So-called Law Research Articles

The first six propositions of Archimedes' on equilibrium of planes 1

ABSTRACT Modern commentators have doubts about the authenticity and cogency of the early propositions of Archimedes’ On Equilibrium of Planes Book 1. Ernst Mach famously said that the proof of Prop. 6, the so-called law of the lever, assumes what is to be proven. Comparing the initial text in Heiberg’s modern edition (1881, 1913) to the first propositions in Eutocius’ commentary on EP 1, J. L. Berggren ([1976]. ‘Spurious Theorems in Archimedes’ Equilibrium of Planes: Book I’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 16.2 (1976), 87–103.) claimed that the propositions up through Proposition 3 of the standard modern edition are schoolbook additions written by an ancient author inferior to Archimedes. The present paper argues for the logical connectedness of Postulates 1–5 to Props. 1–6, by means of a detailed examination of the course of the argument and a re-examination of Eutocius’ remarks. The paper reinterprets the role of the empirical in the early propositions and offers a reading of the contribution of Archimedes’ mechanics to the method of EP 1.

Benefits of using matrix methods in teach-ing mechanics in higher education institu-tions

Problem. Basic concepts, concepts, principles of mechanics are mainly taught from simple to complex in institutions of higher technical education, which to some extent resembles a course on the history of mechanics. In today's conditions, the education system is required to take into account current trends in scientific and engineering fields. The use of inherently geometric methods of vector algebra and vector analysis as a basis for studying mechanics is losing its relevance. To a certain extent, this approach interferes with the use of multidimensional spaces (configurational and phase), tensor algebra, and computer technologies in modeling complex mechanical systems. Goal. The goal is to expand the field of application of the matrix formalism to infinite-dimensional spaces, justify its advantages compared to other approaches used in teaching the basics of mechanical disciplines, and demonstrate its capabilities in solving complex practical problems, both in terms of modeling and in terms of using computer technologies. Methodology. The methodological basis for choosing matrix methods is the use of infinite-dimensional and abstract, in physical terms, spaces when studying the movement of mechanical systems. The fundamental impossibility of accurately describing the state of a mechanical system requires the use of statistical modeling methods and the extension of the so-called law of conservation of matter in the form of a balance equation to these models. Results. It is shown that the matrix method, which is widely used in quantum mechanics and very limited in classical mechanics, allows you to use the advantages of the transition to phase space when obtaining canonical equations and when solving problems of kinematics and dynamics of a solid body. Originality. The paper proposes certain improvements of the matrix apparatus, related to the use of geometric parameters of the mechanical system as indexes. That is, infinite-dimensional matrices with real coefficients are used. Practical value. The proposed method allows you to effectively solve the problems of the mechanics of an absolutely rigid body without using any theorems of the general course, remaining within the limits of standard mathematical training.

Category Mismatches in Coordination Vindicated

Bruening and Al Khalaf (2020) deny the possibility of coordination of unlike categories. They use three mechanisms to reanalyze such coordination as involving same categories: conjunction reduction, super-categories, and empty heads. We show that their proposal leaves many cases of unlike category coordination unaccounted for, and we point out various methodological, technical, and empirical problems that it faces. We conclude that the so-called Law of the Coordination of Likes is a myth. Instead, all conjuncts must satisfy any external restrictions on the syntactic position they occupy. Such restrictions may be rigid, resulting in categorial sameness, but when they are underspecified or disjunctive, category “mismatches” may arise.

Zwolnienie stypendiów z PIT a warunek ich zatwierdzenia przez ministra właściwego do spraw szkolnictwa wyższego i nauki. Glosa krytyczna do wyroku NSA z dnia 4-11-2020 r., II FSK 1774/18, LEX nr 307998

The Polish Personal Income Tax Law provides for a relatively extensive group of tax exemptions related to various benefits offered to doctoral students and academics. It also includes an exemption for scholarships and assistance grants referred to in Law 2.0, as well as scholarships received under programmes or projects aimed at implementing the current state scientific policy. The rule adopted is that the exemption applies as long as the rules for granting the scholarships and grants in question them have been approved by the minister in charge of higher education and science. The research objective adopted in the gloss is to verify the jurisprudential practice regarding the issue of the tax exemption in question. The analysis and evaluation have been performed also in the context of the guidelines and ideas behind the reform of higher education and science (regulations of the so-called Law 2.0). This gloss is a critical commentary. It makes use of dogmatic-legal and normative analysis.

