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This paper critiques the All-Subjected Principle. The All-Subjected Principle is one of the most prominent answers to the Boundary Problem, which consists in determining who should be entitled to participate in which democratic decision. The All-Subjected Principle comes in many versions, but the general idea is that all people who are subjected in a relevant sense with regard to a democratic decision should be entitled to participate in that decision. One respect in which versions of the All-Subjected Principle differ concerns how to best understand ‘subjectedness’. One view spells out ‘subjectedness’ in terms of legal bindingness. Another view understands ‘subjectedness’ in terms of coercion. I argue that the All-Subjected Principle is extensionally inadequate on both views in that it yields verdicts that are at odds with our considered judgements about certain cases. These cases involve legal norms of referral or international administrative assistance.

This article analyzes the interactions between norms formally stemming from different orders and regimes so as to demonstrate how and to what extent the legal spaces composing the transnational legal sphere are intertwined. Furthermore, it addresses the consequences of the intertwinement and suggests a fresh approach to the traditional concept of legal orders: it stresses a norm-centered rather than system-centered understanding of the transnational legal sphere. It argues for a norm-based strategy in order to understand the phenomenon of intertwinement, analytically deducing the relationship of the legal orders from the relationship of the legal norms.

The analytical tension between legal norms, moral values, and national interests seems no uncharted territory in political science, but has found very little interest in legal academia. For lawyers, moral values and national interests are largely “unknowns,” dealt with by other disciplines. Looking a bit deeper, the picture becomes more nuanced, however. As part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay argues that norms, values, and interests are not different universes of legal normativity, morality, and specific interests, but are interrelated concepts. Values clearly influence norms and often underpin them, while seemingly concrete norms (rules) are themselves often fragile constructs trying to balance competing interests. Value systems are quite diverse within societies, and this is even truer for interests; each society is a dynamic system of social interaction where conflicting interests are constantly playing out. In a way, underlying conflicts of values and interests are constantly being renegotiated in the legal system, with the norms enshrined in the text of statutes and treaties serving to constitute transitory reference points.

The fulfillment of water needs for living things is the responsibility of the State. State control of dealing with water is done through the arrangement and management of licenses ensuring the right of everyone to get water as a primary need. Groundwater extraction and management will be a separate issue when the legal norms do not guarantee certainty and justice for society. The Constitutional Court decision No. 85/PUU-XI/2013 dated February 18th, 2015, states that Law No. 7 of 2004 on Water Resources has no legal force. Therefore, the re-enactment of Law No. 11 of 1974 on watering gives impact to the regulation of groundwater extraction. This should meet the principles of the decision of the Constitutional Court. Governments, including local governments, have an important duty regarding groundwater management, so that the water needs can be fulfilled for all people.

Joint physical custody (JPC)—where children alternate between parental households after a separation—has been found to be on a rise in a diversity of European countries. However, variations in sampling, data and operationalization consistently complicate the comparative mapping of JPC prevalence and its correlates. In this respect, the 2021 EU-SILC ad hoc module on Living arrangements and conditions of children in separated and blended families provides a unique opportunity to study JPC prevalence across Europe. The current study aims to validate and expand on existing research by employing the module’s second release, concerning children in households across 21 countries. Our descriptive overview of shared versus sole and main residence supports and adds to the previously noted diversity of JPC in Europe. We further note a similar father- to mother-residence ratio in countries with high and low incidence of JPC, warranting consideration of how social and legal norms regulate the granting of custody to mothers versus fathers in various country settings. Subsequently, we analyse the association of child-, parent-/household- and country-level characteristics with JPC using a three-level linear mixed model. The results underline the importance of a multi-level approach to understanding the correlates of JPC and prompt the elaboration of country comparisons using the EU-SILC module.

As part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay describes the humanitarian diplomacy of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by comparing it conceptually with other forms of advocacy and illustrating it with the ICRC's recent experience in the Yemen crisis. Humanitarian diplomacy is examined as one particular way of balancing legal norms, moral values, and national interests in the pursuit of greater respect for international humanitarian law (IHL) and principled humanitarian action in armed conflicts. The essay looks back to ancient history for archetypal forms of humanitarian advocacy in various cultural traditions. It then describes humanitarian diplomacy's practice of discreet diplomacy and confidential dialogue with all parties to a conflict, and compares its relatively “quiet” approach with the “loud” approach of outrage activism focused on “naming and shaming,” which tends to be the norm today. The essay argues that there is an important and complementary place for the ICRC's style of humanitarian diplomacy alongside other forms of advocacy even in the face of criticism that the ICRC is sometimes publicly silent about what it knows of atrocities and avoids naming and shaming.

The article aims to study the Venice Commission's role as one of the leading international law interpreters. This role has gradually strengthened in the process of scientifically substantiated promotion of legal norms and standards concerning democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Using system-structural, formal-legal, comparative-legal, empirical, and anthropological methods, one has drawn essential conclusions regarding implementing the Venice Commission's interpretive activities. As a result, it has been proved that the nature of the Venice Commission's interpretive activity demonstrates the existence and growing contradiction between the prevailing interpretive practice at the supranational level and the provisions of the classical theory of law interpretation. Ukraine's ongoing dialogue with the Venice Commission is vital to develop and improve legislation, especially laws, implementing new constitutional provisions on justice, the drafts of which have already been designed or are being developed, as well as indubitable compliance with these laws. Venice Commission's general documents should be for the Ukrainian legislator the source to base the preparation of relevant legislation.

As part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay argues that the policy field of secessionist conflict is structured around a set of five rival norms. The norms of territorial integrity and self-determination form the core of this structure, while the norms of noninterference in internal affairs, human and minority rights, and democracy and good governance each come into play depending on the specific scenario. This configuration permits the parties involved in a secessionist conflict to select from a menu of norms the ones that best suit their interests. Norm selection—a concept that I introduce here—displays remarkable regularities, indicating default positions for each type of actor: home states, secessionist groups, entrapped minorities, patrons, and the broader international community. However, significant outlier cases signal that interests do not simply trump norms but that actors accord different values to those norms over time. This attribution is influenced by the dynamics of a normative environment in which norms rise and fall. In particular since the end of the Cold War, discourse as well as state practice has shifted away from the traditional taboo on secession toward more revisionist concepts, such as remedial secession or earned sovereignty, providing an opening for the secessionist wave that started with the breakup of the Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia.

CHEN Sisi, “春秋决狱”形成的法律文化模式及其功能 (The Legal Culture Model and Its Functions Formed from “the Judgment of Chunqiu”), 12 学术探索 (Academic Research), 95–107 (2022) .

Worldwide, growing numbers of refugees are pushed from their homes. At the same time, fewer and fewer are able to access so-called “durable solutions” to their displacement. This has prompted a flurry of efforts to repair the foundering refugee regime. Many such efforts attempt, implicitly or explicitly, to resolve tensions between legal principles, moral duties, and national interests surrounding refugees. As part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay questions the drive toward oversimplification that has characterized these debates, recognizing that some such tensions are “baked into” the problem of refugeehood. While debates have typically focused on the obligation to admit refugees, and on “responsibility sharing,” I advance the conversation by exploring how law, morality, and national interests are entangled in efforts to support durable solutions for refugees, focusing on voluntary repatriation. What does recognition of the intrinsic and in some senses irreconcilable tensions in the refugee regime mean for efforts to support solutions? I argue that advancing durable solutions, however imperfect, for refugees does not mean definitively overcoming these tensions, but rather navigating them to identify context-specific opportunities to reposition refugees as full and equal citizens as a critical step toward reducing their precarity.