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In international law, as in any other legal system, respect and protection of human rights can be guaranteed only by the availability of effective judicial remedies. When a right is violated or damage is caused, access to justice is of fundamental importance for the injured individual and it is an essential component of the rule of law. Yet, access to justice as a human right remains problematic in international law. First, because individual access to international justice remains exceptional and based on specific treaty arrangements, rather than on general principles of international law; second, because even when such a right is guaranteed as a matter of treaty obligation, other norms or doctrines of international law may effectively impede its exercise, as in the case of sovereign immunity or non-reviewability of UN Security Council measures directly affecting individuals. Further, even access to domestic legal remedies is suffering because of the constraints, put by security threats such as terrorism, on the full protection of freedom and human rights. This collection of chapters offers seven distinct perspectives on the present status of access to justice: its development in customary international law, the stress put on it in times of emergency, its problematic exercise in the case of violations of the law of war, its application to torture victims, its development in the case law of the UN Human Rights Committee and of the European Court of Human Rights, its application to the emerging field of environmental justice, and finally access to justice as part of fundamental rights in European law.

The way jurisdiction over land is distributed among members of a community has a powerful influence over how efficiently land is used, the incidence of poverty, and the level of inequality in the community. Yet much land in less developed countries is underutilized and/or misused from a sustainability standpoint: lack of access to land or unfavorable terms of access remain a fundamental cause of poverty. In addition, unmet demands for land can be a source of political destabilization. At the same time, there presently exist unusual opportunities to reopen the issue of access to land. They include an increasing concern with the efficiency costs of inequality in land distribution, devolution of common property resource management to users, large scale redefinitions of property rights in the context of transition economies in Eastern and central Europe and the end of white rule in South Africa, liberalization of land markets, mounting pressure to deal with environmental issues, the proliferation of civil society organizations voicing the demands of the rural poor, and more democratic forms of governance. Much attention has been given to state-led redistributive land reforms. Other channels include inheritance and inter-vivos transfers, intrahousehold and intracommunity land allocations, community titling of open access resources, the distribution of common property resources and the individualization of rights, decollectivization, land markets and land market-assisted land reforms, and land rental contracts. This book analyzes each of these channels of access to land, and recommends ways of making them more effective.

One of the most important questions about children's development involves how knowledge acquisition depends on the effect of language experience. To what extent, and in what ways, is a child's cognitive development influenced by their early experience of, and access to, language? Likewise, what are the effects on development of impaired access to language? This book confronts directly the issue of how possessing an enhanced or impaired access to language influences children's development. Its focus is on learning environments, theory of mind understanding, and the process of deriving meaning from conversations. The book features chapters which are concerned with bilingualism, deafness, atypical child development, and development in cultures with limited vocabularies in areas such as number concepts. Throughout, it maps out what is known about the interface between language and cognitive development and the prospects for the future directions in research and applied settings.

The issue of how patents impact medicine has increased in significance within the last decade. The conclusion of a landmark international agreement (TRIPS) has increased attention on how patents impact access to medicine, but this new focus has not always led to productive results. Discussions concerning the impact of access to medicine often degenerate into finger-pointing. Patent owning companies are often vilified as greedy corporations that place profits above people while those who advocate greater access to drugs are accused of stealing private property. These accusations seem to be based on deeply held views about the role of patents. On the one hand, patents are seen as a tool to promote innovation, and as such, they can (and should) be modified. On the other hand, patents are viewed as an important property right that should seldom be subject to exceptions, especially considering its limited term. This book explains how these competing views have led to confusion and obfuscation of the law. This book aims to clarify widely prevalent misconceptions as reflected both in reports from the popular press and by some academics in the field of intellectual property. The book has two goals: to provide an explanation of the current international infrastructure that requires most nations to provide patent and related rights regarding drugs, and to explain how competing patent perspectives play a thus far unacknowledged role in promoting distortion and confusion.