The Problematic Path of Fundamental Rights in the European Union: Continuing the Journey on the Regulation on Clinical Trials

Abstract In this paper I have tried to identify and analyse some critical points that Regulation No. 526 of 2014 on clinical trials still presents. I have seen that in the face of a long gestation, the criticisms that have been made of the regulation have been various. If we think of the first criticism identified in the regulation, the so-called law shopping, we must affirm that the subject of experimentation is a very delicate matter since it has a direct and frontal impact on the guarantee of the right to health of European citizens and the use of law shopping does not provide adequate guarantees for the protection of the rights of those participating in a trial. Secondly, the marginalisation of the Ethics Committees whose role is decided at the level of the single national legal system does not ensure that components of independence and representation of the point of view of patients and their associations are guaranteed. This aspect is undoubtedly an important criticism of the regulation as the importance of the role played by the Ethics Committees in the assessment procedures for authorisation applications is not taken into fully consideration. Also, in this case, the economic need for simplification and speed of the evaluation procedure seem to prevail over the need to ensure a thorough and independent scientific and ethical review of authorisation applications. We believe that in the case of Regulation No. 536 of 2014, greater awareness of risks and opportunities will be achieved only by verifying in practice the possible distortions to which this legislation can lead. Only through serious monitoring and reporting of the effects of the regulation on the protection of patients’ rights will it be possible to identify and indicate targeted changes to the rules contained therein and, of course, to adopt the consequent measures to reduce possible damages. In this sense, also on the basis of a possible and foreseeable future phase of gestation of Regulation No. 534 of 2014, we believe that in the European area, in the field of clinical trials but not exclusively, that trend, developed above all in the French context, of the “experimentation of laws” should be further cultivated.

Some Considerations on the Socio-Political Aspects of the Law-Codification in the Province of Yehud in the Persian Period


 
 
 
 The article juxtaposes the process of law codification that took place in Rome in the mid-5th century BCE under the so-called Law of the Twelve Tables and the codification of law that took place around the same time in Palestine, known as Deuteronomy. According to the reconstruction of events in Rome, the codification of laws involved an attempt to limit the judicial omnipotence of the elite, due to pressure from a new elite that sought to diminish the power of the old elite. The text asks whether analogous political mechanisms could have led to the codification of law in the form of Deuteronomy, and if so, how to define the group whose judicial omnipotence would be curtailed.
 
 
 

Legal basis for the use of social media by the Polish public authorities: Case of the Police

Social media are used on a daily basis by public administration agencies in interactions with the public. The benefits of this form of contact have also been recognized by the Police, which maintains fan pages on the most popular social media sites. However, to date there has been no deeper reflection neither about the legal grounds for public authorities’ social media presence, nor about principles which they should obey while running their social media profiles. Using the Police as an example, this article discusses the legal basis for maintaining profiles of public administration agencies in social media. Authors analyze the issue within the framework of existing law and the views of scholars and commentators, confronting them with the legal basis provided by the Police departments. The article presents de lege ferenda conclusions regarding the so-called soft law.

