Education and Promotion of Human Rights from a European and American Perspective

From introduction: "The relationship between education and implementation of programs for the protection of rights and freedoms has been substantiated by the numerous documents produced by international conferences on human rights, such as; the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights , the 1978 UNESCO International Congress in Vienna on the Teaching of Human Rights , the Congress in Seville in 1986 and in Malta in 1987, the Seminar in Geneva in 1988 celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the World Conference in Vienna on Human Rights in 1993, the Montreal International Congress on Education for Human Rights and Democracy on 1993 , and many others."(...

The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the American Constitutional Development

The thorough examination of the influence of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen on constitutions has long awaited proper implementation. The importance of the French act has never been questioned but its multi-sided impact has not been satisfactorily evaluated. With respect to the American Constitution, this problem merits a specially comprehensive study. Although the American and French politics at the end of the eighteenth century were carefully examined, the links between the constitutional developments of both countries has never been researched exhaustively. The reasons seem to be threefold. First, with exception of the American Constitution, the French Declaration preceded all other written constitutions in the world and the influence of the French act on the European constitutions seemed to be the primary subject of attention. Second, the sequence in which the American Constitution and the French Declaration were adopted naturally favored the claim of American parentage of the French act. This conclusion seemed to undermine the originality of the French Declaration and irritate the historians who believed that the key ideas of the Declaration were rooted in the philosophy of the French Enlightenment. Moreover, the American draftsmen emphasized the continuity of their constitutional works and eventually looked for roots in the British rather than in the French constitutional ideas and traditions. For these reasons, the American contribution to the process of drafting the French Declaration and the subsequent influence of the French act on the American constitutional development, particularly the formation of the American Bill of Rights, has never received desired attention

Fundamental Constitutional Rights in the New Constitutions of Eastern and Central Europe

The goal of this article is to review the efforts of the drafters. This study analyzes the process of drafting the new bills of rights against the background of the Western experience. The paper consists of two parts. The first examines the genesis of American and European constitutional protection of human rights, including the socialist concept of the bill of rights. The second is an analysis of basic constitutional rights as provided in several new constitutions and constitutional drafts of the countries of former Soviet dominance. The article also examines the actual records of these countries in human rights protection. The conclusions provide some observations on the likelihood of whether the drafters of new constitutions will reach some identifiable consensus, the possibility of a new constitutional model of human rights protection surfacing, and the applicability of the Western concepts of human rights to the East-Central European experience

Political and Legal Instruments in Supporting and Combating Terrorism: Current Developments

A historian is a prophet of the past, not of the future, and a question about the future is not a historian\u27s favorite one. With all these reservations, a historian is often compelled to trace past and present patterns in order to foresee the most likely arrangements of future events. The reflections presented below (in Part I) do not stem from the intention of the author to speculate about the prospects of Communism or discuss the alternative scenarios for the future of the Soviet bloc. They are limited to a few conclusions which can be drawn from the logical progression of recent events. The reflections in Part II address some current legal aspects of fighting international terrorism

New Era or Just One Step in the History of the Supreme Court of the United States?

The vacancy arising as a result of the death of Antonin Scalia, one of the nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, paralyzed the Court’s work for a few months. Even Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election did not immediately resolve the problem of political balance in the Court. This article, commenting on the stalemate over the Supreme Court, tries to answer some questions. Is the process of politicization of formally politically independent justices a natural result of mutual attrition of the authorities? Does the situation after Scalia’s death undermine the separation of powers, a fundamental concept for the US system? In the author\u27s opinion, the politicization of the US judicial system is not the beginning of a ‘new era’. The impact of judicial decisions on politics, and the impact of political priorities on the line of case law is embedded in the US concept of checks and balances. The US Constitution establishes this system, but does not provide mechanisms that can unequivocally resolve the described above stalemate. The activity of federal judges is limited by the nomination process. The Constitution provides no deadline binding the President and the Senate to make a nomination decision and the Supreme Court itself has clearly stated that situations such as this one do not violate the Constitution