Shape Of Law Research Articles

Resistance to Oppression in Informal Work

Abstract This article takes the study of informal work and resistance to oppression in a new direction. The literature assumes that subaltern resistance is either collective, open, and occasional; or individual, covert, and habitual. The author argues that the reality is a complex mix of these responses, shaped by social power structures and legal frameworks. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with paid domestic workers in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, the author demonstrates that worker resistance is principally individual and multifaceted, including overt and covert, as well as habitual and occasional strategies. In all cases, entrenched racist and patriarchal structures and behaviors as well as the making and implementing of labor law shape social understandings of the nature of remunerated domestic labor and choices of resistance strategies. In this context, collective rights claiming remains challenging.

The Impact of Brexit on the British Constitutional Law

Brexit as a hybrid phenomenon, that is, both legal and political, is the next stage in the debate on the place and role of the European Union (EU). The analysis of the impact of EU legislation on the shape of British constitutional law requires establishing the admissibility of reversing existing constitutional modifications. The author will argue that the age of globalisation and establishing legal network links, the participation of states in supernational organisations can result in irreversible modifications of the scope and meaning of constitutional law. In a simplified way, individual legal systems in a legal pluralism are “open”. The changes taking place are irreversible because they concern the foundation of competences as well as the system position of individual national authorities.

The externalization of legal categories: how U.S. immigration law shapes Central American youth migrants’ journeys through Mexico

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between the categorization of migrants under U.S. immigration laws and how Central American migrant youth understand and make decisions about their journeys through Mexico on their way to the U.S. Drawing from four years of ethnographic research in Mexico and Central America, this article shows how youth migrants learn about different legal classifications of migrants under U.S. immigration laws while transiting through Mexico and assess how such categories take (or do not take) into account their experiences during the migration journey. These assessments transform the migrant youths’ journeys – they change their routes through Mexico, and families split before crossing to the U.S. – and make them less likely to denounce or call attention to the violence they suffer in Mexico. This article ultimately shows how U.S. immigration law has an externalized effect that transforms migrants’ journeys well before migrants ever reach the U.S.

Policies, Places and Practices: Why Environmental Law Scholars Should Care About the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Act 2023

Abstract The Levelling-Up and Regeneration Act 2023 has marked major reforms in how planning law legally conceptualises policies, places and practices. These reforms have an impact not only on the scope of planning law but also on the shape of environmental law in England and Wales. In particular, the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Act 2023 changes how different forms of national and local policy legally interact, creates new administrative regulation for protected landscapes and establishes a new framework for environmental impact assessment called the Environmental Outcome Reports. This introduction to the legislation illustrates the importance of understanding the planning law reform for environmental law scholarship more generally.

Spatial Distribution Patterns and Beta Diversity of Fish Communities in a Tropical River Basin of Deccan Plateau

ABSTRACTRiverine ecosystems exhibit significant spatial variations in their communities, and understanding of these variances is vital to comprehend the mechanisms that maintain biodiversity. This study was conducted to understand pattern of distribution and beta diversity of fish communities in the Bhima River basin in the Deccan Plateau region of India. Fish distribution data from 59 sites across 11 rivers of the Bhima River basin were collected, and pair‐wise βDissimilarity and site‐wise local contribution to beta diversity (LCβDSorensen) and its components (LCβDTurnover and LCβDNestedness) were calculated. Power function regression was analysed to understand the decay in community similarity with geographical and environmental distances. Redundancy analysis was performed to investigate the relationship between fish distribution and environmental variables. Results indicated that species richness declined with increasing longitude from west to east. A negative relationship was observed between species richness and LCβDSorensen. LCβDTurnover formed Ո‐shaped curve at both ends of the species richness gradient, while LCβDNestedness values exhibited Ս‐shaped curve. No significant difference between mean LCβDTurnover and mean LCβDNestedness across the sites was observed. The distance decay relationship between community similarity and both geographical and environmental distances follows the power law shape, and the slope of this relationship flattened with increasing distance. Precipitation, topography, temperature variation and dissolved oxygen played a pivotal role in shaping fish assemblages. This study provides insight into the spatial distribution of fish communities in the Bhima River basin, which will be helpful to comprehend the ordination of biodiversity in the riverine ecosystem of the Deccan Plateau region.