Copyright law has become the subject of general concerns that reach beyond the limited circles of specialists and prototypical rights-holders. The role, scope, and effect of copyright mechanisms involve genuinely complex questions. Digitization trends and the legal changes that followed drew those complex matters to the center of an ongoing public debate. This book explores theoretical, normative, and practical aspects of premising copyright on the principle of access to works. The impetus to this approach has been the emergence of technology that many consider a threat to the intended operation, and perhaps even to the very integrity, of copyright protection in the digital setting: It is the ability to control digital works already at the stage of accessing them by means of technological protection measures. The pervasive shift toward the use of digital technology for the creation, dissemination, exploitation, and consumption of copyrighted material warrants a shift also in the way we perceive the structure of copyright rules. Premising the copyright order on the concept of digital access first calls for explaining the basic components of proprietary access control over information in the abstract. The book then surveys recent developments in positive law, while showing how the theoretical access-right construct could explain the logic behind them. Finally, the book critically analyzes existing approaches to curbing the resulting problems of imbalance and overprotection, which are said to disadvantage users. In conclusion, the book advocates for a structural overhaul of our current regulative apparatus. The proposed reform involves a series of changes in the way we define copyright entitlements, and in the way in which those entitlements may interrelate within a single, coherent scheme.

Health care systems in developed countries must respond to diverse populations especially given increasing population movements. These groups make different claims upon the state and may have different health care needs and expectations. But policy-makers and professionals often seem blind to this diversity. To ensure the wellbeing of its whole population, a state must respond to subgroups in terms of their health status and access to health services. The chapters in this book discuss countries and population groups that illustrate different responses to claimant groups and different ways of delivering health services. The chapters consider inherent population diversity (age, sex), citizenship issues (e.g. migrants, asylum seekers), and ethnic and indigenous groups (Roma in Europe, New Zealand Maori, Australian Aborigines). Are there barriers to people receiving equitable health care? Should mainstream health services be more responsive to the needs of different people, or should alternative health services be set up? The book provides a breadth of perspectives from which to draw conclusions on how to meet the needs of societies characterized by diversity.

This book introduces Immanuel Kant's masterwork, the Critique of Pure Reason, from a ‘relaxed’ problem-oriented perspective which treats Kant as an especially insightful practising philosopher, from whom we still have much to learn, intelligently and creatively responding to significant questions that transcend his work's historical setting. The book's main project is to command a clear view of how Kant understands various perennial problems, how he attempts to resolve them, and to what extent he succeeds. The constructive portions of the First Critique—the Aesthetic and Analytic—are explored in detail; the Paralogisms and Antinomies more briefly. At the same time the book is an introduction to the challenges of reading the text of Kant's work and, to that end, selectively adopts a more rigorous historical and exegetical stance.

Many government bodies relate to each other through contracts: government departments and agencies; government departments and the Treasury; National Health Service (NHS) purchasers and NHS Trusts. These ‘internal contracts’ are not, in general, regulated or enforced by the law. This book explores the practical problems encountered by the parties to internal contracts, drawing on evidence from an empirical case study of NHS contracts. It uncovers difficulties in defining the parties' roles; in maintaining good working relationships; and in securing compliance with contractual terms. It then examines the possibility of solving these problems through law. Some commentators, particularly public lawyers, have condemned the law's failure to keep pace with the rise of ‘government by contract’, but few have made specific proposals for reform. The book develops an original public law analysis of internal contracts, interpreting them as mechanisms of accountability from service providers to purchasers. It proposes norms which would help the parties to use their contracts as fair and effective mechanisms of accountability. It also suggests reforms to the institutional framework for internal contracts.

Situated at the intersection of democratic theory and international studies, Accountability and Democracy provides an in-depth critical analysis of the concept “democratic accountability.” The book proceeds with separate chapters on accountability as found in the U.S. Ratification debates, agency theory, ancient Athenian democracy, theories of deliberative democracy, capitalist markets, and cosmopolitan democracy. Through an engagement with these different traditions and contexts, the book paints a picture of democratic accountability as a multidimensional concept harboring competing imperatives and diverse instantiations. It both engages conventional electoral models of accountability and moves beyond them by situating democratic accountability within more deliberative, participatory and agonistic contexts. Contrary to dominant views that emphasize discipline and control, the book describes democratic accountability as a source of mutuality, community, and political transformation. The book also challenges deep-seated understandings of democratic accountability as an expression of popular sovereignty. It instead argues that accountable governance is incompatible with all claims to ultimate authority, regardless of whether they refer to the demos, the state, or cosmopolitan public law. Rather than conceiving of democratic accountability as a way to legitimize a secure and sovereign political order, the book contends that destabilization and democratic insurgence are indispensable and often neglected facets of democratic accountability practices.

This work approaches the issue of democratic deficit from the angle of accountability, seen in contemporary society as an essential element of democratic government. It looks at differing understandings of the concept in the Member States and at various techniques — political, legal, and managerial — by which accountability can be assured. These include the Parliament as well as national parliaments but extend to less familiar institutions, such as the European Court of Auditors.