European Integration: Past, Present, and Future

From its inception in the 1950s until the early 1990s, the European Union (EU) was largely the creation of politicians, jurists, and technical experts. Its effective sphere of operations was confined for the most part to economic matters. The Single European Act, which entered into force in 1987 and called for the completion of the economic integration project by 1992, marked the end of what might be termed the first, or economic, phase of European integration. With the entry into force of the Treaty on European Union (Treaty of Maastricht) in 1993, a second, or political, phase of European integration has begun. Due to the sensitive matters involved in this second phase of European integration--such as justice and home affairs, common foreign and security policy, and the creation of a common currency and a European Central Bank--the people of EU Member States are increasingly asking fundamental questions about the direction and character of the European integration project itself as well as seeking greater participation in EU affairs, at both the national and EU levels

A Comparison of Constitutionalism in France and the United States

In the American legal system, the Constitution is the fundamental legal document. All law, and in fact any exercise of public power in any form, is evaluated for validity by constitutional standards. The Constitution deals with such crucially important matters as the structure and operation of government and the fundamental rights of the governed. The Constitution is also the most important symbol of American national life and the perceived repository of the most cherished values of the American people. In France, in marked contrast, a comprehensive code of private law, the Code civil, has for a long time occupied a similar central place in legal and national life, and constitutions have had far less practical and symbolic importance. My experience teaching in both French and American law schools convinces me that it is often difficult for persons brought up in American legal culture to understand and appreciate the historical and contemporary importance of the Code civil in the French legal system and the relative lack of importance of the Constitution; likewise, persons educated in France often have similar difficulty in understanding and appreciating the centrality of the Constitution (and the role of judges in applying the Constitution) in the American legal system and the unsystematic and fragmented state of our private law. It is the purpose of this Essay to describe and account for the differing conceptions of constitutionalism in the United States and France. My central thesis is that both the United States Constitution and the French Code civil represent the incarnation in legal form of national movements that emerged triumphant from revolutionary struggles

Application of Treaties and Decisions of International Tribunals in the United States and France: Reflections on Recent Practice

In recent years, with the growth of international treaty law and the increasing role of international tribunals, questions involving the application of conventional international law and the decisions of international tribunals by national courts have assumed great practical importance. This is not only because such questions are arising with increasing frequency, but also because the way in which they are handled by domestic courts has a lot do with the efficacy of international law. As a practical matter, the rules of conventional international law and the decisions of international tribunals, if applied or effectuated by domestic courts, may very well be determinative of the outcome of a dispute. More significantly domestic courts may be the only bodies that are realistically positioned to apply or effectuate international law or the decisions of international tribunals in specific cases. As a legal matter, international law mandates that a state that has assumed an international legal obligation must act in conformity with that obligation. As far as treaties are concerned, they must be performed in good faith, and a state may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.\u27 \u27 This means that a state must give effect to a legal obligation it has assumed by agreement with other states no matter what substantive domestic law might provide to the contrary or whether or not domestic institutional or procedural modalities exist to give effect to that obligation. If a state is unwilling or unable to fulfill an international obligation it has assumed, it incurs international responsibility for that wrongful act.\u27\u27 International law, however, does not prescribe how a state must give effect to an international legal obligation. How a state fulfills its international legal obligations is a matter for the state itself to determine. Traditional international law was concerned primarily with the external behavior of states considered as unitary actors. As the rules of substantive international law and the decisions of international tribunals concern themselves more and more with matters that are internal to states, the quotidian operations of internal institutions are increasingly implicated. This results at times in the clash of core substantive and procedural values of domestic legal systems with contrary requirements of international law or the decisions of international tribunals. The questions faced by both French and American courts revolve around the degree to which conventional international law and the decisions of international tribunals may intrude into the normal operation of their domestic legal systems, systems that have been developed and refined to a large degree by the highest political and legal authorities in each nation, which have deep historical roots, and ones in which each nation takes enormous pride. In many ways, despite their differences and disagreements, contemporary France and the United States are very much alike in ways that are relevant to their attitudes toward international law. France and the United States each see themselves as exceptional nations, having a national calling to better the condition of mankind. The question of the relationship between the international and domestic legal orders has long been one of great theoretical interest. The traditional theoretical framework for describing and analyzing the relationship between international law and domestic law posits two types of relationships: monism, where international law and domestic law comprise one unitary system of law, and dualism, where international law and domestic law comprise two distinct legal orders. Monism, especially the version that regards international law as having priority over domestic law, expresses an internationalist, cooperative, world-community orientation, while dualism expresses a state-centered, state sovereignty perspective. It has been suggested that the monism- dualism approach to the question of the relationship of international law to domestic law is no longer useful, since the reality of the matter, which is how national constitutions and the decisions of domestic courts deal in actual practice with the application of international law in domestic courts, can no longer be profitably described or analyzed within the monism-dualism conceptual framework. Nevertheless, as advocated by Patrick Daillier and Serge Sur, two prominent French international legal scholars and co-authors of principal treatises on public international law, conceptual clarity and coherence are important in order to articulate accurately the contemporary relationship between international and domestic legal orders, and to allow for the clarification of the political and legal values underlying different relational choices. In adopting a monist or dualist perspective, a legal system in effect selects the basic orientation of its courts to international norms and decisions. That orientation then serves as a guide to courts in establishing presumptions and default rules and providing a principled basis for directly applying or not applying international law or giving effect to the decisions of international tribunals. The monism-dualism dichotomy is best viewed not as descriptive of what courts do, but rather as prescriptive, what courts should do, or at least what their fundamental policy orientation ought to be. In this sense it is valuable, if not indispensable, to bringing coherence and direction to this area of the law and to providing principled guidance to judges as they grapple with specific cases

