Charter

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Kinds of Charter

  • innovation charter
  • product innovation charter

  • Terms modified by Charter

  • charter school

  • Selected Abstracts


    UNDER THE BARRED UMBRELLA: IS THERE ROOM FOR A WOMEN-CENTERED SELF-INJURY POLICY IN CANADIAN CORRECTIONS?

    CRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 1 2006
    JENNIFER M. KILTY
    Research Summary: This article examines a chain of policy directives concerning self-injury inside federal correctional facilities in Canada. Specific attention is paid to the impact of these policies on federally sentenced women. I argue that the Correctional Service of Canada's focus on risk assessment fails to address the needs of the women they confine. Instead, women's needs are reconceptualized as institutional risk factors. Policy Implications: Women who self-injure are still routinely disciplined for their behaviour in Federal Canadian prisons through admittance to administrative segregation. This policy challenges two sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (s. 7 and s. 15) and must be changed. In this article, I will recommend a new women-centered approach to replace current practice. [source]


    Locating Responsibility: The Sphere Humanitarian Charter and Its Rationale

    DISASTERS, Issue 2 2004
    James Darcy
    Criticised by some as a technical initiative that neglects core principles, Sphere was seen by its originators precisely as an articulation of principle. The Humanitarian Charter was the main vehicle through which this was expressed, but its relationship to the Minimum Standards has remained a matter of uncertainty. Specifically, it was unclear in the original (1999) edition of Sphere how the concept of rights informed the Minimum Standards. The revised (2004) edition goes some way to clarifying this in the way the standards are framed, yet the link between the standards and the charter remains unclear. The concern with the quality and accountability of humanitarian assistance, which motivated the attempt to establish system-wide standards through the Sphere Project, was accompanied by a desire to establish such actions in a wider framework of legal and political responsibility. In part, this reflects the conditional nature of the undertaking that agencies make when they adopt Sphere. This aspect of the charter has been neglected, but it is fundamental to an understanding of the standards and their application. This paper considers the rationale of the Sphere Humanitarian Charter and the conceptual model that underpins it. It discusses the relationship between the charter and the Minimum Standards, and the sense in which the latter are properly called ,rights-based' (explored further in a related paper herein by Young and Taylor). The author was closely involved in the conception and drafting of the charter, and this paper attempts to convey some of the thinking that lay behind it. [source]


    Still in Deficit: Rights, Regulation, and Democracy in the EU1

    EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 6 2006
    Richard Bellamy
    Recently two groups of theorists have argued neither deficit need prove problematic. The first group adopts a rights-based view of democracy and claims that a European consensus on rights, as represented by the Charter of Fundamental European Rights, can offer the basis of citizen allegiance to EU wide democracy, thereby overcoming the demos deficit. The second group adopts a public-interest view of democracy and argues that so long as delegated authorities enact policies that are ,for' the people, then the absence of institutional forms that facilitate democracy ,by' the people are likewise unnecessary,indeed, in certain areas they may be positively harmful. This article argues that both views are normatively and empirically flawed. This is because there is no consensus on rights or the public interest apart from the majority view of a demos secured through parliamentary institutions. To the extent that these remain absent at the EU level, a democratic deficit continues to exist. [source]


    The General Provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

    EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2002
    R. Alonso García
    The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union provides the Union with a ,more evident' (as the European Council of Cologne asked for) framework of protection of the individuals before the public authorities within the European context, after more than thirty years (since the Stauder Case) of full confidence in the leading role played by the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Communities. This new normative catalogue of fundamental rights (included the so called ,aspirational fundamental rights') implies one more instrument of protection which has to find its own place with regard to the protection afforded by the national Constitutions and the international agreements on human rights, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights, which are already a privileged source of inspiration for Court of Justice of the European Communities. It is the main objective of the General Provisions of the Charter to clarify which is that place and the relationship with those other levels of protection as managed by their supreme interpreters (i.e., the Constitutional,or Supreme,Courts of the Member States of the Union and the European Court of Human Rights). [source]


    The Law beneath Rights' Feet.

    EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2002
    Preliminary Investigation for a Study of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union
    This article is meant as a philosophical preface to the study of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. In particular, attention is focused on a particular legal positivistic reading of legislation as a political moment which would not allow for transcendental rights. This view is rejected by pointing out how much the notion of citizenship and consequently of fundamental rights is central for the democratic, and in some case even for the legal positivistic, celebration of legislation. In the last section a few conclusions are drawn as far as the scope of the Charter is concerned. In particular, any interpretation of it in the framework of the so,called regulatory paradigm (which gives up the democratic connection between deliberation and representation) is considered incoherent and self,defeating. In addition the principle of indivisibility of rights is evoked in defence of the validity of social rights within the Charter. [source]


    Europe in Search of its Civil Society

    EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 2 2002
    Olivier De Schutter
    Building upon the experience of the Convention for the elaboration of the Charter of fundamental rights and upon the suggestions of the White Paper on European Governance, this article puts forward proposals for a better involvement of the ,civil society' in the system of the European Union. It offers a general diagnosis of the misunderstandings surrounding the notion of ,civil society' and the relationship of representative democracy to participatory democracy. It then draws some lessons from the experiment in deliberative democracy which led to the drafting of the Charter of fundamental rights. Finally, it focuses on the contribution the organisations of the civil society can make to good governance in the European Union. Altogether, the proposals presented tend to encourage a better structuration of the actors of the civil society. Such a structuration, the article concludes, although it is usually considered with suspicion even by those whom it would most benefit, must be seen instead as a condition for the effective exercise of whichever participatory rights might be granted to the organisations of the civil society. [source]


    Constitutions, Constitutionalism, and the European Union

    EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 2 2001
    Paul Craig
    The institutional reforms of the EU, coupled with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, have fuelled the debate about a European Constitution. This paper begins by examining the nature of constitutions and constitutionalism. The focus then turns to the EU itself. It is argued that the Community has indeed been transformed into a constitutional legal order, and that the arguments to the contrary are not convincing. This does not however mean that the EU has, or should have, a European Constitution cognisable as such which draws together the constitutional articles of the Treaties, together with the constitutional principles articulated by the European Court of Justice. The difficulties with this strategy are examined in detail, and the conclusion is that we should not at present pursue this course. It would be better to draw on the valuable work done by the European University Institute in its recent study in order to simplify and consolidate the Treaties. [source]


    Turning principles into practice in Alzheimer's disease

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PRACTICE, Issue 9 2010
    J. Lindesay
    Summary The prevalence of dementia is reaching epidemic proportions globally, but there remain a number of issues that prevent people with dementia, their families and caregivers, from taking control of their condition. In 2008, Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI) launched a Global Alzheimer's Disease Charter, which comprises six principles that underscore the urgency for a more ambitious approach to diagnosis, treatment and care. This review highlights some of the most important aspects and challenges of dementia diagnosis and treatment. These issues are reviewed in light of the six principles of the recent ADI Charter: promoting dementia awareness and understanding; respecting human rights; recognizing the key role of families and caregivers; providing access to health and social care; stressing the importance of optimal diagnosis and treatment; and preventing dementia through improvements in public health. The authors continue to hope that, one day, a cure for Alzheimer's disease will be found. Meanwhile, healthcare professionals need to unite in rising to the challenge of managing all cases of dementia, using the tools available to us now to work toward improved patient care. [source]


    Factors associated with constructive staff,family relationships in the care of older adults in the institutional setting

