Democracy and Feminism

Although feminist legal theory has had an important impact on most areas of legal doctrine and theory over the last two decades, its contribution to the debate over constitutional interpretation has been comparatively small. In this Article, Professor Higgins explores reasons for the limited dialogue between mainstream constitutional theory and feminist theory concerning questions of democracy, constitutionalism, and judicial review. She argues that mainstream constitutional theory tends to take for granted the capacity of the individual to make choices, leaving the social construction of those choices largely unexamined. In contrast, feminist legal theory\u27s emphasis on the importance of constraints on women\u27s choices has led to a neglect of questions of citizenship and sovereignty within a democratic system. By comparing mainstream constitutional theory and feminist theory, Professor Higgins highlights the existing limitations of both. She argues both that mainstream constitutional theory must take into account feminist arguments concerning constraints on individual choice and that feminist theory must take seriously the mainstream debate over democratic legitimacy. Integrating these distinct concerns, she suggests a framework for constitutional interpretation that reflects a feminist conception of citizenship under conditions of inequality

The philosophy of European Law with "chaos out of order" set-up and functioning

In reconsideration of the composition and operation of European law, it is the description of its underlying mentality that may cast best light on the query whether European law is the extension of domestic laws or a sui generis product. As to its action, European law is destructive upon the survival of traditions of legal positivism, for it recalls post modern clichés rather. Like a solar system with planets, it is two-centred from the beginning, commissioning both implementation and judicial check to member states. As part of global post modernism, a) European law stems from artificial reality construction freed from particular historical experience and, indeed, anything given hic et nunc. By its operation, b) it dynamises large structures and sets in motion that what is chaos itself. It is owing to reconstructive human intent solely that any outcome can at all be seen as fitting to some ideal of order, albeit neither operation nor daily management strives for implementing any systemicity. This is the way in which the European law becomes adequate reflection of the underlying (macro) economic basis, which it is to serve as superstructure. Accordingly, c) the entire construct is operated (as integrated into one well-working unit) within the framework of an artificially animated dynamism. With its “order out of chaos” philosophy it assures member states’ standing involvement and competition, achieving a flexibly self-adapting (and unprecedentedly high degree of) conformity

Knowledge modelling for integrating semantic web services in e-government applications

Service integration and domain interoperability are the basic requirements in the development of current service-oriented e-Government applications. Semantic Web and, in particular, Semantic Web Service (SWS) technology aim to address these issues. However, the integration between e-Government applications and SWS is not an easy task. We argue that a more complex semantic layer needs to be modeled. The aim of our work is to provide an ontological framework that maps such a semantic layer. In this paper, we describe our approach for creating a project-independent and reusable model, and provide a case study that demonstrates its applicability

The democratic legitimacy of international human rights conventions: Political constitutionalism and the European convention on human rights

International Human Rights Courts (IHRCts), such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), have come under increasing criticism as being incompatible with domestic judicial and legislative mechanisms for upholding rights. These domestic instruments are said to possess greater democratic legitimacy than international instruments do or could do. Within the UK this critique has led some prominent judges and politicians to propose withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Legal cosmopolitans respond by denying the validity of this democratic critique. By contrast this article argues that such criticisms are defensible from a political constitutionalist perspective but that International Human Rights Conventions (IHRCs) can nevertheless be understood in ways that meet them. To do so, IHRC must be conceived as legislated for and controlled by an international association of democratic states, which authorizes IHRCts and holds them accountable, limiting them to 'weak review'. The resulting model of IHRC is that of a 'two level' political constitution. The ECHR is shown to largely accord with this model, which is argued to be both more plausible and desirable than a legal cosmopolitan model that sidelines democracy and advocates 'strong' review

Real Talk on the Metaphysics of Gender

Gender classifications often are controversial. These controversies typically focus on whether gender classifications align with facts about gender kind membership: Could someone really be nonbinary? Is Chris Mosier really a man? I think this is a bad approach. Consider the possibility of ontological oppression, which arises when social kinds operating in a context unjustly constrain the behaviors, concepts, or affect of certain groups. Gender kinds operating in dominant contexts, I argue, oppress trans and nonbinary persons in this way: they marginalize trans men and women, and exclude nonbinary persons. As a result, facts about membership in dominant gender kinds should not settle gender classification practices

What to make of the exception? A three-stage route to Schmitt’s institutionalism

This article traces a developmental trajectory in Schmitt’s conception of law that brings out alternative conceptualizations of the exception. “Transcendence”, “immanence” and “integration” signify three different models to represent the relation between what I call “nomic force” (the particular phenomenon of bringing order) and “materiality” (the matter-offactness of a particular entity or phenomenon). I contend that while Political Theology feeds off a transcendent model, where a sovereign decider makes materiality speakable, The Concept of the Political shows important differences as Schmitt’s argument implies a novel conception of materiality, much indebted to an immanent model. Finally, in the years in which Schmitt embraces an institutional theory of law, between 1928 and 1934, he elaborated on a theory of law pivoted on integration. The chief claim of this article is that Schmitt’s conceptualization of exception and decision is conditional upon the relation between nomic power and materiality that underlies his reflection in these three phases

Gender and European Integration

The paper assesses the contribution of gender approaches to understanding Europeanintegration. It offers a conceptualization of such approaches as including a distinctontology, epistemology and methodology. While feminist literature on the EuropeanUnion is diverse, all such literature sheds light on the gendered process of Europeanintegration. The authors identify two distinct contributions of this literature: (a) itillustrates the relevance of movement actors and other advocates in shaping EU policies;(b) it shows that economic integration entails the creation of new gender regimes. Thepaper illustrates these contentions presenting case studies of the EU’s response to sextrafficking, the reform of the common agricultural policy, and of enlargement.