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The purpose of this paper is to assess the implementation of the minimum level of protection against the loss of the home that arises from Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in The Netherlands. The paper focuses on anti-social behaviour-related cases in which the landlord requests the court to issue an eviction order.

The paper is based on a statistical analysis of nearly 250 judgements concerning housing-related anti-social behaviour.

A significant difference is found in the court’s attitude against drug-related anti-social behaviour and other types of nuisance. Moreover, it is found that in two-thirds of the cases, the tenant advanced a proportionality defence. Although the European Court stresses the need of a proportionality check, the Dutch courts ignore the tenant’s proportionality defence in 10 per cent of the cases and issue an eviction order in the majority of all cases. Advancing a proportionality defence does not result in any difference for the court decision.

The paper presents original data on the legal protection against eviction in cases concerning anti-social behaviour. This is the first study that analyses the approach towards housing-related anti-social behaviour in the context of the European minimum level of protection. Whilst centred on legislation and procedures in The Netherlands, its findings and discussion are relevant in other jurisdictions facing similar issues.

The purpose of this paper is to frame organisational cybersecurity through a strategic lens, as a function of an interplay of pragmatism, inference, holism and adaptation. The authors address the hostile epistemic climate for intellectual capital management presented by the dynamics of cybersecurity as a phenomenon. The drivers of this hostility are identified and their implications for research and practice are discussed.

The philosophical foundations of cybersecurity in its relation with strategy, knowledge and intellectual capital are explored through a review of the literature as a mechanism to contribute to the emerging theoretical underpinnings of the cybersecurity domain.

This conceptual paper argues that a knowledge-based perspective can serve as the necessary platform for a phenomenon-based view of organisational cybersecurity, given its multi-disciplinary nature.

By recognising the knowledge-related vectors, mechanisms and tendencies at play, a novel perspective on the topic can be developed: cybersecurity as a “knowledge problem”. In order to facilitate such a perspective, the paper proposes an emergent epistemology, rooted in systems thinking and pragmatism.

In practice, the knowledge-problem narrative can underpin the development of new organisational support constructs and systems. These can address the distinctiveness of the strategic challenges that cybersecurity poses for the growing operational reliance on intellectual capital.

The research narrative presents a novel knowledge-based analysis of organisational cybersecurity, with significant implications for both interdisciplinary research in the field, and practice.

This Chapter is written in an era in which the United Nations (UN) routinely deploys Missions to environments that satisfy the armed conflict threshold. Such Missions often require personnel to employ significant levels of force, whether to safeguard mission and humanitarian personnel, to protect civilians, to neutralise violent armed groups or, in pure self-defence. But use as well as non-use of force can readily frustrate the very objectives these troops are deployed to uphold, in turn creating gaps between the Promises they make and the Outcomes they actually secure. On the other hand, current Missions such as MINUSMA in Mali have proven to be amongst the deadliest for UN troops in the entire history of UN Peacekeeping. The thin line between use and non-use of force must therefore be trodden with utmost care. This Chapter tries to find answers to this dilemma from a moral perspective and considers how the peculiar nature of the morality of resort to force by the UN influences that of its use of force. It assesses why the latter should be calibrated or adjusted to comply with the former, and how this can consequently channel UN troop conduct towards the objectives pursued through deployment. It is only where these realities are understood and addressed, the Chapter submits, that the aforementioned Gaps between Promises and Outcomes can be redressed and closed.

The object of this research is the reconstruction of the existing legal response by European Union states to the phenomenon of immigration. It seeks to analyse the process of conferral of protection.

One main dimension is selected and discussed: the case law of the national courts. The study focuses on the legal status of immigrants resulting from the intervention of these national courts.

The research shows that although the courts have conferred an increasing protection on immigrants, this has not challenged the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the states to decide, according to their discretionary prerogatives, which immigrants are allowed to enter and stay in their territories. Notwithstanding the differences in the general constitutional and legal structures, the research also shows that the courts of the three countries considered – France, Germany and Spain – have progressively moved towards converging solutions in protecting immigrants.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the different legal orders analysed.

The relation between moral judgements, policy decisions and economic implications is a challenging subject for analysis, especially when the isues are the arms race and war‐fighting capabilities. How to translate moral judgements into policy decisions with their economic consequences is a complex and troublesome question because of the enormous stakes for national and worldwide survival. The problem confronting us is clearly illustrated by the US Catholic bishops' pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace, May 1983, which addressed the moral dimension of the nuclear arms race and warfare without coming to grips adequately with the issues of policy decisions and economy which their moral conclusions raised. Their later pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the US Economy, November 1986, compounded their failure by omitting to confront directly the economic implications of translating their moral conclusions into practical policies. The economic side of the arms race is a concern which must be recognised and addressed if policy decisions are to be made effective. The harshest critics of The Challenge of Peace have noted this failure realistically to confront policy decisions in terms of geopolitical, strategic and economic consequences.

