Global business and human rights: the UN “norms on the responsibility of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights” - a requiem

On 11 June 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council endorsed the ‘Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights’ as a new set of guiding principles for global business designed to provide a global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activity. This outcome was preceded by an earlier unsuccessful attempt by a Sub-Commission of the UN Commission on Human Rights to win approval for a set of binding corporate human rights norms, the so called “Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights”. This article identifies and discusses the reasons why the Norms eventually failed to win approval by the then UN Commission on Human Rights. This discussion is important in order to understand the difficulties in establishing binding ‘hard law’ obligations for Transnational Corporations with regard to human rights within the wider framework of international law. It is crucial to understand possible motives as well as the underlying rationale which lead first to the adoption and then the rapid abandoning of the Norms: such a discussion will also shed light on the prospects and trends of concepts of indirect, vague voluntarism of business human rights compliance, as well as on prospects of finding alternative solutions, and finally the rationale and effect of the ‘Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights’

State-based business licensing in Australia: the Constitution, economics and international perspectives

This paper considers the potential for s92 of the Commonwealth Constitution to invalidate inconsistent State-based licensing requirements in relation to the carrying out of particular occupations

Creating personas for political and social consciousness in HCI design

Personas have become an important tool for Human-Computer Interaction professionals. However, they are not immune to limitations and critique, including stereotyping. We suggest that while some of the criticisms to personas are important, the use of personas is open to them in part because of an unquestioned focus on explicating user needs and goals in traditional persona research and creation. This focus, while helping designers, obscures some other potentially relevant aspects. In particular, when the goal of the product or software being designed is associated with social and political goals rather than with bringing a product to the market, it may be relevant to focus personas on political aspirations, social values and the will or capacity of personas to take action. We argue that it is possible when producing personas (and associated scenarios) to partially move away from representing needs and embrace personas which more explicitly represent political or social beliefs and values. We also suggest that a phenomenographic approach to user data analysis is one way to achieve this. We provide empirical evidence for our position from two large-scale European projects, the first one in the area of Social Innovation and the second in the area of eParticipation

Physicality in Australian patent law

It is generally understood that the patent system exists to encourage the conception and disclosure of new and useful inventions embodied in machines and other physical devices, along with new methods that physically transform matter from one state to another. What is not well understood is whether, and to what extent, the patent system is to encourage and protect the conception and disclosure of inventions that are non-physical methods – namely those that do not result in a physical transformation of matter. This issue was considered in Grant v Commissioner of Patents. In that case the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia held that an invention must involve a physical effect or transformation to be patentable subject matter. In doing so, it introduced a physicality requirement into Australian law. What this article seeks to establish is whether the court’s decision is consistent with the case law on point. It does so by examining the key common law cases that followed the High Court’s watershed decision in National Research Development Corporation v Commissioner of Patents, the undisputed authoritative statement of principle in regard to the patentable subject matter standard in Australia. This is done with a view to determining whether there is anything in those cases that supports the view that the Australian patentable subject matter test contains a physicality requirement

Standard of proof, unpredictable behaviour and the High Court of Australia's verdict on preventive detention laws

Preventive detention laws authorize courts to order the continued detention in prison of a person who has served their allocated term of imprisonment, but who are thought to be at risk of re-offending if released. They raise fundamental issues about the separation of powers, the purpose of incarceration, and the standard of proof which is/should be required to authorize detention. They assume that it is possible to predict, with a satisfactory rate of success, whether or not a past offender would if released commit further offences. Recently, a majority of the High Court of Australia validated such legislation. The author in this article explains his reasons for disagreeing with the verdict of the Court in this matter

Control orders post 9-11 and human rights in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada: a Kafkaesque dilemma?

This article aims to assess the impact that the European Convention of Human Rights, incorporated into British law through the Human Rights Act 1998, has had on the control order regime in the United Kingdom. It will discuss recent British jurisprudence on the topical question whether there can be a true balance between the civil liberties of an individual and the need to protect state and society from a continuing terrorist threat. The article compares the UK’s present control order system of summer 2010 with similar legislation, which the Commonwealth jurisdictions of Australia and Canada enacted to protect their nations from the threat of terrorism. It will conclude with a discussion of possible reforms as well as other security measures that have been identified as alternatives to control orders and which form the basis of present UK governmental initiatives to limit scope and impact of Anti Terrorism Legislation

Reflections on public health policy in the food regulatory system: challenges, and opportunities for nutrition and food law experts to collaborate

Diet-related diseases such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer are reaching epidemic proportions in many developed countries. Although there are increasing calls across the food regulatory system for interventions to help protect and promote public health, there is not astrong history of collaboration between public health nutritionists and food law experts in this area. This article explores the challenges facing public health nutritionists and food law experts and their opportunities to collaborate in the food regulatory system. Through a reflection on experiences with food fortification and food labelling policy debates,challenges to the objective of protecting public health and safety in the food regulatory system are identified. These challenges include: the absence of a coherent food and nutrition policy; the lack of a clear definition of what ismeant by the objective ‘to protect public health and safety’; capacity constraints; and limitations imposed by dominant regulatory reform agendas. Two case studies are provided to describe opportunities that are being pursued for public health nutritionists and food law experts to collaborate in the food regulatory system. The first case study describes aresearch project investigating reform of the Australian food regulatory system in relation to obesity prevention. The second case study describes a research proposal to review the role of nutrition in decision-making within the Australian food regulatory system. The paper concludes that, to becomemore effective when working across the food regulatory system to protect and promote public health, public health nutritionists and food law experts need to collaborate more strategically in research and practice

Post-disaster fiction for young adults : some trends and variations

In the forty years or so since it began to develop as a sub-genre of young adult fiction, post-disaster fiction has commented on a range of issues, including perceived social fears of the time, the nature of various types of society, and what people need in order to be truly human. This paper explores how young adult post-disaster fiction makes comment on these and other issues. It argues that within this genre there are three connected sub-genres, with the disaster having a different function in each, and the nature of the comments made by each of these sub-genres tending also to be different. As its title suggests, this paper includes texts in which the focus is on life after the disaster. The genre&rsquo;s strong link with both the nature of young adult fiction and with adolescence itself suggests that it will continue to flourish as a sub-genre.<br /

Louie, Louis: the fictional, stage, and auteur personas of Louis C.K. in Louie

This paper examines stand-up comedy in light of the persona studies idea of proliferation of the public self to consider the ways comedians are represented and self-presented. Stand-up comedy as a performance mode deploys a literal version of Goffman’s front-stage and back-stage personas, raising questions about who comedians “really” are. Where the simultaneous observation of the on- and off-stage personas of comedy performers was previously only afforded in representational fiction, the diversification of what constitutes on-stage space for comedians has provided opportunities for comedians to perform versions of their back-stage selves in a broader variety of public, front-stage spaces. In the case of American comedian Louis C.K., his television series Louie has proven to be a liminal entity that operates in the spirit of presentational media, while produced, constructed, and distributed as representational media. This paper examines Louie to articulate cultural understandings of the front-stage and back-stage personas of personal, confessional comedians like C.K. who present aspects of their private lives in their public work. In addition, I look at how C.K. asserts his public persona as a self-presentational meta-presence within the representational depiction of his fictionalised self on television. The result is a step toward considering self-performance in the front- and back-stage personas of stand-up comedians, and how representational media with a distinct authorial voice can act in the spirit of presentational media