This paper focuses on the everyday life experiences of the post-1980 generation in Turkey–a generation stigmatized for being depoliticized and apathetic. Rather than accepting this stigmatizing view, however, this analysis aims to better understand young people's actual lived experiences. To do so, it adopts the concept of “necessary conformism” developed in previous empirical research. This concept offers an alternative analytical framework that transcends the engaged/disengaged or political/ unpolitical dichotomy in young people's social participation. Specifically, the application of this concept reveals that apathetic behavior may actually mask powerful discontent and suffering that can be expressed neither through conventional politics nor open resistance. The necessary conformism of young people, therefore, is not apathetic behavior, but the expression of an underlying discontent and often a hidden agony.

This article investigates the contemporary Turkish business environment as shaped by the economic, political and cultural transformations of the past 30 years. The changes in the forms and mechanisms of government intervention in the economy, the spatial relocation of industry, the rise of “Anatolian capital,” and the cleavages within the business community generated by the increasing salience of Islam in society and politics are some of the interrelated themes that will be pursued in the article. To understand the current context and the configurations of interest in the business community it is necessary to have a closer look at the manifestations of politics in business life. Political factors are important at the level of government-business relations where the political authority continues to mobilize a series of legislative and administrative mechanisms for the privileged treatment of those businesspeople with the right political and sectarian affiliations. Politics also enters the business environment through the role played by different business associations. These associations not only represent the interests of different segments of the business community, but they also shape the ways in which economic interests are defined, presented in policy terms and pursued through different strategies. In this context, the article also draws attention to the political cleavages that are manifested at the local level where they are managed and kept under control with different degrees of success.

This study uncovers the neo-conservative “style of thought” informing the ideology of the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP). The AKP's politico-cultural strategy in pursuing Turkey's goal of full membership to the EU is constituted on this ideological ground. Based on critical constructivism, this article argues that the AKP constitutes a domestic-foreign policy nexus of change characterized by a neo-conservative “style of thought” that aims to redefine the identity of Turkey. Along this line of politics, Europe appears as a politico-cultural space, as an ideational structure, enabling and limiting the AKP to act as a political and cultural agent. While the AKP adopts and sublimates the position of the “other” in the ideational structure of Europe, it reconstitutes the identity and interests of Turkey through neo-conservative ideas. Both are mutually reinforcing.

Germans have long prided themselves on their commitment to the Rechtsstaat, the state based on the rule of law. However, they have not agreed on what would constitute a Rechtsstaat. Recht can mean “law,” or “right,” or “justice,” leaving open what a Rechtsstaat ought to establish. Moreover, a Rechtsstaat could be merely formal, an independently adjudicated process of applying statutes equally binding for all, or substantive, a process providing “justice.” Formal processes should minimize capricious decisions but could, in particular cases, produce outcomes that citizens perceived as unjust, and people are generally most committed to outcomes they believe to be just or appropriate. Not surprisingly, a complex debate developed among jurists, across a century and multiple regimes, over what the Rechtsstaat and Recht might mean.

As the title suggests, Jeffrie G. Murphy's latest anthology of thirteen essays comprises an agglomeration of his thoughts on punishment and forgiveness along with the moral emotions of guilt, remorse, resentment, shame, love and jealousy. All were written and published in law and philosophy journals between 1999 and 2011, with the exception of the final chapter in which he returns to an earlier passion for Kant's moral, political and legal theory in relation to duelling, infanticide, shipwrecks and the right of necessity. Murphy's enduring commitment to the quasi-Kantian ideal of human dignity is articulated by reference to the social significance of a religious framework within which, he claims, it is possible to elucidate an appropriately moral vision of punishment for criminal justice decision-making. Although the investigation of moral emotions is not purported to deliver solutions in the form of a set of precise rules or principles capable of producing specific outcomes, he provides normative direction by an appeal to the core values which comprise the traditional Christian ethic of forgiveness. Because, according to Christianity, we are all created in God's image, there is resemblance between all human beings which means we are able to identify with the sentiments of others.

This paper aims at contributing to the evolving debate over the rights of the dead by providing it with concrete empirical socio-legal context. A pioneering study of succession disputes, conducted in Israel, exposes a gap between a prominent judicial promise to respect the wishes and guard the dignity of the deceased testator, and the actual action taking place behind this rhetoric. The findings reveal that the testator's dignity and wishes are trampled during testamentary procedures, when demeaning allegations about his or her mental and physical competence are allowed, and personal and medical information is exposed, and when the judge approves settlements that diverge from the testator's last will in the name of familial reconciliation, even though in most cases there are no nuclear family ties between the rival parties. These findings are discussed in the light of an original typology mapping the theoretical controversies over posthumous rights, to highlight some of the possible normative implications of the project for the law on the books and law in action related to property division after death.

