Questões de Inglês

TEXTO

Studying Roman law: Juno it’s more useful than you’d think

It might sound like it has little relevance to law students in 21st century Britain, but Roman law is valuable to your future studies and career

Some might think – given the module is compulsory for Oxbridge students – that studying the law of ancient Rome is illustrative of the intellectual snobbery and elitism often associated with those two institutions. But various law schools across the UK also offer students the chance to study Roman law, whether it be as a stand-alone module (as at Dundee or Glasgow) or as part of a wider European legal history module (available at Kent and the London School of Economics).

The very idea of studying Roman law (sometimes referred to as civil law) can be confusing to many prospective law students: it’s hard to see why studying the legal system of an empire that ended over 1,200 years ago could be useful to a new law student. After all, as Issie Forrest, 19, a law student at the University of Nottingham, points out: “If I’d wanted to study history, I’d have applied for a history degree and enjoyed the comparably greater spare time that comes with it.” But it’s wrong to dismiss studying Roman law as elitist or a waste of time – this overlooks the advantages it can offer to law students, both during and after their degree.

Studying the Roman law of contract, delict or property can provide an invaluable grounding for studying the complex English system. Bronte Cook, 20, a law student at the University of Cambridge, says: “The piecemeal nature of English law, thanks to the often unstructured development of the common law, means that certain central ideas are lost beneath layers and layers of precedent. But in many cases, the knowledge I carried over from my Roman law module allowed me to negotiate through that labyrinth.”

The Romans had the first truly advanced legal system, and Roman law principles and doctrine are littered throughout English law. The Roman concept of usucapiois almost identical to the English land law doctrine of adverse possession, and similar to prescription in public international law, while the Roman concept of consensus ad idem reflects conceptually what The siger LJ in Household Fire and Carriage Accident Insurance Co Ltd v Grant described as “practically the foundation of English law upon the subject of the formation of contracts”.

Many Roman law doctrines and maxims continue to be used in English legal cases today, making it vital for students. For example, in the case of Star Energy Weald Basin Ltd v Bocardo SA, Lord Hope referred to, and applied, the civil law maximcuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad ifernos.

Globalisation is paving the way for the increasingly international legal transactions and disputes. As a result, solicitors are required to work across numerous jurisdictions. Knowledge not only of languages but also of some of the relevant legal concepts of these jurisdictions is beneficial. Because the French, German, Italian and a vast number of other legal systems kept alive many of the Roman legal rules and principles, studying Roman law gives students a solid grounding in the fundamental principles of these jurisdictions.

Professor Andrew Borkowski, of the University of Bristol’s Faculty of Law, says studying Roman law is “a passport to the appreciation of continental legal systems”.

John Hull, a former partner at Latham & Watkins, sums it up best: “Roman law is the historical framework to so many modern aspects of civil law procedure and jurisprudence. As a lawyer who practised in international, multi-jurisdictional litigation, I have seen first-hand how Roman law concepts are woven like a thread into fundamental aspects of cases I have been involved in, both as a matter of the private and public international law.”

The concept of lis alibi pendens, which is integral to many multi-jurisdictional disputes today to the extent that is enshrined within EU law, demonstrates this. It holds that a court cannot accept jurisdiction over a case that another court is in the process of determining.

For many law students too, some of the contents of a Roman law module – as well as being useful for future studying and work – can represent a welcome break from the complexities of English law. After struggling through a book about mortgages or a never-ending article on legal causation, reading the primary sources of Roman law – much like some English case law – often make for light-hearted relief.

So don’t dismiss Roman law as an unimportant module that’s not worth studying: the knowledge it offers can be valuable to your future studies and career. And, compared to other law modules available, it’s a lot less Gaul-ling.

At: http://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/apr/11/why-studying-romanlaw-is-useful-for-law-students-careers

Lives Grow Longer, and Health Care’s Challenges Change
Jeremy N. Smith
July 16, 2015