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EVIDENCE BASED HEALTHCARE, Issue 4 2006
    Emily Haesler BN PGradDipAdvNsg
    Abstract Background, Modern healthcare philosophy espouses the virtues of holistic care and acknowledges that family involvement is appropriate and something to be encouraged due to the role it plays in physical and emotional healing. In the aged care sector, the involvement of families is a strong guarantee of a resident's well-being. The important role family plays in the support and care of the older adult in the residential aged care environment has been enshrined in the Australian Commonwealth Charter of Residents' Rights and Responsibilities and the Aged Care Standards of Practice. Despite wide acknowledgement of the importance of family involvement in the healthcare of the older adult, many barriers to the implementation of participatory family care have been identified in past research. For older adults in the healthcare environment to benefit from the involvement of their family members, healthcare professionals need an understanding of the issues surrounding family presence in the healthcare environment and the strategies to best support it. Objectives, The objectives of the systematic review were to present the best available evidence on the strategies, practices and organisational characteristics that promote constructive staff,family relationships in the care of older adults in the healthcare setting. Specifically this review sought to investigate how staff and family members perceive their relationships with each other; staff characteristics that promote constructive relationships with the family; and interventions that support staff,family relationships. Search strategy, A literature search was performed using the following databases for the years 1990,2005: Ageline, APAIS Health, Australian Family and Society Abstracts (FAMILY), CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Dare, Dissertation Abstracts, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Social Science Index. Personal communication from expert panel members was also used to identify studies for inclusion. A second search stage was conducted through review of reference lists of studies retrieved during the first search stage. The search was limited to published and unpublished material in English language. Selection criteria, The review was limited to studies involving residents and patients within acute, subacute, rehabilitation and residential settings, aged over 65 years, their family and healthcare staff. Papers addressing family members and healthcare staff perceptions of their relationships with each other were considered for this review. Studies in this review also included those relating to interventions to promote constructive staff,family relationships including organisational strategies, staff,family meetings, case conferencing, environmental approaches, etc. The review considered both quantitative and qualitative research and opinion papers for inclusion. Data collection and analysis, All retrieved papers were critically appraised for eligibility for inclusion and methodological quality independently by two reviewers, and the same reviewers collected details of eligible research. Appraisal forms and data extraction forms designed by the Joanna Briggs Institute as part of the QARI and NOTARI systematic review software packages were used for this review. Findings, Family members' perceptions of their relationships with staff showed that a strong focus was placed on opportunities for the family to be involved in the patient's care. Staff members also expressed a theoretical support for the collaborative process, however, this belief often did not translate to the staff members' clinical practice. In the studies included in the review staff were frequently found to rely on traditional medical models of care in their clinical practice and maintaining control over the environment, rather than fully collaborating with families. Four factors were found to be essential to interventions designed to support a collaborative partnership between family members and healthcare staff: communication, information, education and administrative support. Based on the evidence analysed in this systematic review, staff and family education on relationship development, power and control issues, communication skills and negotiating techniques is essential to promoting constructive staff,family relationships. Managerial support, such as addressing workloads and staffing issues; introducing care models focused on collaboration with families; and providing practical support for staff education, is essential to gaining sustained benefits from interventions designed to promote constructive family,staff relationships. [source]


    The Ottawa Charter,from nursing theory to practice: Insights from the area of alcohol and other drugs

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NURSING PRACTICE, Issue 4 2000
    Morgan Smith RN
    This article aims to assist nursing services to use the Ottawa Charter as a framework for nursing practice. Incorporation of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion into a nursing structure constitutes an innovation in nursing practice that was evaluated as a quality improvement exercise in a health-care organization responsible for providing services in the area of alcohol and other drugs. The evaluation consisted of two stages and sought to identify the degree to which the framework was effective in practice. This involved identifying issues surrounding the implementation of the Ottawa Charter as a framework for nursing practice as well as identifying the means by which quality improvements could occur. The evaluation involved an initial questionnaire to all nursing staff, followed by a series of focus groups. The data collected was both informative and enlightening and revealed a range of pertinent issues such as staff understanding and interpretation of the Ottawa Charter, expansion of the nurse's role and suggestions for organizational change. The Ottawa Charter strategies are discussed in relation to their relevance to the organization under evaluation and also expanded into recommendations to assist those contemplating using the Ottawa Charter as a framework for nursing practice. There was considerable agreement among the respondents that the Ottawa Charter provided a useful framework for nursing practice, but was on occasions problematic. [source]


    Dental health of 5-year-olds following community-based oral health promotion in Glasgow, UK

