LEGAL SYSTEM OF THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS
ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ
Данное пособие является составной частью учебно-методического комплекса по английскому языку, обеспечивающего курс профессионально ориентированного обучения студентов юридической и экономической специальностей. Оно составлено в соответствии с требованиями «Типовой учебной программы по иностранному языку для высших учебных заведений» и рассчитано на 150 часов аудиторной работы при полном объёме курса в 250 часов.
В последнее время расширение деловых связей с англо-язычными странами вызывает необходимость в более детальном изучении правовой и экономической систем этих стран. С этой целью в пособии используются оригинальные и адаптированные тексты для чтения и перевода, взятые из американских и английских источников. Содержание разделов тематически связано со специальными предметами, изучаемыми на юридическом факультете.
Предлагаемое учебное пособие состоит из трёх разделов: тексты для чтения и перевода, тексты для аннотирования и тексты для устного высказывания.
Тексты для чтения развивают навыки ознакомительного чтения, целью которого является знакомство с содержанием прочитанного. Проверка понимания осуществляется путём ответов на вопросы. Выделенные абзацы текстов предназначены для перевода с английского языка на родной. Второй раздел состоит из аутентичных текстов, которые могут быть использованы для формирования навыков аннотирования иноязычной литературы по специальности. Вопросы и задания, предлагаемые в третьем разделе, носят репродуктивный и продуктивный характер. Выполнение заданий требует от студентов концентрации внимания на адекватности употребления лексических средств, логичности и чёткости изложения.
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Автор выражает надежду, что данное пособие будет интересно и полезно всем, кто занимается вопросами юридического и экономического характера и проявляет интерес к английскому языку.
МЕТОДИЧЕСКАЯ ЗАПИСКА
Тексты, представленные в этом разделе, предназначены для ознакомительного чтения, целью которого является знакомство с содержанием прочитанного. Проверка понимания осуществляется путём ответов на вопросы, а также письменным переводом выделенных отрезков. Для того чтобы рационально и успешно организовать Вашу работу по чтению и пониманию профессионально ориентированных текстов, рекомендуется следующая последовательность действий.
1. Внимательно прочитайте текст без словаря. Попытайтесь понять в нём всё, что сможете при первом чтении.
2. Используя англо-русский словарь, прочитайте текст, восполняя ту информацию, которую Вы не поняли, читая текст без словаря. При этом из нескольких значений каждого незнакомого английского слова, приводимых в словаре, Вам необходимо выбрать одно значение, которое имеет отношение к Вашей специальности.
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Сделать это можно, опираясь на уже понятую информацию текста, который представляет собой законченное смысловое единство, т.е. предложения в нём логически взаимосвязаны. Поэтому значения незнакомых Вам английских слов по Вашей специальности определите, и выпишите по мере появления их в тексте в процессе его чтения. Обратите внимание на наличие в тексте терминов, заимствованных русским языком из английского.
1. Для того, чтобы сделать адекватный письменный перевод отрывка из текста, Вам необходимо: а) иметь определённый запас слов английского языка ( в том числе специальной терминологии в Вашей области знаний); б) владеть техникой перевода и уметь эффективно пользоваться словарём( прежде чем открывать словарь, знать по формальным признакам, к какой части речи относится незнакомое слово; знать все особенности построения словаря). Учитывайте эти рекомендации при письменном переводе частей текстов, выделенных курсивом.
TEXTS FOR HOME READING
HISTORY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION
PART I
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Ancient Greece
The earliest people who could be described as "lawyers" were probably the orators of ancient Athens. Athenian orators faced serious structural obstacles. First, there was a rule that individuals were supposed to plead their own cases, which was soon bypassed by the increasing tendency of individuals to ask a "friend" for assistance. However, around the middle of the fourth century, the Athenians disposed of the perfunctory request for a friend. Second, a more serious obstacle, which the Athenian orators never completely overcame, was the rule that no one could take a fee to plead the cause of another. This law was widely disregarded in practice, but was never abolished, which meant that orators could never present themselves as legal professionals or experts. They had to uphold the legal fiction that they were merely an ordinary citizen generously helping out a friend for free, and thus they could never organize into a real profession – with professional associations and titles and all the other pomp and circumstance – like their modern counterparts. Therefore, if one narrows the definition to those men who could practice the legal profession openly and legally, then the first lawyers would have to be the orators of ancient Rome.
Early Ancient Rome
A law enacted in 204 BC barred Roman advocates from taking fees, but the law was widely ignored. The ban on fees was abolished by Emperor Claudius, who legalized advocacy as a profession and allowed the Roman advocates to become the first lawyers who could practice openly – but he also imposed a fee ceiling of 10,000 sesterces. This was apparently not much money; the Satires of Juvenal complain that there was no money in working as an advocate.
Like their Greek contemporaries, early Roman advocates were trained in rhetoric , not law, and the judges before whom they argued were also not law-trained. But very early on, unlike Athens, Rome developed a class of specialists who were learned in the law, known as jurisconsults (iuris consulti). Jurisconsults were wealthy amateurs who dabbled in law as an intellectual hobby; they did not make their primary living from it. They gave legal opinions (responsa) on legal issues to all comers (a practice known as publice respondere). Roman judges and governors would routinely consult with an advisory panel of jurisconsults before rendering a decision, and advocates and ordinary people also went to jurisconsults for legal opinions. Thus, the Romans were the first to have a class of people who spent their days thinking about legal problems, and this is why their law became so "precise, detailed, and technical."
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1. What sort of earliest people in Ancient Greece could be considered "lawyers".
2. What obstacles did they have to face?
3. Where and when was the profession of a lawyer legalized?
4. What does the word jurisconsult mean?
5. What is publice respondere?
PART II
During the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire, jurisconsults and advocates were unregulated, since the former were amateurs and the latter were technically illegal. Any citizen could call himself an advocate or a legal expert, though whether people believed him would depend upon his personal reputation. This changed once Claudius legalized the legal profession. By the start of the Byzantine Empire, the legal profession had become well-established, heavily regulated, and highly stratified. The centralization and bureaucratization of the profession was apparently gradual at first, but accelerated during the reign of Emperor Hadrian At the same time, the jurisconsults went into decline during the imperial period.