   If you’re living with multiple ailments, you’re not alone. According to an analysis published last month in the British medical journal The Lancet, 2.3 billion people, almost one-third of humanity, suffered from five or more health problems in 2013. More than 80 percent of those people were younger than 65 years old. And between 1990 and 2013, the number of people in developed countries who suffered from 10 or more ailments increased by 52 percent.
     These figures, based on some 36,000 sources of health data gathered for an international study called the Global Burden of Disease, are only approximate. But they provide the most complete picture yet of a global population’s need for increasingly complex care. Two or three generations ago, communicable diseases and problems in pregnancy and early childhood were the leading health concerns in all but the wealthiest countries. Now, after decades of economic development, rising aid money for health, and medical advances, these problems predominate only in sub-Saharan Africa, and life expectancy averages 71 years worldwide. But progress carries a price: The longer people live, the more health problems – and simultaneous health problems – they tend to suffer.
    The most common ailments worldwide include irondeficiency anemia, hearing loss, low back pain and diabetes, each affecting more than 400 million people, according to the study. How many health clinics, charities, governments or global public health agencies are prepared to diagnose and treat a deaf person suffering from diabetes, anemia and low back pain, for decades? “The transition in terms of illness patterns has happened very quickly, but the health system transition has not,” said Dr. Rifat Atun, director of the global health systems cluster at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We have individuals from a very young age living with an illness, disease or disability for 30, 40, or 50 years – and they will have not just one, but multiple conditions, and multiple consequences of these conditions. And health systems are not really set up to manage this.”
    In low - and middle - income countries, aid efforts and government programs still concentrate almost exclusively on communicable diseases and problems of pregnancy and early childhood, though close to 75 percent of deaths in these countries are now caused by noncommunicable diseases and injuries. Even in wealthy countries, most funding goes to those diseases and injuries that kill people rather than much more common conditions that cause long-term illness and disability. And maladies are usually addressed one by one, if at all, rather than as a cluster.
    India, where life expectancy at birth is now 66 years old, exemplifies all these trends. Deaths from tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrheal diseases and preterm birth complications have all fallen sharply – in total, these diseases today kill fewer than 2 million Indians annually, according to Global Burden estimates. Meanwhile, in 2013, approximately 239 million Indians were migraine sufferers, 60 million had diabetes, 37 million had anxiety disorders and 26 million had osteoarthritis. Yet people with these conditions – and often all of them at once – have gotten little aid or attention. …
    Karl Hofmann’s nonprofit, PSI, which supports 15,000 health care providers in 65 countries, has expanded its offerings in the last decade to include screenings for hypertension, cervical cancer and gender-based violence along with childhood vaccinations and family planning services. Still, Mr. Hofmann observed, someone entering even the best health clinic or hospital with multiple chronic sources of disability is unlikely to have all of his or her conditions addressed comprehensively – in India or in the United States. “The transcendent challenge in the coming decades is trying to deal with the human reality of the health consumer, or patient, rather than the vertical, disease-specific issues.”
    The longer the status quo continues, the greater the cost – both human and financial. “This is a major societal challenge,” said Dr. Atun of Harvard. “It puts pressure on not just the health systems, but also the entire economy.” Given how many people are suffering from simultaneous health problems, and the resultant loss of productivity to society, “the issue is not whether or not, but how rapidly can we transition health systems,” he concluded.
    Policy makers, public health professionals and physicians can take inspiration from their remarkable past triumphs. Globally, age-standardized death rates fell 24 percent between 1990 and 2013. If new programs can reduce nonfatal ailments at the same rate over the next two decades, billions of people will benefit for a lifetime.
(www.nytimes.com. Adapted.)

Lives Grow Longer, and Health Care’s Challenges Change
Jeremy N. Smith
July 16, 2015

