Unwritten constitutional conventions also known as lex non scripta, are under permanent scholarly scrutiny. This does not happen only in the Anglo-Saxon scholarly tradition. When analyzing the issues of unwritten law, a considerable number of representatives of this tradition, starting with W. Blackstone and finishing with contemporary British and American scholars, also talk about the existence of constitutional conventions. It should also be noted that issues pertaining to unwritten law and issues of conventions in particular, are often mentioned and analyzed (...) in the works of scholars of the Roman-Germanic legal tradition. Italian, French, German and Czech scholars take account of constitutional conventions, analyze their features and hold discourse on their future. However, in the course of scholarly debate, the issues of constitutional conventions have been dealt with in a fairly controversial manner. Even though individual scholars recognize constitutional conventions, the variety of opinions and conceptions is too large to form a uniform understanding. (shrink)

Constitution is an exclusive legal document, and its interpretation is a process – a continuous work of explanation of its content, the end and qualitative perfection of which may only be considered taking into account the limits of intellectual potential of the particular time. The interpretation of constitution is a permanent process, which is influenced and determined by plenty of conceptual factors. Firstly the supreme juridical power of the constitution as well as its integrity determines the opportunities of its interpreter (...) and applier. Integrity of the constitution is considered to be the legal, philosophical, logical integrity of its norms, which determines an obligation of its interpreter to perceive this legal act as an integral unit, i.e. not only as a catalogue of particular values, but also as a balance of these values. All the constitutional expressis verbis provisions are equal in its’ juridical power, that is why they do not negate each other, on the contrary – each of them only complement others’ content. Besides, it is important to mention that exceptional juridical power of the constitution determines its interpretational self-sufficiency. Constitution can not be interpreted invoking the content of the acts of lower juridical power. (shrink)

T. G. Masaryk and M. Romeris are certainly prominent personalities and great names in history. It would be hard to understand the Czech nation and the development of the state of Czechoslovakia without T. G. Masaryk’s philosophical views on person, nation, state, and his political activity; and it would be hard to understand certain aspects of the interwar Lithuania’s legal and political development without M. Romeris’ scientific heritage. These are the personalities, who have left a significant inheritance due to their (...) scientific, political and social activities. (shrink)

The constitution’s standing as a legal act of the highest power not only ensures its exclusive status in the legal system but also determines the hierarchic certainty of all norms within that system. The explicit character of the constitution does not preclude it from ensuring the hierarchical functionality of the legal system. This latter function requires that the limitation “problem” of explicitness be addressed by interpreting the constitution as a systemic document. Applying the constitution, therefore, requires a continuous effort in (...) comprehending it. The official doctrine of constitutional judicial institutions reflects the standard for understanding the constitution. This standard becomes the sole source, not only de jure, but significantly de facto, for determining the legality of legal acts. The constitution, as the prime and foremost law in a country, determines the functionality of the entire system of legal norms. As a legal source, it takes on the role of the material arbiter of final legality. The constant need to ensure the functioning of the system of legal norms hence informs yet another necessity–to apprehend and understand the constitution and the norms and principles established within. A few factors induce this perpetual need for interpretation, those being (a) the abstractness of constitutional norms, (b) “competition” among constitutional norms, (c) the integral and systemic nature of the constitution, and (d) the problem of legislative/regulative omission in the constitution. (shrink)

Straipsnyje tyrinėjamos dvi akrasijos sampratos ir jų santykis su atsakomybės priskyrimu Douglaso Husako baudžiamosios atsakomybės teorijoje. Nuo Platono Protagoro laikų akrasijos problema filosofijoje glaudžiai siejama su moralinio žinojimo klausimu. Pasitelkiant Antikos bei krikščioniškajai etikai itin reikšmingus tekstus, taip pat šiuolaikinius akratiško elgesio tyrinėjimus, straipsnyje išryškinama kita – vidiniu konfliktu paremta akrasijos samprata. Husako teorijoje taikoma akrasijos samprata akcentuoja moralinį žinojimą-nežinojimą. Tačiau jos prielaidų šaltinis yra ne Antika, o šiuolaikiniai moralinės atsakomybės priskyrimo skeptikai, nors paties Husako teorija nėra skeptinė. Darbe išryškinami (...) esminiai Husako teorijos trūkumai. Šie trūkumai atsiremia į Husako akratiško veikėjo sampratą ir kaip tokiam veikėjui priskiriama atsakomybė. Jų nagrinėjimas leidžia parodyti vidiniu konfliktu grįstos akrasijos sampratos pranašumus konstruojant neskeptinę baudžiamosios atsakomybės teoriją. (shrink)

The aim of the present article is to explain the role of the judiciary in forming the family policy in Lithuania. For this purpose in the first part of the article the legal basis for the state family policy formation is discussed. The conclusion is drawn that the judiciary is not separated from the formation of the family policy by any constitutional means. The article further describes how this function is actually implemented by the judiciary. The actual influence of the (...) judiciary is demonstrated by an analysis of the Lithuanian case law in three different areas: dissolution of marriage, child maintenance and the protection of the rights of children born outside marriage. The results of the analysis suggest that the influence of the judiciary on the state family policy works in diverse ways: when filling in legal gaps overlooked by the legislator; determining specific criteria which are important to the state family policy (while the legislator has determined only general principles); introducing international human rights standards in the national legal system, etc. One of the most controversial ways for the case law to influence the state family policy is through the modification of the legal regulation models prescribed by the laws. (shrink)

