Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn the United States, final amendments to the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects ("the Common Rule") were published on January 19, 2017, and they will take effect on January 21, 2019. One of the most widely discussed provisions is that for the first time, federal regulations governing research with humans authorize the use of broad consent for future, unspecified research on individually identifiable biospecimens and associated data. Many questions have been raised about broad consent, including what effect it will have on research and whether it adequately protects the interests of research participants.There are lessons to be learned for the U.S. and other countries by looking to countries that already have experience with broad consent for biobank collection and with the storage and subsequent use of the biospecimens and data. This article describes how broad consent works in five countries—Canada (in Quebec), Israel, Nigeria, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom—and with different types of biobanks: national biobanks, federated biobanks, and regional biobanks. Evaluating the provisions and challenges of the broad consent approaches in these countries can inform policies for this increasingly used approach to biobank regulation.

Diplomacy has developed a large amount of formalistic ritual much of which is reflected in international law. The titles and ranking of diplomats constitute the most striking example. Curiously enough this tendency is not wholly reflected in the modern law and practice of treaty-making. It is of no legal consequence, for example, whether an agreement between or among states is called a treaty, a convention, a statute, an agreement, a protocol or a covenant or charter. Certain labels are used with a degree of consistency to signify the informal or temporary character of an agreement such as modus vivendi and "exchange of notes," while others, such as "covenant" and "charter," have been utilized to suggest the basic and over-all importance of the instrument. The labels do not, however, indicate whether the agreement registers a boundary settlement, the conclusion of peace, a political and military alliance, provisions for the extradition of fugitive criminals, arrangements for the distribution of radio frequencies, adjustment of double taxation, respect for copyrights, or facilities for travelling salesmen. The applicable substantive law similarly fails to distinguish among such diverse subjects and covers them all with the same rules concerning conclusion, interpretation, and termination. Such uniformity is convenient for the student, the statesman, and the judge, but it is not responsive to the needs of the international community in some important respects which will be discussed in this chapter.

Although often omitted from final texts, armchair speculation is vital to much politics research. This article argues that thought experiments are a powerful tool for harnessing scholarly imagination with enormous potential for international relations (IR). To provide guidance for thought experiments' incorporation into IR research, the article begins by clarifying thought experiments' epistemological foundations and expanding existing best practices criteria for minimal-rewrite counterfactuals. Doing so enables consideration of the diversity of thought experiments useful to the discipline, ranging from alien invasions to zombie apocalypses. Then, the article outlines five ways in which thought experiments prove particularly useful in researching international politics: probing modal consequences of macro-level theories; refining concepts; formulating hypotheses; speculating about rare events; and conveying theories' real-world implications. To facilitate thought experiments' incorporation into mixed- and multi-methods research, the article's final section offers a novel typology to guide scholars in not only formulating new thought experiments, but also adapting and comparing them, including in conjunction with empirical methods.

Status of the Province of Kosovo and Metohija; argues that human rights of the Albanian minority are a national, not international, issue.