   If you’re living with multiple ailments, you’re not alone. According to an analysis published last month in the British medical journal The Lancet, 2.3 billion people, almost one-third of humanity, suffered from five or more health problems in 2013. More than 80 percent of those people were younger than 65 years old. And between 1990 and 2013, the number of people in developed countries who suffered from 10 or more ailments increased by 52 percent.
     These figures, based on some 36,000 sources of health data gathered for an international study called the Global Burden of Disease, are only approximate. But they provide the most complete picture yet of a global population’s need for increasingly complex care. Two or three generations ago, communicable diseases and problems in pregnancy and early childhood were the leading health concerns in all but the wealthiest countries. Now, after decades of economic development, rising aid money for health, and medical advances, these problems predominate only in sub-Saharan Africa, and life expectancy averages 71 years worldwide. But progress carries a price: The longer people live, the more health problems – and simultaneous health problems – they tend to suffer.
    The most common ailments worldwide include irondeficiency anemia, hearing loss, low back pain and diabetes, each affecting more than 400 million people, according to the study. How many health clinics, charities, governments or global public health agencies are prepared to diagnose and treat a deaf person suffering from diabetes, anemia and low back pain, for decades? “The transition in terms of illness patterns has happened very quickly, but the health system transition has not,” said Dr. Rifat Atun, director of the global health systems cluster at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We have individuals from a very young age living with an illness, disease or disability for 30, 40, or 50 years – and they will have not just one, but multiple conditions, and multiple consequences of these conditions. And health systems are not really set up to manage this.”
    In low - and middle - income countries, aid efforts and government programs still concentrate almost exclusively on communicable diseases and problems of pregnancy and early childhood, though close to 75 percent of deaths in these countries are now caused by noncommunicable diseases and injuries. Even in wealthy countries, most funding goes to those diseases and injuries that kill people rather than much more common conditions that cause long-term illness and disability. And maladies are usually addressed one by one, if at all, rather than as a cluster.
    India, where life expectancy at birth is now 66 years old, exemplifies all these trends. Deaths from tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrheal diseases and preterm birth complications have all fallen sharply – in total, these diseases today kill fewer than 2 million Indians annually, according to Global Burden estimates. Meanwhile, in 2013, approximately 239 million Indians were migraine sufferers, 60 million had diabetes, 37 million had anxiety disorders and 26 million had osteoarthritis. Yet people with these conditions – and often all of them at once – have gotten little aid or attention. …
    Karl Hofmann’s nonprofit, PSI, which supports 15,000 health care providers in 65 countries, has expanded its offerings in the last decade to include screenings for hypertension, cervical cancer and gender-based violence along with childhood vaccinations and family planning services. Still, Mr. Hofmann observed, someone entering even the best health clinic or hospital with multiple chronic sources of disability is unlikely to have all of his or her conditions addressed comprehensively – in India or in the United States. “The transcendent challenge in the coming decades is trying to deal with the human reality of the health consumer, or patient, rather than the vertical, disease-specific issues.”
    The longer the status quo continues, the greater the cost – both human and financial. “This is a major societal challenge,” said Dr. Atun of Harvard. “It puts pressure on not just the health systems, but also the entire economy.” Given how many people are suffering from simultaneous health problems, and the resultant loss of productivity to society, “the issue is not whether or not, but how rapidly can we transition health systems,” he concluded.
    Policy makers, public health professionals and physicians can take inspiration from their remarkable past triumphs. Globally, age-standardized death rates fell 24 percent between 1990 and 2013. If new programs can reduce nonfatal ailments at the same rate over the next two decades, billions of people will benefit for a lifetime.
(www.nytimes.com. Adapted.)

Lives Grow Longer, and Health Care’s Challenges Change
Jeremy N. Smith
July 16, 2015

   If you’re living with multiple ailments, you’re not alone. According to an analysis published last month in the British medical journal The Lancet, 2.3 billion people, almost one-third of humanity, suffered from five or more health problems in 2013. More than 80 percent of those people were younger than 65 years old. And between 1990 and 2013, the number of people in developed countries who suffered from 10 or more ailments increased by 52 percent.
     These figures, based on some 36,000 sources of health data gathered for an international study called the Global Burden of Disease, are only approximate. But they provide the most complete picture yet of a global population’s need for increasingly complex care. Two or three generations ago, communicable diseases and problems in pregnancy and early childhood were the leading health concerns in all but the wealthiest countries. Now, after decades of economic development, rising aid money for health, and medical advances, these problems predominate only in sub-Saharan Africa, and life expectancy averages 71 years worldwide. But progress carries a price: The longer people live, the more health problems – and simultaneous health problems – they tend to suffer.
    The most common ailments worldwide include irondeficiency anemia, hearing loss, low back pain and diabetes, each affecting more than 400 million people, according to the study. How many health clinics, charities, governments or global public health agencies are prepared to diagnose and treat a deaf person suffering from diabetes, anemia and low back pain, for decades? “The transition in terms of illness patterns has happened very quickly, but the health system transition has not,” said Dr. Rifat Atun, director of the global health systems cluster at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We have individuals from a very young age living with an illness, disease or disability for 30, 40, or 50 years – and they will have not just one, but multiple conditions, and multiple consequences of these conditions. And health systems are not really set up to manage this.”
    In low - and middle - income countries, aid efforts and government programs still concentrate almost exclusively on communicable diseases and problems of pregnancy and early childhood, though close to 75 percent of deaths in these countries are now caused by noncommunicable diseases and injuries. Even in wealthy countries, most funding goes to those diseases and injuries that kill people rather than much more common conditions that cause long-term illness and disability. And maladies are usually addressed one by one, if at all, rather than as a cluster.
    India, where life expectancy at birth is now 66 years old, exemplifies all these trends. Deaths from tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrheal diseases and preterm birth complications have all fallen sharply – in total, these diseases today kill fewer than 2 million Indians annually, according to Global Burden estimates. Meanwhile, in 2013, approximately 239 million Indians were migraine sufferers, 60 million had diabetes, 37 million had anxiety disorders and 26 million had osteoarthritis. Yet people with these conditions – and often all of them at once – have gotten little aid or attention. …
    Karl Hofmann’s nonprofit, PSI, which supports 15,000 health care providers in 65 countries, has expanded its offerings in the last decade to include screenings for hypertension, cervical cancer and gender-based violence along with childhood vaccinations and family planning services. Still, Mr. Hofmann observed, someone entering even the best health clinic or hospital with multiple chronic sources of disability is unlikely to have all of his or her conditions addressed comprehensively – in India or in the United States. “The transcendent challenge in the coming decades is trying to deal with the human reality of the health consumer, or patient, rather than the vertical, disease-specific issues.”
    The longer the status quo continues, the greater the cost – both human and financial. “This is a major societal challenge,” said Dr. Atun of Harvard. “It puts pressure on not just the health systems, but also the entire economy.” Given how many people are suffering from simultaneous health problems, and the resultant loss of productivity to society, “the issue is not whether or not, but how rapidly can we transition health systems,” he concluded.
    Policy makers, public health professionals and physicians can take inspiration from their remarkable past triumphs. Globally, age-standardized death rates fell 24 percent between 1990 and 2013. If new programs can reduce nonfatal ailments at the same rate over the next two decades, billions of people will benefit for a lifetime.
(www.nytimes.com. Adapted.)

