Suchergebnisse

When the public-law Sickness Benefits Act (Dutch Ziektewet) was privatised, this created the question of how to protect sick employees' privacy in their labour-law relationship. It is now the employers' responsibility to carry out the labour-law scheme governing sickness, which is part of Title 7:10 of the Dutch Civil Code (Dutch Burgerlijk Wetboek). These new rules have caused tension in labour-law relations, since the instructions and measures issued by the employer may affect employees' personal lives, thus restricting their fundamental right to privacy which follows from the Dutch Constitution and human rights treaties. Regulations should offer sick employees sufficient protection against the employer and any other parties who might violate their rights while executing the rules. Effective instruments should be available to act against violations. This thesis focuses on the question to what extent the privacy of sick employees is sufficiently protected by existing regulations. In order to answer this question, this thesis develops a normative assessment method. This method is necessary to answer the question of when the protection of privacy is 'sufficient'. This method is based on the regulations and case law concerning the right to privacy. The result of the thesis is that on a large number of points, the execution of the legal scheme governing sickness meets the criteria concerning privacy protection. Violations are only committed on the basis of the legal powers granted by law to the employer and experts. The legislator has laid down additional rules regarding the provision of information as part of reintegration processes. Moreover, guarantees are in place to ensure confidential treatment of medical information. The relevant rules are based on the assumption that employers must not receive any medical information. Medical information is processed only by medical experts who are bound by medical professional secrecy. The medical profession has itself set very clear rules outlining which information can ...

The establishment of Regulation No 864/2007 on the Law Applicable to Non-Contractual Obligations (Rome II) is a landmark for European Private International Law. The regulation of torts in the European Union has a history of forty years, starting with the preparation of the Rome Convention in 1967. As was the case with its thorny counterpart, the Regulation on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations (Rome I), negotiations have been difficult. It is also for the first time, that the efforts to develop European conflict-of-law rules and the negotiations have attracted such serious cross-Atlantic attention, especially from scholars in the United States (US). Not only have Americans and other non-Europeans bothered to publish on the (draft) Rome II Regulation, they have also interacted in the Brussels negotiations, at the invitation of the European Parliament's rapporteur for Rome II. This contribution provides an outline of the background (section 2), scope (section 3), and system of the Regulation (section 4) and an analysis of the two general conflict rules laid down in Article 4 (section 5) and 14 (section 6). The question is whether in methodology and content this Regulation stands in the European tradition, or whether it takes a new direction. Another question is whether it offers a predictable but at the same time a sufficiently flexible system of conflict rules. The Rome II Regulation proves that it is difficult to reach a satisfactory compromise between legal certainty and flexibility in order to do justice in an individual case, while fulfilling the law and economics criteria of simple and predictable rules. The Regulation provides many special rules as well as general and special exceptions that are occasionally ambiguous and make the outcome sometimes unpredictable. Nevertheless, it is concluded that the Rome II Regulation in spite of its flaws, is an acceptable instrument that furthers the harmonization of conflict of laws in Europe.

Authoritarianism as a form of political regime became a widespread phenomenon in the inter-war Europe. It was also a part of Lithuanian and Polish history. The coup d'etat in Poland on May 12, 1926 claimed many more victims than the analogous event in Lit- huania. The 1926 coups in the two neighbouring countries put an end to the era of parlia- mentarianism, which had had its legal basis on the permanent constitutions (passed on March 17, 1921 in Poland and August 1, 1922 in Lithuania). The position of a Chief of State was established in Poland on November 14, 1918. It was legally consolidated by the Small Constitution of February 20, 1919. Both Jozef Pilsudski and Antanas Smetona had accumulated enough political experience to rule their respective countries after the coup. However, as politicians they were of different caliber. The authoritarian regime in Poland had its name – sanation. This term was supposed to mean the purification or a return to po- litical health. The main support of authoritarian regimes in both countries were the armed forces. This was more perceptible in Poland, especially after the death of Jozef Pilsudski. If Poland during the period of authoritarian rule retained the multi-party system, albeit re- stricted, then in Lithuania after the February 1, 1936 the one-party rule was established. The Polish parliament functioned without cessation all the way from 1926 to 1939, while in Lithuania the Seimas was absent from 1927 to 1936. In the Polish historiography the period of sanation is clearly divided into two periods: 1) the Pilsudski Era, which lasted from the May 1926 coup until the marshal's death on May 12, 1935; 2) the period of "the colonels' rule", which lasted from the May 12, 1935 to the Nazi occupation of Poland in September 1939. However, in Lithuania the whole period of authoritarian rule was presided by the sa- me personality – Antanas Smetona. Due to this reason it is difficult to discern any essential changes in the country's political system.

