Justice in Medicare : recent changes to the public health care system

This article sets out and examines a number of changes proposed by the Commonwealth Government to the Australian Medicare system as part of the 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 federal budgets, and the 2004 federal election campaign. In assessing the suitability of these reforms, the idea of justice is discussed. Health, as a basic good, is argued to be a matter of distributional and rectificatory justice. A number of popular material principles of justice are also examined and shown to be unsuited as sole determinants of health care resource allocation decisions. In light of this, various problems with the reforms are identified and improvements suggested.

Climate change and social inclusion: opportunities for justice and empowerment

...the greatest untapped resource at our disposal lies in the disadvantaged Australians living in our most excluded communities. (Nicholson 2007 p. 4)

The commons are where justice and sustainability converge, where ecology and equity meet. (Shiva 2005 p. 50)

Since 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recognised human induced climate change to be primarily a result of burning fossil fuels and land clearing (Lee 2007). Changes to the world's climate patterns have been occurring for decades, but only in recent times has climate change arrived in our collective conscious. An onslaught of extreme weather events, destruction and failure of crops, increasing levels of water restrictions, government announcement of desalination plants. proposed increase in prices for utilities such as power and water - have ushered climate change into the Australian lexicon.

The challenges for all of us are many and varied and perhaps even unimaginable. as many propose a global reduction in annual C02 emissions of between 60-80% (compared to 1990 levels) by 2050.

We are not talking just about the re-construction of our world, but about its re-invention. Ryan (2007)

How will climate change affect us? Who is most vulnerable? What will be the features of policies and strategies to combat climate change that ensure an equitable and just response across our entire society? Are our present social-cultural justice paradigms of social exclusion and inclusion adequate in addressing the impending health consequences that are likely to result from climate change, and in supporting an equitable. harmonious and fruitful life for all population groups in the future?

This paper, written in the spirit of solution-oriented research. focusing on the causes of positive health rather than the causes of disease and other problems (Robinson & Sirard 2005). explores the possibility of a paradigm shift which imagines the social inclusion of specific population groups, not as an appended extra, but integral to the design of an equitable, sustainable low carbon society of the future.

Social justice in education in 'new times'

This thesis considers social justice in education in ‘new times’. To facilitate the investigation a number of research questions were pursued. These questions were: • What is meant by the label ‘social justice’? • How is social justice to be understood in contemporary terms? • Are there tensions between traditional and contemporary views of social justice? • How effective are policy developments in delivering social justice via education? • What difference do such policies make at the local level? To answer these questions a critical case analysis of a country community and one of its primary schools was carried out. Data were gathered using a variety of methods. As a researcher who was also a teacher in the school I kept a personal professional journal during 1993 and 1994. During this period I was the teacher in the school with responsibility for curriculum development related to issues of social justice. In 1994 I conducted interviews with twenty students, parents and teachers at the school in relation to social justice issues. I also interviewed the CEO of the town’s Council. A number of relevant Federal and State Government and school policy documents were consulted and an archival search of the local newspaper from 1956 to 1994 was undertaken. Statistical information from the Australian Bureau of Statistics as well as from school records was used. A number of local history books were consulted as well as the minutes of relevant school committee meetings. Contemporary social theory, more specifically the work of Anthony Giddens, provided the major methodological tool. Giddens structuration theory was selected as it provided a way of interpreting society from both macro and micro perspectives, it provided a way of studying the interconnectedness of the individual and society. In addition to this, a metaphor was used as a way of developing an understanding of the data. The river was chosen as the metaphor as it has significance to the case study community and it also provides a way of understanding interconnectedness. At an interpretive level, both social theory and moral philosophy were drawn on, including the work of Geoffrey Sharp, Anthony Giddens and Alisdair MacIntyre. A review of selected literature indicated three main areas of concern in relation to this thesis. We live in a time of constant and ongoing change, understanding how this change impacts on the lives of individuals and society is important. Such an understanding relates directly to issues of ontology. In addition it was necessary to consider schools in these ‘new times’. The literature revealed that the changes occurring in the wider society were related to the changes currently being seen in schools. Specifically this related to the increasing emphasis on economics and on individualism, emphases also reflected in the findings of this thesis. Finally the literature related to social justice was discussed, the focus here was on distributive theories of justice and the way these are reflected in programs such as the DSP. The data, as expressed in the metaphor of the flowing river, revealed dominant and marginal currents in social justice in education in ‘new times’. The dominant social group are the intellectually trained and the dominant issues were related to technology, globalisation and economic and bureaucratic rationalism. In the marginal currents we find the under-employed and the unemployed and marginal issues relating to housing, the black economy, poverty and the survival of rural communities. The data also revealed a marginal tributary running into the river. This tributary shows that social cohesion is still a part of life in ‘new times’, albeit a marginalised part. The dominant and marginal currents in social justice in ‘new times’ reveal changes at a deep cultural level. Social justice in ‘new times’ is set within the limits provided by economic rationalism. Such a position is closely linked to the rise of liberal democracy as a political ideology. A rise which has been on a global scale. This valorizes the individual as compared with the group, and the family as compared to the social whole, within the context of expanded economic groupings and markets. Such an ideological position sees the role of the state as providing the ‘legitimising muscle’ to advance the cause of individuals and their families as compared to larger social groupings. These perceptions were applied in Australia, even under a Labor Government. In this sense social justice policies in ‘new times’ are ideological, they act as a political lever to legitimate economic restructuring. They are policies designed to carry disparate groups forward and together on a common wave of economic reform. They are used to ‘sell’ economic reform as being ‘good’ for all of society. Against the backdrop of economic rationalism and liberal democratic ideals there emerges a language geared to the production of an economically viable self, self image, self identity, self esteem and self confidence. As a result, the sense of identity as ‘social’ is lost from view. This thesis argues that what is needed is a new way of looking at social justice in education. A way that reaches beyond the solutions forwarded by the political Left and the Right. It is about the development of an understanding of the way in which an assimilation of the hyper individual and the social group can result in the emergence of the socially responsible individual. This is a cultural shift that sees the individual/society dualism presented in a new way. The categories enter into a new relationship where the balance shifts away from the individual towards society. A shift to a culture where the individual’s rights and responsibilities are respected within a social whole. Such a cultural shift would result in a curriculum which would build social identity, promoted socially responsible independent thought and make space for creativity and the aesthetic. A ‘curriculum for social responsibility’ would be a socially just curriculum.

Social justice in Australian education : rethinking what we know for contemporary times

In this paper I attempt two things. First I canvass the history of social justice policy in schooling and higher education in Australia, with a view to drawing out ten principles to inform a rejuvenated social justice agenda in education, facilitated at this political moment by the current Australian Government’s financial and education commitments to/for people in low socioeconomic status communities, schools and higher education. I draw primarily on what we have learned from the 1973 Karmel Report and the Disadvantaged Schools Program to which it gave rise, and on the 1990 higher education policy statement, A Fair Chance for All. I then propose three new concepts for rethinking social justice in education, which reflect a new ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams 1961) and new social capacities in contemporary times.

Messages from Long Tan, Vietnam: memorialisation, reconciliation, and historical justice

This article explores the changing ways in which Australians and Vietnamese remember and memorialize their involvement in the Vietnam War and how these processes intersect with notions of reconciliation and historical justice in postwar contexts. It uses the Battle of Long Tan of August 1966 as an entrée into these considerations and questions how heritage-making and memorialization processes can facilitate the achievement of reconciliation between parties formerly in conflict. Not surprisingly, the Australian and Vietnamese veterans of the battle and the two states, the Commonwealth of Australia and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, have different motivations for wanting to remember Long Tan. On the Australian side, a sense that reconciliation and atonement are needed is often reflected in official government and veterans’ statements about the war and Australia-Vietnam relations, in the memorialization process at Long Tan and in the involvement of Australian veterans groups engaged in local economic development and community building in Vietnam. On the Vietnamese side, where the Vietnam War played out as a civil as well as an international war, efforts by those who actively supported the former Republic of Vietnam based in Saigon in the south and among the overseas Vietnamese (Viet kieu) to memorialize their engagement in the conflict have been frustrated. The usefulness of the notion of seeking historical justice is therefore questioned in post–civil war situations where people are locked into fixed histories and are unprepared or unable to revisit and retell personal and collective memories and histories.

