Character education is an effort to instill virtuous values aimed at shaping a generation with strong morals in accordance with societal norms. This study aims to examine the impact of the Kaleng Impian (Dream Can) program in instilling character education, as well as to identify the supporting and inhibiting factors in its implementation among students at MI NU Hidayatun Najah Tuban. This research is a qualitative descriptive study using a case study approach. The research subjects consisted of teachers and students at MI NU Hidayatun Najah Tuban, with data collected through observation, in-depth interviews, and documentation. The study refers to Thomas Lickona’s three components of character education: Moral Knowing, one’s ability to evaluate oneself; Moral Feeling, the drive to do good and the ability to control oneself; and Moral Action, the implementation of moral knowledge and feelings through actions aligned with established norms. Thus, the researcher seeks to explore how the Kaleng Impian program is implemented from the perspective of character education through the lenses of moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral action. The findings reveal that the Kaleng Impian program at MI NU Hidayatun Najah successfully cultivates character values such as responsibility, tolerance, and religiosity based on moral knowing, feeling, and action, thereby contributing to the formation of students' character. However, several inhibiting factors were identified, including limited teacher understanding, low parental involvement, diverse levels of student comprehension, and the absence of a standardized evaluation system
Immigration and the defense of national borders have played a vital role in European right-wing populist discourses since the European border crisis in 2015. Western European populist anti-immigration policies are often intertwined with gender politics (as in femonationalism and homonationalism). Research on Central and Eastern Europe offers the opportunity to examine the relationship between populist, “illiberal” family mainstreaming and anti-immigration policies. The aim of this article is to fill a gap in literature, addressing a direct connection between the Hungarian government’s family politics and anti-Muslim immigration policies. How has an ideological understanding of “family” legitimated the Hungarian government’s border politics since 2015? This question is addressed using qualitative content analysis and framing analysis to examine government material dated 2015–2023 (Modifications of the Fundamental Law, National Consultations, and material related to the Budapest Demographic Summit). The article demonstrates how border politics are informed and legitimated by discourses around Christian “families.” An antagonism between “illiberal” family policies and “liberal” immigration policies is forged around two discursive frames: economics and human rights. According to the government, pro-immigration border policies threaten the sustainability of its family policies—and indirectly the Hungarian “families” —as both are fighting for finite economic resources. Besides, it is argued that mass Muslim immigration threatens Hungary’s national self-identity, which is strongly rooted in Christianity and familialism. The results suggest that family politics, beyond serving as a biopolitical tool, provide an ideological platform on which nationalism, populism, and illiberalism are effectively merged as the foundation of the Hungarian government’s “illiberal” politics. In its ideological sense, “family” acts as a signifier for the “illiberal” political community. In this context, immigration is framed not solely as a biopolitical threat, but is used by the Hungarian government to discursively constitute a frontier of “us.” This frontier is primarily drawn between “us” and the European Union’s pro-immigration policies, and only indirectly between “us” and the immigrants themselves.
The preliminary reference procedure is today the ‘infringement procedure of the European citizen’. Although it was initially designed as a mechanism for judicial cooperation, the procedure soon became an instrument for supranational judicial review of national legislation. Such a discrepancy between the intended role of the preliminary reference procedure and its actual use in practice has important consequences that are yet to be fully explored in the literature. Indeed, how can the Court of Justice appropriately review national legislation through a procedure designed for interpreting EU law? Is the procedure governing the preliminary reference mechanism suitable to perform such a role? In this paper, we focus on one issue in particular: the way in which the Court of Justice gains information regarding the legal and factual background of the case. The Court has long recognised that appropriate knowledge of the factual and legal context of the referred case is a necessary prerequisite to performing its scrutiny and that, in accordance with the judicial cooperation model, such information is provided by the national judge. The Article critically examines the rules of procedures and the case law to show that the national judge certainly plays a key role, but other actors contribute to shaping the Court’s knowledge too. After an analysis of each actor’s role, the Article concludes that the procedure offers few guarantees as to the effective participation of individual parties to the advantage of other actors in the proceedings, increasing the risk of having partial or unbalanced information regarding the legal and factual background of the cases.