By the fourth century, advocates had to be enrolled on the bar of a court to argue before it, they could only be attached to one court at a time, and there were restrictions (which came and went depending upon who was emperor) on how many advocates could be enrolled at a particular court. By the 380s, advocates were studying law in addition to rhetoric (thus reducing the need for a separate class of jurisconsults); in 460, Emperor Leo imposed a requirement that new advocates seeking admission had to produce testimonials from their teachers; and by the sixth century, a regular course of legal study lasting about four years was required for admission. Claudius's fee ceiling lasted all the way into the Byzantine period, though by then it was measured at 100 solidi. Of course, it was widely evaded, either through demands for maintenance and expenses or a sub rosa barter transaction. The latter was cause for disbarment.
The notaries (tabelliones) appeared in the late Roman Empire. Like their modern-day descendants, the civil law notaries, they were responsible for drafting wills, conveyances, and contracts. In Roman times, notaries were widely considered to be inferior to advocates and jurisconsults. Roman notaries were not law-trained; they were barely literate hacks who wrapped the simplest transactions in mountains of legal jargon, since they were paid by the line.
Middle Ages
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the onset of the Early Middle Ages, the legal profession of Western Europe collapsed. However, from 1150 onward, a small but increasing number of men became experts in canon law but only in furtherance of other occupational goals, such as serving the Roman Catholic Church as priests. From 1190 to 1230, however, there was a crucial shift in which some men began to practice canon law as a lifelong profession in itself.
The legal profession's return was marked by the renewed efforts of church and state to regulate it. In 1231 two French councils mandated that lawyers had to swear an oath of admission before practicing before the bishop's courts in their regions, and a similar oath was promulgated by the papal legate in London in 1237. During the same decade, Frederick II, the emperor of the Kingdom of Sicily, imposed a similar oath in his civil courts. By 1250 the nucleus of a new legal profession had clearly formed. The new trend towards professionalization culminated in a controversial proposal at the Second Council of Lyon in 1275 that all ecclesiastical courts should require an oath of admission. Although not adopted by the council, it was highly influential in many such courts throughout Europe. The civil courts in England also joined the trend towards professionalization; in 1275 a statute was enacted that prescribed punishment for professional lawyers guilty of deceit, and in 1280 the mayor's court of the city of London promulgated regulations concerning admission procedures, including the administering of an oath.
1. Who could call himself an advocate During the Roman Republic?
2. How had the rules about the legal profession changed by the fourth century?
3. What rules had been introduced by the sixth century?
4. What were the responsibilities of the notaries in the late Roman Empire?
5. What was the main change in the legal profession in the Middle Ages?
BONNIE AND CLYDE
PART I
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were nothing like the characters portrayed in the film Bonnie and Clyde. They were illiterate, unfeeling killers, who spread terror through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and other states, stealing and earning a reputation as lethal killers who enjoyed taking lives. Lawmen quickly learned that to attempt to reason with them was to invite dearth. For a period of about two years, 1932–34, the Barrow gang, never more than five or six members, became the terror of the Southwest. They preyed upon small store owners, filling stations, and travelers driving along remote roads. They lived in the country for the most part, renting small, cheap cabins, often sleeping in the cars they stole. They were thieves with high-powered weapons.
The reckless manner, in which the Barrows operated, their utter disregard for the law, and their contempt for their own violent ends, pointed to only one rationale that held the band together – they intended to be killed as they had killed, with the gun, inside a storm of violence. In short, the Barrows were fanatically suicidal. Both Clyde and Bonnie recorded their almost every moment together, taking photographs of each other, writing long letters to their families in which they portrayed themselves as persecuted, misunderstood, young people and sending even longer missives (and even poems) to the newspapers-letters that glorified their robberies.
Clyde was an expert killer who practiced his marksmanship (искусство стрельбы) every day he lived outside of prison, firing all manner of weapons: submachine guns, shotguns, rifles, automatics and revolvers. He taught Bonnie to fire all these weapons too, and she, in turn, devised a special trick pocket for Clyde, one where his right trouser was zippered so that he could carry a sawed-off shotgun next to his leg and then, employing the break-away zipper, whip the gun out and fire in one motion.
Born in Texas, on March 24, 1909, Clyde was one of eight children, and early on he aped (стал подражать) his older brother Ivan Marvin Barrow, called Buck, a troubled and unruly boy who taught Clyde how to steal turkeys and later cars. By the age of ten, Clyde was impossible for his parents to handle; he was an incorrigible petty thief and a runaway.
In January 1930, after robbing a few stores, Clyde walked into Marco’s Café in Dallas where he met a twenty-year-old blonde-haired waitress, Bonnie Parker. Since that time they spent time together practicing their marksmanship, and Bonnie soon became an expert with automatics, pistols, and submachine guns.
There were robberies, a lot of them. Mostly Bonnie drove the car and Clyde ran into cafes or grocery stores, quickly cleaning out the till while holding proprietors and customers at bay with a shotgun or a pistol. He would then dash outside and leap into the already moving car Bonnie was driving.
1. How big was the Barrow gang?
2. What was the intention of the gang that held the members together?
3. How and what for did Clyde use his trick pocket?
4. What was Clyde’s background?
5. Where did Clyde meet Bonnie Parker?
PART II
Sometime in early 1930, Bonnie and Clyde robbed a Waco, Texas, store and Clyde left his fingerprints behind. He was identified and tracked down to the Dallas apartment. Clyde was convicted of robbery and given a two-year sentence in the Waco jail but he was not behind bars for long. After Clyde heard that his brother Buck had escaped the Eastham Prison Farm he sent word to Bonnie to visit him in the Waco jail and “bring me a pick-me-up (поддержка).” His reference was to a gun. In the first week of March 1930, Bonnie arrived at the jail and smuggled a .38-caliber Colt with a handle so thin it could be slipped through the bars of Clyde’s cell. This was strapped to Bonnie’s thigh, and when the guard was not looking she passed the weapon to Clyde.