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PAEDIATRIC DENTISTRY, Issue 6 2006
    Y. BLAIR
    Summary., Aim., A community development oral health promotion programme based on the principles of the Ottawa Charter was conducted in an attempt to improve the dental health of children under 5 years of age in two severely socioeconomically challenged pilot districts in Glasgow, UK. Later phased extension involved all of the area's most deprived communities. The aim of the present study was to assess dental health outcomes by secondary analysis of routine caries datasets for Glasgow 5-year-olds over the interval from 1997,1998 to 2003,2004. Design., Wilcoxon tests assessed change in d3mft scores and logistic regression was used to analyse binomial scores (e.g. % d3mft = 0). Results., After adjusting for age and deprivation (DepCat) in pilot districts 1 and 2, significant redistributions of the relative frequency of d3mft scores were observed (P = 0·012 and P < 0·001, respectively), mean d3mft decreased from 5·5 to 3·6 and from 6·0 to 3·6, respectively, and the proportions with d3mft = 0 increased from 11% to 29% and from 10% to 32%, respectively [P = 0·010, odds ratio (OR) = 0·25, and P = 0·006, OR = 0·30, respectively, for d3mft > 0]. Following extension of the programme into all of Glasgow's socioeconomically challenged areas, the mean d3mft values of 5-year-olds reduced in all DepCat 7 communities, and across Glasgow as a whole from 4·9 to 4·1 and from 3·5 to 3·1, respectively, while the proportion with d3mft = 0 increased from 20% to 32% (P < 0·001) and from 34% to 42% (P < 0·001), respectively. Conclusion., Dental health improvements were observed in pilot districts and across all DepCat 7 communities following the roll-out of the programme. This change was of sufficient magnitude to impact upon area-wide statistics for Glasgow. [source]


    "Grab the Signatures and Run": Federal Unity Strategy in Canada from the Referendum to Patriation

    INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2009
    Neal Carter
    Whether as a traumatic event or great accomplishment, the legacy of the First Ministers' Conference of 1981 lives on in Canadian politics. Constitutional negotiations among the prime minister and provincial premiers in 1981 produced the only "packaged" agreement since Confederation to achieve even the minimal support necessary to achieve ratification. The resulting Constitution Act of 1982, which included the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, remains in place and is the principal manifestation of intergovernmental bargaining from over two decades ago. This study reevaluates the strategic interaction and conflict processes that took place between Ottawa and the provinces in negotiations leading up to that fateful November 1981 conference. We apply the sociological framework for assessment of the dynamics of identity contention adopted from McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001) and find tentative support for its propositions. After an overview of the article's agenda, we present an analytic framework for the study of conflict processes. Second, the background to the constitutional crisis of 1980-81 is summarized. Using the analytic framework, the third section focuses on the federal strategy in the crisis as suggested by minutes from cabinet meetings, and the fourth section examines key events of the First Ministers Conference of November 1981. Fifth, and finally, the contributions of the preceding sections are summed up and ideas are put forward for further research. [source]


    Development of a community health promotion center based on the World Health Organization's Ottawa Charter health promotion strategies

    JAPAN JOURNAL OF NURSING SCIENCE, Issue 2 2009
    Chung Yul LEE
    Abstract Aim:, To describe the development process of nursing school-led community health promotion centers (CHPC) to improve the health of the surrounding communities. Methods:, This study design was a research and development study. (i) Assessment of health needs by interviewing 359 people in the community to select health programs for the community health promotion center. (ii) Five health promotion strategies from the Ottawa Charter were applied to develop the community health promotion center for a city community. Results:, (i) The people in the community had higher socioeconomic status levels and better health behaviors compared to the general Korean population, and they also listed chronic health problem management as their first priority health service. (ii) Development of the community health promotion center was done based on the five World Health Organization's Ottawa Charter Health Promotion Strategies: build healthy public policy, create supportive environments, strengthen community actions, develop personal skills, and reorient health services. Conclusions:, The present study showed that the WHO's five Ottawa Charter Health Promotion Strategies were useful for developing health promotion centers in the community. [source]


    Migrants as Minorities: Integration and Inclusion in the Enlarged European Union,

    JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 4 2005
    RYSZARD CHOLEWINSKI
    The developing migration and asylum law and policy of the European Union aim to construct a common normative framework to address the admission and residence of diverse categories of third-country nationals in EU territory. The principles of minority protection, however, are absent from EU law, with the exception of some references in the new Constitutional Treaty and the incorporated Charter of Fundamental Rights, although they have been employed, to a certain degree, in a prescriptive and pragmatic way in the context of the accession of new Member States. However, increased EU attention to the concept of integration in recent Council policy pronouncements and newly adopted legal measures, aimed almost exclusively at lawfully resident third-country nationals, provides a space where migration policy and minority protection principles may engage more directly. This article undertakes a preliminary assessment of the points of convergence and divergence in these two sets of principles, and argues that greater convergence would result in a more coherent EU policy on integration. [source]


    The Strategic Use of Demand-side Diversity Pressure in the Solicitors' Profession

    JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2010
    Joanne P. Braithwaite
    There has been a long line of official initiatives seeking to address the poor record of the solicitors' profession on diversity. One of the latest, the Law Society's 2009 Diversity Charter and Protocol, attempts to harness client pressure as a way of bringing about change. The objective of the paper is to assess this strategic use of ,demand-side diversity pressure' in the solicitors' profession, contextualizing the strategy and using different perspectives to assess it. The paper first considers the strategy as a development of ,business case' arguments for diversity and explores the implications of scholarly objections to this approach. Secondly, the paper uses empirical data from the City law firm sector to explore the nature and practical effects of demand-side diversity pressures within law firms. I conclude by considering the prospects of the Law Society's scheme having a meaningful effect, factoring in the possible effects of the ongoing global economic crisis. [source]


    The role of civil society in European integration

    JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2001
    Beatrice Rangoni Machiavelli
    Abstract This paper explores the concept of ,civic society' in Western political thought, charting the changing understanding of this concept through history and its manifestation in contemporary political and social life. The paper draws out the inferences for our understanding of the role of government, particularly with the European Union and its relationship with citizens and other representative community-based and non-governmental organisations. The paper argues that the fundamental values that are central to civic society underpin the proposed EU Charter on Fundamental Rights and maintains that effective European integration requires responsible participation by Europe's citizens. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications [source]


    The Impact of Legal Mobilization and Judicial Decisions: The Case of Official Minority-Language Education Policy in Canada for Francophones Outside Quebec

    LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
    Troy Q. Riddell
    The article investigates the impact of legal mobilization and judicial decisions on official minority-language education (OMLE) policy in the Canadian provinces outside Quebec, using the "factor-oriented" and "dispute-centered" theories of judicial impact developed by U.S. scholars. The Canadian Supreme Court's decision in Mahé v. Alberta (1990), which broadly interpreted Section 23 of the Charter of Rights to include management and control of OMLE programs and schools, along with federal funding to the provinces to implement OMLE policy, are important to explaining OMLE policy change as predicted by the factor-oriented approach. The dispute-centered approach, on the other hand, helps us understand how the Charter of Rights and judicial decisions shaped the goals and discourse of Francophone groups in the policy process and, more instrumentally, provided opportunity structures that Francophone groups exploited effectively. The article concludes that both approaches to explaining judicial impact could be accommodated within an institutional model of judicial impact that construes institutions as state actors, as sets of rules, and as frameworks of meaning and interpretation. Such an approach would allow for the development of a more comparative model of judicial impact. [source]


    Déjà Vu all over again: Charter reform fails in St. Louis

    NATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2005
    Robert A. Cropf
    Editor's note: There is a lively ongoing debate in this country over the forms of organization and the distribution of powers within local government, especially when it comes to the critical question of mayoral leadership. The following essay is an account of a failed attempt to change St. Louis's city charter. Because the National Civic League's Community Services program played a role in facilitating the discussion leading up to the proposal of charter amendments, we would like to emphasize that as with most essays and reports published in this journal, the analysis and conclusions herein represent the perspectives of the authors, or in some cases the participants they interviewed, and not necessarily those of National Civic League staff. We hope this essay will stimulate further discussion and debate on these critical issues of concern. [source]