The concept of national human rights institutions (NHRIs) as known today originated under the auspices of the United Nations. Although national human rights institutions in the contemporary context have been the subject of a growing body of literature, the evolutionary path of the very idea of their creation has remained largely unexplored. The aim of this paper is to fill this literature gap by analysing key United Nations documents from the end of World War II to the adoption of the 1978 Geneva Guidelines. The paper reveals how the very concept of national human rights institutions had evolved over time, how it had been understood, which functions had been tied to these institutions, and which organizational forms had been taken as models. The paper explores the changes in the attitudes of UN Member States in relation to a given issue and provides a better understanding of the context in which this idea developed. In this regard, the paper also offers new insights into how the process of negotiating the core UN human rights conventions has influenced the evolution of the idea of creating national human rights institutions, a factor that has been rarely considered.
Law of Europe, Comparative law. International uniform law
(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2019 4(1), 123-126 | Article | (Abstract) The Special Section investigates, from a multidisciplinary perspective, foundations, tools and implications of regulatory competition in the EU legal order. The analysis takes the view that regulatory competition is not just an inevitable corollary of the creation of the internal market, but it is the result of political choices made to pursue specific policy objectives. Moving from different analytical angles, it sheds more light on the dangers that the choice to promote regulatory competition poses for the constitutional identity of the EU. The Special Section is composed by two main parts. The first one offers an in-depth examination of the complex relationship between the European integration process and regulatory competition, exploring its historical and conceptual foundations, as well as critically engaging with its implications on the EU constitutional architecture. The second one builds on these analytical findings and, in particular, on the idea that regulatory competition is the by-product of political choices made by supranational institutions. These choices, and the institutional dynamics underneath, vary from sector to sector. The Articles composing this second part look both at fields where EU law acted as a facilitator of regulatory competition and at fields where it functioned as a buttress against it or, at least, some of its most heinous effects.
Abstract:
Legal capacity is build-up on the concepts of rationality and capability, which exclude persons with mental illness. Although the notion of mental illness is highly subjective and dependent on historical and sociocultural contexts, the representation on the collective imagination of persons with mental illness tends to identify them by the negative characteristics associated to their diagnosis. The paper reviews how these traditional legal notions, together with the collective imagination representation of the mentally ill, have an impact on the way law has treated persons with a psychiatric diagnostic. It has approached issues that concern them mainly through normative differences and justifying its rights limitations. This work focuses the analysis on the differenced treatment imposed by the civil institution of guardianship and the best interest criterion of interpretation used tojustify it, which are both rejected by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) and replaced by decision support models and by the criterion of the will and preferences. These new values of interpretation of the legal capacity, and thus of the constitution of the subject of rights, are incompatible with the traditional and dominant approach in the current legal systems, despite they coexist now. The paper also analyses the most significant case law on this issue and highlights the value of the courts to adjust the current institutions to the new parameters of interpretation. Finally, it considers how the impact of the change of paradigm on the notions of legal capacity and subject of rights might transform the way society recognizes the person with a mental illness and its own identification, towards a less negative representation of mental illness.
Law of Europe, Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence
(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2018 3(2), 911-922 | European Forum Insight of 21 June 2018 | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. The dispute at the main proceeding and the preliminary question. - III. The Opinion of AG Bot. - IV. The CJEU ruling and the enhanced application of Directive 2004/38. - V. Non-discrimination and right to family life: the marginalisationof fundamental rights. - V.1. EU citizenship and non-discrimination on grounds of nationality: two sides of the same coin. - V.2. The CJEU vis-à-vis the "right to family life": limiting or enhancing its potential? - VI. The additional value of the Toufik Lounes ruling: its implications for Brexit. - VII. Concluding remarks. | (Abstract) This Insight tackles a recent judgment of the CJEU, Toufik Lounes (Court of Justice, judgment of 14 November 2017, case C-165/16, Toufik Lounes v. Secretary of State for the Home Department), where the CJEU was asked to rule on the case of a EU national, Ms García Omazábal, who had exercised her free movement rights, later acquiring the citizenship of the host State while also retaining her nationality of origin. The Court has further investigated the scope ratione personae of Directive 2004/38 and Art. 21, para. 1, TFEU, so to clarify whether, in the scenario above, the EU national and her third-country national spouse could still be considered "beneficiaries" under Directive 2004/38. The CJEU answered as follows: while Directive 2004/38 is not applicable in the situation above, Art. 21, para. 1, TFEU shall instead be applied so as to prevent the EU national holding a dual citizenship to be treated less favourably than a EU national having the citizenship of his country of origin only, and therefore having the EU national's right to family life unreasonably disrupted. Against this backdrop, the Insight first highlights the merits of the decision, by also investigating its positive effects within the Brexit process. Secondly, it discloses a main shortcoming that is likely to weaken the overall protection granted to EU citizens, i.e. the CJEU choice to disregard the connection between the provisions on the EU citizenship and the respect of fundamental rights.
