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Legal Definitions (legal + definition)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences42%

Selected Abstracts

Aroma, touch and well-being: following the mind to wellness

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COSMETIC SCIENCE, Issue 3 2004
J. C. Brahms
Fragrances have been used since ancient times to deliver a variety of benefits. The term aromatherapy was first coined in the 1920s by a French chemist named Rene-Maurice Gattefossé, referring specifically to the use of natural fragrance essential oils to treat injury and disease. More recently, the discovery that touch is an important part of healthy human development has led to a greater understanding of its role as an essential part of maintaining wellness. With the growing mainstream acceptance of holistic health care, herbal remedies and nutraceuticals, aromatherapy has become much more broadly defined to include benefits which are strictly cosmetic in nature. Today, a variety of products ranging from candles to dish-washing liquids are marketed with ,aromatherapy' benefits. Although there is no legal definition of aromatherapy in the U.S.A., specific claims can affect whether a product is considered a cosmetic or a pharmaceutical. Outside of the U.S.A., the term aromatherapy itself has very specific connotations which can affect the regulatory status of potential product introductions. In recent years, a number of new tools such as psychophysical measures and brain imaging techniques have greatly enhanced our knowledge of how touch and aromas are interpreted by the mind and body. This symposium will review the current state of our understanding in this area with the objective of providing a clearer understanding of the sometimes subtle differences of the role of fragrance and touch in maintaining well-being and enhancing personal attractiveness vs. those which are pharmacological in nature. [source]

The Cultural Defense as Courtroom Drama: The Enactment of Identity, Sameness, and Difference in Criminal Trial Discourse

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 1 2010
Sigurd D'hondt
This article traces cultural defense as a discursive realization-in-context, rather than as a legal-doctrinal figure, in a Belgian real-life criminal trial. In examining the defense plea for a Turkish man accused of battery, three discursive techniques are identified for making Cultural Otherness visible: de-individualization, reporting preparatory meetings with the client, and supplying ethnographic "expert" knowledge that transforms the client into the "object" of discourse. Apart from providing information about the defendant's background, cultural defenses also involve particular modes of behaviorally orienting toward the defendant in the courtroom. Otherness must be enacted in court, and to this end attorneys often actively disaffiliate themselves from their clients, marking them as impenetrable, mute, and unemancipated. In doing so, they draw extensively upon the indexical and iconic modalities of talk, which is convenient because the matrix of sameness and difference on which the cultural defense is founded escapes formal legal definition. [source]

Forced Displacement in Darfur, Sudan: Dilemmas of Classifying the Crimes

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 2 2008
Klejda Mulaj
ABSTRACT The ongoing forced displacement in Darfur has occasioned renewed interest in the phenomena of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Whereas the international response to the conflict has been considered promptly and elaborately by various analysts, few have paid sufficient attention, in the first instance, to the controversy surrounding the debate about the definition of the situation and the classification of crimes involved. Following an overview of the current conflict, the unfolding analysis seeks to show that the terminological debate reveals discrepancies in legal definitions and interpretations that may suggest that existing law may be inadequate to fully capture the nature of the crimes committed in Darfur. Confusion with the terminology has contributed to making the conflict more intractable. In addition, disagreement on a common definition of the situation has tended to justify inaction or limited involvement on the part of the international community. This article suggests that it is therefore necessary to resolve the terminological debate in order to ensure that no energy is wasted in arguing about the indeterminacy of the terms in the future and effective responses to mass violations of human rights are crafted in a timely fashion. [source]

NGRI Revisited: Venirepersons' Attitudes Toward the Insanity Defense,

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 8 2006
Brooke Butler
Three hundred venirepersons from the 12th Judicial Circuit in Sarasota, Florida completed the following booklet of stimulus materials: one question measuring participants' level of support for insanity defense; a 16-item measure assessing participants' attitudes toward the myths associated with the insanity defense, the legal definitions of insanity, and mental illness; a case scenario; verdict preference; and standard demographic questions. Level of support for the insanity defense was significantly related to participants' attitudes toward legal standards of insanity, mental illness, and the myths associated with the insanity defense. In addition, results indicated that level of support for the insanity defense, age, educational level, occupation, type of prior jury service, and political views were significantly related to verdict preference. Notably, three factors that have been found to impact verdict preference in previous research failed to do so in the current study: participants' experience with psychological disorders; participants' exposure to psychotropic medications; and participants' experience with psychologists or psychiatrists. The findings both replicate and extend earlier findings by suggesting that attitudes toward the insanity defense are more complex than previously imagined. [source]

GENOCIDAL MUTATION AND THE CHALLENGE OF DEFINITION

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 4 2010
HENRY C. THERIAULT
Abstract: The optimum definition of the term "genocide" has been hotly contested almost since the term was coined. Definitional boundaries determine which acts are covered and excluded and thus to a great extent which cases will benefit from international attention, intervention, prosecution, and reparation. The extensive legal, political, and scholarly discussions prior to this article have typically (1) assumed "genocide" to be a fixed social object and attempted to define it as precisely as possible or (2) assumed the need for a fixed convention and sought to stipulate the range of events that should be denoted by the term. Even if its meaning is a matter of convention, however, "genocide" is not a fixed object but varies by context and evolves in methods and forms over time. In fact, as relevant laws, legal interpretations, and political commitments develop, so do would-be perpetrators modify what genocide is in order to avoid political and legal consequences. This article advances an approach to a definition of "genocide" that allows even legal definitions to keep pace with this evolutionary process. [source]

Humanitarian aid beyond "bare survival": Social movement responses to xenophobic violence in South Africa

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 4 2009
STEVEN ROBINS
ABSTRACT In this article, I investigate responses to the humanitarian crisis that emerged following the May 2008 xenophobic violence against South African nonnationals that resulted in 62 deaths and the displacement of well over 30,000 people. I focus specifically on how a South African AIDS activist movement, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and its partners, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF,Doctors Without Borders) and the AIDS Law Project (ALP), translated a particular style and strategy of AIDS activism into legal, medical, humanitarian, and political responses to the massive population displacement. The TAC provided relief to displaced people in the form of basic needs, such as food, clothes, and blankets, as well as legal aid, and it engaged in activism that promoted the rights of the refugees. I investigate how the ideas and practices of global agencies such as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) were deployed and reinterpreted by TAC activists. I also examine how TAC activists involved in assisting the refugees drew on a global humanitarian assemblage of categories, legal definitions, norms and standards, and procedures and technologies that went beyond the simple management of "bare life." TAC's shift from fighting for antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to fighting for refugees' rights reveals a "politics of life" that spans multiple issues, networks, and constituencies. It is also a politics that, at times, strategically deploys standardized bureaucratic logics and biopolitical techniques of humanitarian aid. [source]

Directors' Duties and Corporate Governance: Have We Gone Too Far?

AUSTRALIAN ACCOUNTING REVIEW, Issue 32 2004
Jeff Coulton
We review recent policy initiatives in Australia, such as corporate governance reporting requirements and innovations in defining directors' roles and responsibilities, and argue that such initiatives are often premised on overly simplistic models of the role played by directors. The role and effectiveness of directors vary according to the economic activity of the firm; hence, uniform guidelines for board composition, for example, are unlikely to be economically desirable. Likewise, statutory definitions of directors' duties are unlikely to be effective unless they allow for directors' roles to vary according to circumstance. Conversely, broad legal definitions will be problematic because of uncertainties in judicial interpretation. [source]