Clyde forced his way out of the Waco jail that night and stole a car, driving northward. He abandoned the car, stole another, and repeated this process several times until jumping a freight train. He was arrested in the freight yard of Middleton, Ohio, as he jumped from a cattle car. Clyde was sent to Eastham Prison Farm, but soon released. When Clyde stepped from the prison farm, his parole in his hand, Bonnie was waiting for him. They stole a car a few days later but were seen driving off and police were soon on their trail, closing in on them at Mabank, Texas, where, in the wild pursuit, Clyde lost control of the car and crashed into a tree. As he had done with his brother Buck years earlier, he jumped from the car, running across the open fields, leaving Bonnie to be captured by police. She was jailed for three months, but on her release she went straight back to Clyde and they resumed their robbery career. They slept like gypsies, mostly on the seats of their cars. They ate cold sandwiches but sometimes stopped at picnic grounds where they roasted hot dogs over open fires-their favorite meal. Bonnie Parker was a celebrity and did all she could to perpetuate the image of the gun-tough mob girl who kept pace with her frantic killer-lover. The Barrows then consisted of five members.
On January 20, 1934, the gang, now swollen by the three escaped convicts, robbed the bank in Lancaster, Texas taking a small amount. The barrow gang was the most sought-after group of criminals in the country. Clyde was already credited with killing between fifteen to twenty persons, and lawmen knew he would not hesitate to murder at any time. An army of lawmen made several attempts to catch the gang and once they managed to wound four members; Buck Barrow was in the worst shape.
At last on May 23, 1934, the story of Bonnie and Clyde came to an end. The lawmen saw a fast moving car on the road. Clyde was at the wheel, wearing dark glasses and driving in his socks. Bonnie sat beside him wearing a new red dress and red shoes she had purchased some weeks earlier. Under Bonnie’s front seat were fifteen stolen license plates (these were changed each day to avoid detection) and behind her, in the back seat on the floor, was an arsenal consisting of eleven pistols, a revolver, a shotgun, three Browning Automatic Rifles, and more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition. The lawmen let loose a terrifying fusillade which poured into Clyde’s car, like heavy rain falling , a thunderous blast of rapid-fire weapons that caught the bandits full force, riddling the outlaws.
1. What was Clyde accused of?
2. How did Bonnie manage to pass the gun to Clyde?
3. What was the life style of Bonnie and Clyde?
4. When and how did the story of Bonnie and Clyde come to an end?
NATURAL LAW
Natural law in philosophy is a system of right or justice held to be common to all humankind and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society, or positive law. Throughout the history of the concept, there have been disagreements over the meaning of natural law and over its relation to positive law.
Aristotle held that what was "just by nature" was not always the same as what was "just by law"; that there was a natural justice valid everywhere with the same force and "not existing by people's thinking this or that"; and that appeal could be made to it from the positive law. He drew his instances of the natural law, however, chiefly from his observation of the Greeks in their city-states, with their subordination of women to men, of slaves to citizens, and of barbarians to Hellenes. The Stoics, on the other hand, conceived an entirely egalitarian law of nature in conformity with the "right reason," or Logos, inherent in the human mind.
Some scholastic philosophers, for instance John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and, especially, Francisco Suárez, emphasized the divine will instead of the divine reason as the source of law. This "voluntarism" influenced the Roman Catholic jurisprudence of the Counter-Reformation.
The epoch-making appeal of Hugo Grotius to the natural law belongs to the history of jurisprudence. Grotius insisted on the validity of the natural law "even if we were to suppose . . . that God does not exist or is not concerned with human affairs." A few years later Thomas Hobbes was arguing not from the "state of innocence" in which man had lived in the biblical Eden but from a savage "state of nature" in which men, free and equal in rights, were each one at solitary war with every other. After discerning the right of nature (jus naturale) to be "the liberty each man hath to use his own power for the preservation of his own nature, that is to say, of life," Hobbes defines a law of nature (lex naturalis) as "a precept of general rule found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life" and then enumerates the elementary rules on which peace and society can be established. Grotius and Hobbes thus stand together at the head of that "school of natural law" which, in accordance with the tendencies of the Enlightenment, tried to construct a whole edifice of law by rational deduction from a fictitious "state of nature" followed by a social contract. In England, John Locke departed from Hobbesian pessimism to the extent of describing the state of nature as a state of society, with free and equal men already observing the natural law. In France, where Montesquieu had argued that natural laws were presocial and were superior to those of religion and of the state, Jean-Jacques Rousseau postulated a savage who was virtuous in isolation and actuated by two principles "prior to reason," self-preservation and compassion (innate repugnance against the sufferings of others).
The Declaration of Independence of the United States refers only briefly to "the Laws of Nature". The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen asserts liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression as "imprescriptible natural rights." The philosophy of Immanuel Kant renounced the attempt to know nature as it really is, yet allowed the practical or moral reason to deduce a valid system of right with its own purely formal framework; and Kantian formalism contributed to the 20th-century revival of naturalistic jurisprudence.
1. What is natural law in philosophy?
2. Where did Aristotle get his examples of natural law?
3. What was Hugo Grotius’s point of view concerning natural law?
4. What were the attitudes to natural law in England and France?
5. How do the Declaration of Independence and Declaration of the rights of Man and of the Citizen refer to the Laws of Nature?
CRIMINAL COURTS
There are many different types of courts and many ways to classify and describe them. Basic distinctions must be made between civil and criminal courts, between courts of general jurisdiction and those of limited jurisdiction, and between trial and appellate courts.
Criminal courts deal with persons accused of crime, deciding whether they are guilty and, if so, determining the consequences they shall suffer. Prosecution is on behalf of the public, represented by some official such as a district attorney, prosecutor, or a police officer.
In civil-law countries a more active role is assigned to the judge. In the common-law courts, in which the «adversary» procedure prevails, the lawyers for both sides bear responsibility for producing evidence and they do most of the questioning of witnesses.
In civil-law countries, «inquisitorial» procedure prevails, with judges doing most of the questioning of witnesses and having an independent responsibility to discover the facts.