    Crossing Borders: Globalization as Myth and Charter in American Transnational Consumer Marketing

    AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 2 2000
    Kalman Applbaum
    In this article, I explore the strategic practices and cultural theories of marketing managers in three U.S.-based transnational corporations (TNCs) as seek to meaningfully direct their products across national borders. While cultural anthropologists have lately focused on local adaptation and appropriation of TNCs' products to local meanings, the reverse process by which TNCs co-opt local meanings to a universalizing evolutionary paradigm,in what they have come to regard as a consumption-led new global order,has not been examined. Globalization is explored as a key cultural concept driving marketing managers' practices,the myth and charter behind large TNC border crossings. [consumer marketing, globalization, transnational corporations, United States] [source]


    Childhood obesity: political developments in Europe and related perspectives for future action on prevention

    OBESITY REVIEWS, Issue 1 2008
    D. Fussenegger
    Summary The dramatically increasing prevalence of obesity, especially among children, has become a major public health problem in Europe. In reaction to this alarming trend, a series of initiatives and actions has been launched in recent years. As the potential impact of these activities is widely unknown so far, we underline the need for adequate evaluation of these measures. The aim of this paper is to report the latest developments in the fight against obesity at different political levels across Europe, with special attention to the major results of the recent World Health Organization European Ministerial Conference on Counteracting Obesity. In accordance with the main principles of the European Charter on Counteracting Obesity adopted at the meeting, immediate action should be taken now by implementing the few available schemes with proven effectiveness. Finally, given the lack of appropriate evaluation, we consider it particularly important to establish national research centres to collect country-specific data that are to be evaluated together by a central European administration department. Based on the results of such a comprehensive data pool, concrete strategies could be developed for future policy building. [source]


    The Origins of American Power in Iraq, 1941,1945

    PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 3 2009
    Christopher O'Sullivan
    Utilizing archival sources in both the United States and Britain to describe the changes in American policy in Iraq during World War II, and tracing the emergence of the United States as an important factor in Iraq's politics and history, the authors challenge the notion that the United States was a passive bystander to events there during the war. Washington initially followed the British lead, but, beginning in 1942, the United States became more assertive in its relations with Iraq, with American diplomats, State Department officials, postwar planners, and intelligence officers promoting the ideals of the Atlantic Charter while simultaneously aiming to secure Iraq's petroleum and tying it into a network of Western alliances. Iraq's vital strategic position and its rich petroleum resources made it an important part, along with Saudi Arabia and Iran, of the American effort to secure, militarily and economically, the oil-rich Gulf region for the West in the postwar era. [source]


    Is Constitutional Politics like Politics ,At Home'?

    POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2008
    The Case of the EU Constitution
    A large number of delegates from different institutional levels within the EU have achieved a remarkable consensus on a draft constitution. Has this consensus been made possible because the nationally predominant left,right divide was only weakly present during the deliberations of the delegates? Left,right differences have been analysed by means of a content analysis on submitted documents during the European Convention. The data analysis confirms our assumption that the left,right distinction was relevant, although not very dominant. The draft constitution did not take a mean position on left and right issues, but in fact puts more emphasis on substantial goals related to both left and right, giving an equal weight to both anti-poles. However, if we exclude the Charter of Human Rights, the draft constitution appears to be strongly tilted to the right. The analysis also shows that party family differences did affect the process of coalition building during the Convention, since more than half of all documents have been submitted together with at least one member of the same party family and/or with one family member close by. Our analysis also indicates that the process of consensus building was enhanced by the absence of many extremist and new parties during the Convention. This may have enhanced agreement on the Constitution, but later it became problematic for the domestic democratic process and for the acceptance of the Constitution in some countries, such as France and the Netherlands, especially since some of the excluded parties have actively and successfully mobilised voters to vote against the Constitution. [source]


    Why a Charter of Fundamental Human Rights in the EU?

