Volume 15, Issue 3

State capacity, stable currencies, and well functioning financial systems seem to be ‘package deals’ – one cannot have one without having all. I show that the intimate functional links among states, monies, and financial systems, ubiquitous across history and geography as they are, are not accidental. I do so by analytically ‘deriving’ first law and the polity, then money and finance, from a temporally extended implicit covenant that is both grounded in and facilitative of ongoing joint agency among persons. This lends to state and money alike their shared normative and, once formally systematized, legal character. I indicate throughout how this shared genesis, function, and normative character keep state, money, and ultimately finance practically ‘joined at the hip’, and manifest how polity and economy, indeed our very political and productive selves, are thus joined as well. To recognize and to ‘own’ this, I conclude, is not only to see that ‘the public’ must take a far more explicit role in finance, but also in a sense finally to own our own selves.

Many states are grappling with the regulation of assistance in suicide and ending the life of another upon their request. Initially punishable in most countries, a growing number of jurisdictions have now introduced permissive frameworks decriminalising, to varying degrees, rendering assistance in dying. Other countries, however, have proceeded with the criminal prohibition and several courts have upheld the lawfulness of the respective criminal laws during human rights and constitutional challenges. Yet, the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015, the German Federal Constitutional Court in February 2020 and the Austrian Constitutional Court in December 2020 have respectively declared unconstitutional and void national criminal laws prohibiting rendering assistance in dying. This article first outlines the criminal law framework relating to assisted dying in Canada, Germany and Austria. It subsequently analyses the judgments before pondering their impact on the legal landscape in the three countries. The article concludes that while the Canadian Supreme Court decision appears to have had a significant impact on the introduction of subsequent legislation in Canada, the effects of the Constitutional Courts’ judgments seem much more subdued in Germany and are yet to unfold in Austria.

The political rights of public employees vary greatly in scope and depth across democratic societies. While some countries balance the need for a neutral government with the rights of its employees, others fail to provide meaningful avenues for expression of political activities. As the civil service has grown and become more vocal, the government’s desire for an impartial government has grown with it. Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, three Westminster-style governments who evolved from a once singular legal system, have adopted laws and regulations to address their employees’ political activities with varying effectiveness and form. This Article will analyze each country’s legal framework for these restrictions, within their larger free speech regime. In particular, this Article will use candidacy and social media activity as a lens to examine these restrictions and provide examples for how these restrictions most commonly effect civil servants’ political activities. Although each regime has successes and failures at balancing the government’s need for impartiality with the civil service’s rights to expression, Canada has most successfully established a balance between the government’s interests in neutrality with their employee’s rights to political expression.