Data protection rules applicable to Financial Intelligence Units: still no clarity in sight

Financial information can play a key role in tackling money laundering, terrorist financing and combatting serious crime more generally. Preventing and fighting money laundering and the financing of terrorism were top priorities of the European Union’s (EU) Security Strategy for 2020-2025, which might explain the fast developments regarding legislative measures to further regulate anti-money laundering (AML) and counter terrorism financing (CTF). In May 2020, the European Commission put forward an Action Plan to establish a Union policy on combatting money laundering and shortly afterwards, proposed a new AML Package.Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) play a crucial role in analysing and exchanging information concerning unusual and suspicious transactions, serving as intermediaries between the private sector and law enforcement authorities (LEAs). Such information includes personal data, which is protected under the EU data protection acquis. The latter is constituted of two main laws, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies to general processing and the so-called Law Enforcement Directive (LED) that is applicable when competent law enforcement authorities process personal data for law enforcement purposes.This Article argues that the current legal framework on AML and CTF legislation is unclear on the data protection regime that applies to the processing of personal data by FIUs and that the proposed AML Package does little or nothing to clarify this dilemma. In order to contribute to the discussion on the applicable data protection framework for FIUs, the assessment puts forward arguments for and against the application of the LED to such processing, taking into account the relevant legal texts on AML and data protection.

The origins of the Polizia Femminile, 1948–1961

ABSTRACT Women entered police forces through women-only special corps in many democratic states in the early twentieth century. In Italy this reform occurred after World War II, first under the occupying Allied military government in Trieste and, after 1959, on a national basis. Women served separately from men from 1961 until 1983. This article examines the debate triggered by the campaign of the so-called Merlin Law from 1948–1958, a law which deregulated prostitution, closed state-run brothels, and abolished the vice squad in favour of a women’s squad dedicated particularly to working with prostitutes and juveniles. This complex and shifting debate regarding the constitution of what would become the Polizia femminile (P.F.) is reconstructed through sources documenting the legislative campaigns by Italy’s first generation of women members of parliament, the scramble in the Ministry of the Interior and the upper administration of the police to control and define the terms of women’s entry, and media reactions. Ultimately P.F. officers did secure professional status with uniforms, service weapons, and power to arrest; yet they were enjoined to use these powers to surveille and discipline the sexuality of other women. Women police are thus a historical window into understanding the complicated bargain women made to achieve new professional opportunities while enforcing normative gender roles. Yet the very work of policing often subverted those same roles of gender and sexual respectability, making women police officers a crucial site for conflict over who could enforce, challenge, or subvert the claim to social control in post-war Italian society.

The law of similars: current biases in its application

Background and Aims. Homeopathic prescription is based on the so-called law of similars, i.e. 1) on a patient sharing symptoms with the artificial and reversible disease caused by a drug taken in the state of health in a proving (Materia Medica Pura); 2) on systematic observations of pathogenetic effects due to accidental drug abuse (toxicology). However, in contemporary homeopathy, distortions in the application of the law are not infrequent, and they will be considered here.
 Methods. Two main biases are described and analyzed: 1) the shift towards the law of the same, concerning methods like isopathy and homotoxicology; 2) the a priori attribution of therapeutic properties to high dilutions of a given substance. The first twist can be retraced to the extension of the concept of drainage. Drainage is aimed to restore a blocked function by making use of a drug with affinity for a given anatomic district or a specific function – tropism. To some extent this technique is compatible with classical homeopathy, though not based on the law of similars. In any case, drainage has limited effects and typically precedes the use of a simillimum identified within a holistic view. The second kind of distortion is due to the influence of the ancient doctrine of signaturae. In the Organon S. Hahnemann warns against the temptation of ascribing to remedies any effect or property without a preliminary screening through proving. However, while doctrine of signaturae was regarded by classical masters as a further support to experimental findings, rather than being used to infer ex novo substance properties, several homeopaths have expanded its application to the point of using it as an alternative approach to Materia Medica.
 Conclusions. In a picture of contemporary homeopathy based on these premises, we can draw a line which goes from methods combining isopathy and drainage, acting only on a local level, to approaches somewhat related to the doctrine of signaturae, postulating a priori essences of remedies apart from experimental research. Classical homeopathy (centered on the original concept of simillimum) lies at the middle. The two opposite ends of the picture remind of the Cartesian dichotomy of reductionism. This classification, far from representing a continuum, hints at the danger of an allopathic drift of homeopathy. We fear that any attempt to reconcile strongly heterogeneous principles and views in the so-called “integrated” approach to disease is a chimera, and that it would benefit market rather than the “true art of healing” as originally conceived.