Procedure for coordination of legislative norms of financial and tax law within the framework of public law regulation

The article explores the peculiarities of harmonizing legislative norms of financial and tax law within the framework of public legal regulation. It is established that the norms of financial and tax law shape the rules for managing the financial system and taxation, contributing to a balance between the state’s needs for financial resources and the preservation of economic stability for citizens and businesses. The demarcation of norms of financial and tax law by the subject of regulation is characterized, emphasizing the common method of legal regulation. It is determined that the norms of financial law regulate budgeting, financial planning, state debt, financial accounting, financial stability, and additional sources of funding. Norms of tax law cover tax rates, tax incentives, tax accounting and reporting, and combating tax evasion. It is noted that due to the common features and subject of legal regulation, conflicts arise between the norms of financial and tax law. It is established that the public legal regulation of conflicts between the norms of financial and tax law involves a systematic and organized process aimed at harmonizing legislative norms and resolving conflicts through the activities of the executive authorities of Ukraine. The competencies of central executive authorities that contribute to the harmonization of norms of financial and tax law are characterized. It is determined that the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the Ministry of Finance, the State Tax Service, the Ministry of Justice, and the National Bank of Ukraine play a key role in resolving conflicts and coordinating strategies in the financial and tax sectors. It is noted that central executive authorities coordinate and cooperate for systematic conflict management and the achievement of harmony in financial and tax legislation. The efficiency of harmonizing norms of financial and tax law is ensured by creating an Interdepartmental Committee, conducting consultations and discussions, as well as adopting and implementing harmonized subordinate legislative acts. Attention is drawn to the fact that the effectiveness of harmonizing norms of financial and tax law is determined by the efficiency of the procedure for developing harmonized subordinate legislative acts conducted by central executive authorities.

From criminality to inclusion? Law and media framing of migrants in 1987–1990 and 2016–2019 Japan

ABSTRACT Immigration law and policies shape public understanding of immigrants by categorizing the population into dichotomies of ‘illegal’ or ‘legal,’ and ‘skilled’ or ‘unskilled.’ Within such processes, scholars emphasize the importance of media which diffuses policy rhetoric, and thus set the tone of public discussion. Yet, research on how immigration laws may shape media framing is scant, leaving questions of how and to what extent legal rhetoric do or do not translate into media. By creating a unique data set of 1929 Japanese newspaper articles during periods of immigration policy activity, in which government officials expanded the definition of ‘skilled’ workers, I investigate how legal discourse influences the media portrayal of foreigners. Taking a mixed methods approach, the quantitative results show that regardless of the ideological leaning of media outlets there is a significant increase in positive media framing concerning foreigners. Nonetheless, the qualitative results show that the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ remains strongly intact through subtle forms of othering that justify the use of social control via policing and surveillance.

Sustainable Environment in Islam, Its Manifestations and Causes

This study aims to revise the Islamic law (sharia) and analyze the Islamic foundations of environmental and sustainability and how Islamic law shapes people's understanding of the sustainable environment. It looks at the morals, ethics, and conduct that Sharia law promotes in order to combat the escalating environmental issues. Involving religious organizations and making use of jurists' scientific knowledge, the project aims to improve the idea of social responsibility while offering answers to environmental problems. It also clarifies Islamic philosophical precepts, which place a strong emphasis on protecting and conserving the environment.The study emphasizes how critical it is to address environmental issues, change people's attitudes and behaviors regarding the environment, and find answers to the problems that it faces. It creates a link between environmental issues and Islamic beliefs in the framework of sustainable development objectives.

