Hans Kelsen: A Peacemaker Through Law

Mario Patrono has made many visits to New Zealand, and to Victoria University of Wellington School of Law in particular, during the course of his career. Most recently he has been a Visiting Professor at the Law School, arriving for the first trimester of 2013, 2014, and soon 2015, enjoying Wellington's calmer autumn months, then sensibly returning to Rome before winter takes hold. During each of these visits Professor Patrono leads a seminar class on the fundamentals of European Union law for honours and masters students. He also contributes to the intellectual life of the Law School more generally, speaking at staff and student events. This article is based on one of those speaking engagements. The context of this talk was a Law School student seminar on the history and theory of international law led by Dr Guy Sinclair. Professor Patrono was invited to introduce the students to the work of Hans Kelsen. In this lecture he outlines Kelsen's background and key works for this audience, touching on subjects such as Kelsen's departure from Europe and early reception in the United States, before challenging those present with the notion that Kelsen's work might have something to offer New Zealand constitutional scholarship

International Law and Global Politics in a Post-Pandemic World: Homo Sapiens?

This article discusses the Coronavirus pandemic: A deep wound destined, sooner or later, to heal, or instead sow the seed of a global revolution? The first part examines the history of war and peace among nations to propose the idea of an International Court of Justice endowed with compulsory jurisdiction as the first step towards the creation of a world State. The second part further considers a changed New Global Order in the face of crises

Kelsen Before Kelsen – Reflections on Hans Kelsen's Die Staatslehre des Dante Alighieri

In this article, I reflect on Hans Kelsen's first work, Die Staatslehre des Dante Alighieri, which was written in 1905 while he was still a student. There is no English translation of Die Staatslehre. These "reflections" based on the Italian edition of the book are dedicated to the honour of a scholar and a gentleman, Gordon Anderson

Protection of Fundamental Rights by Constitutional Courts - A Comparative Perspective

"Man", said Benjamin Franklin, "is a tool-making animal". A major contribution of 20th century Western legal thought to tool-making was possibly the publication in 1914 of Reichgesetz und Landesgesetz nach der österreichen Verfassung1 by Hans Kelsen, a Czech lawyer, but Austrian by adoption. Kelsen is noted for his "pure theory of law". By conferring upon a special constitutional court the exclusive power to rule on the constitutionality of legislation and to refuse to enforce legislation that in its judgment violated the constitution, Kelsen found a way for the United States pattern of constitutional adjudication (as established in 1803 by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v Madison) to work in countries which have (as in the United States) a written and "rigid" Basic Law, and even where the doctrine of precedent does not operate.This is a very short history of the development of that Kelsen "tool" and an evaluation of it

Do VERTIS-CV trial results question a class-effect of cardiovascular protection with sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors?

VERTIS-CV was planned according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) former guidelines to assess the CV safety of new glucose-lowering drugs (recently updated to evaluate safety more broadly). Therefore, this study was originally designed and powered to show non-inferiority of ertugliflozin compared to placebo with respect to CV outcomes in high-risk patients with type 2 diabetes. From this point of view, the ‘mission’ was accomplished since VERTIS-CV results showed non-inferiority of ertugliflozin compared to placebo. However, based on previous studies showing positive effects of other SGLT2i on CV and renal outcomes, the VERTIS-CV protocol had been amended to reflect a doubling of the original sample size and inclusion of efficacy objectives for superiority

Chaebol and Korea\u27s Industrial Finance

The Korean economy is based on a government led and export oriented growth model centered on business groups or conglomerates known as chaebols which have close relationships with the government. The government led growth model, also known as Guided or Managed Capitalism, relies on a government dominated, but privately owned, business sector. The private business sector is itself dominated by chaebols which are family owned or controlled business groups. These groups are supported by preferential relationships with the government. While the chaebol system was an important element of South Korea\u27s early industrial growth, it ultimately had to be reformed. The access to cheap and easy credit as well as protected domestic markets led many chaebols to make poor investment decisions. The weaknesses of the chaebols became apparent during the Asian financial crisis. Many of them collapsed in a short period of time because they were heavily invested in export-oriented industries, and thus exposed to the risk of a downturn in foreign markets

Phylogenetically distinct equine influenza viruses show different tropism for the swine respiratory tract

Influenza A viruses circulate in a wide range of animals. H3N8 equine influenza virus (EIV) is an avian-origin virus that has established in dogs as canine influenza virus (CIV) and has also been isolated from camels and pigs. Previous work suggests that adaptive mutations acquired during EIV evolution might have played a role in CIV emergence. Given the potential role of pigs as a source of human infections, we determined the ability of H3N8 EIVs to replicate in pig cell lines and in respiratory explants. We show that evolutionary distinct EIVs display different infection phenotypes along the pig respiratory tract, but not in cell lines. Our results suggest that EIV displays a dynamic host range along its evolutionary history, supporting the view that evolutionary processes play important roles on host range and tropism, and also underscore the utility of using explants cultures to study influenza pathogenesis