Electoral Competitiveness, Tax Bargaining and Political Incentives in Developing Countries: Evidence from Political Budget Cycles Affecting Taxation

Studies of political budget cycles in developing countries have generally sought to inform understanding of short-term fiscal dynamics, but can also offer unique insight into broader political dynamics in developing countries. This article correspondingly employs markedly improved data in order to study the impact of elections on tax collection, and draw broader lessons. It shows that while elections as a group have had no significant effect on tax collection, the subset of competitive elections has had a significant negative impact on pre-election tax collection; while this effect appears to be largest where incumbents are particularly unpopular. This provides powerful evidence that the impact of elections on political incentives in developing countries is conditioned by the existence of an electorally competitive opposition, while offering preliminary evidence that popular resistance to taxation by unpopular governments may be an important means by which taxpayers may generate pressure for improved governance

Meeting Students Where They Are: Educating Students with Varying Life Experiences About the Health Care Needs of Persons with Disabilities

Purpose: Medical students enter preclinical years with varying levels of experience with individuals with disabilities. Previous experience has been shown to have a significant impact on attitudes toward this population and, hence, has the potential to impact patient care (Tervo et. al, 2002). This study examined the impact of a one-day Interclerkship on students’ self-reports regarding specific components of their attitudes, by level and type of previous disability experience. Methodology: Students met with individuals with physical or cognitive disabilities and their families in small groups to discuss their health care needs and experiences. Students also viewed a short film regarding effective methods of communication with and modifications to the clinical encounter for individuals with physical disabilities. Afternoon workshops covered a wide array of topics including assistive technology, sexuality/childbirth, mental health, community resources and bladder management. Students reported levels of experience cognitive/physical: friends, relatives, schoolmates k-12 and college. 153 (77%) students over two years completed pre-and post-Interclerkship self-assessments that rated attitudes about medical care for patients with disabilities, using a 14-item 5-point Likert scale; means were compared by paired t-test. Students also provided course feedback. Results: There was a highly significant (pConclusions: A single-day Interclerkship improved the attitudes of students’ reporting all levels and types of disability experience

Meeting Challenges in Caring for Patients with Disabilities: An Interclerkship Course

