Doctrine

About: Doctrine is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 21901 publications have been published within this topic receiving 204282 citations.

Principles of the Institutional Law of International Organizations

Abstract: The second edition of C. F. Amerasinghe's successful book, which covers the institutional aspects of the law of international organizations, has been revised to include, among other things, a new chapter on judicial organs of international organizations, as well as a considerably developed chapter on dispute settlement. There is a rigorous analysis of all the material alongside a functional examination of the law. A brief history of international organizations is followed by chapters on, amongst others, interpretation, membership and representation, international and national personality, judicial organs, the doctrine of ultra vires, liability of members to third parties, employment relations, dissolution and succession, and amendment. Important principles are extracted and discussed, and the practice of different organizations examined.

Why Equal Protection No Longer Protects: The Evolving Forms of Status-Enforcing State Action

Abstract: In this essay, Professor Siegel examines efforts to reform racial and gender status law in the nineteenth century in order to raise questions about the ways antidiscrimination law operates today. The essay demonstrates how efforts to dismantle an entrenched system of status regulation can produce changes in its constitutive rules and rhetoric, transforming the status regime without abolishing it. Part I illustrates this reform dynamic in the nineteenth century, a period when protest movements were demanding the abolition of slavery and reform of marital status law. Legislatures and courts responded by eliminating some of the more overtly hierarchical features of marital status law, yet adopted gender-biased policies governing domestic labor and domestic violence that were justified as promoting family privacy, rather than marital hierarchy. Similarly, in the aftermath of the Civil War, legislatures and courts granted the newly emancipated slaves "civil" rights, yet denied them "social" rights, rationalizing miscegation laws and segregation as preserving associational liberty, rather than racial hierarchy. As these examples illustrate, the rules and reasons the legal system employs to enforce status relationships evolve as they are contested. Part II of the essay uses this dynamic model of status regulation to analyze the operations of equal protection law today. We know that doctrines of heightened scrutiny have disestablished overtly classificatory forms of race and gender status regulation dating from the nineteenth century. Yet the doctrine of discriminatory purpose currently sanctions facially neutral state action that perpetuates race and gender stratification, so long as such regulation is not justified in discredited forms of status-based reasoning. Once we recognize that the rules and reasons the legal system employs to enforce status relations evolve as they are contested, we ought to scrutinize justifications for facially neutral state action with skepticism, knowing that we may be rationalizing practices that perpetuate historic forms of stratification, much as Plessy v. Ferguson once did.

Vagueness in Law and Language: Some Philosophical Issues

Abstract: This Article is devoted to a philosophical account of the various problems with meaning that lawyers associate with the "void-for-vagueness" doctrine. I shall not attempt any detailed consideration of the doctrine itself. Apart from some comments in the concluding section, my contribution is intended to set the conceptual stage for, rather than preempt, the substantive discussion of problems of vagueness in the law. I am employed here, in John Locke's words, as an underlabourer in clearing ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way of knowledge; which certainly had been very much more advanced in the world, if the endeavours of ingenious and industrious men had not been so much encumbered with the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms.'

The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy

Abstract: Ukrainian-born Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) was a powerful and controversial member of the spiritualist world and for a time famous for her powers as a medium. She was a co-founder of the theosophy movement in the United States, which she later extended to Europe and India, drawing from her extensive global travels and her familiarity with a broad range of belief systems, from Asian religions to New Orleans voodoo, as well as secret societies such as the Freemasons. Drawing from Hinduism and Buddhism, theosophy aimed to understand the mystic powers of the universe and promote the study of other religions. The first two volumes of The Secret Doctrine were published in 1888, but this third volume was published in 1897 by spiritualist Annie Besant from Blavatsky's notes. It looks at some ancient spiritual teachings and mysteries, and the development of the practice of magic.