(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2018 3(2), 985-992 | European Forum Insight of 20 July 2018 | (Table of Contents) I. Introduzione. - II. La sentenza Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses: i fatti all'origine del rinvio. - III. Il contributo della decisione alla definizione del concetto di Stato di diritto e dei relativi obblighi in capo agli Stati membri. - IV. Osservazioni conclusive: verso un controllo giurisdizionale del rispetto dello Stato di diritto da parte degli Stati membri. | (Abstract) The judgment in the case Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses (Court of Justice, judgment of 27 February 2018, case C-64/16) offers a significant contribution to the sensitive issue of the role of the Court of Justice in monitoring the respect of the rule of law by the EU Member States. The Insight focuses on the implications deriving from a paragraph of the judgment in which the Court identifies a link between the rule of law, as a common value pursuant to Art. 2 TEU, and Art. 19 TEU. The analysis aims to highlight the contribution given by the judgment in defining the concept of the rule of law within the EU legal order. Moreover, the analysis focuses on the nature and content of the obligation incumbent upon Member States to respect the rule of law, as a common value recognized in the Treaties. The last part of the Insight proposes a reflection about the role that the Court of Justice seems to define for itself in order to ensure compliance with the rule of law by the Member States, seeking to highlight potentials and criticalities.
Resumen:
El objeto de este estudio es analizar la objeción de conciencia farmacéutica tanto en nuestra reciente doctrina constitucional como en la jurisprudencia del Tribunal Supremo federal estadounidense y del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos, para intentar explicar la coherencia (o incoherencia) de nuestro modelo de objeción de conciencia farmacéutica con el marco constitucional, así como en qué medida la posición de nuestro Tribunal Constitucional se asemeja a la de los
tribunales referidos.
La elección del modelo estadounidense se debe a que este ordenamiento jurídico tiene una dilatada experiencia en la regulación y resolución de conflictos relacionados con la objeción de conciencia; y en el caso concreto de la objeción de conciencia farmacéutica el Tribunal Supremo federal acaba de pronunciarse sobre un supuesto planteado en términos muy similares al resuelto en la STC 145/2015, aunque utilizando una receta muy diferente a la nuestra para resolver el conflicto entre norma y conciencia.
La primera parte del artículo analiza la naturaleza jurídica de la objeción de conciencia en nuestro ordenamiento jurídico, así como las decisiones de nuestro Tribunal Constitucional en este terreno. Esto nos permitirá conocer cuál es la relación entre la libertad de conciencia y la objeción de conciencia, así como en qué medida es necesario que el legislador reconozca expresamente la posibilidad de que los individuos no cumplan con aquello que señala el ordenamiento jurídico por motivos de conciencia, para hablar de un hipotético derecho a la objeción de conciencia.
La segunda parte se dedica al análisis del modelo constitucional estadounidense,
y al estudio de las decisiones del Tribunal Supremo federal en el terreno de la objeción de conciencia en el contexto sanitario, incluyéndose en este apartado su posición sobre la objeción de conciencia del personal farmacéutico.
El artículo concluye ofreciendo una serie de reflexiones acerca de las diferentes respuestas que los modelos estudiados proponen, y su respectivo encaje constitucional. En este sentido, hay que destacar que nuestro Tribunal Constitucional ha dado el peligroso paso de reconocer a los farmacéuticos el derecho a no dispensar la píldora del día después por motivos de conciencia, con una decisión que está llamada a tener especial relevancia en la futura conformación de la objeción de conciencia en nuestro ordenamiento jurídico. Con esta decisión nos alejamos de las soluciones que han adoptado otros países de nuestro entorno jurídico, y que habían sido avaladas por el TEDH; asimismo,
se ignoran las valiosas lecciones del modelo estadounidense, el cual ha intentado no sacrificar y armonizar los bienes jurídicos en juego, articulando mecanismos que garantizan la correcta prestación del servicio público.