Lives Grow Longer, and Health Care’s Challenges Change
Jeremy N. Smith
July 16, 2015

   If you’re living with multiple ailments, you’re not alone. According to an analysis published last month in the British medical journal The Lancet, 2.3 billion people, almost one-third of humanity, suffered from five or more health problems in 2013. More than 80 percent of those people were younger than 65 years old. And between 1990 and 2013, the number of people in developed countries who suffered from 10 or more ailments increased by 52 percent.
     These figures, based on some 36,000 sources of health data gathered for an international study called the Global Burden of Disease, are only approximate. But they provide the most complete picture yet of a global population’s need for increasingly complex care. Two or three generations ago, communicable diseases and problems in pregnancy and early childhood were the leading health concerns in all but the wealthiest countries. Now, after decades of economic development, rising aid money for health, and medical advances, these problems predominate only in sub-Saharan Africa, and life expectancy averages 71 years worldwide. But progress carries a price: The longer people live, the more health problems – and simultaneous health problems – they tend to suffer.
    The most common ailments worldwide include irondeficiency anemia, hearing loss, low back pain and diabetes, each affecting more than 400 million people, according to the study. How many health clinics, charities, governments or global public health agencies are prepared to diagnose and treat a deaf person suffering from diabetes, anemia and low back pain, for decades? “The transition in terms of illness patterns has happened very quickly, but the health system transition has not,” said Dr. Rifat Atun, director of the global health systems cluster at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We have individuals from a very young age living with an illness, disease or disability for 30, 40, or 50 years – and they will have not just one, but multiple conditions, and multiple consequences of these conditions. And health systems are not really set up to manage this.”
    In low - and middle - income countries, aid efforts and government programs still concentrate almost exclusively on communicable diseases and problems of pregnancy and early childhood, though close to 75 percent of deaths in these countries are now caused by noncommunicable diseases and injuries. Even in wealthy countries, most funding goes to those diseases and injuries that kill people rather than much more common conditions that cause long-term illness and disability. And maladies are usually addressed one by one, if at all, rather than as a cluster.
    India, where life expectancy at birth is now 66 years old, exemplifies all these trends. Deaths from tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrheal diseases and preterm birth complications have all fallen sharply – in total, these diseases today kill fewer than 2 million Indians annually, according to Global Burden estimates. Meanwhile, in 2013, approximately 239 million Indians were migraine sufferers, 60 million had diabetes, 37 million had anxiety disorders and 26 million had osteoarthritis. Yet people with these conditions – and often all of them at once – have gotten little aid or attention. …
    Karl Hofmann’s nonprofit, PSI, which supports 15,000 health care providers in 65 countries, has expanded its offerings in the last decade to include screenings for hypertension, cervical cancer and gender-based violence along with childhood vaccinations and family planning services. Still, Mr. Hofmann observed, someone entering even the best health clinic or hospital with multiple chronic sources of disability is unlikely to have all of his or her conditions addressed comprehensively – in India or in the United States. “The transcendent challenge in the coming decades is trying to deal with the human reality of the health consumer, or patient, rather than the vertical, disease-specific issues.”
    The longer the status quo continues, the greater the cost – both human and financial. “This is a major societal challenge,” said Dr. Atun of Harvard. “It puts pressure on not just the health systems, but also the entire economy.” Given how many people are suffering from simultaneous health problems, and the resultant loss of productivity to society, “the issue is not whether or not, but how rapidly can we transition health systems,” he concluded.
    Policy makers, public health professionals and physicians can take inspiration from their remarkable past triumphs. Globally, age-standardized death rates fell 24 percent between 1990 and 2013. If new programs can reduce nonfatal ailments at the same rate over the next two decades, billions of people will benefit for a lifetime.
(www.nytimes.com. Adapted.)