International audience ; Concerned about how to intervene more efficiently in the humanitarian field, the International Court of Justice elaborated a concept that is nowadays standing as a norm of international law. We are hereby referring to "elementary considerations of humanity". Considered as a customary aspect of international humanitarian law by the International Court of Justice, the elementary considerations of humanity are a set of appraisal elements meant to protect the fundamental needs of the human being (life, integrity, well being, etc.). These considerations are likely to affect the application of the rules of international law, for instance, in the law of war as well as in the humanitarian law. The elementary considerations of humanity refer indeed to the common interests of all people, to the universal common good and to the existence of a more united international community. The humanity rules and protection reinforcement on a practical aspect: of individuals and populations within the interstate action. These rules make visible the major importance that the protection of human rights and human person and the rules of humanitarian law should have in the interstate relations and, in this way, they also contribute to concretely guaranteeing the respect for the fundamental humanity rules in any circumstances. Nevertheless, the role of the International Court of Justice is only an accident, taking into account not only the missions that it gets on account of its Statute and of the United Nations Charter, but also the political implications that stir up conflicts of international humanitarian law. ; Dans le souci d'intervenir plus efficacement dans le domaine humanitaire, la Cour internationale de justice a élaboré un concept qui s'érige, aujourd'hui, en norme de droit international, il s'agit des considérations élémentaires d'humanité. Considérées comme un aspect coutumier du droit international humanitaire par la Cour internationale de justice, les considérations élémentaires d'humanité sont un ...

Authoritarianism as a form of political regime became a widespread phenomenon in the inter-war Europe. It was also a part of Lithuanian and Polish history. The coup d'etat in Poland on May 12, 1926 claimed many more victims than the analogous event in Lit- huania. The 1926 coups in the two neighbouring countries put an end to the era of parlia- mentarianism, which had had its legal basis on the permanent constitutions (passed on March 17, 1921 in Poland and August 1, 1922 in Lithuania). The position of a Chief of State was established in Poland on November 14, 1918. It was legally consolidated by the Small Constitution of February 20, 1919. Both Jozef Pilsudski and Antanas Smetona had accumulated enough political experience to rule their respective countries after the coup. However, as politicians they were of different caliber. The authoritarian regime in Poland had its name – sanation. This term was supposed to mean the purification or a return to po- litical health. The main support of authoritarian regimes in both countries were the armed forces. This was more perceptible in Poland, especially after the death of Jozef Pilsudski. If Poland during the period of authoritarian rule retained the multi-party system, albeit re- stricted, then in Lithuania after the February 1, 1936 the one-party rule was established. The Polish parliament functioned without cessation all the way from 1926 to 1939, while in Lithuania the Seimas was absent from 1927 to 1936. In the Polish historiography the period of sanation is clearly divided into two periods: 1) the Pilsudski Era, which lasted from the May 1926 coup until the marshal's death on May 12, 1935; 2) the period of "the colonels' rule", which lasted from the May 12, 1935 to the Nazi occupation of Poland in September 1939. However, in Lithuania the whole period of authoritarian rule was presided by the sa- me personality – Antanas Smetona. Due to this reason it is difficult to discern any essential changes in the country's political system.

This report deals with the testing of eSTV software from ERS, Electoral Reform Services. The purpose of the test is to determine the conformance of eSTV to the WIG-rule [1]. In order to determine conformance we have created a new implementation of the rule in the functional programming language Clean [4]. Since this language uses a different programming paradigm and the implementation is made completely independent from the software to be tested it is extremely unlikely that both implementations contain the same error. Testing is done by computing the election result for a given set of votes with both programs. The results of both programs are compared to the level of votes numbers after each selection and elimination step in the algorithm. This has shown to be a very sensitive test for very small variations in the algorithm used in the programs. These tests are executed for 808 standard test cases. These test cases are partly handcrafted or the vote distributions in real elections for similar voting rules. Each of these sets is computed with 4 different elimination orders. In addition the results of 5000 generated data sets and a number of hand crafted data sets covering border situations in the algorithm are compared. Both test sets have shown to be very effective to identify even the smallest changes in the algorithm to compute the result of the election. Testing of preliminary versions of eSTV showed some small inaccuracies in the program as well as some small space for different interpretation of the rules. The Scottish Executive provided the final interpretation of the rules (as detailed in section 7.1) and all test where repeated for eSTV version 2.0.16. In these final tests there was an exact match for each of the 4 × 808 + 5000 = 8232 test cases.