If a person has been found guilty, he is sentenced, again according to law and within limits fixed by legislation. The objective is not so much to wreak vengeance upon the offender as to rehabilitate him and deter others from following his example. Hence the most common sentences are fines, short terms of imprisonment, and probation (which allows the offender to remain at large but under supervision).
In extremely serious cases, the goal may be to prevent the offender from committing further crimes, which may call for a long term of imprisonment or even capital punishment. The death penalty, however, is gradually disappearing from the criminal codes of civilized nations.
Civil courts deal with “private” controversies, as where two individuals (or corporations) are in dispute over the terms of a contract or over who shall bear responsibility for an auto accident. Ordinarily the public is not a party as in criminal proceedings, for it has no interest beyond providing just rules for decision and a forum where the dispute can be impartially and peacefully resolved.
The objective of civil actions is not punishment or correction of the defendant or the setting of an example to others but rather to restore the parties so far as possible to the positions they would have occupied had no legal wrong been committed. The most common civil remedy is a judgment for money damages.
There are, however, areas of overlap, for a single incident may give rise to both civil liability and criminal prosecution. Two separate actions must be brought, independent of each.
1. What is the main distinction in qualifying court system?
2. What do criminal courts deal with?
3. What is the role of the judge in civil-law countries?
4. What is the objective of dealing with the offender in criminal cases?
5. What is the objective of civil actions?
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
ECONOMICS AS A SCIENCE
PART I
The word 'economics' derives from the Greek word 'oikonomika' that means household management. Economics came of age as a separate area of study with the publication of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations". Adam Smith is often considered to be the founder of modern day economics because he was the first writer to outline and appraise the workings of a free market economy. Major economic thinkers (include David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, J John Mill , Karl Marx and others.
There are many competing schools of thought, in economics: the main division has been between the Classical and Neo-classical schools. Adam Smith, the founder of the Classical school, emphasized primarily the concept of economic value and the distribution of wealth between the classes – workers, capitalists, and landlords. Smith's theories were further developed in the writings of John Stuart Mill and David Ricardo. The workings of the "invisible hand" of the market place, which allocated resources according to the self-interest of both producers and consumers, led to the promotion of the social good. Central to the theory were economic freedom, competition, and laissez-faire government. The idea that economic growth could best be prompted by free trade, unassisted by government, was in conflict with mercantilism. The belief that agriculture was the chief determinant of economic health was also rejected in favour of manufacturing development, and the importance of labour productivity was stressed. The theories put forward by the classical economists still influence economists today. The Marxist school of thought is one of the offshoots of the Classical school of economics.
Since 1776, economic thought has developed considerably against the backdrop of ever more complex economies. David Ricardo an economist working in the early 19th century predicted that eventually economies would cease to grow and that workers wages would settle down at a subsistence level whilst land owners and capitalists would reap huge rewards. His prediction led to economies being dubbed "the dismal science". We know today that Ricardo's thinking was flawed and that workers in the rich industrialized countries of the world enjoy prosperity undreamt of in Ricardo's time.
The Neo-classical school, now the mainstream of western economic thought, emphasizes the role of allocating scarce resources between competing ends. The founders of this school, William Jevons, Carl Menger, and Leon Walras, were known as Marginalists. Neoclassicists believed competition to be the regulator uneconomic activity that would establish equilibrium between demand and supply through the operation of market forces. The economist Alfred Marshall (10) established the orthodox position of Neo-classical 4 economics, which, as modified by John Maynard Keynes (11) remains the standard today.
1. What does the word economics mean?
2. Why is Adam Smith considered to be the founder of economics?
3. What is the meaning of the “invisible hand”?
4. What were the main concepts of Classical school of economics?
5. What does the Neo- classical school emphasize?
PART II
No one has ever succeeded in neatly defining the scope of economics. Economists used to say, with Alfred Marshall, the great English economist, that economics is "a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life; it examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of wellbeing" – ignoring the fact that sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists frequently study exactly the same phenomena. Another English economist, Lionel Robbins, has more recently defined economics as "the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses". This definition – that economics is the science of economizing – captures one of the striking characteristics of the economist's way of thinking but leaves out the macrоeconomic approach to the subject, which is concerned with the "economy as a whole.
Difficult as it may be to define economics, it is not difficult to indicate the sort of questions that economists are concerned with. Among other things, they seek to analyse the forces determining prices - not only the prices of goods and services but the prices of the resources used to produce them. This means discovering what it is that governs the way in which men, machines, and land are combined in production and that determines how buyers and sellers are brought together in a functioning market. Prices of various things must be interrelated; how does such a "price system" or "market mechanism" hang together, and what are the conditions necessary for its survival?
Decades of controversy about the nature and appropriate boundaries of their discipline led the economists to observe that "economics is what economists do". Somewhat more precisely, economists engage in systematic inquiry into the effects of those human activities which are grouped under three broad headings: production, exchange, and consumption. The nature and magnitude of these activities and their implications for individual and social welfare constitute the focus of economics and the policy prescriptions that economists make.
Most economists define economics as a social science concerned with the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. 'Economics is the study of how goods and services get produced and how they are distributed. By goods and services, economists mean everything that can be bought and sold. By produced, they mean the processing and making of goods and services. By distributed, they mean the way goods and services are divided among people. Economists focus on the way in which individuals, groups, business enterprises, and governments seek to achieve efficiently any economic objective they select.
Economics is the study of how, in a given society, choices are made in the allocation of resources to produce goods and services for consumption, and the mechanisms and principles that govern this process.
1. What does economics study?
2. How does Lionel Robbins define economics?
3. What are the main problems economists are concerned with?
4. What are the human activities affecting the study of economics?
5. How do most economists define economics?
PART III
Economics seeks to apply scientific method to construct theories about the processes involved and to test them against what actually happens. Its two central concerns are the efficient allocation of available resources and the problem of reconciling finiteresources with a virtually infinite desire for goods and services. Economics analyses the ingredients of economic efficiency in the production process, and the implications for practical policies, and examines conflicting demands for resources and the consequences of whatever choices are made, whether by individuals, enterprises, or governments.