Recognition of the status of family in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania mandates the state authorities to care and provide for the family, to ensure the family members’ constitutional rights, and to ensure respect for family life. Such duties fall on both, the legislative and executive authorities. However, the enforcement of constitutional imperatives is not straightforward. One reason for this is that the Constitution does not contain any legal definition of ‘family’ or ‘family members’. Nor does the jurisprudence (...) of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania reveal the content of these notions. This, in turn, allows for various interpretations as to the scope of duties of state authorities and state attitude towards the family in general. In this context, the article aims to present approaches to the legal concept of family in Lithuanian legal doctrine, positive law and court practice. First, the article analyses the constitutional background of the concept of family and presents an overview of the ongoing political debate concerning this concept. Second, we analyse Lithuanian legal doctrine, scanty as it may be on this issue. Third, we examine the legislative specifics and the case law developed by the country’s highest judicial bodies with regard to the legal definition of ‘family’ and ‘family members’ in order to assess their impact on the state family policy in general. (shrink)

The article introduces the phenomenological idea of 'natural attitude' in the field of dance. Three phenomena, which very clearly show the embodiment of the natural attitude and its resistance to the requirements of dance, are analyzed. The 'controlling gaze' is the natural tendency to look at the limbs andfollow their movements instead of proprioceptive control The 'chess play' is a natural tendency of moving on the flat surface and ignoring the volume of movement. The 'seduction' is a natural tendency to (...) lose the body-self because of an interference with the others body. The dancing body has constantly to deal with these natural inclinations. And a dance teacher has to understand this split between 'ought' and 'is'. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of an empirical study that reflects monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of some legal acts on the labour of the Republic of Lithuania. The analysis of legal documents at the national and international level is provided. A review of cognate studies conducted by foreign and Lithuanian researchers is presented and the professional situation of a Lithuanian teacher from the employee rights perspective is highlighted. The professional activities contexts and sectors, wherein systematic violations of teachers’ (...) rights to a healthy and safe working environment are possible, are distinguished. A lack of generalized scientific data of employee (especially teacher) working conditions, the actual security of relevant rights and its monitoring and evaluation is still felt both in the country and abroad. A contradiction between: a) insufficient research of the issue and b) its importance to science and practice, exactly presupposes the scientific problems of the empirical study presented in the given paper. The subject of the study: teachers’ rights to a healthy and safe working environment and a fair remuneration for their work. The objective of the study: to conduct monitoring and evaluation of the effective implementation of relevant legal norms and legal acts applying a written sociological survey. The study is based on the results of a mass country-wide written survey of teachers. (shrink)

In Berlin, the pronunciation of /ç/ as [ɕ] is associated with the multi-ethnic youth variety. This alternation is also known to be produced by French learners of German. While listeners form socio-cultural interpretations upon hearing language input, the associations differ depending on the listeners’ biases and stereotypes toward speakers or groups. Here, the contrast of interest concerns two speaker groups using the [ç]–[ɕ] alternation: multi-ethnic adolescents from Berlin neighborhoods carrying low social prestige in mainstream German society and French learners of (...) German supposedly having higher cultural prestige. To understand the strength of associations between phonetic alternations and social attributes, we ran an Implicit Association Task with 131 participants using auditory and written stimuli. In experiment 1, participants categorized written words as having a positive or negative valence and auditory stimuli containing pronunciation variations of /ç/ as canonical [ç] or non-canonical [ɕ]. In experiment 2, identical auditory stimuli were used but the label Kiezdeutsch was changed to French Accent. Results show faster reaction times when negative categories and non-canonical pronunciations or positive categories and canonical pronunciations were mapped to the same response key, indicating a tight association between value judgments and concept categories. Older German listeners match a supposed Kiezdeutsch accent more readily with negatively connotated words compared to a supposed French accent, while younger German listeners seem to be indifferent toward this variation. Young multi-ethnic listeners, however, seem to associate negative concepts more strongly with a supposed French accent compared to Kiezdeutsch. These results demonstrate how social and cultural contextualization influences language interpretation and evaluation. We interpret our findings as a loss of cultural prestige of French speakers for the YMO group compared to the OMO group: younger urban listeners do not react differently to these contextual primes. YMU listeners, however, show a positive bias toward their in-group. Our results point to implicit listener attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes and shared world knowledge as significant factors in culturally- and socially situated language processing. (shrink)

The paper discusses the myth of the founding of Vilnius as an example of a myth of city foundation. The myth has received two independent semiotic interpretations. Narrative grammar procedures are applied to the analysis of the mythical story and the semantic code generating the story in the paper “Gediminas’ Dream (Lithuanian myth of city foundation: an attempt at analysis)” by Algirdas Julien Greimas (1971). The sovereignty ideology expressed in the myth, which describes religious and spiritual culture of the (...) Grand Duchy of Lithuania, is linked to the tri-functional model of the Indo-European social structure. The semantics of the Vilnius myth is seen as analogous with such Indo-European myths as king’s accession to the throne and creation of a city-state. The Lithuanian myth of Vilnius is linked paradigmatically to the Indo-European mythology in the study “Vilnius, Wilno, Vil’na: City and myth” by Vladimir Toporov (1980). At the level of the signifier, phonological equivalents of toponyms of Vilnius are traced. At the level of the signified, transformations of the “core” Indo-European myth are identified. The myth of the city foundation can be read both as a figurative form of cultural expression and as an ideology narrated as a plot of a story. In this view, the paradigmatic and syntagmatic approaches complement each other. (shrink)