Child labour in affluent societies: law's influence on attitudes and practices

The thesis traces the influence of law on the institutional practices and attitudes concerned with child labour, using a comparative approach. It has been suggested, that the adoption of International Instruments relating to children and young people, in particular the Convention on the Rights of the Child, will be able to change attitudes towards children. Views of children and childhood have both influenced laws, framed with a view of protection, and have been influenced by them. This interdependent relationship is explored in three affluent States. Affluent societies have been selected rather than countries in transition, as developments in the regulation of child work are less likely to be determined by poverty and expediency than by the regard for the interests of young people. The three States are California, one of the States of the United States, the Netherlands, and the Island of Aruba, a semi-independent State within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The States selected occupy different positions within the international legal framework. The United States has so far not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child or other Conventions related to children, the Netherlands has ratified most children's rights Instruments, whilst Aruba only recently accepted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In order to be able to cover the various activities by young people, which can be regarded as 'work', use is made of a comprehensive definition of the concept of 'child labour*. This definition not only covers traditional children's jobs, but also juvenile prostitution, one of the 'worst forms of child labour1, targeted by ILO Convention 182. Views of work construct children as different from adult workers. Some work, considered suitable for children, is considered important for its educational value only. Other activities are thought to lead to the loss of childhood of the young people involved, who need to be both protected as helpless victims and kept under control. According to the philosopher Habermas, the legitimacy of law depends on the extent, to which equal consideration is given to the interests of all involved individuals. This is possible, if a system of legal norms is built on a process of discourse, in which participants are able to regard each other as equals. The discourse principle allows the addressees of law to be involved at the same time in its formulation, thereby satisfying both the private and public autonomy of participants. The attitude of children to labour controls on their work is explored in the light of the discourse principle. Recent developments in the field of children's rights have led to changes in the perception of children from mere objects of concern into social actors. Such developments have been promoted by the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which constructs young people both as rights subjects and individuals entitled to care and protection, regardless of inequalities of gender, class or ethnicity. The thesis explores the rationale for the recent changes in legislation concerned with the work of children and young people with the purpose of examining, whether the views of young people are taken into account. An important question is to what extent attempts are made to balance existing patterns of thought with new modes of thinking, promoted by International Instruments, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As the views of people involved, are of crucial importance, use is made of a fieldwork study of the views of young people and of adults, administered in California and the Netherlands. Also a number of respondents working with children and young people in various capacities, were interviewed in the three States in the comparison. According to the analysis of the developments in the three States in the comparison, the process, by which the child labour legislation has been conceived in the Netherlands, corresponds most closely to the ideal of law, in which the addressees of law also engage in its framing

The Rights We Won At Runnymede: An Argument for the Repeal of Magna Carta

Much has been written about Magna Carta, particularly given its recent 800th birthday. Yet few are prepared to speak against this ancient document for fear that the rule of law, liberty, and even democracy might crumble if Magna Carta no longer stands. This paper argues that Magna Carta should be repealed. First, by studying both Magna Carta’s history and the relevant New Zealand case law, this paper establishes that Magna Carta no longer has any discernible practical use. Though it once represented rights against the monarch, it is now out of date, predominantly misused and is therefore obsolete. Building upon this conclusion the paper argues that little of what Magna Carta supposedly stands for can in fact be justified by legitimate statutory interpretation approaches. Even a generous, purposive approach is not enough to transform Magna Carta from a feudal document signed to end a civil war into a sure guarantee of rights and principles in modern New Zealand. Furthermore, Magna Carta does not live up to the rule of law it supposedly epitomises. It is an unnecessary, overly detailed and inaccessible piece of legislation. Finally, it is argued that New Zealand’s constitutional framework would be better off without Magna Carta. New Zealand’s ability to provide effective rights protection and adhere to the rule of law does not depend on the charter signed at Runnymede. Excessive reverence for the past robs New Zealanders of a constitutional framework that suits our unique nation. On this basis, the paper concludes that Magna Carta should be repealed

Veda and Society. Some remarks a propos of the film "Altar of Fire"

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Protection Against Slavery in New Zealand

The European Court of Human Rights decision in CN v The United Kingdom highlighted that slavery remains a modern problem. It may no longer resemble the traditional picture of slavery dramatically presented by Hollywood but it is no less on an issue. Modern slavery is less visible; it is hidden away within homes, normal workplaces or in overseas factories. This paper argues that New Zealand’s current treatment of slavery is inadequate exemplified by the absence of prosecutions. Thorough protection of slavery requires clear definitions that courts can easily apply. This paper explores how the Bill of Rights could be used to remedy this situation. This paper argues for the application of the Drittwirkung concept to give a horizontal effect to a right against slavery. Furthermore it is argued that New Zealand is under positive obligations to actively prevent rights violations, not merely avoid them. These positive obligations are a key component of modern human rights jurisprudence and can be read into the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. This paper speculates that one action courts could take is to undertake the development of a tort action against slavery

On the mechanisms governing gas penetration into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection

A new 1D radial fluid code, IMAGINE, is used to simulate the penetration of gas into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection (MGI). The main result is that the gas is in general strongly braked as it reaches the plasma, due to mechanisms related to charge exchange and (to a smaller extent) recombination. As a result, only a fraction of the gas penetrates into the plasma. Also, a shock wave is created in the gas which propagates away from the plasma, braking and compressing the incoming gas. Simulation results are quantitatively consistent, at least in terms of orders of magnitude, with experimental data for a D 2 MGI into a JET Ohmic plasma. Simulations of MGI into the background plasma surrounding a runaway electron beam show that if the background electron density is too high, the gas may not penetrate, suggesting a possible explanation for the recent results of Reux et al in JET (2015 Nucl. Fusion 55 093013)

Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET

The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR