Animals at war: the status of "animal soldiers" under international humanitarian law

In February 2014 the Taliban revealed the capture of a British military working dog in Afghanistan and posted a video of their captive on the internet. Taking this recent incident as a starting point, the contribution aims to evaluate some aspects relating to the issue of a possible incorporation of "animal soldiers" into the scope of application of international humanitarian law. For this purpose, the analysis proceeds in four main steps. In the first part, it is argued that international humanitarian law -although so far largely neglected in the respective discourses- is for a variety of reasons a particularly suitable research object from the perspective of a political theory of animal rights. Subsequently, a brief overview will be given of the current status -or rather non-status- of animals in the realm of the ius in bello. The third part addresses and discusses some of the chances resulting from as well as in particular also conceptual challenges arising in connection with a potential recognition of animals as international legal subjects having the status of combatants under the law of armed conflict. Finally, I sketch the probabilities of and possible conditions for a successful implementation of this approach in practice

CITIZENS’ INVOLVEMENT IN THE EUROPEAN UNION COMMON COMMERCIAL POLICY

The starting point of this contribution is, first, a factual observation and, second, a normative finding. Free trade agreements today often enjoys a high degree of public attention including controversial deliberations among and within political parties and have thus obviously turned into a politicized area of law. It is recognized that traditional concepts of democratic legitimacy developed under the conditions of the nation-state alone constitute an inadequate approach for legitimizing the respective transnational steering regimes. Rather, those scholars who are sympathetic towards a conceptual change of legitimacy favor more complex approaches comprising of ’input-oriented’ as well as ’output-oriented’ elements; legitimizing factors that are more appropriately qualified as alternatives to, or surrogates for, democratic legitimacy and find their overarching normative basis in the republican constitutional principle. Against this background, the contribution assesses the possibilities for the involvement of the general public as well as individual non-state actors in the two main phases of EU FTAs. This includes an evaluation of the direct and indirect participatory option during the negotiations of these agreements. Moreover, the contribution attempts to identify and assess the venues for participation by interested and affected nonstate actors in the implementation and continued progressive development of EU FTA

TERMOELEKTRYCZNE URZĄDZENIE SOLARNE DO ZASILANIA PLATFORMY POMIAROWEJ

This work presents the prototype of the solar - thermoelectric device, which can float on water surface. It produces electrical energy as a result of the Seebeck effect in a commercial, low-cost Peltier module. The main application of the device will be an autonomous and a floating measurement platform. An important advantage of the presented solution is the possibility to work alike at day, when a solar light heats the surface of the absorber, and at night, when the different of temperatures between air and water causes the heat flux and in an effect the electricity. The device is capable of working for many cloudy days and also in winter on very short days. The presented device is based on low-cost and widely available components.W pracy zaprezentowano prototypowe solarne urządzenie termoelektryczne pływające po powierzchni wody. Wytwarza ono w niedrogim, komercyjnym module Peltiera energię elektryczną w wyniku zachodzącego w nim zjawiska Seebecka. Docelowo głównym obszarem aplikacyjnym urządzenia będzie zasilanie autonomicznej, pływającej platformy pomiarowa do monitorowania parametrów środowiskowych. Istotną zaletą przedstawionego rozwiązania jest możliwość pracy zarówno w dzień, gdy światło słoneczne ogrzewa powierzchnię absorbera, jak również w nocy, gdy różnica temperatur między powietrzem a wodą powoduje powstawanie strumienia ciepła w module Peltiera. Urządzenie może pracować przez wiele pochmurnych lub krótkich dni, także w zimie. Do konstrukcji układu zastosowano relatywnie tanie i łatwo dostępne w handlu komponenty

Not Just Collective Bargaining: The Role Of Trade Unions In Creating And Maintaining A Democratic Society

This essay addresses the historical and contemporary roles which trade unions have played in creating conditions necessary for democracy to flourish. Their effectiveness in fulfilling these roles is due in large measure to the organizational characteristics which make trade unions the archetypal civil society organization: democratic representation, demographic representation, financial independence, breadth of concerns and placement within society. This essay explores these aspects of the trade union movement and suggests that advocates for democracy have cause for concern in the absence of a vibrant, and independent, domestic trade union movement

Transnational Corporations as Steering Subjects in International Economic Law: Two Competing Visions of the

Transnational corporations (TNCs) not only occupy an important status as economic actors on the international scene, but they are also political actors who are increasingly involved in the progressive development and enforcement of the regulatory structures of the international economic system. Against this background, this article focuses on the current status and potential future development of TNCs as steering subjects in international economic law (IEL). It evaluates the role played by this category of nonstate actors in two of the central public international law fields of IEL, namely the legal order of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the international regime on the protection of foreign investments. Based on this evaluation, this article argues that the multilateral framework of world trade law, on the one side, and international investment law, on the other side, serve as notable reference fields for two competing approaches to the incorporation of TNCs in the regulatory practice of the global economic system and thus to their position as steering subjects in the framework of IEL as a whole. In light of these findings, this article provides some broader conceptual thoughts on the normative guiding vision of an emerging transnational economic community as an analytical framework for assessing the future development of TNCs as steering subjects in the international economic realm. (First presented at a symposium in the context of the biannual conference of the German Law & Society Association (Vereinigung fur Recht und Gesellschaft e. V) on Transnationalism in Law, the State, and Society. This conference was organized together with the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 597 Transformations of the State at the University of Bremen from March 3-5, 2010. The Collaborative Research Center 597 \u27Transformations of the State, U. BREMEN, www.staat.uni-bremen.de