In this paper I want to look at just one of the many contemporary legal narratives of homophobia – the phenomenon of the “Homosexual Advance Defence” (H.A.D.). While I agree with the analysis of one American commentator, who indicts the H.A.D. as a “judicial institutionalization of homophobia” (Mison, 1992, p. 136), I maintain that it is important to extend analyses which take as their main target the entrenchment of bigoted judicial views or which employ as their main critical tool a liberal framework of equality and discrimination (for example, see Potter, 2001). Just as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick urges us not to view homophobia as simple ignorance or bigotry (see Howe, 2000, pp. 85–87), I argue that there is much more at stake with the H.A.D., and consequently much more required of us, than mere questions of ignorance, discrimination and (re-)education. While it is important to identify and condemn at every turn the various legal and social manifestations of homophobia, of which the H.A.D. is clearly one, it is just as important (if not more so) to interrogate the discursive and epistemological foundations, or legitimations, of these very beliefs.

The images of soldiers which are evoked on memorial days commonly include a number of different virtues: courage, loyalty, fraternity, etc. One ideal perhaps extolled above all others is that of sacrifice. Soldiers, according to popular moral platitudes, are lauded for the sacrifices they make for the common good. Implied in this is the expectation that soldiers ought to be the type of people who are prepared to sacrifice themselves in defence of an ideal. Within the most popular framework for morally evaluating war, Just War Theory, sacrifice tends to be understood from within the deontological, rights-based framework that modern just war theorists favour. In this chapter I will aim to show how the conclusions drawn by considering sacrifice through a deontological lens can be enriched through the addition of virtue theoretical considerations, leading to a fuller account of sacrifice.

This chapter takes a philosophical approach to the idea of sacrifice in the military. It explores whether the predominant framework used for evaluating war, Just War Theory, is a suitable framework for understanding the sacrifices soldiers, commanders, and political leaders can be asked to make in times of war. Focussing on various conceptions of sacrifice, including physical and moral sacrifices, the chapter argues that the predominantly deontological formulation of modern just war theories could be enriched by considering notions surrounding the ancient Greek concept of arete (virtue). Thus, as well as being a detailed exposition of sacrifice in war, the chapter also seeks to show how consideration of aretaic notions such as virtue, character and moral psychology can enrich just war theories responses to various issues.

The value of this research is in suggesting that soldiers are morally obligated to accept more risk than modern warfare typically places, or at least historically has placed, on them. It also has implications for military ethics education in that it suggests that soldiers’ characters should be shaped in such a way as to dispose them to sacrifice. Further, it has implications for the use of Just War Theory in international relations by introducing a moral framework through which political leaders can determine when they might be morally obligated to forgive the indiscretions of another nation, and what it means to forgive in this context. As such, it makes a contribution to a growing discussion within Just War Theory: jus post bellum – the moral norms surrounding the resolution of conflict.

This chapter aims to demonstrate that the fundamental human rights principle that no one should be subjected to (grossly) disproportionate punishment should be interpreted to take into account terminal illness of the offender. It should be applied both during imposition of the sentences and also during execution of already imposed sentences.

In order to reveal whether this principle takes into account serious medical conditions, including terminal illness of the offender in the calculus of the proportionality of punishment and whether it is applicable at the execution stage of sentences, this chapter examined the roots of the fundamental human rights principle of proportionality of punishment by briefly surveying the penal theory, jurisprudence, court cases, laws, and legislative history from the U.S. federal and state jurisdictions and from Europe.

There is a consensus among surveyed theories that terminal illness of the offender is an element of the principle of proportionality of punishment. Thus the fundamental human rights principle must be interpreted to take it into account. The principle should be observed not only at the imposition stage, but also at the execution stage of already imposed sentences.

This chapter re-examines the roots of the fundamental human right to not being subjected to (grossly) disproportionate punishment. It does so in order to demonstrate that the right should be interpreted to take into account terminal illness of the offender and that it should be observed not only at the imposition stage, but also at the execution stage of already imposed sentences.

War is undoubtedly a dirty business, usually entailing massive destruction and loss of life on both sides. In an attempt to limit this inevitable death and destruction, philosophers have argued that belligerents must following certain principles in the conduct of warfare; namely, the principles of discrimination (that only legitimate military targets may be attacked) and of proportionality (that the damage done in attacking such targets must not be out of proportion to the military value of the target). These principles have come to be enshrined in International Law through a range of treaties, which are collectively known in military circles as the International Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC).

The essential idea at the heart of Michael Walzer’s supreme emergency argument, or as Brian Orend calls it, the supreme emergency exemption, is that desperate times call for desperate measures. If the situation is dire enough, and the consequences faced are serious enough, then it will be justifiable to act in ways which would normally be prohibited. In concrete terms, what this means is that during a time of war, a state can in some circumstances ignore the usual rules of warfare (i.e. the principles of discrimination and proportionality). Walzer claims this is justified if and only if the following conditions are met: the state is the victim of aggression, the state is about to be militarily defeated, and that the consequences of defeat will be catastrophic (i.e. would include extreme and widespread violations of fundamental human rights). In other words, when faced with a supreme emergency one is justified in engaging in widespread violations of the rights of some people (people to whom one only has a general duty) in order to prevent widespread violations of the rights of others (people to whom one has a specific duty).

In this paper I argue that the ‘rules’ which must be applied in order for widespread rights-violations to be considered justified are actually well understood, and that supreme emergency is not an unusual situation for which new rules must be considered, but simply an important specific example of such a situation. Essentially I argue that one must dirty one’s hands in war, but that there is no need for one’s hands to get any dirtier in a situation of supreme emergency.

This paper provides a novel framework for considering a much-debated question within military ethical fields, using insights from two of the major proponents of contemporary military ethics.