This article examines the emergence, over the last two decades, of a doctrine that bases probable cause on the unshared knowledge of different law enforcement agents working together on an investigation. Thus if an officer conducts a search or arrest without probable cause, the action may be validated by looking to the other officers' knowledge. So far the rule has been confused with the "collective knowledge" rule and has traveled under that name. The article argues that the new rule (here called the "constructive knowledge" rule) depends on constructive belief and may establish constructive, not actual, probable cause. While the rule might seem to be justifiable on the ground that the officers would have pooled their information in any case, research on cognitive bias suggests that an after-the-fact analysis of the officers' knowledge would likely exaggerate any inculpatory evidence while disregarding exculpatory evidence. Fourth Amendment law imposes few formal ex ante requirements on officers, but some de minimis formality is appropriate here, as we may see by looking to the role of collaborative decision-making in administrative law. The article argues that courts should make explicit the rule's "inevitable communication" premise, and should refuse to aggregate the unshared information. Failing that, courts should require the prosecution to show that the officers would have shared their knowledge before leaving the scene. The "constructive knowledge" problem reveals the difficulty of factoring the risk of error into the analysis of probable cause when the requisite quantum of cause remains fixed in all cases. That difficulty, in turn, suggests that the probable-cause calculus may be likened to the Mathews v. Eldridge formula for termination of governmental benefits. This analogy points up other difficulties with the notion of "transsubstantive" probable cause.

Judicial Peculiarities of the Collective Labour Disputes Resolution: International Regulation, Experience of Foreign Countries and Future Perspectives in Lithuania. In this task are analysed judicial peculiarities of the collective labour disputes resolution in international regulation of law rules, these disputes judicial resolution of foreign countries and future perspectives of this institute in Lithuania. Judicial procedure of solving this kind of labour disputes is applying effectively for a long time in a lot of foreign countries while the rules of Lithuanian law are not directly talk about this institute. The rules of law talking about it are equivocal and abstruse.There aren't a lot of collective labour disputes, in other words, they are unpopular in Lithuania, because the collective labour relations are undeveloped, weak and have no deep traditions in the country. It was noted, that principles of social partnership and tripartite cooperation are the main talking about regulation of collective labour relations and solving collective labour disputes arising of that.The analysis of international and European Union rules of law showed that there are not directly fixed any special rules of law regulated judicial peculiarities of the collective labour disputes resolution. Each country have the right to decide which institution or what procedure will be applied to solve this kind of labour disputes. The main request is the workers rights should really be protected and defended. Development of collective labour disputes resolution in Lithuania should follow the western practices and realisation of basic principles such as reconciliation of parties and striving to compromise. Consequently, it is suggested to set by law criteria allowing to distinguish collective labour disputes arising because of violation of interests from those arising from violation of rights. Besides, to start solving collective labour disputes arising of violation of rights in general competence courts and to think to introduce independent specialised system of labour courts in the future in Lithuania.

Judicial Peculiarities of the Collective Labour Disputes Resolution: International Regulation, Experience of Foreign Countries and Future Perspectives in Lithuania. In this task are analysed judicial peculiarities of the collective labour disputes resolution in international regulation of law rules, these disputes judicial resolution of foreign countries and future perspectives of this institute in Lithuania. Judicial procedure of solving this kind of labour disputes is applying effectively for a long time in a lot of foreign countries while the rules of Lithuanian law are not directly talk about this institute. The rules of law talking about it are equivocal and abstruse.There aren't a lot of collective labour disputes, in other words, they are unpopular in Lithuania, because the collective labour relations are undeveloped, weak and have no deep traditions in the country. It was noted, that principles of social partnership and tripartite cooperation are the main talking about regulation of collective labour relations and solving collective labour disputes arising of that.The analysis of international and European Union rules of law showed that there are not directly fixed any special rules of law regulated judicial peculiarities of the collective labour disputes resolution. Each country have the right to decide which institution or what procedure will be applied to solve this kind of labour disputes. The main request is the workers rights should really be protected and defended. Development of collective labour disputes resolution in Lithuania should follow the western practices and realisation of basic principles such as reconciliation of parties and striving to compromise. Consequently, it is suggested to set by law criteria allowing to distinguish collective labour disputes arising because of violation of interests from those arising from violation of rights. Besides, to start solving collective labour disputes arising of violation of rights in general competence courts and to think to introduce independent specialised system of labour courts in the future in Lithuania.

