Will Donald Trump shoot down TTIP or rebrand it as the ‘Trump Trade and Investment Partnership’?

When Donald Trump takes the oath of office, he will also inherit President Obama’s legacy on trade – with negotiations towards the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) ongoing. While Trump has already stated he will axe TPP, TTIP’s future is much more uncertain. Tereza Novotna outlines five scenarios for what actions Trump may take, from ditching it completely to putting it to the “back of the queue”, to rebranding and revising it to better fit with his own realpolitik

Document Similarity of Czech Supreme Court Decisions

Retrieval of court decisions dealing with a similar legal matter is a prevalent task performed by lawyers as it is a part of a relevant decision-making practice review. In spite of the natural language processing methods that are currently available, this legal research is still mostly done through Boolean searches or by contextual retrieval. In this study, it is experimentally verified whether the doc2vec method together with cosine similarity, can automatically retrieve the Czech Supreme Court decisions dealing with a similar legal issue as a given decision. Furthermore, the limits and challenges of these methods and its application on the Czech Supreme Court decisions are discussed

The European elections in Central and Eastern EU states illustrate that the rise of Euroscepticism was far from uniform across Europe

The key story to emerge from the European elections in countries like France and the UK was the rise of Euroscepticism, but does this narrative apply to all countries across Europe? Tim Haughton and Tereza Novotna present an analysis of the elections in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries: Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia. They write that while there has been a tendency to regard CEE states as distinct from those in Western Europe, this perspective is largely outdated and analyses of EU-wide political trends should pay as much attention to smaller states in the East as they do to larger states in the West. When adopting this perspective it is apparent that the rise in Euroscepticism was not a Europe-wide trend, but rather confined to individual countries

Towards Transparent Legal Formalization

A key challenge in making a transparent formalization of a legal text is the dependency on two domain experts. While a legal expert is needed in order to interpret the legal text, a logician or a programmer is needed for encoding it into a program or a formula. Various existing methods are trying to solve this challenge by improving or automating the communication between the two experts. In this paper, we follow a different direction and attempt to eliminate the dependency on the target domain expert. This is achieved by inverting the translation back into the original text. By skipping over the logical translation, a legal expert can now both interpret and evaluate a translation

South Korea and the EU battling COVID-19: shared contribution to global health governance and human security

Commemorating the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties, the article analyzes public health governance during the COVID-19 pandemic in the EU and South Korea. Shifting focus from traditional national security to a more people-centered understanding, the article employs the human security framework to examine nuances of the global health crisis. Through this theoretical lens, the research empirically compares and contrasts the EU’s and South Korea’s differing strategies battling COVID-19 from the pandemic’s inception to the mass vaccination rollouts. While the EU’s early approach was initially marked by slower responsiveness and border closures, South Korea stood out for its swift counter-epidemic measures, leveraging technological innovations and public–private partnerships. Yet once vaccination campaigns started, South Korea had to catch up with Europe. The article chronologically presents its findings, identifying a mutual convergence in approaches with the Omicron’s emergence. In conclusion, the article distills seven key lessons from the pandemic management: the significance of independent public health institutions, the role of digitalization and transparency in fostering public trust, the shared responsibility to bridge the vaccination gap and invest in robust public health systems, and the paradigm shift towards human security combined with the resurgence of state which has to be balanced with safeguarding individual liberties and a collective global action. In addition, the article underscores potential avenues for a strengthened EU-South Korea collaboration to enhance global health governance beyond the confines of major geopolitical rivalries

Network Analysis in Law: A Literature Overview and Research Agenda

Application of network analysis in legal domain is not a new approach, however it has noted an increased interest past two years. As the network analysis methods are widely adopted in legal domain, it is the aim of this review to provide an overview of the most current efforts in this field. This review methodologically and temporely builds on the previous review of Whalen’s from 2016. Firstly, this article adresses data sample issue and the importance of complexity of datasets. In the second part it shows some repetitive trends appearing in current network analysis research results and its interpretation

Classified patents

Tento článek zpracovává problematiku utajovaných patentů. Nejprve diskutuje samotnou existenci tohoto institutu s ohledem na princip veřejnosti. Následně analyzuje právní úpravu samotného institutu na mezinárodní, evropské i národní úrovni s důrazem na přesný popis řízení o jeho udělení a se snahou definovat i dopad utajování patentu na vlastnická práva k němu. Na závěr doplňuje analýzu krátkou komparací s právní úpravou v dalších státech, kde se zaměřuje zejména na rozdílné prvky v řízení.This article comprehensively deals with the issue of secret patents, which are pa tents containing classified information. This institute therefore lies within the scope of industrial property rights and the protection of classified information. As such, it contains typical features of both legal branches, some of which are in contradiction. Therefore, the very existence of this institute, which is by its very nature non-public, is discussed with regard to the principle of disclosure, which is typical for the industrial property rights. It then analyzes the legal regulations of the institute itself at the international, European and, especially, national level, with an emphasis on the precise description of the procedure for its granting and with the effort to define the impact of the patent secrecy on property rights thereon. In particular, this part is devoted to who and how the degree of secrecy of the patent application is proposed, who decides on the degree and how this decision further affects subsequent patent proceedings. The position of the Industrial Property Office, the National Security Authority and possibly other central administrative bodies in this spe cific management are also defined. A section dealing with the analysis of the effect of patent confidentiality on the owner's property rights i salso included. This part is specific to the other text in particular by the absence of relevant norma tive and professional resources and is therefore compiled, inter alia, with the help of consultations with experts and historical text. Finally, the analysis is complemented with short comparison with legal regulations of secret patents in other countries, namely the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, where the focus is mainly on different elements in procedure and this part includes some statistics comparing the number of classified patents or patent applications. However, these data could not be obtained from all countries. The comparison is followed by de lege ferenda evaluation, which evaluates current legislation, in particular on the basis of previous comparisons, and suggests the direction of possible future changes of this legal regulation

