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Abstract Background The oral health of military populations is usually not very well characterized compared to civilian populations. The aim of this study was to investigate two physical oral health characteristics and one perceived oral health measure and their correlation in the Japan self-defense forces (JSDF). Methods Number of missing teeth, denture status, and OHRQoL as evaluated by the Japanese 14-item version of the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-J14) as well as the correlation between these oral health measures was investigated in 911 personnel in the JSDF. Results Subjects did not have a substantial number of missing teeth and only 4% used removable dentures. The mean OHIP-J14 score was 4.6 ± 6.7 units. The magnitude of the correlation between the number of missing teeth with OHIP-J14 scores was small (r = 0.22, p < 0.001). Mean OHIP-J14 scores differed between subjects with and without dentures (8.6 and 4.4, p < 0.001). Conclusions Compared to Japanese civilian populations, personnel of the JSDF demonstrated good oral health. Two physical oral health characteristics were associated with perceived oral health.

This article is a plea for adopting a reinvigorated, analytic perspective on contemporary international law, building on MacCormick's powerful insights into law's essential structure. The article proposes that international law as whole forms an institutional normative order. The idea of institutional normative order has certain conditions. These link a normative conception of international law with the means of achieving it. The article makes three arguments on these conditions. It first argues that the function of international law is to create order in the sense of orderliness for its principal users, States and international organizations. It then claims that international law establishes normative order through international rules that are binding from the viewpoint of States and international organizations. An international process of rule-making embedded in State practice turns norms into such rules. The process is being held as a bindingness-creating mechanism because it formalizes rules through recognized means and organizes collective consent to authorize them. States and international organizations then apply these rules by exercising international legal powers under a defeasible presumption of legality. Third, the article argues that this normative order becomes institutionalized. The institutions of international law are grounded in ideas about agencies, arrangements, and master-norms that integrate the mass of international rules and principles. The article exemplifies these arguments for UN-driven international law with the relating recent jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and Annex vii tribunals, and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The upshot of this idea of international law as institutional normative order is unity, or indeed a system. No part of international law can be seen outside of this context and hence the burden of argumentation is on those wishing to make the case for divergence.

Examines contrasting positions, and implications for the future, legally significant events occurring between Mar. 1998 and Mar. 1999, and impact on requirement for UN Security Council authorization. Reviews rules governing use of force by regional security organization, such as NATO, and proposed reforms.

International economic law (IEL) continues to evolve through dialectic processes of unilateral, bilateral, regional and worldwide regulation aimed at protecting cosmopolitan rights and transnational rule of law in mutually beneficial economic cooperation among citizens in a globalizing economy (section 1). The more transnational protection of cosmopolitan rights (e.g., human rights, trading, investor and social rights) depends on multilevel cooperation among national and international courts, the stronger becomes the need for justifying "multilevel judicial governance" by conceptions of "cosmopolitan" and "constitutional justice" rather than only by "Westphalian justice" and "commutative justice", as reciprocally agreed in treaties among States (section 2). "Fragmentation" of "IEL among States" through multilevel economic regulation and adjudication (e.g., inside free trade areas and economic communities) is a necessary strategy for reforming international law for the benefit of citizens. In order to remain legitimate and reconcile the rational self-interests of citizens with their reasonable common interests, investment arbitration must remain embedded into multilevel human rights law and respect for legitimate "constitutional pluralism" protecting cosmopolitan rights, transnational "participatory" and "deliberative democracy" and rule of law through "consistent interpretations" and "judicial comity" among national and international courts of justice (section 3).