Search Results (84)

This article examines how the right to mental health has been constitutionalized in Peru through the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. Using doctrinal constitutional analysis, the article combines the interpretation of international human rights standards, domestic legislation, and the Court’s leading cases with a targeted review of recent scholarship on community mental health reform, disability rights, and coercion. It argues that the Peruvian Court has transformed mental health from a predominantly medical or welfare concern into a constitutionally enforceable right by recognizing its connection to dignity, psychological integrity, equality, and the right to health. The article further argues, however, that this constitutionalization remains incomplete: the Court has been stronger in recognition and remedial activation than in fully confronting coercion, legal capacity, and the structural determinants of unequal enjoyment. The Peruvian case therefore illustrates both the promise and the limits of judicially driven rights-based mental health reform. Its broader contribution lies in showing that constitutionalization should be assessed not only by rights recognition, but also by doctrinal elaboration, institutional remedies, and the extent to which courts reshape the underlying legal model of care. Full article

In 19th-century Hungary, the German-language press provided an important intellectual platform for Jewish journalists, many of whom became significant actors in political communication and cultural transfer. This study examines the Pester Lloyd (founded in 1854) as an institutional case through which the mediating role of Jewish journalists in a multilingual press culture can be explored. By analyzing editorial strategies, journalistic networks, and forms of cultural mediation, the paper explores how Jewish intellectuals operated between Hungarian- and German-language cultural and political spheres. Methodologically, the study combines historical press research with institutional and intellectual–historical analysis, drawing on editorials, feuilletons, autobiographical writings, and contemporary press material. Special attention is given to Miksa Falk, whose editorial leadership embodied the ideals of liberal constitutionalism and linguistic and cultural mediation. The article situates the Pester Lloyd as both a product of and an important medium for journalistic modernization and the participation of Jewish journalists within Hungary’s evolving media landscape. Full article

The growing complexity of cryptocurrency ecosystems has created substantial difficulties for anti-money laundering (AML) enforcement across jurisdictions. Existing AML information-sharing mechanisms are fragmented, slow, and constrained by privacy regulations. This paper presents CAHE-AML, a risk-adaptive architecture built on a context-aware hybrid encryption framework designed to enable secure and privacy-preserving cross-border AML data exchange between regulatory authorities and virtual asset service providers (VASPs). CAHE-AML integrates symmetric encryption, attribute-based encryption (ABE), a decentralized key governance model, and heuristic risk-scoring mechanisms for dynamic policy adaptation. Using an Ethereum Fraud Dataset, we compute risk scores to dynamically assign context-aware access policies across three hierarchical tiers: local, regional, and global. Experimental evaluation on an enterprise-grade multi-core system demonstrates high computational efficiency, achieving substantial throughput and low processing latency. The system identifies integrity breaches with high accuracy while maintaining a manageable data expansion ratio. These results highlight the computational feasibility of CAHE-AML’s cryptographic layer for real-time, high-frequency AML data processing in decentralized financial systems. Full article

The reunification of scientific, artistic, and philosophical knowledge empowers us to rethink our relationship with nature in light of a biocultural ethic grounded in co-inhabitation among humans and other-than-human beings in shared habitats. To this end, the biocultural ethic is built upon the 3H model, which values the vital links among co-inhabitants and their life habits in shared habitats. The model integrates the biophysical, cultural, and sociopolitical dimensions characteristic of environmental complexity. In this essay, the 3H model is applied to rivers, examined from biological, philosophical, poetic, and legal perspectives. The result is not only to highlight that rivers are more than merely exploitable resources, but also to show that their “voice” raises a normative (ethical and legal) appeal that, among other aspects, has inspired the new Latin American constitutionalism. This ontological, epistemological, and ethical turn seeks to foster a transition from destruction and homogenization toward a bioculture that values biological and cultural diversity through renewed forms of co-inhabitation with rivers and the biosphere. Full article