Given most goods are scarce; every society must somehow determine what goods to produce. Scarcity is the condition that exists if more of a good or service is demanded than can be produced. As human needs are virtually unlim ited and resources are finite, most goods and services are, in the economic sense, scarce. In a free economy, allocation of scarce resources is controlled by the price mechanism. Through the market mechanism the production and consump tion decisions of individuals directly affect the allocation of resources. When the market mechanism fails to provide goods and services efficiently and equitably - a situation called "market failure" – the public sector must provide assistance. Market imperfections must be overcome by government activity. In a controlled economy, central government has to decide how resources are to be allocated.
"Economics aims to be either positive, presenting objective or scientific explanations of how an economy works, or normative, offering prescriptions and recommendations on what should be done to cure perceived ills.
The major divisions of economics include microeconomics, which deals with the behaviour of individual consumers, companies, traders, and farmers; and macroeconomics, which focuses on aggregates such as the level of income in an economy, the volume of total employment, and the flow of investment.
Both fields place a heavy emphasis on the individual or household as the basic unit of analysis, rather than the classes.
Microeconomics and macroeconomics frequently overlap. They include the sub-discipline of econometrics, which analyses economic relationships using mathematical and statistical techniques. Increasingly sophisticated econometric methods are today being used for such topics as economic forecasting.
Another branch, development economics, investigates the history and changes of economic activity and organization over a period of time, as well as their relation to other activities and institutions. Development economics examines the attitudes and institutions supporting economic activity as well as the process of development itself.
Within these three major divisions there are specialized areas of study that attempt to answer questions on a broad spectrum of human economic activity, including public finance, money supply and banking, international trade, labor, industrial organization, and agriculture. The areas of investigation in economics overlap with other social sciences, particularly political science, but economics is primarily concerned with relations between buyer and seller. Economics has always been controversial because it is used by individuals, businesses, and governments to make decisions.
1. What are the two central concerns of economists?
2. What is scarcity from economic point of view?
3. What are the main divisions of economics?
4. What do microeconomics and macroeconomics deal with?
5. What does development economics investigate?
HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT
PART I
Economic issues have occupied people's minds since ancient times. The Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato wrote about problems of wealth, property, and trade. Both felt that to live by trade was undesirable. The Romans borrowed their economic ideas from the Greeks and showed the same contempt for trade. During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church condemned usury (the taking of interest for money loaned) and regarded commerce as inferior to agriculture.
The development of modern nationalism during the 16th century shifted economic attention to increasing the wealth and power of the various nation-states. The economic policy of the time was known as mercantilism. Mercantilists valued gold and silver because with these metals a ruler could hire and outfit mercenaries, thus increasing the country's power. Many European nations began colonizing other parts of the world and siphoning precious metals and raw materials from their colonies.
A school of thought known as physiocracy arose in France during the second half of the 18th century. The physiocrats believed that all wealth originates in agriculture; wealth is then distributed from farmers to other groups. The physiocrats promoted free trade and laissez-faire. The British economist Adam Smith met the leading physiocrats and developed their doctrines in his writings.
As a coherent economic theory, classical economics starts with Smith, continues with Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo, and culminates with John Stuart Mill. Classical economists agreed on several major principles. All believed in private property, free markets, and the benefits of competition. They shared Smith's suspicion of governmental involvement in the economy and his belief that the individual pursuit of private gain increased the public good. From Ricardo, classicists derived the notion of diminishing returns, which held that as more labour and capital were applied to land, a point was reached after which yields steadily diminished.
One debate was in regard to population growth. Malthus maintained that human population growth would eventually outstrip food production, leading to famine, war, epidemics, and plague. Mill believed that human population could rationally be limited. He also thought that government could play a role in the economy and favoured worker ownership of factories. Mill thus represents a bridge between classical laissez-faire economics and an emerging welfare state.
The German political philosopher Karl Marx provided the most important opposition to classical economics. Marx's historical studies convinced him that profit and other property income result from force and fraud inflicted by the strong on the weak. Thus, the central social conflict is between capitalists who own the means of production-factories and machines-and workers who possess nothing but their bare hands. Exploitation is measured by the capacity of capitalists to pay no more than subsistence wages to their employees and extract for themselves as profit the difference between these wages and the selling price of market commodities. Marx argued that the internal contradictions within capitalism-its social inequities-would eventually end its existence.
According to Marx, the crises of capitalism would manifest themselves in falling rates of profit, mounting hostility between workers and employers, and ever more severe depressions. Class warfare would lead to revolution and progress towards, first, socialism and, ultimately, communism. Once communism was achieved, the state would wither away, and each individual would be compensated according to need.
1. What were the main ideas of mercantilism?
2. What did the physiocrats promote?
3. What did classical economists believe in?
4. Where was the central social conflict according to Karl Marx?
5. How would the crises of capitalism manifest themselves in Marx’s opinion?
PART II
Classical economics proceeded from the assumption of scarcity of resources. Dating from the 1870s, Neo-Classicist economists shifted emphasis from limitations on supply to interpretations of consumer choice. Neo-Classicists explained market prices according to the intensity of consumer preference for one more unit of a commodity. The British economist Alfred Marshall explained demand by the principle of marginal utility, and supply by the rule of marginal productivity (the cost of producing the last item of a given quantity). In competitive markets, consumer preferences for low prices of goods and seller preferences for high prices settle on a mutually agreeable level. This same reconciliation between supply and demand occurs in markets for money and human labour. For example, in competitive labour markets, actual wages represent to the employer the value of the output, and to the employee the acceptable compensation for the work.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, accepted strategies for reversing the depression failed, and fresh policies were urgently required. The British economist John Maynard Keynes supplied them. In his work The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), he asserted that (1) neither high prices nor high wages explain persistent depression and mass unemployment, and (2) the explanation of these phenomena should be focused on aggregate demand-that is, the total spending of consumers, business investors, and governmental bodies. When aggregate demand is low, sales and jobs suffer; when it is high, all is well and prosperous. These ideas form the basis of contemporary macroeconomics. The national economy depends not on the actions of consumers, who are limited in the amounts that they can spend by the size of their incomes, but on business investors and governments, who invest in the economy. In a recession or depression, the proper thing to do is either to enlarge private investment or create public substitutes. This is done through easy credit or low interest rates, or more drastically by incurring deliberate budget deficits through public projects or subsidies to afflicted groups.
