Suchergebnisse

About the International Monetary System, by Benjamin J. Cohen
The outlook for the world financial system is clouded by a variety of problems - volatility of floating exchange rates, inefficient management of the multiple-reserve-asset standard, the massive burden of balance-of-payments financing. No doubt it would be excessively pessimistic, not to say alarmist, to predict outright collapse: the system has shown considerable resiliency, after all, in recent years. The potential for improvement exists in our international monetary arrangements, but it is not infinite. The system could be better managed, both efficiency and consistency could be promoted. Why not begin? But nothing can ensure that monetary relations will always remain stable and free of policy conflict. So long as there will be politically sovereign states and formally independent national currencies, there will be international monetary problems.

Christians have been trying to convert Jews for two thousand years. And for two thousand years Jews have been resisting with notable resiliency. Judaism has lost more Jews to apathy or assimilation than it ever has—or probably ever will—to the blandishments of Christian missionaries. Jews unwilling to affirm the beliefs or practice the rites of Judaism are rarely ripe candidates for the ardent Christian proselytizer. As a matter of fact, these approaches have most often revolted even the most cynical Jew. In modern times proselytism has become a kind of chronic nuisance, having two main effects, both of them negative. It produced a deep-seated anti-Christian attitude within the bosom of the Jewish body, and it facilitated a defensive withdrawal by Jews from the larger "gentile world." Jews sometimes justify this inwardness with words like "peoplehood." Non-Jews have as often labeled it "clannishness."

This article examines the uncanny resiliency of an ancient doctrine called parens patriae despite legislative and judicial attempts to restrict its use in involuntary commitment proceedings of the mentally ill. Attempts by the legislature and courts to reduce parens patriae rationales, which are heavily promoted by the medical profession, have emphasized police power rationales and have followed two general strategies. One strategy sets up a number of procedural steps that provide monitoring of individual rights at critical junctures during the commitment process. The second strategy attempts to establish multiple criteria that must be met before any commitment decision can by made. It is pointed out that legislatures, and to some extent the courts, have focused on the procedural strategy, while neglecting the more substantive issue of behavioral criteria. It is argued that the lack of attention to the second strategy, specifically in relation to clear definitions and rigorous criteria, have created the impetus for the medical‐psychiatric profession to continue its dominance in involuntary commitment proceedings under the guise of parens patriae.