Fixed nature and dynamic processes in Hahnemann's thought

Background and Aims. At least since classical Greek philosophy two opposite vews are facing, the one of Heraclitus, affirming that all things are in a continuous flux, and the other of Parmenides, the assertor of changelessness. The aim of present contribution is to consider if and how the tension between such views continues to permeate several features of the culture, including the thought of S. Hahnemann.
 Methods. This will be achieved through the examination of some cases in the natural sciences and human sciences, including Hahnemann’s writings.
 Few examples are presented here. The living being can be viewed as a thing genetically determined, or as an open and dynamic complex of processes interacting mutually and with the environment at metabolic and informational levels. The central nervous system is seen to underlie both automatic, and creative behaviours. A species is considered a pure ideal type, or a historically varying population of similar individuals. The basic traits of human behaviour are attributed to an unchanging nature (better, a nature undergoing slow Darwinian changes), or to a culture evolving in a rapid Lamarckian way. Within an integrated view of the person one may consider both the four fixed human constitutions (see H. Bernard; M. Martiny; N. Pende; A. Negro), and their four changing constitutional stages (see H. Bernard). Classical culture highlights the paramount importance of universal principles, while postmodern culture highlights proteanism, liquid state, patchwork.
 In particular, we may encounter such two views in the thought of Hahnemann on diseases. They are found in his writings respectively on the chronic diseaes, and on the so-called non-miasmatic diseases. About chronic diseases, he wrote that they are primitive, deeply-rooted, underlying external symptoms, old, universal, always recurring, internal, and do not desappear even when external symptoms of acute diseases desappeared, while the whole symptoms of them must be extensivery taken into account. About non-miasmatic diseases, he wrote that the complex of symptoms of a single case, which is always different for each individual case, cannot be foreseen, nor schematized, nor taken as a model, nor treated by an a priori chosen remedy or with a priori rules different from the strict application of the so-called law of similars, experimentally established.
 Conclusions. We may conclude that Hahnemann’s integrated consideration of diseases takes into account both the fixed characteristics of the chronic ones and the dynamic processes of the acute ones, so that the two above views appear to be not opposed, but perfectly integrated.

ISLAMIC BANKING SYSTEM IN THE SULTANATE OF OMAN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF BANKING OFFICERS EMPLOYEES AND CUSTOMERS

This research aims to determine the viability for the operation of Islamic banks within the Omani banking system. By looking into various opportunities for Islamic banking in Oman and given the unique rules on transactions (fiqh muamalat) of Islamic banking based on the Shariah precepts or the so-called Islamic law. As the establishment of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is rapidly growing in Oman, many SMEs can draw support from Islamic banks. The study used a mixed method approach to answer the research questions. Do the participants patronize Islamic banking over conventional banking?. The study compared both conventional and Islamic Banking. The population of the study represented bank officers, bank employees and customers. The sample of the study (n=100) participated in the survey. Another selected sample participated in interviews. Findings revealed different views over Islamic banking. Islamic banking is careful to provide products and services. Also, they are found to be capable of offering products and processes that answers the need of certain aspects with a risk management framework that is distinct from what normal banking provides. The study findings support the need for Islamic banking systems as it would be easier to spread Islamic banking and financing.

Re-Defining Borders Online: Russia’s Strategic Narrative on Internet Sovereignty

Over the past decades, internet governance has developed in a tug-of-war between the democratic, transnational nature of the web, and attempts by national governments to put cyberspace under control. Recently, the idea of digital sovereignty has started to increasingly gain more supporters among nation states. This article is a case study on the Russian concept of a “sovereign internet.” In 2019, the so-called law on sustainable internet marked a new milestone in the development of RuNet. Drawing on document analysis and expert interviews, I reconstruct Russia’s strategic narrative on internet sovereignty and its evolution over time. I identify the main factors that have shaped the Russian concept of sovereignty, including domestic politics, the economy, international relations, and the historical trajectory of the Russian segment of the internet. The article places the Russian case in a global context and discusses the importance of strategic narratives of digital sovereignty for the future of internet governance.