Economic Systems
The two major economic systems are the free-enterprise system and the Communist system. The major differences between these concern ownership of factories, farms, and other enterprises, and contrasting principles of pricing and income distribution. In free-enterprise societies, much of the gross national product (GNP) is directly generated by profit-making business enterprises, farmers, and private institutions. Prices are determined by markets, and income is not firmly established. In Communist economies, the state plans much of the price setting, and there is public ownership of factories, farms, and large retail establishments. However, all organized economic systems mix market activity and government intervention to some degree.
Falling somewhere between societies that emphasize either central planning or free enterprise are those that formally practise social democracy, or liberal socialism. For example, Sweden organizes the bulk of productive activity under private ownership but regulates this activity closely, intervenes to protect the jobs of workers, and redistributes substantial portions of profits and large individual incomes to low-income groups.
1. How did the British economist Alfred Marshall explain demand and supply?
2. What do actual wages represent to the employer and the employee in competitive labour markets?
3. What were the two main items in John Maynard Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money?
4. What does the national economy depend on?
5. What are the major differences between the free-enterprise system and the Communist system?
PART III
Between 1945 and 1973, the economies of the industrialized nations of Western Europe, Japan, and the United States grew rapidly. Several circumstances contributed to this, but perhaps the most important was that energy was plentiful and cheap. In the early 1970s the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which controls the bulk of the world's oil reserves, sharply raised its prices. This hampered economic growth worldwide. The heightened oil prices increased other product prices, leading to inflation and reduced purchasing power. This in turn depressed sales of consumer items, resulting in layoffs. Poorer nations had to borrow money, and their interest payments further slowed their development plans.
The various economic problems of recent years have stimulated serious debate about the proper role of public policy. In the 1980s a different solution was tried in the United States and Great Britain. Attempts were made to diminish taxation and government regulation on private enterprise and thus, by enlarging the potential profits of corporations, to encourage additional investment, higher productivity, and renewed economic growth.
In the 19th century, economics was the hobby of gentlemen of leisure and the vocation of a few academicians; economists wrote about economic policy but were rarely consulted by legislatures before decisions were made. Today, there is hardly a government, international agency, or large corporation that does not have its resident economist.
Clearly, much depends on how one defines the job of an economist: the list of the National Science Foundation is confined to persons whose chief competence is in any one of the recognized economic specialties. Of the 11,000 professional economists, about 4,500 were employed as teachers of economics; the rest worked in various research or advisory capacities, either for themselves, or for government. This leaves out of account many others employed in accounting, commerce, marketing, and business administration; they may think of themselves as economists, but their professional expertise falls within other fields.
There were about 75 English-language journals in economics and another 25 in various foreign languages, with new ones appearing every year. This implies the publication of about 1,500 scientific papers per year, not to mention the 700 new books on economics published every year. This is indeed "the age of economics" and the demand for their services seems insatiable.
Economic affairs have never before had quite the significance which is attached to them today. This is because, although economists have always been concerned with the same basic question of how to make the best use of scarce recourses, the sort of answer which they have given has radically changed over the past few decades.
Laissez-faire thinking of the nineteenth century was optimistically based on the idea that for the nation to prosper and for resources to be used to maximum advantage, all that was required was for individuals to resolutely pursue their own ends. The price mechanism, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, would then ensure that devotion to private gain would automatically maximize the welfare of the community as a whole.
Economics in such circumstances had a limited appeal. The economic mechanism could be described and explained, but then all that remained to be done was to stand back and admire its working. Anytampering would only reduce the benefits which it was geared to produce.
Economics today is more interesting than ever before, because wenow realize that the economy is neither an automatic mechanism whichcan safely be left to chug smoothly along its own optimal path nor governed by blind and unpredictable forces over which we can have no control. Its proper behavior can only be secured by deliberate manipulation, and developments in economic theory have indicated some of the basic techniques necessary for this purpose.
1. What was the main reason for rapid growthof the economies of industrialized nations?
2. How didthe United States and Great Britaintry to solve their economic problems in the 1980s?
3. Why do people call economics of nowadays"the age of economics"
4. What was laissez-faire thinking of the nineteenth century based on?
5. Why is economics today more interesting than ever before?
LEADERSHIP
Leadership is the direction and guiding of other participants in the organization.
Leadership differs in degree. Transactional leaders exchange rewards for services. They guide subordinates in recognizing and clarifying roles and tasks. They give their subordinates the direction, support, and confidence to fulfill their role expectations. They also help subordinates understand and satisfy their own needs and desires. They encourage better than average performance from their subordinates. They are good managers.
Transformational leadership is more dramatic. Transformational leaders change the relationship of the subordinate and the organization. They encourage subordinates to go well beyond their original commitments and expectations. If transactional leaders expect diligence, transformational leaders foster devotion. These leaders have the ability to reach the souls of others to raise human consciousness. They raise the level of awareness and encourage people to look beyond their self-interest.
Both forms of leadership are important. When people in positions of authority encourage subordinates to believe that their work is important - not merely a fair exchange of pay for work – motivation, commitment, and performance surpass routine expectations.
Leadership is required for major changes and new directions, and without leadership government easily stagnates. When things go well or poorly we credit or blame the leader. We look for leadership in candidates for high office. But can we determine which job candidates are "natural born" leaders? Can we train employees so that they develop the required personality characteristics to become effective leaders?
Over many years, investigators have hoped to identify leadership traits. It is extremely difficult to know precisely what traits such diverse political leaders as Napoleon Bonaparte, Luther King, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Indira Ghandi, and Adolf Hitler shared in common. Yet many researches have attempted to identify universal characteristics of leadership and the following classification of the leadership traits is suggested:
1) capacity (intelligence, verbal facility, originality, judgment);
2) achievement (scholarship, knowledge, athletic accomplishments);
3) responsibility (dependability, initiative, persistence, aggressiveness, self-confidence, desire to excel);
4) participation (activity, sociability, cooperation, adaptability, humor);
5) status (socioeconomic position, popularity).