Analysing the impact of the 50:22 kick law changes in South African rugby tournaments between 2021 and 2022

ABSTRACT Tactical kicking plays a crucial role in rugby union, influencing both attacking and defensive strategies and potentially impacting a team’s overall success. The introduction of the 50:22 law requires defensive teams to reposition players to anticipate and counter kicks, thereby reducing the number of players in their defensive front line. This study investigated the impact of the 50:22 kicking law on kicking profiles by comparing the 2021 and 2022 seasons, as well as examining the success rate of 50:22 kicks during the 2022 season in South African rugby union tournaments. A retrospective research design was employed, utilising video-based performance analysis software (Nacsport Scout Plus) for data collection. The analysis encompassed all general play kicks from 177 matches spanning two seasons and tournaments, amounting to a total of 6,479 kicks. Within this dataset, there were 53 successful 50:22 kicks out of 162 attempts. Key findings revealed an upswing in kicks by scrum halves (2021: 20%, 2022: 26%; p = 0.00) and a concurrent decline in kicks by fullbacks (2021: 21%, 2022: 18%; p = 0.01). Notably, there was a significant increase in the percentage of kicks occurring in the fourth quarter of the match (2021: 20%, 2022: 22%; p = 0.01). Furthermore, the study identified a noteworthy increase in the percentage of kicks following a turnover (2021: 2%, 2022: 3%; p < 0.01). In conclusion, this research contributes valuable insights into how the 50:22 law shapes kicking strategies in South African rugby union, shedding light on the shifts in player roles and temporal patterns of kicking within the context of this specific law.

The politics of emotion and domestic violence in northern Vietnam

AbstractChanging social, political, and cultural processes in Vietnam are reshaping people's emotional and social responses to domestic violence on multiple levels. Socioeconomic reforms instituted in the 1980s, the related state revival of Confucian gender ideologies, and the influences in recent decades of international and local nongovernmental organizations’ approaches to domestic violence are significant shifts that have influenced these emergent responses. Using the framework of feminist critical medical anthropology, I explore how different emotional experiences of violence provide insight into patterns of help‐seeking and interventions addressing marital violence. I suggest that Vietnamese state discourses and laws shape people's feelings in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. State actors, for one, are particularly influenced to express and experience emotional responses in support of the nation. On the other hand, abused women, community members, and professionals experience more ambivalent feelings toward state discourses and practices as they engage moral emotions of care, love, and concern, prioritizing abused women's health and safety. Complicating this is some state actors grappling with their own ambivalent and tangled feelings as they assist abused women. Awareness of the diverse cross‐cultural range of emotional complexity can aid feminist anthropologists and activists in attempts to understand and prevent domestic violence.

Changing the Division of Household Work in Conservative and Minority Context: The Case of Arab-Druze Women in Israel

This article seeks to understand how Druze women’s employment in nontraditional fields (such as engineering, medicine, and law) shapes gender role division in their nuclear family. Data from 24 interviews with educated Druze women employed in high-quality professions suggests that Druze women who work in these fields succeed in bringing about a change in perceptions and practices regarding gender role division in their households. The interviews revealed three gender patterns: (a) ten women in the current study indicated egalitarian gender role division; (b) six women indicted reversal of gender roles in their home, and (c) eight women described a traditional role division, which required them to sacrifice their career in favor of the family. The choice of Druze women to study nontraditional professions is increasingly recognized and valued in Druze society and its clergy, driving a paradigm shift concerning women’s employment and gender role division in the private sphere.

The centrality of law for EU sustainable finance markets: Outlining a research agenda

AbstractThis article discusses how law shapes sustainable finance market creation in the European Union (EU). Although markets for environmental, social and governance (ESG) oriented investments have continued to grow, a gap has persisted between fund popularity and real‐world impact. The EU has sought to address this through common legal standards for sustainable economic activities. However, there has been limited empirical examination of how industry applies these new measures and how they facilitate further market development. The article seeks to address this by proposing a research agenda for the examination of sustainable finance legislation through a ‘law as constitutive’ lens. The approach argues for an empirical inquiry that recognises the political and social conditions of market development, explored through interviews with market participants focusing on their experiences of legislation. The article explains how a ‘law as constitutive’ framing best suits the EU context when exploring the potential and limitations of the current policy approach.