    RATIO JURIS, Issue 3 2003
    Erik Oddvar Eriksen
    It has been argued that human rights politics is detrimental to social integration. But human rights are not merely abstract principles which, when positivated, secure negative freedom. When they are constitutionalised and turned into fundamental rights they contain a guarantee for equal freedom to all citizens. A charter of fundamental rights is a means to enhance the legal certainty of the citizens, reduce arbitrariness and moral imperialism and to institutionalise the right to justification. However, as the principle of popular sovereignty points to a particular society, and human rights point to an ideal republic, only with a cosmopolitan order can the problem of human rights politics be resolved. [source]


    Inclusion: lessons from the children

    BRITISH JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION, Issue 2 2005
    Phyllis Jones
    Phyllis Jones is assistant professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of South Florida. In this article, she describes the work she did while acting as consultant to an Early Years Childcare Development Partnership (EYCDP) in the north of England. Part of this process entailed developing a Charter for Inclusion for the Partnership. Phyllis Jones and her colleagues decided to draw upon the views of children and designed a picture booklet, with questions, in order to encourage a small group of children, aged between six and 14 years, to talk about inclusion. Parents or primary care workers worked through the booklet with the children, exploring what inclusion may mean for them from general and personal perspectives. A total of 14 booklets were returned, with responses exemplifying the strong contribution children are able to make, not only to the philosophical drive for greater inclusion, but also to our understanding of what helps and hinders inclusive practice. Phyllis Jones reviews those ideas here and also reflects on some of the methodological issues that arise when researching the views of children in innovative and imaginative ways. [source]


    Litigation in Canadian referendum politics

    CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 3 2003
    Gregory Tardi
    The Canada-wide referendum on the Charlottetown Constitutional Accord in 1992, the Quebec sovereignty referendum in 1995, and the British Columbia referendum on aboriginal treaty negotiations in 2002 are the most interesting and the most significant examples. The core issue in each case was determining the political direction a government or a jurisdiction should follow. In each of these instances, interested citizens representing a segment of public opinion sought court injunctions to stop the vote. The focus of this article is the use of the courts on the political process. In each of the three cases, the applications for injunction were denied and the referendum proceeded. Nevertheless, the legal proceedings highlighted the increasing impact of law in politics under the Charter, as well as the greater willingness of political actors to use litigation to achieve political goals. These trends point out lessons for democracy that public administrators ought not ignore. Sommaire: Au cows de la demière dénnie, divers governments au Canada ont organisé des référendums pour déterminer leurs options concemant des questions faisant l'objet de séneuses controversies. Le référendum Canadian de 1992 sur l Accord constitutional de Charlottetown, le référendum de 1995 sur la souverainets du Québec et le refbrendurn qui s'est tenu en 2002 en Colombie-Britan-nique sur les négociations des droits issus de traités des Autochtones sont les référendums les plus intéressants et les plus marquants. Dans chaque cas, le point essential consistait à determiner l'orientation politique que le gouvemement ou une juridiction devrait adopter. Dans chacun de ces examples, des citoyens concernés représentant un segment de l'opinion publique ont tenté d'empêcher la tenue du vote en solicitant des injunctions auprès des tribunaux. Le present article porte sur le recours à des moyens légaux pour influer sur le processus politique. Dans chacun des trois cas, les demandes d'injonctions ont été refusées et le réféerendum a eu lieu. Néanmoins, les actions en justice ont souligné l'impact grandissant du juridique dam le domaine des politiques, sous l'influence de la Charte, et une plus grande acceptance de la part des responsables politiques à recourir à des litiges pour atteindre des objectifs politiques. Ces tendances soulignent pour la démocratie des leçons que les administrateurs publics ne devraient pas ignorer. [source]


    Official minority-language education policy outside Quebec: The impact of Section 23 of the Charter and judicial decisions

    CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 1 2003
    Troy Q. Riddell
    The importance of looking beyond Charter jurisprudence to the broader policy impact of litigation and judicial decisions is revealed. The Supreme Court'sMahé decision was particularly important in putting omle policy on the agenda and for providing Francophone groups with important legal, political and symbolic resources that were effectively exploited to generate policy change. Sommaire: Ce texte soutient que les litiges et la jurisprudence déoulant de l'article 23 de la Charte ont joué un rôle essentiel dam l'élargissement et l'uniformisation de la politique relative à l'enseignement dans la langue de la minorité en dehors du Quebec. Il révèle l'importance de voir au-delè de la Charte quelles ont été les répercussions des litiges et de la jurisprudence sur la politique dans son ensemble. La dkision rendue par la Cour suprême dans l'affaire Mahé a été particulierement importante en mettant à l'ordre du jour la politique de l'enseignement dans la langue de la minorité et en offrant aux groupes francophones d'importantes ressources juridiques, politiques et symboliques dont ils ont effedivement su tirer parti pour engendrer une modification de la politique. [source]


    Discretion unbound: Reconciling the Charter and soft law

    CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 4 2002
    Lorne Sossin
    This study explores the relationship between discretion and the Charter and argues for a broader, more contextual approach to remedying the source of unconstitutional discretion. Guidance as to how to exercise broad discretionary authority comes in the form of "soft law," which encompasses a variety of non-legislative instruments such as policy guidelines and training materials, and which, more informally, extends to administrative culture. Administrative discretion involves choices and judgements usually shaped by a range of legal, bureaucratic, social and personal factors. Under present jurisprudence, the less precise a statutory discretion and the greater the reliance on non-legislative guidelines, the more difficult that discretion will be to subject to constitutional scrutiny. This article challenges this logic and concludes that respect for governmental accountability and the rule of law require bringing soft law out of the constitutional shadows. The first part of the analysis examines the regulation of discretion generally and soft law specifically outside the Charter. The second part analyses the leading case law on the regulation of discretion under the Charter. The third section explores the intersection of discretion, soft law and the Charter. Finally, the fourth section considers the problem of remedying unconstitutional exercises of discretionary authority. Alternative principles are suggested for the development and application of soft law, which envisions a central role for the Charter in rendering the discretionary decision-making process more accountable and just. A version of this paper was first presented at a workshop for the Twenty Years Under the Charter Conference, Association of Canadian Studies, Ottawa, 19 April 2002. The author is associate professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. He is grateful to those who participated in that workshop for their suggestions and comments, as well as to Robert Chamey, David Dyzenhaus, Ian Greene, Nicholas Lambert, Ian Morrison and David Mullan, who commented on an earlier version of this paper. He is also indebted to his colleagues Sujit Choudhry and Kent Roach, who have shared their work on related themes. He would like to thank Laura Pottie and Aaron Delaney for their superb research assistance. He wishes to acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and the Connaught Foundation for their generous financial support of this research. Finally, he acknowledges the Journal's anonymous reviewers for their comments. [source]


    Citizens, Charters and Public Service Reform in France and Britain

    GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 2 2000
    David Clark
    [source]


    Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks , Edited by J. Barrow and A. Wareham

    HISTORY, Issue 315 2009
    ALAN B. COBBAN
    No abstract is available for this article. [source]


    The Legal Cartography of Colonization, the Legal Polyphony of Settlement: English Intrusions on the American Mainland in the Seventeenth Century

    LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 2 2001
    Christopher Tomlins
    This essay investigates the first century of English colonization of the North American mainland, concentrating on the charters and letters patent that proponents of western planning secured over the course of the century. The elaborated legalities of chartering should be understood as a technology of planning and design. Charters allowed projectors both to justify their pursuit of particular territorial claims and to establish, with some precision, the conceptions of the appropriate, familiar, desired order of things and people that would be imposed onto uncharted social and physical circumstance. The structures of authoritative sociolegal order planned by projectors encountered others implicit in the migrations of actual settlers. Investigating settlers'disagreement with and departure from projectors'designs, the essay discards common explanations,that these were inevitable corrections brought about by the intrusion of local environmental realities on English projectors'fantasies, or the realization of an implicit evolutionary logic of political development, or of legal reception. It argues that disagreements were more often the result of a collision of distinct English legal cultures brought, by migration, into an unavoidable proximity. The essay counterposes the paradigm of "colonization" to both "common law reception" and "bottom-up localism" analyses of the formation of early American legal culture. It proposes that "colonization" also resolves the discontinuity between early (colonial) and later (U.S.) American history. [source]