Yet this list is not very helpful. Particular traits are neither necessary nor sufficient to become a leader. There are brilliant thinkers and talkers who are not leaders, and there are people who are not very intelligent and not blessed with verbal facility who are obvious leaders. The holding of a degree does not say enough of the holder and whether he would fit into a particular situation. In some situations the manager's superior education may be even resented by less well educated organization members.
It is obvious that some managers are better leaders than others, and if psychological traits do not explain the variations, what is the explanation?
Some investigators emphasize the situational character of leadership. The ingredients of this parameter of leadership are the following:
• status, or position power – the degree to which the leader is enabled to get the group members to comply with and accept his or her leadership (but leadership should not be confused with high position – holding high office does not guarantee impact; despite the leader's formal power, he or she did not always get from subordinates the performance that was desired);
• leader-member relations – acceptance of the leader by members and their loyalty to him or her;
• task-structure – the degree to which the jobs of the followers are well defined;
• ability to recognize the most critical needs for organization members at the moment (physiological needs for food, sleep, etc. or safety needs for freedom from fear, for security and stability; needs for love, friends and contact; esteem needs for self-respect and the respect of others or needs for self-actualization, for achieving one's potential).
Defining leadership is a very difficult task but rejecting the study of leadership would impoverish our understanding of governing.
1. What is leadership?
2. What are the two forms of leadership?
3. What characteristics does a “natural born” leader possess?
4. What classification of the leadership traits is suggested?
5. What is necessary to become a leader?
ADVERTISING
To advertise means to tell people publicly about a product or service in order to persuade them to buy it. Advertising – the techniques and practices used to bring products, services or opinions to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way toward what is advertised. Most advertising involves promoting a good that is for sale, but similar methods are used to encourage people to drive safely, to support various charities, or to vote for political candidates. In many countries advertising is the most important source of income for the media through which it is conducted. The media are all the organizations, such as television, radio, and the newspapers, that provide information for the public. In the ancient and medieval world such advertising as existed was conducted by word of mouth. The first step toward modern advertising came with the development of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 17th century weekly newspapers in London began to carry advertisements, and by the 18th century such advertising was flourishing. The great expansion of business in the 19th century was accompanied by the growth of an advertising industry; it was that century, primarily in the United States that saw the establishment of advertising agencies. Advertising agency is a company that designs and makes advertisements for other companies. By the 1920s advertising agencies could plan and execute complete advertising campaigns.
There are some principal media for advertising. Newspapers can offer advertisers large circulations (circulation – the average number of copies of a newspaper or magazine that are usually sold each day, week, month etc) and the opportunity to alter their advertisements frequently and regularly. Magazines may be of general interest or they may be aimed at specific audiences (such as people interested in computers or literature) and offer the manufacturers of products of particular interest to such people the chance to make contact with their most likely customers. The most pervasive (existing or spreading everywhere) media are television and radio. Advertisers can buy short “spots” of time to promote their products or services. Advertising spots are broadcast between or during regular programs. For advertisers the most important facts about a given television or radio program are the size and composition of its audience. The size of the audience determines the amount of money the broadcaster can charge an advertiser, and the composition of the audience determines the advertiser's choice as to when a certain message, directed at a certain segment of the public, should be run. The other advertising media include direct mail, outdoor billboards, posters, and etc. Advertising is on some occasions too intrusive (affecting someone's private life or interrupting them in an unwanted and annoying way).
There is no serious disagreement over the power of advertising to inform consumers of what products are available (can easily be bought or found). In a free-market economy effective advertising is extremely important and necessary to a company's survival, for unless consumers know about a company's product they are unlikely to buy it. For an advertisement to be effective its production and placement must be based on a knowledge of the public and a skilled use of the media. A career in advertising is a difficult one. Good advertisers are in great demand. Advertising agencies serve to organize complex advertising campaigns. The effectiveness of advertising campaigns is based on research into consumer behaviour and demographic analysis of the market area. [Demography is the study of human populations and the ways in which they change] Advertisers combine creativity in the production of the advertising messages with canny scheduling and placement, so that the messages are seen by, and will have an effect on, the people advertisers most want to address. Given a fixed budget, the advertiser faces a basic choice: he can have his message seen or heard by many people fewer times, or by fewer people many times.
In criticism of advertising it has been argued that the consumer must pay for the cost of advertising in the form of higher prices for goods; against this point it is argued that advertising enables goods to be mass marketed, thereby bringing prices down. It has been argued that the cost of major advertising campaigns is such that few firms can afford (to have enough money to buy or pay for something) them, thus helping these firms to dominate (to have power and control over) the market; on the other hand, whereas smaller firms may not be able to compete (to try to be more successful) with larger ones at a national level, at the local level advertising enables them to hold their own. Finally, it has been argued that advertisers exercise an undue (more than is reasonable, suitable, or necessary) influence over the regular contents of the media they employ – the editorial stance (an opinion that is stated publicly) of a newspaper or the subject (the thing one is talking about or considering in a conversation, discussion, book, film etc.) of a television show. In response it has been pointed out that such influence is counteracted, at least in the case of financially strong media firms, by the advertiser's reliance on the media to convey his messages; any compromise (an agreement between two contracting parties that is achieved by both of them accepting less than they wanted at first) of the integrity of a media firm might result in a smaller audience (the persons reached by a publication, radio, TV, etc.) for his advertising.