Existence of non-exotic traversable wormholes in squared trace extended gravity theory

An extended gravity theory is used to explore the possibility of non-exotic matter traversable wormholes. In the extended gravity theory, additional terms linear and quadratic in the trace of the energy momentum tensor are considered in the Einstein-Hilbert action. Obviously, such an addition leads to violation of the energy-momentum tensor. The model parameters are constrained from the structure of the field equations. Non-exotic matter wormholes tend to satisfy the null energy conditions. We use two different traversable wormhole geometries namely an exponential and a power law shape functions to model the wormholes. From a detailed analysis of the energy conditions, it is found that, the existence of non-exotic matter traversable wormholes is not obvious in the model considered and its possibility may depend on the choice of the wormhole geometry. Also, we found that, non-exotic wormholes are possible within the given squared trace extended gravity theory for a narrow range of the chosen equation of state parameter.

Using Machine Learning and Finite Element Analysis to Extract Traction-Separation Relations at Bonding Wire Interfaces of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor Modules.

For insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules using wire bonding as the interconnection method, the main failure mechanism is cracking of the bonded interface. Studying the mechanical properties of the bonded interface is crucial for assessing the reliability of IGBT modules. In this paper, first, shear tests are conducted on the bonded interface to test the bonded interface's strength. Then, finite element-cohesive zone modeling (FE-CZM) is established to describe the mechanical behavior of the bonded interface. A novel machine learning (ML) architecture integrating a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a long short-term memory (LSTM) network is used to identify the shape and parameters of the traction separation law (TSL) of the FE-CZM model accurately and efficiently. The CNN-LSTM architecture not only has excellent feature extraction and sequence-data-processing abilities but can also effectively address the long-term dependency problem. A total of 1800 sets of datasets are obtained based on numerical computations, and the CNN-LSTM architecture is trained with load-displacement (F-δ) curves as input parameters and TSL shapes and parameters as output parameters. The results show that the error rate of the model for TSL shape prediction is only 0.186%. The performance metric's mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) is less than 3.5044% for all the predictions of the TSL parameters. Compared with separate CNN and LSTM architectures, the proposed CNN-LSTM-architecture approach exhibits obvious advantages in recognizing TSL shapes and parameters. A combination of the FE-CZM and ML methods in this paper provides a promising and effective solution for identifying the mechanical parameters of the bonded interfaces of IGBT modules.

Spectrum of gravitational waves from long-lasting primordial sources

We discuss long-lasting gravitational wave sources arising and operating during radiation-dominated stage. Under a set of assumptions, we establish the correspondence between cosmological evolution of a source and the resulting gravitational wave spectrum. Namely, for the source energy density ρs falling as a power law characterized by the exponent β, i.e., ρs ∝ 1/aβ , where a is the Universe scale factor, the spectrum takes the form Ωgw ∝ f 2β-8 in certain ranges of values of constant β and frequencies f. In particular, matching to the best fit power law shape of stochastic gravitational wave background discovered recently by Pulsar Timing Array collaborations, one identifies β ≈ 5. We demonstrate the correspondence with concrete examples of long-lasting sources: domain walls and cosmic strings.

Antonín Švehla a pozapomenuté diskuze, osnovy a návrhy realizovaných i nerealizovaných zákonodárných projektů jeho doby

The article deals with selected forgotten discussions on legal and sub-legal projects in period 1918–1929 when Antonín Švehla held important state executive positions. It draws attention to the importance of Antonín Švehla for the legislation and interpretation of law, and also tries to highlight specific significant projects from that period that are important for the trends in the development of legal sectors, especially in the sectors of labour law and social security in Czechoslovakia. The article provides some new insights into the history of law in the Czech lands in the first half of the 20th century, e.g., the considerations on the creation of the Labour Code as early as in the 1920s, the public law aspects of labour law and their abandonment, efforts to unify social security legislation, etc. It refers to the important institutions that were to influence the shape of commercial and trade law, as well as labour relations, at the beginning of the Czechoslovak Republic. The efforts to abolish the death penalty are also mentioned in the article. The article does not limit itself to normativity, but also considers interest, socio-economic and other extra-legal influences on the shape of the legal order.