Workshop on public participation in international negotiations on environmental matters: Panel on environmental justice and access rights for sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean

This publication was prepared with financial support from the United Nations Development Account and the project “Addressing critical socio-environmental challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean ”

Perceptions of Procedural and Distributive Justice in the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

The September l1th Victim Compensation Fund (the Fund) was created in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Much has been written about the Fund, both pro and con, in both popular media and scholarly literature. Perhaps the most widely used term in referring to the Fund is "unprecedented." The Fund is intriguing for many reasons, particularly for its public policy implications and its impact on the claimants themselves. The federal government has never before provided compensation to victims of terrorism through a special master who had virtually unlimited discretion in determining awards. Consequently, this formal allocation of money by a representative of the federal government to its citizens has provided an opportunity to test theories of procedural and distributive justice in a novel context. This article tests these theories by analyzing the results of a study of the Fund's claimants. Part I provides general background, summarizes existing commentary on the Fund, and discusses prior research on social justice that is relevant to the 9/11 claimants' experiences with the Fund. Part II of this article describes the methodology behind the study, in which seventy-one individuals who filed claims with the Fund completed surveys about their experiences with and perceptions of the Fund. Part III discusses the survey results. We found that participants were reasonably satisfied with the procedural aspects of the Fund, such as representatives' impartiality and respectful treatment. Participants were less satisfied, however, with the distributive aspects of the Fund, such as the unequal distribution of compensation and the reduction in compensation if claimants received compensation from other sources (e.g., life insurance). Part IV of this article addresses the implications of the study results for public policy and for theories of social justice.

Legality and Human Rights: Administrative Justice in Russia 1862-1917

The question of how far pre-revolutionary Russia was from the ideal of a lawful state has received little academic attention, particularly as relates to the legal regulation of relations between person, society and state within the state administration. Pravilova explored the methods of settling disputes between individuals and the administration, and the emergence of legal controls of the administration, analysed projects for the organisation of administrative justice and studied the particular nature of concepts from Russian administrative justice. The idea of an organisation of special bodies examining complaints by private persons against the actions of officials and state bureaucratic organs first appeared in the early 1860s. In the 1870s-1890s various projects for the reform of administrative justice (reorganisation of the Senate and local administrative institutions) were proposed by the Ministries of Justice and Finance, but none of these was put into practice, largely due to resistance from the bureaucracy. At the same time, however, the rapid development of private enterprise, the activities of the zemstvo and self-government produced new norms and mechanisms for the regulation of authorities and social relations. Despite the lack of institutional conditions, the Senate did consider complaints from private persons against illegal actions by administrative officials, playing a role similar to that of the supreme administrative courts in France and Germany. The spread of concepts of a 'lawful state' aroused support for a system of administrative justice and the establishment of administrative tribunals was seen as a condition of legality and a guarantee of human rights. The government was forced to understand that measures to maintain legality were vital to preserve the stability of the system of state power, but plans for liberal reforms were pushed into the background by constitutional reforms. The idea of guarantees of human rights in relations with the authorities was in contradiction with the idea of the monarchy and it was only when the Provisional Government took power in 1917 that the liberal programme of legal reforms had any chance of being put into practice. A law passed in June 1917 ordained the organisation of local administrative justice bodies, but its implementation was hampered by the war, the shortage of qualified judges and the existing absolute legal illiteracy, and the few administrative courts that were set up were soon abolished by the new Soviet authorities. Pravilova concluded that the establishment of a lawful state in pre-revolutionary Russia was prevented by a number of factors, particularly the autocratic nature of the supreme authority, which was incompatible with the idea of administrative justice as a guarantee of the rights of citizens in their relations with the state.

Rick Henderson and Mike Pochin: A Right Result? Advocacy, justice and empowerment

As Henderson and Pochin point out in the introduction to their book, recent years have seen the concept of advocacy given increasing prominence in central and local government policy in the UK. It made an appearance in local community care and long-stay hospital closure plans. It features in reforms to the health service in England and Wales, in the form of the Patient Advocacy and Liaison Services (DoH 2000), while proposed changes to the mental health system also accord a key role to service users' advocates. In addition, Valuing People, central government's proposals on the future strategy for people with learning disabilities, promised the widespread development of advocacy services (DoH 2001). Advocacy, traditionally located on the margins of state activity in the UK, is experiencing something of an attempt to shift it into mainstream policy and service provision. This makes it a significant time to review the core values and practices that have distinguished advocacy from other forms of professional and voluntary intervention and to explore how these may be preserved and developed in the contemporary context.

The European Court of Justice and process-oriented review. Research Paper in Law, 01/2012

Structuralism is a theory of U.S. constitutional adjudication according to which courts should seek to improve the decision-making process of the political branches of government so as to render it more democratic.1 In words of John Hart Ely, courts should exercise their judicial-review powers as a ‘representation-reinforcing’ mechanism.2 Structuralism advocates that courts must eliminate the elements of the political decision-making process that are at odds with the structure set out by the authors of the U.S. Constitution. The advantage of this approach, U.S. scholars posit, lies in the fact that it does not require courts to second-guess the policy decisions adopted by the political branches of government. Instead, they limit themselves to enforcing the constitutional structure within which those decisions must be adopted. Of course, this theory of constitutional adjudication, like all theories, has its shortcomings. For example, detractors of structuralism argue that it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw the dividing line between ‘substantive’ and ‘structural’ matters.3 In particular, they claim that, when identifying the ‘structure’ set out by the authors of the U.S. Constitution, courts necessarily base their determinations not on purely structural principles, but on a set of substantive values, evaluating concepts such as democracy, liberty and equality. 4 Without claiming that structuralism should be embraced by the ECJ as the leading theory of judicial review, the purpose of my contribution is to explore how recent case-law reveals that the ECJ has also striven to develop guiding principles which aim to improve the way in which the political institutions of the EU adopt their decisions. In those cases, the ECJ decided not to second-guess the appropriateness of the policy choices made by the EU legislator. Instead, it preferred to examine whether, in reaching an outcome, the EU political institutions had followed the procedural steps mandated by the authors of the Treaties. Stated simply, I argue that judicial deference in relation to ‘substantive outcomes’ has been counterbalanced by a strict ‘process review’. To that effect, I would like to discuss three recent rulings of the ECJ, delivered after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, where an EU policy measure was challenged indirectly, i.e. via the preliminary reference procedure, namely Vodafone, Volker und Markus Schecke and Test-Achats.5 Whilst in the former case the ECJ ruled that the questions raised by the referring court disclosed no factor of such a kind as to affect the validity of the challenged act, in the latter cases the challenged provisions of an EU act were declared invalid.

An Exercise in Legal Honesty: Re-writing the Court of Justice and the Bundesverfassungsgericht. IHS Political Science Series No. 136, February 2014

At a time of crisis – a true state of emergency – both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the German Federal Constitutional Court have failed the rule of law in Europe. Worse still, in their evaluation of the ersatz crisis law, which has been developed in response to financial and sovereign debt crises, both courts have undermined constitutionality throughout Europe. Each jurisdiction has been implicated within the techocratisation of democratic process. Each Court has contributed to an incremental process of the undermining of the political subjectivity of European Citizens. The results are depressing for lawyers who are still attached to notions of constitutionality. Yet, we must also ask whether the Courts could have acted otherwise. Given the original flaws in the construction of Economic and Monetary Union, as well as the politically pre-emptive constraints imposed by global financial markets, each Court might thus be argued to have been forced to suspend immediate legality in a longer term effort to secure the character of the legal jurisdiction as a whole. Crisis can and does defeat the law. Nevertheless, what continues to disturb is the failure of law in Europe to open up any perspective for a return to normal constitutionality post crisis, as well as its apparent inability to give proper and honest consideration to the hardship now being experienced by millions of Europeans within crisis. This contribution accordingly seeks to reimagine each Judgment in a language of legal honesty. Above all, this contribution seeks to suggest a new form of post-national constitutional language; a language which takes as its primary function, proper protection of democratic process against the ever encroaching powers of a post-national executive power. This contribution forms a part of an on-going effort to identify a new basis for the legitimacy of European Law, conducted jointly and severally with Christian Joerges, University of Bremen and Hertie School of Government, Berlin. Differences do remain in our theoretical positions; hence this individual essay. Nevertheless, the congruence between pluralist and conflict of law approaches to the topic are also readily apparent. See, for example, Everson & Joerges (2013).

INS technology selection [microform] : hearing before a subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, second session, May 12, 1988.

CIS Microfiche Accession Numbers: CIS 89 H401-11