1. What is advertising?
2. What are the principal media if advertising?
3. What are the main factors that determine the effectiveness of advertising?
4. Why is advertising often criticized?
5. Does advertising increase or decrease prices?
КАК ПИСАТЬ АННОТАЦИЮ
Аннотация (от лат.аппоtatiо – замечание) – краткая характеристика содержания произведения печати или рукописи. Она
представляет собой предельно сжатую описательную характеристику первоисточника. В ней в обобщенном виде раскрывается тематика публикации без полного раскрытия ее содержания. Аннотация дает ответ на вопрос, о чем говорится в первичном источнике информации. Работа начинается с того, что после знакомства с общим содержанием, Вам необходимо ещё раз внимательно прочитать текст для того, чтобы найти ключевые фрагменты. При выписывании ключевых фрагментов необходимо учитывать следующие моменты: а) выписываются или подчёркиваются, как правило, не целые высказывания, а их части, отдельные словосочетания; б) формы, в которых выписываются фрагменты, могут не совпадать с вариантами в оригинале. Так, именное словосочетание может быть записано в ином падеже, причастный оборот трансформируется в инфинитив, порядок следования фрагментов произволен и может не совпадать с изначальным текстом.
Задача составления краткого изложения содержания оригинала значительно облегчается, если Вы располагаете примерным списком языковых клише. Среди всего многообразия клише можно выделить следующие три важные группы:
– клише, начинающие аннотацию и вводящие главную тему. Например:
The text deals with…
The text is on…
The text an be divided into…chapters…
The…chapter discusses an important problem of…
– клише, оформляющие ключевую мысль произведения. Например:
The author shows/points out that/how…
The author’s primary objective is to…
The text gives information on/introduces/ discusses…
– клише, подчёркивающие суть заключения, выводов, к которым приходит автор. Например:
The author comes to the conclusion that…
On reading the text we realize the fact that…
In conclusion the text reads…
SAMPLE
TEXTS FOR ANNOTATION
CESARE LOMBROSO
Since the 18th century, various scientific theories have been advanced to explain crime. One of the first efforts to explain crime on scientific, rather than theological, grounds was made at the end of the 18th century by the German physician and anatomist Franz Joseph Gall, who tried to establish relationship between skull structure and criminal proclivities. This theory, popular during the 19th century, is now discredited and has been abandoned.
A more sophisticated theory – a biological one-was developed late in the 19th century by the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, who asserted that crimes were committed by persons who are born with certain recognizable hereditary physical traits. Lombroso’s theory was disproved early in the 20th century by the British criminologist Charles Goring. Goring’s comparative study of jailed criminals and law-abiding persons established that so-called criminal types do not exist. Reсent scientific studies have tended to confirm Goring’s findings.
Another approach was initiated by French political philosopher Montesquieu, who attempted to relate criminal behaviour to natural or physical environment. His successors have gathered evidence to show that crimes against persons, such as homicide, are more numerous in warm climates, whereas crimes against property, such as theft, are more frequent in colder regions.
ANNOTATION
The text “Cesare Lombroso deals with the explanation of crime and can be divided into three chapters. The first chapter discusses an important problem of explaining crime by the German physician and anatomist Franz Joseph Gall at the end of the 18th century. He tried to establish relationship between skull structure and criminal proclivities.
In the second chapter the author points out that the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso asserted that crimes were committed by persons who were born with certain recognizable hereditary physical traits. Lombroso’s theory was disproved early in the 20th century by the British criminologist Charles Goring.
In conclusion the text reads that French political philosopher Montesquieu attempted to relate criminal behaviour to natural or physical environment.
LAW
HISTORY OF LAW
Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations and is set in the wider context of social history. Among certain jurists and historians of legal process it has been seen as the recording of the evolution of laws and the technical explanation of how these laws have evolved with the view of better understanding the origins of various legal concepts, some consider it a branch of intellectual history. Twentieth century historians have viewed legal history in a more contextualized manner more in line with the thinking of social historians. They have looked at legal institutions as complex systems of rules, players and symbols and have seen these elements interact with society to change, adapt, resist or promote certain aspects of civil society. Such legal historians have tended to analyze case histories from the parameters of social science inquiry, using statistical methods, analyzing class distinctions among litigants, petitioners and other players in various legal processes. By analyzing case outcomes, transaction costs, number of settled cases they have begun an analysis of legal institutions, practices, procedures and briefs that give us a more complex picture of law and society than the study of jurisprudence, case law and civil codes can achieve.
HISTORY OF ASIAN LAW
The eastern Asia legal tradition reflects a unique blend of secular and religious influences. Japan was the first country to begin modernizing its legal system along western lines, by importing bits of the French, but mostly the German Civil Code. This partly reflected Germany's status as a rising power in the late nineteenth century. Similarly, traditional Chinese law gave way to westernization towards the final years of the Ch'ing dynasty in the form of six private law codes based mainly on the Japanese model of German law. Today Taiwanese law retains the closest affinity to the codifications from that period, because of the split between Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists, who fled there, and Mao Zedong's communists who won control of the mainland in 1949. The current legal infrastructure in the People's Republic of China was heavily influenced by soviet Socialist law, which essentially inflates administrative law at the expense of private law rights. Today, however, because of rapid industrialization China has been reforming, at least in terms of economic (if not social and political) rights. A new contract code in 1999 represented a turn away from administrative domination. Furthermore, after negotiations lasting fifteen years, in 2001 China joined the World Trade Organization.
LEGAL SYSTEM OF THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS
The Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were a great achievement of Belarusian Law. They were written during the 16th century in Belarusian and are among first European constitutions and codes. They have served later as model to other European nations. The Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are considered to be one of the main treasures of Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish culture.
The modern legal system of the Republic of Belarus is included in the Romano-German legal family, forming together with the countries of CIS, the independent "Euroasian" group. The basic sources of law in Belarus are: a) Constitution (supreme law of the country); b) Codes; c) Decrees and Edicts of the President; d) Laws of the Parliament; e) Decisions of Government.
International treaties are an important source of law. The Republic of Belarus recognizes the principles of the international law and provides conformity with them in its legislation.
The most important codes of Belarus are based on the modeling legislation approved by Inter Parliamentary Assembly of the States of the participants of CIS. The new Civil Code was accepted in 1998. The Civil Code includes the law of obligations (contract and tort), property law, law of intellectual property, inheritance law and international private law. The Code of Land is the main source of land law, the Family Code adjusts the family relations and the Labor Code regulates labor relations.
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