Judicial Peculiarities of the Collective Labour Disputes Resolution: International Regulation, Experience of Foreign Countries and Future Perspectives in Lithuania. In this task are analysed judicial peculiarities of the collective labour disputes resolution in international regulation of law rules, these disputes judicial resolution of foreign countries and future perspectives of this institute in Lithuania. Judicial procedure of solving this kind of labour disputes is applying effectively for a long time in a lot of foreign countries while the rules of Lithuanian law are not directly talk about this institute. The rules of law talking about it are equivocal and abstruse.There aren't a lot of collective labour disputes, in other words, they are unpopular in Lithuania, because the collective labour relations are undeveloped, weak and have no deep traditions in the country. It was noted, that principles of social partnership and tripartite cooperation are the main talking about regulation of collective labour relations and solving collective labour disputes arising of that.The analysis of international and European Union rules of law showed that there are not directly fixed any special rules of law regulated judicial peculiarities of the collective labour disputes resolution. Each country have the right to decide which institution or what procedure will be applied to solve this kind of labour disputes. The main request is the workers rights should really be protected and defended. Development of collective labour disputes resolution in Lithuania should follow the western practices and realisation of basic principles such as reconciliation of parties and striving to compromise. Consequently, it is suggested to set by law criteria allowing to distinguish collective labour disputes arising because of violation of interests from those arising from violation of rights. Besides, to start solving collective labour disputes arising of violation of rights in general competence courts and to think to introduce independent specialised system of labour courts in the future in Lithuania.

Judicial Peculiarities of the Collective Labour Disputes Resolution: International Regulation, Experience of Foreign Countries and Future Perspectives in Lithuania. In this task are analysed judicial peculiarities of the collective labour disputes resolution in international regulation of law rules, these disputes judicial resolution of foreign countries and future perspectives of this institute in Lithuania. Judicial procedure of solving this kind of labour disputes is applying effectively for a long time in a lot of foreign countries while the rules of Lithuanian law are not directly talk about this institute. The rules of law talking about it are equivocal and abstruse.There aren't a lot of collective labour disputes, in other words, they are unpopular in Lithuania, because the collective labour relations are undeveloped, weak and have no deep traditions in the country. It was noted, that principles of social partnership and tripartite cooperation are the main talking about regulation of collective labour relations and solving collective labour disputes arising of that.The analysis of international and European Union rules of law showed that there are not directly fixed any special rules of law regulated judicial peculiarities of the collective labour disputes resolution. Each country have the right to decide which institution or what procedure will be applied to solve this kind of labour disputes. The main request is the workers rights should really be protected and defended. Development of collective labour disputes resolution in Lithuania should follow the western practices and realisation of basic principles such as reconciliation of parties and striving to compromise. Consequently, it is suggested to set by law criteria allowing to distinguish collective labour disputes arising because of violation of interests from those arising from violation of rights. Besides, to start solving collective labour disputes arising of violation of rights in general competence courts and to think to introduce independent specialised system of labour courts in the future in Lithuania.

Раздел "Международное право" - рубрика "Вопросы теории" ; В статье рассматривается концепция непосредственного применения международных договоров. Автором анализируются понятия, используемые в сфере применения международных договоров в национальных правовых системах, а также критерии самоисполнимости (непосредственной применимости) норм международных договоров. В статье обосновывается тезис о том, что детализированность положений международных договоров не является определяющим фактором в установлении возможности их применения в национальной правовой системе. Утверждается, что диспозиция одной и той же нормы права может использоваться: а) как модель поведения; б) как критерий установления ответственности. Таким образом, признание нарушения несамоисполнимой нормы можно использовать в качестве основания для принятия необходимого имплементационного законодательства. По сравнению с трансформацией положений международных договоров в национальное законодательство их непосредственное применение как способ имплементации международных обязательств способствует большему проникновению международного права в правовую культуру и сознание общества. = The article focuses on the concept of direct application of treaties. The author analyzes notions which are used in the sphere of application of treaties in municipal legal systems as well as examines the criteria of self-executiveness (direct applicability) of treaties. The article argues that the degree of treaty rules detailing is not decisive in determining whether specific treaty rules may be directly applicable in a municipal legal system or not. It is stated that a disposition of the same rule may be applied: a) as a behavioral model; b) as a criterion for establishing one's responsibility. Thus, it is possible to use recognition of an infringement of a non-self-executing rule as a legal ground for adoption of the required implementing legislation. In comparison to transformation of treaty rules into municipal legislation, the direct application of treaties as a method of the implementation of international obligations encourages better international law penetration into the legal culture of the society.