This paper reflects on the conceptual approach adopted, in international practice, to the design and implementation of initiatives to promote the rule of law at the national level. It pays particular attention to the understanding, in international practice, of the relationship between the rule of law, democracy, human rights and development. It does so by looking especially at the practice of the UN, and taking into account many empirical and theoretical studies. After first examining the predominant paradigm in the rule of law field adopted by the international community until 2010, and the evolution of international practice thereafter, it concludes that the observance of the rule of law in a given country is determined by political and economic structures, cultural norms, institutions and laws. On this basis, and acknowledging the critical importance of the adopted concepts of rule of law, democracy and human rights, it finds the increasing recognition by the UN of the mutually reinforcing impact of these notions as adequate. This approach allows greater attention to be paid to several socio-economic and political issues that significantly affect the observance of the rule of law in many developing countries, the main recipients of the work of the international community in this field. Based on these findings, it indicates areas for reform.

We address the question of when, how and why highly marked rhymes of the structure VVCC (as in gold, false or bind) came to be established in the lexical phonotactics of English. Specifically, we discuss two hypotheses. The first is that lexical VVCC clusters owe their existence to the fact that similar rhyme structures are produced routinely in verbal past tenses and third-person singular present tense forms (fails, fined), and in nominal plurals (goals, signs), The other is based on the insight emerging in morphonotactic research (Dressler & Dziubalska-Kołaczyk 2006) that languages tend to avoid homophonies between lexical and morphotactically produced structures. We hold both hypotheses against a body of OED and corpus data, reconstruct the phases in which the lexical VVCC rhymes that are still attested in Present-day English emerged, and relate them to the phases in which productive inflectional rules came to produce rhymes of the same type. We show that the emergence of morphotactic models is indeed likely to have played a role in establishing VVCC rhymes in the English lexicon, since VVCC rhymes of the types VV[sonorant]/d|z/ began to establish themselves in lexical phonotactics at the same period in which they also started to be produced in inflection, and clearly before similar types that had no inflectionally produced analogues (i.e. VV[sonorant]/t|s/ as in fault, dance). At the same time, we show that this does not necessarily contradict the hypothesis that homophonies between lexical and morphotactic rhymes are dispreferred. We argue that under the specific historical circumstances that obtained in English, natural ways of eliminating the resulting ambiguities failed to be available. Finally, we show that, once the phonotactically and semiotically dispreferred VV[sonorant]/d|z/ rhymes had been established, the emergence of morphotactically unambiguous rhymes of the types VV[sonorant]/t|s/ was to be expected, since they filled what was an accidental rather than natural gap in the phonotactic system of English (see Hayes & White 2013).

Since the 1980s, and mainly since the 1990s, studies in politics and law have adopted an economic attitude to explaining judicial behaviour. In contrast, this paper follows the individualistic approach by focusing on the role of individuals in bureaucracies in designing policy outcomes, using political entrepreneurship and new institutionalism as its theoretical framework. In describing a specific institutional change in Israel – the passage of the General Security Service Law in 2002 – I maintain that this institutional change is an equilibrium that resulted from the actions of empowered military bureaucrats acting as political entrepreneurs who sought to maximise their own political assets in the light of certain structural and cultural conditions, both local and international. The institutional arena was characterised by the inability of the government to function effectively (non-governability), enhanced judicialisation, the dominance of security issues in Israel, and the development of a unique shared mental model of alternative political culture. However, it was still open to changes based on new liberal attitudes about human rights. Thus, politicians influence and are influenced by a wide range of institutional norms and practices in a complex process of changes in institutional design.

Many cetaceans are borderline persons and, as such, have a right to life. This is partly a normative and partly a positive legal claim. While many philosophers agree that cetaceans possess limited moral rights, it can also be shown that most states already behave as though they possess limited legal rights. The most basic of these, the right to life, reflects shifting contemporary norms – especially given scientific evidence as to cetacean sentience, intelligence and autonomy – and the consolidation of customary international law. The recent decision of the International Court of Justice in Whaling in the Antarctic (2014) includes important obiter dicta to this effect and arguably suggests an avenue for future doctrinal development in this area. Nevertheless, while the cetacean right to life already exists, there are a number of obstacles that preclude its enforcement. Perhaps the most significant of these remain the traditional status of the world's oceans as a global commons and the weak sovereignty of international law.

The work of the Polish–Russian scholar Leon Petrażycki from the early decades of the twentieth century holds a strikingly paradoxical position in the literature of juristic and socio-legal scholarship: on the one hand, lauded as a supremely valuable contribution to knowledge about the nature of law and, on the other, widely neglected and little known. This paper asks how far Petrażycki's theories, expressed in writings by and about him available to an international readership, can provide insight for contemporary socio-legal studies – not as historical background but as living ideas. How far can his work speak to current issues and inform current debates? What obstacles stand in the way of this? Why have few international scholars engaged with his theories despite their rigour and originality? The paper starts from this last issue before addressing the others. It argues that Petrażycki's radical legal theory offers strikingly distinctive resources for rethinking issues about the role of law in multicultural societies, the nature of developing transnational law, and the significance of law as an aspect or expression of culture.