The United States of America is renowned for the rights and freedoms that it endows upon its citizens. But what is not well recognized is the fact that such rights and privileges are seldom offered the citizens on a platter. Behind every progressive legislative achievement is a long and hard struggle, usually led by the…
Category: Law
What is the liability of employers for employee psychiatric illness in relation to the common law duty of care
Business corporations are instituted for the primary purpose of economic gain. Often, as the pressure to show impressive profits in each financial quarter increases, it is the workforce who are put under undue stress. Ranging from unreasonably high productivity standards, to sub-standard and hazardous work environments, workers face several potential risks to their mental and…
The extent of reform of House of Lords membership in the century since the Parliament Act of 1911
The reform of the upper house of the Parliament has been attempted since the establishment of parliamentary democracy in the UK. Some of these attempts have fetched positive results whereas the rest have at best been nominal and ineffective. The Parliament Act of 1911 is a cornerstone legislation in this context as the provisions within…
Prison-Industrial Complex in the United States
Response to Glenn Loury’s “A Nation of Jailers” and Michelle Alexander’s “How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Underclass” The mainstream media’s presentation of social realities within the United States had always been contested by a minority of writers, who have endeavored to offer an alternative point of view. Glenn Loury…
Alexander Hamilton’s role in establishing the US Treasury and laying the foundation for the American Economic System
Alexander Hamilton, alongside such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison is rightly considered as a founding father of the United States of America. In the second half of the eighteenth century, when British colonies in America entered a period of fervent political change, intellectuals such as Hamilton played…
Crimes against public order
Crimes against public order often register the highest number of cases each year in the United States. Such crimes can vary widely in the extent of their criminality, but its perpetrators are all liable to legal prosecution. Public order crimes are also referred to by other terms, such as “consensual crime, victimless vice, crimes without…
Should the UK Tax system be simplified?
A good indication of how complicated the present tax system in the UK is, is learnt from the size of the most authoritative guide to the subject. Tolley’s Yellow Tax Handbook, which is being published every year since 1983 is getting bigger each subsequent year. To give an example, it totalled close to 6,000 pages…
President Obama should discontinue President Bush’s electronic suveillance policies
When Barack Obama took over the reigns from George W. Bush, he was expected to make significant changes to the policy framework. But already into the second year of his Presidency, it is fair to say that Obama’s performance has fallen short of expectations. On the negative side, the ‘surge’ in military operations in Afghanistan…
The USA PATRIOT Act and issues of privacy
The twentieth century has been a transformational period for human societies. As the process of industrialization advanced during this period, more people moved away from rural to urban settings. As a result major cities became overpopulated and towns expanded into cities. The meaning of ‘public space’ got expanded and redefined during this process. And when…
Criminal Justice: Preventing rape as a weapon of war
The association between rape and war goes as far back as recorded history. Among all evil actions that human beings are known to commit, rape is only next to murder in terms of its barbarity and cruelty. It is also a sad fact that irrespective of widespread acknowledgement of the tendency of human beings to…