«Страница из истории марксизма»: о чтении Гефтером Маркса

The purpose of this paper is to show how the thought and speech of people holding and defending directly opposite positions affect the change in the thought and speech of people of their own and subsequent generations, with different life orientations, and to find ways of this influence. The author describes the situation that arose at the end of the sixties of the twentieth century, known as the ideological dispersal of philosophical, historical and sociological trends that ran counter to the policy of the CPSU, which became especially fierce in the fight against opponents after the USSR’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, 1968. One of the results of such an ideological battle was the defeat of the sector of the methodology of history of the Institute of General History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed by M. Ya. Gefter, who published a series of books in which the so-called laws of historical development (formational approach) were questioned and the fundamental provisions of the classics of Marxism-Leninism were criticized. The subject of analysis is Gefter’s article “A Page from the History of Marxism in the Early 20th Century”, published in the book “Historical Science and Some Problems of the Modernity”, dedicated to the analysis of Lenin’s tactics and strategy development which changed the views of many, especially young, historians on the historical process, and most importantly - on the methods of seeking and expressing the truth. The differences were expressed primarily in the fact that the proponents and defenders of the Soviet regime, which was based on their own established norms of Marxism-Leninism, fearlessly used all means of pressure on unwanted opponents. Professionals, however, who tried to understand the true sense of the historical process, the sense of judgments about it, especially the sense of the revolutionary struggle against the autocracy, unfolding at the beginning of the twentieth century, were forced to use the Aesopian language, which also provoked a distortion of this sense in many ways: due to the nebulous and veiled expressions, which give the impression of theoretical blackmail, causing such consequences as speech irresponsibility.

Determinants of Legal Behaviour

Introduction. This article is devoted to the research of essence and the legal behaviour of the person. The purpose of article is the identification of the factors influencing formation, development and content of legal behaviour. Theoretical Basis. Methods. The article is based methodologically on the post-classical anthropological paradigm which allows consideration of legal behaviour through a prism of subjective perception by the person. The studying of fundamental bases of legal behaviour is impossible without identification of their valuable basis. Results. It is proved that the commission by the person of certain actions in the legal sphere depends on the individual and the social system of legal values, the individual and society (social group) relation to them, legal status of the personality and the social role which is carried out by it. The classification of legal behaviour on the basis of an axiological approach assumes an allocation of the person which is active, ordinary and passive depending on degree of readiness to carry out the legal actions, being guided by the valuable orientations and installations determined by legal socialisation and the system of legal values of group with which the subject identifies themselves. At the same time, it is insignificant how these actions meet the standards of positive law. However, the legal behaviour often has situational character. In this case its contents are defined by the system of so-called individual person law. The behaviour of the person is the result of operation of the special mechanism consisting of consistently realised elements that connected among themselves not only cognitively but also functionally including legal requirement, legal interest, legal motive, legal orientation, legal installation, legal decision, and legal act. These elements consistently replace each other, providing an interrelation of legal behaviour with legal awareness. The role of the state in formation of the person’s legal behaviour, though is very considerable, but it is not defining. In the process of legal socialisation the cognitive elements of the mechanism of legal behavior determined by legal tradition in combination with social and individual legal experience are formed. Discussion and Conclusion. The analysis of legal behaviour is aimed at expanding the value ideas of legal reality. This will allow a deeper look at legal development on a global scale.

Israeli Pre-Transitional Justice and the Nakba Law

Pre-transitional justice activities that expose past injustices during entrenched conflicts can incite strong reactions among actors who feel threatened by or dislike such activities, and who thus attempt to silence controversial truths. This article illuminates how attempts to silence controversial truths, in parallel with shutting down debate, can also have the unintended outcome of enlarging public discourse on previously marginalised issues. Thus, paradoxically, efforts to curb freedom of expression sometimes result instead in an expanded public capacity to debate previously silenced truths about the conflict. We conduct a case study of reactions to pre-transitional justice in Israeli society focusing on the so-called Nakba Law, enacted in 2011. Through interviews with members of the non-governmental organisation Zochrot, politicians, teachers and media persons, we first show the relationship between pre-transitional justice and enacting the Nakba Law. We then demonstrate that while the Nakba Law indeed aimed to hamper freedom of expression, it also enabled increased public knowledge about the meaning of Nakba. Our theoretical proposition regarding this paradox, in this case activated by instigating new memory laws, is highly relevant to other conflicts-in-resolution that experience pre-transitional justice processes.