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the responses of the Spanish legal system, in contrast to the jurisprudence of the US Federal Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights, to a refusal by pharmacists to dispense drugs for reasons of conscience. In this context are studied: the Spanish jurisprudence and constitutional doctrine, the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, and the most important decisions of the US federal Courts. It attempts to explain the consistency (or inconsistency) of our model of pharmaceutical conscientious objection to the constitutional framework, and to what extent the position of our Constitutional Court resembles that of the courts utilized for comparison.
The choice of the American model is due to this legal system’s extensive experience in the regulation and resolution of conflicts related to conscientious objection. Indeed, in the specific case of pharmaceutical conscientious objection, the Federal Supreme Court recently ruled on a case based on issues very similar to those determined in the STC 145/2015 case, although utilizing a very different methodology from ours in order to resolve the conflict between norm and conscience.
The first part of the article analyses the legal nature of conscientious objection in our legal system, and the decisions of our Constitutional Court in this field. This permits us to understand the relationship between freedom of conscience and conscientious objection, and to what extent it is necessary that legislators expressly recognize the possibility that individuals will not comply with the law on grounds of conscience, so that we may speak of a hypothetical right to conscientious objection.
The second part of the article is devoted to the analysis of the American constitutional model in the field of freedom of conscience, and especially the study of the decisions by the Federal Supreme Court on the grounds of conscientious objection in the context of health. Included in this section are its positions on conscientious objection by pharmaceutical staff.
The article concludes by offering a series of reflections on the different responses suggested by the models studied, and their respective constitutional relevance. In this regard, it is noteworthy that our Constitutional Court has taken the dangerous step of recognizing the right of pharmacists to refuse to dispense the morning-after pill for reasons of conscience, a decision that will be called to play a particularly important role in shaping the future of conscientious objection in
our legal system, and which relegates to the rights of women in this field to a secondary status. With this decision we move away from the solutions that other countries in our legal environment have adopted, and that furthermore had been endorsed by the ECHR. Similarly, our legal system ignore the valuable lessons of the American model, which has attempted to not sacrifice -but rather to harmonize- the legal interests at stake, thus articulating mechanisms that ensure the proper provision of public service.
Law of Europe, Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence
On 17 July 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over Eastern Ukraine, leaving no survivors. Since, victims’ relatives, States, and the wider public are trying to understand what happened, how it could happen, who is responsible, and how to address these responsibilities. The efforts to find justice have faced many complications and legal complexities. This article aims to provide insight into these legal and political complexities. In particular, it discusses the core legal questions of the criminal accountability of the perpetrators and the State responsibility of those States involved —Ukraine and Russia— through the legal doctrines of public international law and the European Convention on Human Rights. It further offers some core considerations relating to civil liability of States and airline carriers. In addition to providing insight into why the road to justice is long and arduous, the legal options available, and the specific challenges of each, the article also emphasises that having a legal option does not necessarily mean that it is also the best choice to use it. That choice is up to victims’ relatives and the States concerned. The article takes no position in this regard. Instead, it seeks to provide an analysis that may contribute to making such decisions in an informed manner.
The EU is frequently referred to as one of the Titans of the WTO and this is why its trade disputes frequently receive a lot of attention from academics, practitioners and the media. This attention frequently arises at the later stages of the proceedings – during oral hearings, after the Panel Report or the Appellate Body Report. However, the focus of our study lies primarily on disputes which are still at the very early phase of their development. The scope of this report has required the narrowing down of the subject-matter, and the authors have concentrated on the movement of goods, covering five pending cases.
First, the report covers cases where the EU is the respondent. It looks at the measures which the EU has adopted internally, examining their background and inquiring how these measures affect trade. It is generally known that EU legislation can pose barriers both to internal and to external trade, and it is interesting that such legislation can be challenged both within the EU – before the European Court, or in the international arena – before WTO bodies. An example of this is the pending disputes on seals and poultry. Then, the report looks at measures from third countries which EU traders have considered to be obstacles to trade, and which the EU decided to challenge using the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. These cases in which the EU acts as a complainant concern India’s and the Philippines’ measures on spirits, and China’s rules on raw materials.