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955.More information
Beyond every political blatant manoeuvre in the media, the analysis of the juridical nature of the Bosnia-Herzegovina according to the Dayton agreements reveals an institutional structure which departs from the state juridical configuration as meant in the public law. The atypical nature of that state results from its organization, neither inspired by the classical model of state organization (unitary state, federal state) nor by the status of a parted state. The vulnerability of the Bosnia-Herzegovina status originates in the ambivalence of its legal conditions as far as state institutions functioning is concerned. Indeed the Dayton agreements have generated a range of juridical orders which seriously raises the question of their organization, both on the vertical level and the horizontal one.
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958.
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959.More information
The historiography of the “Pays d'en haut”, as a specific historical object, may seem relatively stammering. The term “Pays d'en haut” may have been perceived as too soft or too vague, geographically and conceptually, and historians may have preferred to invest the history of Ontario, Michigan, or Manitoba by using other geographic categories (New France, Canada, Great Lakes, Prairies), or more clearly analytical grids (frontier, hinterland, periphery). However, the expression deserves to be valued insofar as it served as a long-term mental and geographical framework. As such, it constitutes an object of research in itself, which can encourage a renewed study of the historical processes at work in the spaces concerned, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. This definition of the “Pays d'en haut” as an object of history is certainly not self-evident: it implies, first of all, a reflection on the object “Pays d'en haut” in history, on how this framework has been built historically through the practices, representations and imaginations of social actors. In order to fully legitimize this approach, we need also to analyze how historiography has, in turn, ignored, neglected, or, on the contrary, emphasized this expression as the space it designates.
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960.More information
TheMerchant of Venice is, for good reason, considered to be one of Shakespeare's most legal works, alongside Measure for Measure. At the heart of the debate is the famous penalty clause that Venetian ship owner Antonio allows to be imposed on him by Jewish moneylender Shylock. The clause requires a pound of Antonio's own flesh in the event that he defaults on payment of his loan. Generally called to mind is the monologue by Portia, who pleads for the moneylender's mercy. The play is read as an illustration of an eternal trial between the letter of the law and its spirit, between legal formalism and equity. This lecture questions this traditional interpretation by placing the story back into its socio-historical context: the Venetian casino, the games of seduction and power, and the fact that the adventures are necessarily financed by the Venetian Ghetto. Yet, in addition to legal analysis and sociological decoding, an anthropological reading of Shakespeare's work is warranted. The Merchant of Venice can be understood as a clash between radicalized legal passions. For Shylock, the promissory note, containing the famous penalty clause, presents itself as an opportunity to finally quench his thirst for vengeance, fueled by age-old resentment. For Antonio, a diehard gambler, any transaction is an opportunity to go for broke and to preemptively turn misfortune to his advantage. After all, how could a Venetian ship owner lose to a Jewish moneylender?