Purpose: People with disabilities use healthcare services more than those without disabilities, yet healthcare systems often fail these individuals. Understanding the needs of those with physical and cognitive disabilities is crucial in providing them with appropriate healthcare. A one-day Interclerkship introduced third-year medical students to key challenges for physicians who care for disabled patients: (1) building trust and confidence, (2) communication, (3) anticipating secondary medical conditions, (4) appropriately modifying clinical encounters, and (5) identifying appropriate community resources. Methodology: Essential elements of patient-centered care for disabled individuals were presented in plenary sessions. In small groups, students met with individuals with physical or development disabilities, their families and their community advocates, discussing healthcare and access concerns. Other workshops, taught by clinical and community experts, addressed assistive technology, parenting challenges, mental health, community resources, sexuality, and end-of-life care. Sixty-seven (69%) students completed pre-and post-Interclerkship self-assessments that rated knowledge, skills, and attitudes about medical care for disabled patients, using a 14-item 5-point Likert scale; means were compared by paired t-test. Students also provided course feedback. Results: There was a highly significant (p80% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that the Interclerkship addressed a topic essential to physician training, providing knowledge and skills not obtained elsewhere. Conclusions: A single-day Interclerkship successfully improved third year medical students self-assessed knowledge, attitudes and skills on providing appropriate medical care for disabled patient. Presented at the AAMC (Association of American Colleges) Annual Meeting, RIME (Research in Medical Education) Program, November 2006

Theorising interprofessional pedagogic evaluation: framework for evaluating the impact of interprofessional CPD on practice change

This paper outlines the development of a conceptual framework to guide the evaluation of the impact of the pedagogy employed in continuing professional development for professionals in education, health and social care. The work is developed as part of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning: Interprofessional Learning across the Public Sector (CETL: IPPS) at the University of Southampton. The paper briefly outlines the field for pedagogic research and comments on the underpinning theories that have so far been used to guide research into interprofessional learning (IPL). It maps out the development of interprofessional CPD in its specific context as part of the CETL: IPPS with its links to a local authority undergoing service reorganisation and the role of the continuing professional development (CPD) in effecting change. It then brings together a theoretical framework with the potential toexplore, explain and evaluate the essential features of the model of pedagogy used in interprofessional CPD, in which professionals from education have for the first time been included alongside those from health and social care. The framework draws upon elements of situated learning theory, Activity Theory and Dreier’s work (2002, 1999) on trajectories of participation, particularly Personal Action Potency. By combining the resulting analytic framework with an adapted version of an established evaluation model, a theoretically-driven, practicable evaluation matrix is developed. The matrix has potential use in evaluating the impact of pedagogic input on practice change. The paper models a process for developing a conceptual framework to steer pedagogic evaluation. Such a process and the resulting matrix may be of use to other researchers who are similarly developing pedagogic evaluation

New policies create a new politics: issues of institutional design in climate change policy

Institutional design focuses on the task of providing accountability and effective monitoring of decision-making by bodies vested with the coercive powers of the state in a context where information is inherently limited, costly to acquire and asymmetrically distributed. This paper focuses on issues of institutional design in the context of climate change policy. It examines proposals advanced in the June 2008 Draft and Final Reports of the Garnaut Climate Change Review (‘Garnaut Reports’), and in the Government’s July 2008 Green Paper and December 2008 White Paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (‘Green and White Papers’) with respect to how revenues raised by the sale of emissions permits would be used; and second, the proposed governance arrangements for the emissions trading scheme

Sticky Prices, Competition and the Phillips Curve

This study analyzes how competition affects price stickiness at the micro level. On the theoretical side, I develop what I call a micro Phillips curve, i.e. a product-specific relation between inflation and economic activity conditional on inflation expectations. I find two opposing effects of competition on the slope of the micro Phillips curve. On the one hand, stronger competition leads to a higher frequency of price revaluations, implying a steeper slope. On the other hand, the stronger competition is, the less firms can transmit changes in economic activity into price changes, implying a flatter slope. Using unique product-level manufacturing panel data, I find that the latter effect clearly dominates and plays an important role in explaining price stickiness. The effect of a marginal increase in economic activity on the likelihood of a price increase is between 63% and 85% lower for products, that face very strong competition, compared to products, that face very weak competition. In line with the theory, prices of products, that face very strong competition, are also less likely to decrease in response to marginal decreases in economic activity. Moreover, it heavily depends on the degree of competition that a product faces whether, and to what extent, the micro Phillips curve is non-linear. The stronger the competition the weaker will be the non-linearity of the micro Phillips curve. My findings imply that effective business cycle policy necessitates good competition policy. Reforms which strengthen the competition in an economy will make stimulus or stabilization policy more effective. Furthermore, the results imply that stimulus or stabilization measures, that target specifically high competition firms or sectors, may be more effective than programs, that follow an indiscriminate all-round principle