Ethics reviews in the European Union. Implications for the governance of scientific research in times of data science and Artificial Intelligence

ABSTRACT This article builds on discussions on peer review in science and the role of ethics in the governance of technologies to achieve a two-fold goal. First, it shows the process of co-production of the European Commission’s (EC’s) standardised ‘ethics appraisal process’ with the development of the EC’s Framework Programmes (FPs), by looking at the standardisation of the process and the mutual shaping of data protection law and risk-based discourses around Artificial Intelligence. Second, it investigates the political and epistemic implications arising from this process for the EU governance of scientific research regarding (1) sponsorship of science and technology by the EU and (2) how many limitations or constraints researchers have in practice when carrying out their research. After sketching the origins of the ethics appraisal process and its co-production with data protection law and risk-based jargon, the article outlines the implications for the governance of scientific research and draws recommendations.

Fractals in Neuroimaging.

Several natural phenomena can be described by studying their statistical scaling patterns, hence leading to simple geometrical interpretation. In this regard, fractal geometry is a powerful tool to describe the irregular or fragmented shape of natural features, using spatial or time-domain statistical scaling laws (power-law behavior) to characterize real-world physical systems. This chapter presents some works on the usefulness of fractal features, mainly the fractal dimension and the related Hurst exponent, in the characterization and identification of pathologies and radiological features in neuroimaging, mainly, magnetic resonance imaging.

Experimental study and numerical prediction of the bond-slip law for concrete elements strengthened with FRP using metaheuristic algorithm

Modeling an accurate bond-slip model between concrete and reinforcement is a significant challenge in fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) strengthened reinforced concrete (RC). This paper presents a novel method for developing and validating an accurate bond-slip model. By employing a numerical procedure based on the finite difference method and a metaheuristic optimization algorithm, this method eliminates the need for a specific bond-slip law shape. This unique feature enables the prediction of bond-slip laws for various strengthening methods, including EBR and NSM, as demonstrated in this study. Furthermore, the methodology allows for the prediction of bond-slip laws associated with premature failure. The numerical and experimental results obtained confirm the accuracy of the methodology.

Separation of dust emission from the cosmic infrared background in Herschel observations with wavelet phase harmonics

The low-brightness dust emission at high Galactic latitudes is of interest with respect to studying the interplay among the physical processes involved in shaping the structure of the interstellar medium (ISM), as well as in statistical characterizations of the dust emission as a foreground to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Progress in this avenue of research has been hampered by the difficulty related to separating the dust emission from the cosmic infrared background (CIB). We demonstrate that the dust and CIB may be effectively separated based on their different structure on the sky and we use the separation to characterize the structure of diffuse dust emission on angular scales, where the CIB is a significant component in terms of power. We used scattering transform statistics, wavelet phase harmonics (WPH) to perform a statistical component separation using Herschel SPIRE observations. This component separation is done only from observational data using non-Gaussian properties as a lever arm and is done at a single 250 µm frequency. This method, which we validated on mock data, gives us access to non-Gaussian statistics of the interstellar dust and an output dust map that is essentially free from CIB contamination. Our statistical modeling characterizes the non-Gaussian structure of the diffuse ISM down to the smallest scales observed by Herschel. We recovered the power law shape of the dust power spectrum up to k = 2 arcmin−1, where the dust signal represents 2% of the total power. Going beyond the standard power spectra analysis, we show that the non-Gaussian properties of the dust emission are not scale-invariant. The output dust map reveals coherent structures at the smallest scales, which had been hidden by the CIB anisotropies. This aspect opens up new observational perspectives on the formation of structure in the diffuse ISM, which we discuss here in reference to a previous work. We have succeeded in performing a statistical separation from the observational data at a single frequency by using non-Gaussian statistics.