Law Commons^™

Sex Selection & Pre Birth Elimination Of Girl Child, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act was enacted in 1994 as a result of pressure created by Forum Against Sex-determination and Sex –preselection. But it was not implemented. After another decade of campaigning by women’s rights organisations and public interest litigation filed by CEHAT, MASUM and Dr. Sabu George, The Pre-natal Diagnostics Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Amendment Act, 2002 received the assent of the President of India on 17-1-2003. The Act provides “for the prohibition of sex selection, before or after conception, and for regulation of pre-natal diagnostic techniques for the purposes of detecting genetic abnormalities or metabolic disorders or …

Law's Box: Law, Jurisprudence And The Information Ecosphere, Paul D. Callister

Paul D. Callister

For so long as it has been important to know “what the law is,” the practice of law has been an information profession. Nonetheless, just how the information ecosphere affects legal discourse and thinking has never been systematically studied. Legal scholars study how law attempts to regulate information flow, but they say little about how information limits, shapes, and provides a medium for law to operate.

Part I of the paper introduces a holistic approach to “medium theory”—the idea that methods of communication influence social development and ideology—and applies the theory to the development of legal thinking and institutions. Part …

The Scottish And English Religious Roots Of The American Right To Arms: Buchanan, Rutherford, Locke, Sidney, And The Duty To Overthrow Tyranny, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

Many twenty-first century Americans believe that they have a God-given right to possess arms as a last resort against tyranny. One of the most important sources of that belief is the struggle for freedom of conscience in the United Kingdom during the reigns of Elizabeth I and the Stuarts. A moral right and duty to use force against tyranny was explicated by the Scottish Presbyterians George Buchanan and Samuel Rutherford. The free-thinking English Christians John Locke and Algernon Sidney broadened and deepened the ideas of Buchanan and Rutherford. The result was a sophisticated defense of religious freedom, which was to …

The Religious Roots Of The American Revolution And The Right To Keep And Bear Arms, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

This article examines the religious background of the American Revolution. The article details how the particular religious beliefs of the American colonists developed so that the American people eventually came to believe that overthrowing King George and Parliament was a sacred obligation. The religious attitudes which impelled the Americans to armed revolution are an essential component of the American ideology of the right to keep and bear arms.

Desafios Da Constituição Europeia À Teoria Constitucional, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

The project of the “Treaty that establishes a Constitution for the Europe”, beyond its political consequences, puts some challenges to the classical constitutional theory. At first sight, it seems completely heterodox towards canon constitutional tendencies, and first of all in what concerns the constituent power classical theories. However, a more rigorous analysis of the history of the modern constitutionalism and its founding texts, mainly French, can lead us to detect very revealing bridges between the liberal modern constitutionalism of the XVIIIth century and the present constitution making of a codified European Constitution. The “treaty” formula that was adopted also represents …