is ‘a Pacific nation’. In this article, we analyse how, in the decade since, US government discourse has continued to narrate a social imaginary of the US as a ‘Pacific nation’ and to attempt to bring that imaginary into being through diplomatic performances and government policy. This has been driven by strategic concerns about the increasing activism of China in the Pacific Islands region and has sought to justify the US’s role, build its relationships, and exercise its power in the region. We argue that when the US is front stage and conscious of being observed, it narrates an imaginary of itself as a Pacific nation and performs that imaginary through its diplomatic performances and policy announcements. But the US’s back stage behaviour, including the non-implementation of policies and the spatialisation of the Pacific Islands region through efforts to discipline Pacific Island countries, build boundaries that exclude China, and emplace the US military presence, reveals its true intentions.

Letramento em saúde em documentos do século XVIII: contribuições da Filologia

The text of the first document presented in this article to illustrate the issue of health literacy, a publication from 1768, stands out for resorting to different forms of knowledge organization to convince the authorities of the need for mass use of the inoculation process against smallpox, a disease that affected Europe and Brazil. It is a letter from the English doctor, dr. Gualter Wade, who, living in Portugal, was responding to a query about what would be new and worthy of imitation in the fight against smallpox. In addition to the representativeness of the language used in the document, a sample of the doctor's effort to prove the safety of inoculation for the elimination of bladders, the topic comes in handy with the current debates, in which the efficacy of vaccines against infectious diseases is still being discussed. The second document, from 1775, handwritten by the captain-general of the captaincy of São Paulo, Martim Lopes Lobo de Saldanha, and addressed to the then secretary of State for the Navy and Overseas, Martinho de Melo e Castro, is a counterpoint to the approach to the sanitary issue, in relation to the 1768 document, since homemade and ineffective measures continued to be used in the colony.

ACCESS TO PUBLIC INFORMATION IN THE AMERICAS: Interview with Dante M. Negro Alvarado / Director of the Department of International Law of the Organization of American States (OAS) and Technical Secretary of the Inter-American Juridical Committee

Interview with Dante M. Negro Alvarado – Director of the Department of International Law of the Organization of American States (OAS) and Technical Secretary of the Inter-American Juridical Committee.

Sending the B team: The impact of lesser signals of resolve

When signaling resolve, is it necessary to go ‘all-in’ and send the strongest possible signal or can sending a lesser signal be effective? Prior research suggests that sending a lesser signal is an admission of irresolution, akin to sending no signal. We make the novel claim that lesser signals of resolve can actually be worse for credibility than sending no signal, particularly in general deterrence situations. We theorize that while the absence of a signal may go unnoticed, a lesser signal puts a spotlight on irresolution. Building on prior findings that high-level visits can function as signals of extended deterrence commitment, we test our theory using new data on visits abroad by the US president, vice president, secretary of state, and secretary of defense. We find that only presidential visits are effective at deterring military challenges against the country visited. Visits by lesser officials, whom we dub the ‘B Team’, actually increase the risk of deterrence failure.

Internuncio Antonio Francesco Cirioli's correspondence with the Secretary of State on the eve of the General Sejm held in Warsaw in 1623

From the mid-16th century onwards, the Apostolic Nunciature in Poland was pro-parliamentary, anti-Turkish and counter-reformative. It should not come as a surprise that the preliminary instruction issued to nuncio Giovanni Battista Lacellotti to stay especially alert and secure the interest of the Catholic Church in Poland as well as care for Christian affairs during parliamentary sessions acquired particular significance. In early November 1622, by the appointment of cardinal Cosimo de Torres, under Gregory's XV papal brief of 3 December 1622, Antonio Francesco Cirioli became internuncio. A Bolognese by origin, Cirioli was and a Doctor of Laws and from 1621 an auditor of Cosimo de Torres's nunciature (to date completely absent from the literature of the subject). The office of the internuncio in Warsaw, to which he was appointed following his 13-month service as an auditor, was held by Cirioli for as many as twenty-three weeks, i.e. from 19 November 1622 to 29 April 1623.

October 2023 to January 2024

Probably the biggest legal news of the period under consideration was the judgment of the Supreme Court in R (AAA (Syria) & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] UKSC 42, [2023] WLR 4433, in which it held unanimously that the Government's policy of sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. One critical issue was that under section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998, it is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way that is incompatible with a right under the ECHR – and the Secretary of State is a public authority for that purpose.

Nixon, Kissinger et l’Amérique latine : l’obsession anticommuniste

In an ambiguous and tense period, between the war in Vietnam, the policy of détente and the vigorous fight against any Communist expansion, Richard Nixon devoted more time to Latin America than he had originally planned, given that the region, though “peripheral” to the two superpowers, was at the heart of the Cold War. This article analyzes the policy towards the region pursued by Nixon and his National Security Adviser, then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, between 1969 and 1974, with an extension into the Ford years, taking into account the various parameters involved in decision-making: the international situation, international actors, electoral concerns, divergences within the executive branch, as well as the role of Congress, in order to propose a nuanced study. Three major issues will be examined: expropriations, the nationalist manifestation par excellence, which reached its peak at the time; Cuba, a real wound to US pride and the focus of all fears ; and finally, the Chilean tragedy.