We shall introduce a set of fundamental legal concepts, providing a definition of each of them. This set will include, besides the usual deontic modalities (obligation, prohibition and permission), the following notions: obligative rights (rights related to others’ obligations), permissive...

The present contribution analyses the connection between privacy and trust, with regard to data protection. In particular, it shows how the need to facilitate trust-based relationships may justify some limitations of privacy (in the sense of a right to self-determination over personal data), but...

This paper provides a review of Rhetoric and the Rule of Law, by Neil MacCormick, focussing on the role of logic in legal reasoning. In particular it considers the connection between syllogism, formal methods and rhetoric, and it distinguishes various aspects of legal defeasibility

International comparisons of Civil Services usually overlook the difficulties due to differing definitions of the civil service in national legal systems. Comparative statistics are therefore extremely misleading, as they are at best based on formal-legal criteria instead of being based on...

The 2005 World Summit was announced as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the United Nations so as to provide it with the institutional and policy tools needed to meet the challenges and threats to peace and security in contemporary world. But the Summit was also meant to be a crucial...

The research of flexibility in Labour Law by the use of fuzzy and imprecise concepts leads to extremely different and paradoxes evolutions. An analysis of the flexibility and flexicurity mechanisms shows the need of a language of rights. The research of new avenues for the European social...

The following Report will be presented to the 22nd FIDE Congress to be held in Limassol, Cyprus, 1-4 November 2006. It has been prepared in response to a questionnaire devised by the General Rapporteur, Professor Piet Eeckhout, which is reproduced as an Annex. It seeks to do two things: first,...

Legal and political science cannot merge, but they should, at the very least, listen to each other. This working paper is a further step in an ongoing interdisciplinary cooperation which seeks to make sense out of Louis Henkin’s famous admonition. This co-operation had begun with a research...

As with any rapid technological developments, the biotechnology revolution is putting great strains on the law and its ability to adapt to new realities and challenges. One particularly pressing need is to assess the role that international law and especially international human rights have in...

The article - to be published in Guibentif and Gonçalves (eds), Os novos territórios do direito: Globalização, europeização e transformação da regulação juridical, Coimbra : Almedina, 2006 or 2007 – explores a few elements of what may be labelled as the Europeanisation of Law –...