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This paper will turn into a contribution to a book on community obligations. It focusses on third parties' rights and obligations in armed conflict.
It is often said that international law has developed from a legal order which is designed to protect sovereignty to a system which also promotes community interests. This shift is said to be reflected in structural changes of the legal system. The creation of rights and obligations for third parties is generally seen as a part of this perceived paradigmatic shift. Community interests can be furthered either by negative duties of abstention, by an entitlement for third states, or even by duties to take positive measures. Since the shift towards protecting community interests apparently requires some form of cooperation, positive rights and duties to protect and to promote appear to be indispensable. Authors relying on a community perspective often dismiss duties of abstention as an expression of indifference in the face of a violation of a fundamental norm. Solidarity seems to require that third states take a more proactive role in actively enforcing community interests.
The paper aims to test this understanding on the basis of an analysis of rights and obligations of third states in armed conflict. In order to argue that duties of abstention of third states are a central instrument for promoting community interests in relation to armed conflicts, the paper will first trace pertinent structural changes in international law. In particular, it will question the extent to which positive rights and obligations of third states have been firmly established in international law. In a second step, this contribution will evaluate the overall tendencies in the ongoing lawmaking process for promoting community interests in relation to armed conflict.
Singular quantified terms
(2016)
In this paper, I discuss the behavior of singular partitives, focusing on Hebrew. I show that group noun-headed singular quantified terms behave essentially different from other singular quantified terms. Specifically, the domain of quantification in the former is a discrete set (the members of the group), while in the latter the domain of quantification is a set of mass entities. I propose a preliminary analysis of singular quantified terms in Hebrew, respecting the properties peculiar to this language as well as the observations about group vs. non-group singular quantified terms. This analysis is based on a novel class of quantifiers I name ’Measure Quantifiers’, which instantiate relations between algebraic sums. Using shifts between algebraic sums, we can represent the different readings of singular and plural individual or group terms.
Tarkovsky’s legacy
(2016)
In June 2013, widespread flooding and consequent damage and losses occurred in Central Europe, especially in Germany. This paper explores what data are available to investigate the adverse impacts of the event, what kind of information can be retrieved from these data and how well data and information fulfil requirements that were recently proposed for disaster reporting on the European and international levels. In accordance with the European Floods Directive (2007/60/EC), impacts on human health, economic activities (and assets), cultural heritage and the environment are described on the national and sub-national scale. Information from governmental reports is complemented by communications on traffic disruptions and surveys of flood-affected residents and companies.
Overall, the impacts of the flood event in 2013 were manifold. The study reveals that flood-affected residents suffered from a large range of impacts, among which mental health and supply problems were perceived more seriously than financial losses. The most frequent damage type among affected companies was business interruption. This demonstrates that the current scientific focus on direct (financial) damage is insufficient to describe the overall impacts and severity of flood events.
The case further demonstrates that procedures and standards for impact data collection in Germany are widely missing. Present impact data in Germany are fragmentary, heterogeneous, incomplete and difficult to access. In order to fulfil, for example, the monitoring and reporting requirements of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 that was adopted in March 2015 in Sendai, Japan, more efforts on impact data collection are needed.
The paper undertakes a preliminary assessment of current developments of international law for the purpose of mapping the ground for a larger research project. The research project pursues the goal of determining whether public international law, as it has developed since the end of the Cold War, is continuing its progressive move towards a more human-rights- and multi-actor-oriented order, or whether we are seeing a renewed emphasis of more classical elements of international law. In this context the term “international rule of law” is chosen to designate the more recent and “thicker” understanding of international law. The paper discusses how it can be determined whether this form of international law continues to unfold, and whether we are witnessing challenges to this order which could give rise to more fundamental reassessments.
The figure of Moses constitutes an important link between Jewish and Muslim traditions.
Muslims consider him to be one of the five elite prophets of God, his story therefore
has a prominent place in the Qurʼan. While there are minor differences, the story
of Moses found in the Qurʼan confirms the account of the Torah; the life of Moses thus
is considered a model for all Muslims to follow. Though elements of his story are found throughout the Qurʼan, it is in chapter 7 where it is given in its greatest detail. As the
focus point of this article, chapter 7 discusses many events in Mosesʼ life, which are important for both Muslims and Jews, and reveals his great importance and Godliness. It also demonstrates how truly similar Islamʼs Moses and Judaismʼs Moses are. Therefore,
through an examination of the various elements of the story of Moses as found in
the Qurʼan, this article will show how by following him, Jews and Muslims can come
together in friendship, harmony and peace. Moses is the common ground on which
Jews and Muslims can come together in order to open up a dialogue and further their
shared commitment to the worship of the One God.
Ever since our first research into Alexander von Humboldt's stay in Spain, the absence of an ensuing relationship between the wise Prussian and the Spanish Crown and Authorities had always surprised us. On starting new research, we found that indeed he sent his first work to Carlos IV from Rome accompanied by a letter of gratitude for the protection he had received during his American trip and submission to the Spanish Crown, which we now present. This first literary fruit of his voyage, which Alexander von Humboldt alluded to in the letter is the first instalment of his work Plantes Équinoxiales, Recueillies au Mexique, dans l’ile de Cuba, dans les provinces de Caracas, de Cumana etc., published in Paris in 1805.
Recent work in semantics has shown that languages can vary in whether or not they include degrees (that is, elements of type < d >) in their semantic ontology. Several authors have argued that their languages of study lack degrees, including Bochnak (2013) for Washo (isolate, USA), Pearson (2009) for Fijian (Austronesian, Fiji), and Beck, et al. (2009) for Motu (Austronesian, Papua New Guinea). In this paper, I follow the tests proposed in Beck, et al. (2009) to assess the status of degrees in Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan, Australia).
I use Warlpiri data collected following the Beck, et al. survey to argue that Warlpiri gradable predicates do not combine with a degree argument. (Like many other Australian languages, adjectival concepts like big and small are expressed using nouns in Warlpiri (Dixon 1982, Bittner & Hale 1995, among others). I refer to these lexical items as “gradable predicates” in this paper.) This paper represents a first pass at assessing the status of degrees in an Australian language, which have otherwise been unexamined from the point of view of degree semantics.
In this article we will present a few examples of the theme of “calling for help and redemption” in Arabic and Hebrew poetry, with particular focus on eleventh and twelfth century Muslim Spain. More particularly, we will offer a glimpse into the life and oeuvre of two medieval poets (one Muslim, one Jewish); both were active in Muslim Spain in the same period and shared a similar fate of exile and wandering: on the one hand, the Sicilian Arabic poet Ibn Ḥamdīs (c. 1056–c. 1133) and on the other hand, the Spanish Jewish poet Moses ibn Ezra (1055–1138). We will take into account the impact of exile and wandering on the profusion of the theme of “calling for help and redemption” as well as the related theme of “yearning for one’s homeland” through an analysis and comparison of poetic fragments by the two aforementioned poets as well as additional Andalusian Jewish (Judah ha-Levi) and Muslim (Ibn Khafāja, al-Rundī and Ibn al-Abbār) poets.