Cellular Automata are usually considered the most efficient technology to understand the spatial logic of urban dynamics: they are inherently spatial, they are simple and computationally efficient and are able to represent a wide range of pattern and situations. Nevertheless the implementation of a CA requires the formulation of explicit spatial rules which represents the greatest limit of this approach. Whatever rich and complex the rules are, they don`t are able to capture satisfactorily the variety of the real processes. Recent developments in natural algorithms, and particularly in Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), allow to reverse the approach by learning the rules and the behaviours in urban land use dynamics directly from the Data Base, following a bottom-up process. The basic problem is to discover how and in to what extent the land use change of each cell i at time t+1 is determined by the neighbouring conditions (CA assumptions) or by other social, environmental, territorial features (i.e. political maps, planning rules) which where holding at the previous time t. Once the NN has learned the rules, it is able to predict the changes at time t+2 and following. In this paper we show and discuss the prediction capability of different architectures of supervised and unsupervised ANN. The Case study and Data Base concern the land use dynamics, between two temporal thresholds, in the South metropolitan area of Milan. The records have been randomly split in two sets which have been alternatively used in Training and in Testing phase in each ANN. The different ANNs performances have been evaluated with Statistical Functions. Finally, for the prediction, we have used the average of the prediction values of the 10 ANNs, and tested the results through the usual Statistical Functions.

The debate about how much protection criminal defendants should have against successive prosecutions has generally been conducted in the context of how to interpret the Double Jeopardy Clause. The doctrinal focus of this debate ignores the fact that for the huge majority of defendants-those who plead guilty instead of standing trial-the Double Jeopardy Clause sin- ply sets a default rule, establishing a minimum level of protection when defendants choose not to bargain about the possibility of future charges. In this Article, Professor Richman examines the world that exists in the shadow of minimalist double jeopardy doctrine, exploring the dynamics of such bargaining and the rules that govern it. Professor Richman begins by showing why, for most defendants, the limited scope of fifth amendment protection against successive prosecution makes little difference. If a guilty plea does not give jeopardy protection against all charges that could possibly be brought, such protection will be afforded by a standard agreement covering the "scope of the indictment." And prosecutors' institutional constraints will generally offer assurances far beyond those terms. For those defendants not satisfied with these protections, however, minimalist double jeopardy doctrine presents a dilemma, since a plea agreement that explicitly protects against unbrought charges can be negotiated only at the risk of exposing crimes or culpability of which the governmnent was not aware. Drawing on recent contract literature, Professor Richman shows how this strategic obstacle will frequently lead to the creation of 'gaps" in the protection offered by specially negotiated plea agreements. The Article then turns to the rules devised by courts to fill these contractual gaps, rules generally based on due process analyses of defendants' expectations or prosecutors' "good faith" obligations. After critiquing these rules, Professor Richmnan inquires into the extent of the government's obligations when it contracts with defendants and proposes a set of ...

On 20 December 2011 the European Commission published its proposals for two new procedural directives on public procurement, one to replace Public Sector Directive 2004/18 and one to replace Utilities Directive 2004/17, with the stated aims of "simplification" and "flexibilisation" (sic) of the rules to improve value for money. However, following the pattern of the previous reforms in 2004, whilst the proposals do indeed provide for some additional flexibility, they have at the same time in many respects introduced more rigidity and burdensome requirements for Member States. Furthermore, these and other changes proposed will result in a set of rules which is vastly more complex than the current regime that the proposals purport to simplify.In this context, this article proposes a simple blueprint for reforming the directives to in the shape of a single directive for all regulated contracts that is based on the Utilities Directive, although with some modifications. Such an approach will afford the flexibility necessary for Member State to promote their own procurement policies, including value for money, in an appropriate way - in particular, it will allow Member States to authorise use of procedures involving negotiation, allow them to take account of the significant benefits of qualification systems, and facilitate cost-effective approaches to advertising contracts. Further, it will greatly reduce the complexities and uncertainties that apply under the current regulatory regime. This will result both from the greater simplicity of the content of the utilities rules as compared with the rules that apply under the other directives, and from the very existence of a single regime, which, inter alia, will eliminate the need to operate under multiple regimes and to determine the boundaries between them. Thus this approach will promote both the flexibility and simplification objective of the current reform agenda whilst at the same, it is submitted, providing a suitable framework of rules for promoting the single ...