Illiberalism within: rule of law backsliding in the EU

How should the European Union cope with Member States that no longer respect the basic values of the Union? This article reviews the responses of the major European Union institutions to Poland and Hungary as their governments removed checks on their power, eliminated the independence of judiciaries and failed to honour their European commitments. As the article demonstrates, the responses of EU institutions have so far been ineffective in bringing these Member States back into line with European values. We examine the various proposals that have been made to do better, concluding that there is promise in some legal strategies that are available now, but have yet to be tried

The role of collective narcissism in populist attitudes and the collapse of democracy in Hungary

What are the psychological processes responsible for the recent spread of populist political systems and movements? All political systems essentially reflect the mental representations of their populations, and collective narcissism has recently emerged as a contributing factor in the rise of populism. This article presents two studies examining the role of collective narcissism in predicting populist attitudes and voting intentions in Hungary. Hungary offers a particularly important case study of state-sponsored populism and illiberalism in Europe, as this country has gone furthest in undermining democratic principles and practices within the EU. To establish the pervasive role of collective narcissism we first review the historical evidence, survey research, and narrative analyses of Hungarian political representations. We then present two empirical studies where we predicted and found that collective narcissism was a significant predictor of negative attitudes toward the EU (Study 1), conservatism, and support for the ruling populist party (Studies 1 and 2). Collective narcissism predicted these variables independently from other factors, such as in-group positivity or perceived relative deprivation. However, once conservatism was controlled for the effects of collective narcissism faded out in some cases. The results nevertheless indicate that collective narcissism plays important role in promoting populist politics. The implications of these findings for understanding the psychological appeal of populism and illiberalism are discussed

Jury Systems Around the World

Lay citizens participate as decision makers in the legal systems of many countries. This review describes the different approaches that countries employ to integrate lay decision makers, contrasting in particular the use of juries composed of all citizens with mixed decision-making bodies of lay and law-trained judges. The review discusses research on the benefits and drawbacks of lay legal decision making as well as international support for the use of ordinary citizens as legal decision makers, with an eye to explaining a recent increase in new jury systems around the world. The review calls for more comparative work on diverse approaches to lay participation, examining how different methods of including lay participation promote or detract from fact finding, legal consciousness, civic engagement, and citizen power

Advances in structure elucidation of small molecules using mass spectrometry

The structural elucidation of small molecules using mass spectrometry plays an important role in modern life sciences and bioanalytical approaches. This review covers different soft and hard ionization techniques and figures of merit for modern mass spectrometers, such as mass resolving power, mass accuracy, isotopic abundance accuracy, accurate mass multiple-stage MS(n) capability, as well as hybrid mass spectrometric and orthogonal chromatographic approaches. The latter part discusses mass spectral data handling strategies, which includes background and noise subtraction, adduct formation and detection, charge state determination, accurate mass measurements, elemental composition determinations, and complex data-dependent setups with ion maps and ion trees. The importance of mass spectral library search algorithms for tandem mass spectra and multiple-stage MS(n) mass spectra as well as mass spectral tree libraries that combine multiple-stage mass spectra are outlined. The successive chapter discusses mass spectral fragmentation pathways, biotransformation reactions and drug metabolism studies, the mass spectral simulation and generation of in silico mass spectra, expert systems for mass spectral interpretation, and the use of computational chemistry to explain gas-phase phenomena. A single chapter discusses data handling for hyphenated approaches including mass spectral deconvolution for clean mass spectra, cheminformatics approaches and structure retention relationships, and retention index predictions for gas and liquid chromatography. The last section reviews the current state of electronic data sharing of mass spectra and discusses the importance of software development for the advancement of structure elucidation of small molecules

Judging Under Stress

This chapter reflects on the many jurisdictions in which judges are finding that their own legitimacy is called into question. These materials map efforts to reconfigure courts, force the retirement of some judges, select others, and change judges’ decision-making authority

"It is not my intention to be a killjoy..." : objecting to a licence application : the complainers

This paper explores the constructed nature of legal complaints through the adoption of a socio-linguistic model with an emphasis upon pragmatics and elements of conversation analysis. When making a legal complaint, we posit that there is a conflict between effective communication and the uptake of politeness strategies. Furthermore, how complaints are ‘worked up’ in situ is a product of the arena in which such complaints are made. Through a textual analysis of the methods of complaining adopted by those who make representations to the licensing authority, for the purposes of objecting to a licence application, we show the tension between making oneself clear and being polite, and how complaints in different settings take different forms. We conclude by exploring the implications of our findings for legal processes—is it reasonable, for instance, to talk of ‘consistency’ in testimony if each complaint is worked up in situ—and for pragmatic theory more generally, i.e the applicability of Brown and Levinson’s politeness model for legal processes