Constitutional Breakdown, Backsliding, or New Post-Conventional Constitutionalism?

In the text the author tackles the issue of constitutional crisis in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It analyses the social source of constitutionalism in CEE after 1989. It criticizes the mainstream approach to the crisis as labelling rather than developing tools for analyses. It proposes different interpretations of the present crisis as the potential development of a new post-conventional constitutionalism in this part of the world. The new post-conventional constitutionalism is deeply rooted in historical narratives and is an escape from legal constitutionalism.

When does math anxiety in parents and teachers predict math anxiety and math achievement in elementary school children? The role of gender and grade year

The study investigated the relationship between math anxiety in parents and teachers and math anxiety and math achievement in first- to third-grade children. The results indicate that math anxiety in fathers (but not mothers and teachers) is associated with math anxiety in first-grade children and third-grade girls. Math anxiety in mothers and teachers (but not fathers) explains the level of math achievement in third-grade children. The research results indicate the importance of adults in shaping pupils’ math anxiety and math achievement, but these relationships vary depending on gender and the grade year. The obtained outcomes generally suggest that adults’ math anxiety is not a social source of children’s math anxiety, but it can be considered a source of low math achievement among children in the final grade of early school education.

People Who Need People (and Some Who Think They Don't): On Compensatory Personal and Social Means of Goal Pursuit

We propose a new theoretical model depicting the compensatory relations between personal agency and social assistance. It suggests three general hypotheses, namely that (1) the stronger the individuals’ sense of personal agency, the weaker their motivation to utilize social assistance and the greater their consequent tendency to develop anti-social attitudes; conversely, (2) the stronger the individuals’ reliance on social assistance, the weaker their motivation to be agentic, and the lesser their tendency to develop a strong sense of self; conversely, (3) the stronger the individual’s cohesion with a social source of assistance, the weaker the compensatory relation between sense of personal agency and anticipated social assistance. In fact, at high levels of cohesion --assistance may augment (rather than reduce) individuals’ exertion of personal agency.

Legal Positivism Social Source Thesis and Metaphysical Grounding: Employing Metaphysical Grounding based on Metaphysical Laws

The core of legal positivism is the so-called social source thesis, which claims that legal facts are determined only by social facts. I examine an interpretation of this thesis that uses metaphysical grounding as an exact relation between legal facts and social facts. I argue that the current interpretation of the social source thesis in terms of metaphysical grounding has significant drawbacks that stem from it being based on the view that metaphysical grounding is a primitive relation. For that reason, the current interpretation is unintelligible and poses problems with explaining the normativity of legal facts. I present two other views on metaphysical grounding: that it holds due to essences of facts and that it holds due to metaphysical laws. I apply the notion that metaphysical grounding holds due to metaphysical laws and argue that in the case of grounding of legal facts in social facts, this metaphysical law is constituted by instrumental rationality. It provides intelligibility to this grounding relation, is able to explain the normative character of legal facts, and is compatible with the general form of explanation.

Evidentiality and flexibility of source reporting

The reporting of the sources of our statements—whether we have, e.g., seen something or been told something—plays an important role in communication. The inaccurate reporting of sources is often associated with the spread of inaccurate beliefs, as when rumors are attributed to a non-existent credible source. Experiments have revealed that participants display a substantial amount of flexibility in the reporting of sources, in particular by attributing to themselves ideas they have acquired from others. However, these participants belonged to large-scale societies, and they spoke languages without grammatical evidential marking. Both factors might increase flexibility in source reporting. To test whether members of small-scale societies speaking languages with evidential marking also display flexibility in source reporting, we conducted two experiments with Quichua and Cha’palaa speakers in Ecuador. In both experiments, some participants acquired a belief through social transmission, and then had to communicate this belief to another participant. In doing so, very few participants mentioned the social source of their belief, whether explicitly, or by using the relevant evidential markers. These results show that flexibility in source reporting is a cross-culturally robust phenomenon, and that grammatical evidential marking does not appear to strongly affect this flexibility.

Sources in Legal-Positivist Theories

This chapter begins by examining the case for legal positivism. Legal positivism is understood as the thesis that the existence of law is a matter of its social source, regardless of its merits. Descriptive, normative, and conceptual arguments are considered, with the aim of demonstrating that what follows for the sources of international law from the commitment to positivism depends on the specific defence offered for accepting it as an account of the nature of law. The remainder of the chapter examines the possibility of customary international law: given that custom can and does serve as a source of international law, positivists owe a plausible account of how customary rules are made or posited. A preliminary argument for the compatibility of the normative practice account of custom with the respective arguments of Hans Kelsen and Joseph Raz for legal positivism brings the chapter to a close.