States of Obligation

States of Obligation
Author: Yanni Kotsonis
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2014-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1442643544

Beginning in the 1860s, the Russian Empire replaced a poll tax system that originated with Peter the Great with a modern system of income and excise taxes. Russia began a transformation of state fiscal power that was also underway across Western Europe and North America. States of Obligation is the first sustained study of the Russian taxation system, the first to study its European and transatlantic context, and the first to expose the essential continuities between the fiscal practices of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Using a wealth of materials from provincial and local archives across Russia, Yanni Kotsonis examines how taxation was simultaneously a revenue-raising and a state-building tool, a claim on the person and a way to produce a new kind of citizenship. During successive political, wartime, and revolutionary crises between 1855 and 1928, state fiscal power was used to forge social and financial unity and fairness and a direct relationship with individual Russians. State power eventually overwhelmed both the private sector economy and the fragile realm of personal privacy. States of Obligation is at once a study in Russian economic history and a reflection on the modern state and the modern citizen.

Against Obligation

Against Obligation
Author: Abner Greene
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2012-04-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674065174

Do citizens of a nation such as the United States have a moral duty to obey the law? Do officials, when interpreting the Constitution, have an obligation to follow what that text meant when ratified? To follow precedent? To follow what the Supreme Court today says the Constitution means?These are questions of political obligation (for citizens) and interpretive obligation (for anyone interpreting the Constitution, often officials). Abner Greene argues that such obligations do not exist. Although citizens should obey some laws entirely, and other laws in some instances, no one has put forth a successful argument that citizens should obey all laws all the time. Greene's case is not only "against" obligation. It is also "for" an approach he calls "permeable sovereignty": all of our norms are on equal footing with the state's laws. Accordingly, the state should accommodate religious, philosophical, family, or tribal norms whenever possible. Greene shows that questions of interpretive obligation share many qualities with those of political obligation. In rejecting the view that constitutional interpreters must follow either prior or higher sources of constitutional meaning, Greene confronts and turns aside arguments similar to those offered for a moral duty of citizens to obey the law.

Moral Dilemmas in Real Life

Moral Dilemmas in Real Life
Author: Ovadia Ezra
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2006-05-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1402041055

Moral Dilemmas in Real Life purports to supply ways of thinking of, perhaps even dealing with, the ins and outs of ethical argument. The world today presents both individuals and communities with situations, which demand moral and ethical deliberations. From the more general issues of universal globalization to the very specific problems of every-day existence encountered by active agents, contemporary life is replete with moral and ethical conundrums. Any thinking person is required, so it seems, to be concerned, involved, or – at the very least – conversant with these issues and this book supplies the wherewithal needed. Applied ethics is that intellectual locale where theory meets praxis. Moral Dilemmas in Real Life is designed to make that meeting point explicit, by presenting a series of issues in well-grounded philosophical formulations. The book begins with the general relation between the individual and society – instilling ethical tension, and even clashes, between the private and the public in our discourse. Going on, from general to specific, it gradually narrows the ethical playing field to touch on medical ethics, the family, and the practice of punishment. In all cases, the book addresses both consensual and conventional social institutions and distortions thereof.

Monitoring State Compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Monitoring State Compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Author: Ziba Vaghri
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2022-01-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3030846474

This open access book presents a discussion on human rights-based attributes for each article pertinent to the substantive rights of children, as defined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It provides the reader with a unique and clear overview of the scope and core content of the articles, together with an analysis of the latest jurisprudence of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. For each article of the UNCRC, the authors explore the nature and scope of corresponding State obligations, and identify the main features that need to be taken into consideration when assessing a State’s progressive implementation of the UNCRC. This analysis considers which aspects of a given right are most important to track, in order to monitor States' implementation of any given right, and whether there is any resultant change in the lives of children. This approach transforms the narrative of legal international standards concerning a given right into a set of characteristics that ensure no aspect of said right is overlooked. The book develops a clear and comprehensive understanding of the UNCRC that can be used as an introduction to the rights and principles it contains, and to identify directions for future policy and strategy development in compliance with the UNCRC. As such, it offers an invaluable reference guide for researchers and students in the field of childhood and children’s rights studies, as well as a wide range of professionals and organisations concerned with the subject.

International Human Rights Law

International Human Rights Law
Author: Olivier De Schutter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-08-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781107657212

The leading textbook on international human rights law is now better than ever. The content has been fully updated and now provides more detailed coverage of substantive human rights, along with new sections on the war on terror and on the progressive realization of economic and social rights, making this the most comprehensive book in the field. It has a new, more student-friendly text design and has retained the features which made the first edition so engaging and accessible, including the concise and critical style, and questions and case studies within each chapter, as well as suggestions for further reading. Written by De Schutter, whose extensive experience working in the field and teaching the subject in both the US and EU gives him a unique perspective and valuable insight into the requirements of lecturers and students. This is an essential tool for all students of international human rights law.

Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History

Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History
Author: Steven L. B. Jensen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2022-01-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009020668

This pioneering volume explores the long-neglected history of social rights, from the Middle Ages to the present. It debunks the myth that social rights are 'second-generation rights' – rights that appeared after World War II as additions to a rights corpus stretching back to the Enlightenment. Not only do social rights stretch back that far; they arguably pre-date the Enlightenment. In tracing their long history across various global contexts, this volume reveals how debates over social rights have often turned on deeper struggles over social obligation – over determining who owes what to whom, morally and legally. In the modern period, these struggles have been intertwined with questions of freedom, democracy, equality and dignity. Many factors have shaped the history of social rights, from class, gender and race to religion, empire and capitalism. With incomparable chronological depth, geographical breadth and conceptual nuance, Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History sets an agenda for future histories of human rights.

Shared Obligations in International Law

Shared Obligations in International Law
Author: Nataša Nedeski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2022-07-21
Genre: Law
ISBN: 110884135X

There are various situations in which multiple states or international organizations are bound to an international obligation in the context of cooperative activities and the pursuit of common goals. This book puts forward a concept of shared obligations that enables scholars and practitioners to tackle questions raised by this phenomenon.

Human Rights Obligations of Non-state Actors

Human Rights Obligations of Non-state Actors
Author: Andrew Clapham
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 656
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This work presents an approach to human rights which goes beyond the traditional focus on states and outlines the human rights obligations of non-state actors. It finishes with examples of how they can be held legally accountable for their actions in various jurisdictions.

Beyond Human Rights

Beyond Human Rights
Author: Anne Peters
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 645
Release: 2016-10-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107164303

Beyond Human Rights, previously published in German and now available in English, is a historical and doctrinal study about the legal status of individuals in international law.

Law, Obligation, Community

Law, Obligation, Community
Author: Daniel Matthews
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2018-06-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1351403699

Against an ever-expanding and diversifying ‘rights talk’, this book re-opens the question of obligation from not only legal but also ethical, sociological and political perspectives. Its premise is that obligation has a primacy ahead of rights, because rights attach to practices and modes of being that are already saturated with obligations. Obligations thus lie at the core not just of law but of community. Yet the distinctive meanings, range and situations of obligation have tended to remain under-theorised in legal scholarship. In response, this book examines the sense in which we are multiply ‘bound beings’, to law and legal institutions, as much as we are to place, community, memory and the various social institutions that give shape to collective life. Sharing this set of concerns, each of the international group of scholars contributing to this volume traces the specificity of the binding force of obligations, their techniques and modes of expression, as well as their centrally important role in giving form to lawful relations. Together they provide an innovative and challenging contribution to legal scholarship: one that will also be of relevance to those working in politics, philosophy and social theory.