Дуализм регулирования общественных отношений (правовое и нормативное регулирование)

The article examines the issues of differentiation of the regulation of public relations, defined primarily by the differentiation of public relations, and then inherent in their legal forms (based on self-regulation) and external regulatory forms (based on power regulations). The need to renounce the traditional differentiation of the right to industry, including its division into so-called private and public law, is justified because it reflects external forms of expression of law, i.e. differentiation of legislation governing a variety of public relations, divided into private and public relations. The notion of dualism (pluralism) of the law must be replaced (or at least interpreted) with the notion of dualism of the regulation of public relations, meaning legal and regulatory regulation, with all the ensuing consequences. Such an approach implies the need to clarify the entire terminology range of jurisprudence. This article discusses issues such as the legal and regulatory regime (mechanism) of public relations regulation, legal and regulatory principles for regulating public relations, legal and regulatory legal facts, as circumstances that are the basis for the emergence, change and termination of legal relations and power relations.

LEI 14.064/2020: AVANÇO NA TUTELA PENAL DOS ANIMAIS NÃO-HUMANOS?

This article, based on hermeneutic and dialectical methods, aims to analyze how the Brazilian legal system regulates the criminal protection of non-human animals, especially with a view to Law No. 14.064/ 2020, which amended Article 32 of the so-called Law of Environmental Crimes. To that end, theoretical reflections will be brought up on the ineffectiveness of Criminal Law applied as the only measure to combat violations against non-human animals and on the collective imaginary of animal objectification. This time, under the prerogative of the defense of a transdisciplinary education that embraces Animal Law, as a pillar in social transformation, possible alternatives to the strengthening of criminal tutelage will be listed, in order to preserve animal life starting from a joint work of the Public Power with the community itself.

Stalin’s Ghosts, Parasites, and Pandemic: The Roots of the 2020 Uprising in Belarus

Abstract The 2020 presidential election in Belarus was different from previous elections in the independence period. Three candidates emerged from the economic and political elite, and several factors reduced the popularity of the incumbent president Aliaksandr Lukashenka, particularly his so-called Parasite Laws of 2016, his dismissal of Covid-19 as a psychosis, and the destruction of crosses at the Kurapaty memorial site. Though several candidates were barred from running, the campaign of Svjatlana Cichanoŭskaja emerged as a serious challenge, with popular mass rallies and support from the other two major campaign teams. Yet the announced results gave Lukashenka over 80%. The response was the largest mass demonstrations seen in Belarus since the late 1980s, to which the government responded with repressions and arrests. The paper discusses the various analyses of the election results and whether the “national awakening” can herald real political change.

Animal Welfare Policies and Human Rights in the Context of Slaughter Procedures

Human rights, such as to non-discrimination and freedom of religion, are internationally recognized. In the meantime, the so-called global animal law is becoming more and more important. In this context, religious slaughter is increasingly becoming a matter for debate as a number of special procedures, which avoid stunning methods, may lead to greater suffering for animals. Such procedures are common to Judaism and Islam and involve 25% of the global population, almost 2 billion people. Considering that about 94% of European public opinion in 2015 expressed concern over animal welfare, it is time to evaluate the legal perspective of these special treatments. Indeed, although they seem to violate animal welfare policies, at the same time states have a duty to uphold religious freedom (and its forms of expression) under International and European law. The aim of this study is to evaluate, through a multidisciplinary approach, the complex balance between human rights in general and animal welfare policies, which are gaining importance especially in the European Continent’s legal framework.