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This article starts with the premise that a classical approach of the law such as the one taught by Hans Kelsen leads to an impasse when it is time to conceive a model of recognition of the Native's "Custom Adoption." The author proposes to take an approach of the law with a view both anthropological and pluralistic in order to study the question. In Canada, the legislatures of one province and two territories have already sanctioned the formal recognition of "custom adoption." These examples will serve as the background to the discussion of the different forms of expression of legal pluralism. The author will argue in favour of a model of recognition that expresses a pluralism of co-operation or co-ordination since it is the model that offers the aboriginal system of adoption the best guarantees of independence and autonomy.

Keywords: Adoption, altérité, anthropologique, assimilation, atikamekw, autochtone, autonomie, autorité, coexistence, colonial, colonisé, coordination, coopération, cri, dialogue, discrimination, diversité, égalité, effectivité, effet, enfant, exclusion, famille, familial, filiation, hégémonique, hiérarchique, homogène, intervention, inuit, juridicité, monisme, Nunavik, occidental, paradigme, personnalité, pluralisme, protection, recommandation, reconnaissance, réforme sociale, symbolique, tribunal, territorial, uniformité, Adoption, otherness, anthropological, assimilation, atikamekw, aboriginal, autonomy (self-rule, self-government), authority, coexistence, colonial, colonized, coordination, co-operation, cry (shout), dialogue, discrimination, diversity, equality, effectiveness, effect, child, exclusion, family, familial, filiation, hegemonic, hierarchic (hierarchical), homogeneous, intervention, Inuit, juridicity, monism, Nunavik, occidental, paradigm, pluralism, protection, recommendation, recognition, social reform, symbolic/symbolism, tribunal, territorial, uniformity

How can an ocean carrier, responsible for damages caused to third party, be identified? This is the recurring question not yet adequately answered, nor addressed by international maritime transportation law. The following phenomenons have greatly contributed to the opacity of oceanic commercial transportation law: they are flags of convenience, phantom ships, the sister-ship company, the marine insurance frauds, the corporate veils, chartering, contractual ambiguity or caveats inserted in charter-parties and bills of lading, the complacency of classifying societies and P & I clubs, etc. In short, maritime commercial practices have become so obscure that they fail to allow for the clear identification of maritime transport actors and more specifically that of the actual maritime transporter. This lack of transparency raises the whole question of the identification of the responsible maritime carrier. This essay will outline the state of the law in the area and the solutions most likely to properly address the questions raised.

Polygamy, generally accepted as the state in which a man is legitimately married to two or more wives, is today a world phenomenon because of the importance of the immigration of individuals coming from countries in which this type of marriage is practised.As a very important issue, it is worth consideration from the judicial point of view and more pressingly from the point of view of private international law. In this regard, there is no doubt that a country like Cameroon which, by virtue of Article 49 of the Ordinance of 29 June 1981 fixing the organisation of civil status, admits polygamous union, the question of Polygamy in private international law poses an acute problem which must be analysed principally from the point of view of conflict of laws.Once envisaged from the angle of the conflict of laws, this question borders essentially on the determination of the applicable law to the polygamous marriage by way of formation of appropriate conflict of law rule on the one hand, and the putting in place of the determinant law on the other.From the insertion of polygamy in the category of marriage and precisely in the substantive conditions of marriage, with the consequence of attaching it principally to the personal law of the spouses, while taking into consideration the plurality of wives which characterises polygamous unions, we come out with a cameroonian solution which can be summarised as follows: the validity of a second marriage celebrated without the dissolution of the first depends firstly on the capacity of the spouses to contract a polygamous marriage with regard to their personal status; secondly on the determination of the nature of the first marriage by the cumulative application of the personal laws of the parties to that marriage and eventually the taking in account of their will.

The issue of liability of government leaders and particularly of heads of state has undergone dramatic changes over the past few years, in a way that can be qualified as a "true legal revolution." We have moved from a principle of general immunity benefiting heads of state engaged in criminal acts, regardless of whether they are still in office or not, to the affirmation of criminal liability under international law for their public acts. The evolution of judicial thinking, the activities of international tribunals, and daring innovations of several national courts have combined to create a trend, recognized as real progress in the law, which leads inevitably to challenging the immunity of heads of state. This determination to hold government leaders accountable for their actions must be situated in the broader context affecting the leaders and the nations themselves. In this context, the issue of liability of heads of state revolves around the precedent-setting value of their conduct. It is often at this high level that the real accountability for the most odious crimes lies, crimes for which immunity is no longer acceptable. But it is also at this level that the sovereignty of the state is most patently exercised, thus forming by and large the basis for the development of international law; the principle of immunity of heads of state traditionally served to ensure respect for that sovereignty. One may wish to bridge these two contradictory imperatives, as the present trend seems to be, by suppressing the legal obstacle created by the immunity principle. But, then, one must avoid the temptation to conceal the considerable political challenges that such a trend entails.

This article examines the practical forms of cosmopolitanism in the Americas, building on a challenge to its definition mainly inherited from European colonialism on the one hand, and stressing on the other hand, the specific socio-historical development of the Americas. This development is presented through the experiences of meetings of indigenous peoples, European, African and other, which occurred in the history of the Americas, and who have given rein to cultural experiences from the meeting and crossing multiple nationalities. The context of development of national cultures in the Americas, has been strongly influenced by these transnational and transcultural currents, and is well demarcated from the development context of European national cultures. In the contemporary situation, however, is in Europe, through the definition of supranational institutions, and not in the Americas, appear the theoretical formulations of a renewed cosmopolitanism. The Americas have, in turn, hands-on experience of cosmopolitanism, based on transnational and transcultural, it is important to recognize and to reach beyond the limits of the continental forms of integration that lie now in the lack of institutional and theoretical considerations concerning what defines the specificity of the socio-historical and cultural experience of the Americas.

Keywords: cosmopolitisme, Amérique, transnationalité, transculturalité, identités, histoire, sociétés américaines, colonialisme, intégration continentale, institutions, pratiques, cosmopolitanism, America, transnational, transcultural, identities, history, American societies, colonialism, continental integration, institutions, practices, cosmopolitismo, América, transnacionalidad, transculturalidad, identidades, historia, sociedades americanas, colonialismo, integración continental, instituciones, práctica

AbstractThe aim of this article is to take a fresh look at Romanticism's arch ‘infidel', Thomas Paine. My approach is to place his key work The Age of Reason (1795) in the context of what Derrida in Spectres of Marx calls ‘spectropolitics'. Derrida coins this term to describe the way in which ‘effectivity phantamolizes itself,' and I want to use Derrida's insight to explore the specifically visual dimension of Paine's ‘phantomal' image. I will show that there are three components to the spectropolitical transformation of Paine: his demonization in the 1790s as the diabolical seducer of the common reader; his ‘resuscitation' in the post-war period by Richard Carlile and other ‘apostles'; and the ironic conjunction between this contested ‘apotheosis' of Paine and his Deistical debunking of Christian revelation as vulgar spectacle. I focus my discussion around George Cruikshank's print The Age of Reason (1819) in order to show that caricature was a major spectropolitical force in the Romantic period and the apposite cultural medium for negatively ‘phantamolizing' Paine, though this tactic always ran the risk of further enhancing his ‘cult' status in radical martyrology. The larger critical aim of the article is to open up a new area in Romantic studies: to redefine Romanticism in terms of ‘spectropolitics' gives popular visual media such as caricature a primary rather than secondary critical function, and it allows us to rethink and revalue the ‘phantasmagoric' transformation of Romantic politics and culture.

While the “dual status” principle is fundamental in cooperative law, it needs to be explained. The author of this article attempts to do this by looking at worker cooperatives. The 1978 law governing cooperatives is subject to interpretation, in particular in the definition of a worker cooperator. Is a worker cooperator an entrepreneur, an employee, or a hybrid status waiting to be invented? The status of the worker cooperator is examined by looking at the financial and non-financial arrangements that exist between the worker and the cooperative. Between the traditional form of remuneration and participation in the enterprise's gains, financial rewards appear directly linked to work. The cooperator participates in management bodies by being a member of the cooperative and in bodies representing the employees by being a worker. The cooperator benefits from the rights and obligations of an employee, but the specificities are inherent to the status of a cooperator. The detailed analysis of the legal nature of the cooperator status clearly shows the whole complexity of the issue, which is reflected in the “cooperation contract.”

The world of mutual insurance is in the midst of change. The application of the directives of the European Union has led to a new set of regulations for French mutual insurers, and health-care mutual insurers are affected by many changes. As a result of mergers and closures, the number of firms has steadily fallen with greater focus on core business and stricter actuarial rules. In this context, how do health-care mutual insurers position themselves in relation to their competitors? What business strategies do they employ? This article presents the results of a survey conducted in 2002 among three groups of mutual insurers. What features do mutual insurers oriented towards complementary health-care present compared with those that sell life annuities? What is the situation for mixed mutual insurers? The survey looks at various aspects, such as the initiatives for innovation, the division between individual and collective contracts, high priority objectives, customer loyalty, marketing tools, how information is managed, the organization of sales, etc. Based on the findings of the survey, the author has identified three types of attitude in relation to competitors and a number of issues that mutual insurers must deal with if they are to remain one of the pillars of the social economy.

During the course of their coevolution, plants and pathogens have evolved an intricate relationship resulting from a continuous exchange of molecular information. Pathogens have developed an array of offensive strategies to parasitize plants and, in turn, plants have deployed a wide range of defense mechanisms similar in some respects to the immune defenses produced in animais. The recent advances in molecular biology and plant transformation have provided evidence that sensitizing a plant to respond more rapidly to infection could confer increased protection against virulent pathogens. One important facet in ascertaining the significance of defense molecules in plant disease resistance isthe exact knowledgeof their spatio-temporal distribution in stressed plant tissues. In an effort to understand the process associated with the induction of plant disease resistance, the effect of biological, microbial and chemical elicitors on the plant cell response during attack by fungal pathogens was investigated and the mechanisms underlying the expression of resistance studied. Evidence was provided that, in all cases, disease-resistance reactions correlated with changes in cell biochemistry and physiology that were accompanied by structural modifications including the formation of callose-enriched wall appositions and the infiltration of phenolic compounds at sites of potential pathogen penetration. Activation of the phenylpropanoid pathway appeared to be a crucial phenomenon involved in pathogen growth restriction and host cell survival under stress conditions. Although examples of practical use of induced resistance as a method of plant disease control are few, a number of field and greenhouse experiments are encouraging and indicate that this approach has the potential to become a powerful strategy against an array of pathogens in a persistent manner.