Tax systems worldwide face a compliance gap that OECD data places at USD 100–240 billion annually in corporate avoidance alone, before accounting for the shadow economy and crypto-asset transactions. FinTech mandatory e-invoicing, real-time transaction matching, and machine-learning audit selection is narrowing the informational conditions that enable evasion, while simultaneously introducing governance risks: opaque algorithmic audit targeting, contested blockchain forensic evidence, and the surveillance potential of programmable money. This article presents a PRISMA 2020 systematic literature review of 59 peer-reviewed articles (Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect), complemented by IRAMUTEQ lexicometric analysis and an extension of the Allingham Sandmo compliance model to incorporate algorithmic detection probabilities, bomb-crater belief dynamics, and Zero-Knowledge Proof verification. Four thematic clusters emerge: tax compliance behaviour and FinTech adoption (19.92%), digital transformation and corporate performance (35.34%), bibliometric and emerging-technology research (16.54%), and cryptocurrency markets and regulatory challenges (28.20%). Across them, FinTech reduces evasion where institutional and technical conditions allow but generates distributional, evidentiary, and constitutional risks that existing legal frameworks have yet to resolve. In response, we propose the Techno-Legal Due Process Framework (TLDPF) three pillars (Techno-Proportionality, Cryptographic Burden of Proof, and Algorithmic Constitutionalism) grounded in EU/OECD constitutional doctrine as a normative design proposal awaiting empirical validation. Full article

This article argues that journalism plays a structurally significant role in accountability within contemporary democratic governance and therefore warrants constitutional protection beyond traditional press-freedom guarantees. It develops the concept of the Quarta Politica as a constitutional order composed of four branches of democratic governance: legislative, executive, judicial, and ombudsman power. Within this framework, the Ombudsman Council constitutes the Fourth Branch of Power and safeguards the informational, participatory, deliberative, and corrective conditions necessary for democratic legitimacy. The article conceptualizes journalism not as a privileged profession or sovereign authority but as part of the informational infrastructure through which democratic systems monitor and contest the exercise of power. Particular attention is given to a Chamber for the Protection of Journalistic Independence within the Ombudsman Council, designed to protect editorial independence, media pluralism, and informational accountability. The analysis further examines how digital transformation, platform dominance, algorithmic amplification, ownership concentration, and fragmented communication environments undermine the institutional conditions necessary for independent journalism. Situating the framework within theories of horizontal accountability, monitory democracy, and digital constitutionalism, the article concludes that safeguarding the informational foundations of democratic accountability has become a central constitutional challenge of contemporary governance. Full article

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 remains highly uneven across countries, while the structural factors associated with this heterogeneity are still insufficiently understood. This study aims to classify 154 countries according to their full 17-dimensional SDG achievement profiles and to identify the structural indicators statistically associated with the observed typological differences. A two-stage analytical approach was applied. First, k-means cluster analysis based on the scores of all 17 SDGs was used to identify homogeneous groups of countries. Second, canonical discriminant analysis was performed for 64 countries with complete data for 17 indicators selected from international sources according to the “one indicator–one goal” principle. The cluster analysis identified three typologically homogeneous groups of countries that broadly correspond to differences in development level but are not reducible to them. The discriminant model achieved apparent classification accuracy of 90.63% (p < 0.0001), while the first canonical function explained 90.3% of the between-group variation. LOO cross-validation yielded an accuracy of 71.43%, confirming that the model retains meaningful discriminatory power beyond the estimation sample, while the difference between apparent and cross-validated accuracy reflects the constraints of a small sample relative to the number of predictors. The strongest differentiating indicators were the proportion of the urban population living in slums, the Global Peace Index, access to sanitation, and poverty. Overall, the results show that SDG achievement profiles constitute an independent analytical characteristic of countries and that typological differences are primarily associated with basic human development and institutional stability. Full article

Background/Objectives: Accurate identification of neonatal malnutrition is essential for optimizing perinatal care and reducing adverse outcomes. Traditional birthweight-based methods fail to account for body proportionality, limiting their ability to distinguish constitutionally small or large neonates from those with true nutritional abnormalities. We previously developed a customized fetal body mass index (cFBMI) percentile model that incorporates both weight and length, adjusted for maternal and fetal characteristics. This study aims to perform a temporal external validation of the cFBMI model following the Riley et al. framework, comparing its performance against the GROW customized birthweight model and the INTERGROWTH-21st population-based standard. Methods: A temporal validation study was conducted using singleton deliveries from Hospital Universitario de Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain. The development cohort comprised 7864 deliveries (2002–2021); the validation cohort comprised 4441 deliveries (2022–2025). Inclusion criteria: singleton pregnancy, gestational age of 33–42 + 6 weeks, birthweight of 500–6000 g, known neonatal sex and length, and complete maternal data. The Ponderal Index (PI = weight/length³ × 100) stratified by sex and gestational age served as the gold standard (undernutrition: PI < p10; overnutrition: PI > p90). Discrimination was assessed using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) with bootstrap 95% confidence intervals (2000 iterations) and DeLong tests. Calibration was evaluated by comparing observed versus expected proportions across percentile categories. Clinical utility was assessed using decision curve analysis (DCA). Temporal stability was quantified by comparing AUCs and Brier scores between the development and validation cohorts. Results: In the validation cohort (n = 4441), cFBMI demonstrated superior discrimination for both undernutrition (AUC: 0.962) and overnutrition (AUC: 0.961) compared with GROW (AUC: 0.751 and 0.676, respectively) and INTERGROWTH-21st (AUC: 0.756 and 0.682, respectively); all DeLong comparisons p < 0.0001. The cFBMI exhibited excellent temporal stability (ΔAUC = −0.004 for undernutrition, +0.002 for overnutrition) and superior calibration (observed proportions: 9.6%/81.7%/8.8% vs. expected 10%/80%/10%; χ² = 9.22, p = 0.010). The decision curve analysis confirmed the superior net benefit of cFBMI across all threshold probabilities. Conclusions: The customized fetal BMI percentile model demonstrates excellent and temporally stable discriminative performance in this single-institution temporal validation study, with superior calibration and apparent advantages in clinical utility as determined by decision curve analysis compared with existing methods. Its integration of body proportionality provides conceptual alignment with the Ponderal Index gold standard. These findings are promising but require confirmation through external multicenter validation before clinical implementation can be recommended. Although the mathematical relationship between the index test (weight/length²) and the reference standard (weight/length³) should be considered when interpreting the magnitude of discrimination metrics, validation against independent clinical outcomes is an essential next step. The cFBMI thus provides a proportionality-aware nutritional metric whose primary discriminative advantage over weight-based methods is realized at and beyond the moment of birth, and which is forward-compatible with emerging modalities for independent prenatal fetal length estimation. Full article

Periods of major technological transformation have historically coincided with the emergence of political movements. The current Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution, alongside the expansion of platform-based media, has reshaped how political dissent is produced, circulated, and normalized. This study examines contemporary anti-monarchist discourse associated with the UK-based Republic movement, focusing on how opposition to constitutional monarchy is articulated on YouTube within an environment shaped by profit-driven goals. Using NVivo 14, this qualitative study analyzes 62 publicly available YouTube videos published over a twelve-month period from January 2025 to January 2026, employing a hybrid inductive–deductive thematic analysis supported by Large Language Models. Findings identify three interrelated discursive themes: monarchy framed as legalized theft and extraction of public wealth; monarchical authority depicted as undemocratic and constitutionally manipulative; and the reproduction of colonial, elite, and mythic power through mediated narratives of tradition and national identity. Rather than evaluating the factual accuracy of anti-monarchist claims, the analysis treats this content as a mediated cultural practice through which broader socio-economic anxieties—such as inequality, democratic distrust, and fears of technological displacement—are symbolically organized. Digital platforms, such as the Republic Campaign YouTube channel, thus enable political discourse to gain visibility and resonance. Full article

Africa is historically celebrated as the cradle of humankind. However, there is doubt on whether she is maintaining her own originality and position as the motherland and fatherland of all humanity. Although globalisation has impacted all continents and states, its negative effects seem to be skewing towards African and in particular Zimbabwean Shona families. This paper examines how DNA testing has impacted on some of the Shona families in Zimbabwe. The Shona community in Zimbabwe is culturally porous and receptive in terms of traditional, religious, linguistic and cultural values. They embraced Western democracy that is premised on human rights principles, constitutionalism, and citizenship, which, however, do not guarantee their belongingness. As some of the Shona families in Zimbabwe drifted away from the traditional cultural belief system campus, they got into a foreign and alien worldview that is dictated by the host in the name of technology. This has led to excessive reliance on foreign systems that are appearing like global standards yet they are disempowering them and causing them emotional and social distress. The reliance is a result of neocolonialism, linguistic and cultural imperialism that needs decolonisation. Thus, the paper adopts a qualitative approach based on an illuminating multiple case study design of six purposively selected scenarios aired on the The Closure DNA Show programme broadcasted on Zimbabwe Television (ZTV). The Afrocentric paradigm serves as a lens to uncover some of the perceptions of Shona families in Zimbabwe on DNA testing and its implications on parenthood, the family unit, and identity. The findings reveal that DNA testing is perceived as gender divisive and a destroyer of the family unit and exposing children to vulnerability, while it is also perceived positively as a way of (dis)affirming identity, which is crucial among the Shona. The paper recommends that other television programmes be screened based on their implications on gender relations, the family unit and identity. Full article

Globally, the effects of widowhood on the welfare, health, financial security and education of the widow’s children in many contexts have been the subject of much research. This paper aims to uncover the nexus among culture, gender and language on widowhood dignity and welfare among four chosen African ethnic groups in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The widowhood phenomenon is culture-bound and value-laden as it signposts the reality of existence in the linguistic and cultural contexts in which it is created and operationalised. Through Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1989 intersectional theory, this paper provides an in-depth, inductive qualitative investigation of the implications of culture, gender, language, and especially the nomenclature that African communities ascribe to the widowed, which in turn stigmatises widowhood. Two (2) South African and two (2) Zimbabwean ethnic groups were purposefully chosen for the multiple case study approach. Grounded theory is the coding framework and analysis technique. The coding starts off with picking key words, phrases and sentences and axial coding which is a higher level in which related data are grouped into sub-themes, themes and global themes. The search revealed that widowhood language, culture and nomenclature denote gendered, culturally contested spaces in which the widowed women especially face dehumanising and dewomanising rituals. The results gathered fall into five broad categories, namely, sexualised widowhood mourning rituals, psychological and emotional widowhood torture rituals, ritualised widowhood dispossession, swearing, movement and space restriction widowhood rituals. The rituals affirm the ascribed socially depressed widowed status implied in the stigmatising nomenclature. The paper recommends redefining widowhood in terms of humanising and womanising language, cultural rituals and nomenclature in the context of equality before the law. Such a move prevents discrimination against the widowed that unintentionally violates their constitutionally espoused right to equality. Full article

Epistemology remains tacitly anthropocentric: it treats knowledge as something produced and validated through human cognitive capacities such as understanding, intuition, and transparent justification. Yet contemporary science and artificial intelligence increasingly depend on non-human systems that generate mathematically valid results, empirically successful models, and operationally reliable inferences that no human can fully survey or interpret. This article develops xenoepistemics, a structural theory of non-anthropocentric knowledge. The central claim is that epistemic evaluation must be reformulated in terms of system-level properties—reliability, robustness, counterfactual sensitivity, and domain transfer—rather than mentalistic notions such as belief or understanding. I offer (i) a definition of xenoepistemic systems as systems that track structure in a target domain without requiring human-style semantic access; (ii) a minimal account of epistemic agency without minds that avoids trivialization; and (iii) a non-circular trust framework that distinguishes empirical success from epistemic legitimacy using independent validation regimes. This paper addresses a reflexive worry—that a human-authored theory cannot dethrone human epistemology—by separating standpoint from object: xenoepistemics is articulated by humans but is not about human cognition. I discuss the pragmatic value of xenoepistemic knowledge production, the limits of independent verification for opaque systems, domain-relative thresholds for xenoepistemic authority, and the problem of constitutionally human-inaccessible knowledge. Finally, I diagnose and formalize the Marcusian regress paradox: recurrent goalpost-shifting, whereby every machine competence is reclassified as irrelevant once achieved. Xenoepistemics reframes this debate by treating non-human knowledge as a present reality requiring new norms, not as a future curiosity. Full article

Global environmental governance has expanded significantly, yet it remains politically inadequate to address planetary crises in the Anthropocene. Despite the proliferation of multilateral environmental agreements, governance arrangements continue to suffer from fragmentation, weak authority, limited accountability, and a sovereignty-bound logic that constrains collective action. This article critically examines these limitations through an assessment of polycentric and Nested Systemic Governance approaches. While nested governance can reduce fragmentation and enhance participation, it remains dependent on voluntarism and lacks the political authority and democratic anchoring required for durable coordination. Drawing on debates in environmental politics and global governance, the article advances a longer-term institutional perspective that conceptualises a gradual evolution toward a federative framework combining multilevel participation with enforceable authority and democratic legitimacy. Full article

Under the Eighth Amendment, prisons are legally mandated to provide constitutionally adequate standards of medical care to the incarcerated. But how do we make sense of a carceral structure in which the very delivery of medical care results in preventable death? This article offers a carceral case study of how prison medical care during the era of mass incarceration generates racialized mortality at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison. By analyzing caselaw documents drawn from the docket of Lewis v. Cain, an ongoing lawsuit alleging inadequate medical care at Angola, this article seeks to address the limits of pursuing relief from prison conditions through legal interventions and reforms that are always yet to arrive. Rather than examining prison medical care and preventable death as problems to be reformed, this project aims to develop theoretical insight into how Angola Prison enacts “medical violence” against its captive population. This refers to the use of prison healthcare capacities to harm rather than affirm the lives of the incarcerated. As this case study argues, medical violence operates through organized abandonment, disregard, and carceral extraction, which together extend the life of the prison through the deaths of its captive population. Full article

Money laundering poses a serious threat to financial stability and requires effective national frameworks for prevention. This study investigates how the quality of legal and institutional frameworks affects the effectiveness of national anti-money laundering (AML) systems and their implications for financial risk management. We conducted an empirical analysis of 132 jurisdictions in 2024 using the Basel AML Index (AMLI) and the WJP Rule of Law Index (RLI). The Random Forest method was employed to model the relationship between rule-of-law indicators and AML risk levels. Findings reveal a significant inverse relationship between rule-of-law indicators and AML risk levels, with an overall classification accuracy of 69.6%. The model performed best for low-risk countries (precision 75%, recall 92.31%), moderately for medium-risk countries (precision 65.22%, recall 78.95%), but failed to identify high-risk jurisdictions, suggesting a legal institutional “threshold” necessary for effective AML functioning. Key predictors included protection of fundamental rights and mechanisms for civil oversight, with strong negative correlations between AML risk and criminal justice impartiality (−0.35), civil justice fairness (−0.35), and equality before the law (−0.41). These results show that legal factors strongly affect AML risk and can guide regulators in improving risk-based standards, enhancing regulatory certainty, and managing financial risk. Full article