Methane ebullition from Czech freshwater reservoirs

Metan je netoxický bezbarvý plyn, který vzniká rozkladem organických látek v anaerobním prostředí. Tyto rozkladné procesy probíhají i na dně řek, přehrad a vodních nádrží. Metan proniká do atmosféry, kde přispívá ke skleníkovému efektu a ke globálnímu oteplování. Cílem práce je popsat ebulici metanu z vybraných údolních nádrží Vranov a Vír, jako modelových nádrží temperátní zóny, a testovat faktory, které ovlivňují její variabilitu uvnitř nádrže a mezi jednotlivými nádržemi. K získání dat posloužil vědecký echolot Simrad EK60 split beam. Data byla zpracována v programu Sonar 5 a následně statisticky zpracována v programu R. Výsledky ukazují, že celkový ebuliční tok z nádrží (Vranov: 3,90 ml·m-2 ·d-1 , Vír: 4,22 ml·m-2 ·d-1 ) není signifikantně rozdílný (p = 0,40), ale je zde patrná velká variabilita mezi segmenty. V obou nádržích se vyskytují segmenty s nulovým ebuličním tokem. Vzhledem k tomu, že hloubka je úzce propojena se vzdáleností od hráze, není možné vliv těchto dvou faktorů testovat samostatně. Je tedy nutné testovat obě proměnné najednou. Pro data z nádrže Vír se po otestování obou faktorů současně jejich signifikance nepotvrdila. Pro data z nádrže Vranov také ne. Pro odseparování efektů bylo tedy nutné použít data z obou přehrad. Po použití lineárního modelu s daty z obou přehrad byl...Methane is a non-toxic colourless gas created by decomposition of organic materials in anaerobic environments. Such processes take place at bottoms of rivers, dams and water reservoirs. The gas is then released to atmosphere where it contributes to the greenhouse effect. The aim of this thesis is to measure the ebullition flux of methane from selected water reservoirs Vranov and Vír (representing typical water reservoirs in the temperate area), analyze factors affecting ebullition, and compare the ebullition flux among these two reservoirs. The data were obtained via device Simrad EK60 split beam, preprocessed in software Sonar 5, and subsequently analyzed in statistical software R. While there is a great degree of variability of ebullition flux within segments of individual water reservoirs, the total ebullition flux is comparable in both water reservoirs (Vranov: 3,90 ml·m-2 ·d-1 , Vír: 4,22 ml·m-2 ·d-1 ) and not significantly different from each other (p = 0,40). When analyzing possible factors affecting ebullition; the water depth and the distance from the dam, it is necessary to take into account that these two variables are highly correlated which may hinder our ability to separate their effects. Indeed, in both Vranov and Vir the effects of these variables, while significant when studied...Institute for Environmental StudiesÚstav pro životní prostředíFaculty of SciencePřírodovědecká fakult

Quality of life in old age

Résumé Diplomová práce se zabývá problematikou stáří, stárnutí a kvalitou života ve stáří. Kvůli demografickému vývoji nabývá problematika stáří a stárnutí na významu. S rostoucím počtem lidí v pokročilejším věku vyvstává otázka zajištění podmínek pro jejich spokojený a kvalitní život. Zaměstnanost ve stáří má v tomto ohledu svou nezastupitelnou roli. Z výsledků šetření vyplývá, že zaměstnanost ve stáří přispívá ke spokojenějšímu životu. Velká část respondentů dále uvádí, že je schopno a má zájem pracovat i po dosažení důchodového věku. To je v souladu se současným trendem posouvání termínu odchodu do důchodu do vyššího věku.Diploma thesis deals with old age, aging and quality of life in old age. Problems of old age and aging acquire an importace because of demographic development. With increasing number of people in higher age it comes a question of assuring the conditions for their satisfied and quality life. Employment in old age has in this respect its own nonsubstitutable role. From the investigation follows the results, that employment in old age supports a positive evaluation of life. Many respondents mention ability and interest to be employed also after their retirement. This agreed with contemporary trend of moving a retirement age into higher age.Department of EducationKatedra pedagogikyFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult