title: First Vienna Award

text: The Hungarian government's strategy for the negotiations was to demand areas in which at least 50% of Hungarians lived according to the 1910 census. That formulation was chosen with respect to the signers of the Munich Agreement, but Hungary also requested areas that did not match those criteria. On the first day, Hungary supplied memorandum with the requested territorial changes. The Hungarians further demanded a plebiscite in the remaining territory in which Slovaks and Ruthenians would declare whether they wanted to be incorporated into Hungary.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Hungary demanded territories up to and including a line defined by Devín (Hungarian: "Dévény"), Bratislava ("Pozsony"), Nitra ("Nyitra"), Tlmače ("Garamtolmács"), Levice ("Léva"), Lučenec ("Losonc"), Rimavská Sobota ("Rimaszombat"), Jelšava ("Jolsva"), Rožňava ("Rozsnyó"), Košice ("Kassa"), Trebišov ("Tőketerebes"), Pavlovce nad Uhom ("Pálóc"), Uzhhorod (, Hungarian: "Ungvár"), Mukacheve ("Mukačevo", "Munkács"), and Vinogradiv ("Nagyszőlős"). The territory was 14,106 km (with 12,124 km in Slovakia and 1,982 km in Carpathian Ruthenia). It included 1,346,000 citizens (1,136,000 in Slovakia, 210,000 in Carpathian Ruthenia). According to the last census, 678,000 of them had declared a non-Hungarian nationality (553,000 in Slovakia, 125,000 in Carpathian Ruthenia) in 1930.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Hungary also requested the immediate takeover of two border towns from Czechoslovakia as a "goodwill gesture". The Czechoslovak delegation agreed on the railway town of Slovenské Nové Mesto (until 1918, it had been a suburb of the Hungarian town of Sátoraljaújhely) and the town of Šahy (). Both were occupied by Hungary on October 12.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The main difference between both parties' arguments was that the Hungarians presented the 1910 census figures, as had Germany during the Munich Conference, but Czechoslovakia presented the latest 1930 figures and contested the validity of the 1910 census. Later, Czechoslovakia also presented figures from Hungarian censuses before 1900. It considered the 1910 census as unacceptable because it represented the peak of Magyarization and differed from previous Hungarian and later Czechoslovak censuses as well as postwar censuses from other countries in which the Hungarian minority lived (Austria, Romania and Yugoslavia). Tiso noted that he, for example, had been counted as a Hungarian during that census.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Meanwhile, the Hungarian delegation did not accept the results of the Czechoslovak census and proposed to use the 1880 Hungarian census, before the peak of Magyarization, as a compromise. The Hungarians also did not agree on the definition of purely-Hungarian towns like Košice.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The request for a plebiscite on Slovaks and Ruthenians for rejoining Hungary was rejected by Czechoslovakia as irrelevant because the Munich Agreement did not address question of either nation, the idea violated the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia and the Ruthenian delegate declared that the Ruthenian nation (except communists) had already expressed its will to live in Czechoslovakia.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The Hungarian delegation rejected several Czechoslovak proposals, such as an offer to create an autonomous Hungarian territory within Slovakia. Kánya characterised the proposal as a "bad joke" and declared that it was "absolutely impossible to discuss this question". Czechoslovakia then offered to cede Great Rye Island (Slovak: "Žitný ostrov", Hungarian: "Csallóköz", 1838 km, with 105,418 inhabitants, almost all of whom were Hungarians), the creation of a free port in the town of Komárno and a population exchange in the remaining frontier regions.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Hungary turned down that offer as well, and on October 13, the Czechoslovak delegation proposed another solution. The goal of the Czechoslovak proposal was to the create borders with balanced minorities in both states (including Slovaks in Békés County). As well as the principle of balanced minorities, the proposal included the Czechoslovak strategic interest of preserving the railway to Carpathian Ruthenia. Pál Teleki rejected the proposal without a deeper study as a "humorous border", and the Hungarian delegation "analysed the map only to be polite".


title: First Vienna Award

text: Although the Czechoslovak delegation declared that it was open for further discussion about its proposal and offered consultation with its experts, the Hungarian delegation rejected further discussion. On the evening of October 13, after consultations in Budapest, Kánya declared that the negotiations had failed and asked the four signatories of the Munich Agreement to be the adjudicators. As the United Kingdom and France had decided not to make any decision, the adjudicators became German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano.


title: First Vienna Award

text: On October 13, the day that the negotiations deadlocked, Hungary conducted a partial mobilisation. Czechoslovakia performed actions to strengthen its security and declared martial law in the frontier region. After the failure of bilateral negotiations, the border dispute escalated to a wider international level. The Axis powers took the initiative in favour of Hungary to realise their own plans for the region.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Hungary sent delegations to both Italy and Germany. Count Csáky went to Rome. Kálmán Darányi went to Germany and told Hitler that Hungary was ready to fight and "[would] not accept the behavior of the Slovaks". However, the situation in Central Europe changed after the Munich Agreement, and the German-Hungarian-Polish bloc was over. Germany refused to take steps to strengthen Hungary. Hitler declared that if Hungary started a conflict, nobody would help it. He rejected the idea of a common conference of the four signers of the Munich Agreement, the demands for plebiscites in Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia and the Hungarian claims for Bratislava. Instead, he advised Hungary to continue the negotiations and to preserve the ethnic principle. He proposed for Germany to act as a mediator. Ribbentrop and Darányi agreed on a map which would be offered to Czechoslovakia ("Ribbentrop line"). The line later became source of misunderstanding between Hungary and Germany. According to Darányi, Ribbentrop did not accept his requests because several important towns remained on the Czechoslovak side (Bratislava, Nitra, Uzhorod and Mukachevo; the question of Košice was open). Germany rejected the accusations and declared that Ribbentrop line was created after it had consulted Darányi and that he had agreed to it. When the Hungarian government insisted, Ribbentrop announced that German mediation had ended.


title: First Vienna Award

text: At the same time as Darányi, Czechoslovak Foreign Minister František Chvalkovský also visited Germany to negotiate with its representatives. Hitler blamed Czechoslovakia for the failure of negotiations with Hungary and requested their renewal. He gave Chvalkovský a map with the Ribbentrop line and promised to guarantee new borders, which were based on that proposal. Back in Prague, Chvalkovský recommended to accept the Ribbentrop line. However, the Slovak autonomous government was against such a solution and hoped to achieve further corrections. On October 19, Tiso and Ďurčanský met with Ribbentrop in Munich and managed to persuade him to assign Košice to Czechoslovakia and to accept the prior proposal of keeping balanced minorities both in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Czechoslovak experts prepared material that argued that the Hungarian statistics were unreliable and that the Hungarian demands did not comply with the ethnic principle but were driven by foreign policy and strategic factors. They argued that Hungarian claims for Košice were not motivated by ethnic or historical reasons but focused on the elimination of the largest communication, economic and cultural centre it the east and on the interruption of the railway to Carpathian Ruthenia and allied Romania. That would totally isolate the eastern part of the republic, which could be later annexed by Hungary. Both Tiso and Ďurčanský believed that they had persuaded Hitler. Tiso sent a letter to Prague to notify on the positive results.


title: First Vienna Award

text: A few days later, Ribbentrop revealed himself to be quite hostile to the Hungarians. As Ciano saw it, "The truth is that he intends to protect Czechoslovakia as far as he can and sacrifice the ambitions, even the legitimate ambitions, of Hungary".


title: First Vienna Award

text: After October 17, activities around Subcarpathian Rus' intensified. Poland proposed a partition of Subcarpathian Rus' among Hungary, Poland and Romania. Romania, a staunch ally of Czechoslovakia against Hungary, rejected the proposal and even offered military support for Czechoslovakia in Subcarpathia. Hungary, in turn, attempted to persuade the Subcarpathian Rus' representatives to become part of Hungary. A common Polish-Hungarian border, which would arise by a Hungarian annexation of Subcarpathian Rus', had been a longtime dream of both Poland and Hungary,


title: First Vienna Award

text: Poland was moving troops toward that border for support. However, since a common Polish-Hungarian frontier would mean a flanking of Germany, Germany was willing to face such a frontier only if Poland compensated by giving the Danzig Corridor to Germany. Poland refused the German proposal.


title: First Vienna Award

text: On October 20, the Rusyns produced a resolution more or less in favour of a plebiscite on all of Subcarpathian Rus' becoming part of Hungary. Five days later, Subcarpathian Prime Minister Andriy Borody was arrested in Prague, and Subcarpathian Foreign Minister Avhustyn Voloshyn was appointed prime minister. He was willing to consider the cession of only ethnically-Hungarian territories to Hungary and rejected the idea of a plebiscite.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Negotiations between Czechoslovakia and Hungary resumed by diplomatic channels. Czechoslovakia adopted the "Ribbentrop line" in the hope that it would receive a guarantee of new borders from the side of Axis powers and proposed it officially on October 22. Czechoslovakia offered to cede Hungary territory that had 494,646 Hungarians and 168,632 Slovaks and to retain Bratislava, Nitra and Košice. Hungary turned down the proposal, which caused Germany to withdraw its position as mediator. Hungary demanded for the territories offered by Czechoslovakia to be immediately occupied by Hungary, for there be a plebiscite in the disputed territory and for Subcarpathia to "decide its own future". Czechoslovakia found it unacceptable to cede territories immediately that had not been the subject of discussion and to resolve the question of the remaining parts later. By accepting the proposal, Czechoslovak border fortifications would become Hungarian, and the Hungarian Army could invade more Czechoslovak territory.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Hungary also warned that if Czechoslovakia refused that proposal, Hungary would demand arbitration (Italo-German in Western Slovakia, Italo-German-Polish in Eastern Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus'). Then, Czechoslovakia would have no choice but to accept Hungarian demands or to agree with arbitration. That decision was forced also by fact that both France and Britain had lost interest on Czechoslovakia and considered the region to be in the German sphere of influence.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Both parties hoped that Germany would support their demands. The Slovak autonomous government also accepted the idea of arbitration with unrealistic expectations, based on Ribbentrop's assurances.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Although the Hungarian government demanded arbitration, it had not had have the prior approval of Germany, which insisted on its negative opinion, Hitler's disagreement, Ribbentrop's disappointment with previous negotiations with Darányi and the danger of military conflict if one country did not accept the results.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Hungary managed to persuade Italy that the powerful German influence that was exercised through Czechoslovakia could be eliminated by a strong Hungary. Ciano accepted the proposal and promised to advocate Hungarian interests. During Ribbentrop's visit to Rome (October 27–30, 1938), Ciano persuaded Ribbentrop on the importance of arbitration for the Axis powers's future position in the region, and Ribbentrop promised to persuade Hitler.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Italy took the initiative and proposed to achieve common agreement in Rome as a basis for arbitration. Ciano, who had been briefed by Hungarian experts, was in a better position than the less-informed Ribbentrop and so achieved several important concessions. On October 31, the Hungarian envoy in Rome confidentially informed Hungarian government, "Ribbentrop definitely agreed with the return of Košice, Uzhorod and Mukachevo".


title: First Vienna Award

text: On October 29, 1938, Czechoslovakia and Hungary officially asked Germany and Italy to arbitrate and declared in advance that they would abide by the results.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The award was made in Vienna by the foreign ministers of Germany, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and of Italy, Galeazzo Ciano. The Hungarian delegation was led by Foreign Minister Kálmán Kánya, accompanied by Education Minister Pál Teleki. The Czechoslovak delegation was led by Foreign Minister František Chvalkovský, accompanied by Ivan Krno. Important members of the Czechoslovak delegation included representatives of Subcarpathian Rus' (Prime Minister Avgustyn Voloshyn) and of Slovakia (Prime Minister Jozef Tiso and Justice Minister Ferdinand Ďurčanský). Also present was Hermann Göring. A few days before the arbitration, Budapest had received messages from some of borderline villages that rejected became part of Hungary ("Stay there, do not liberate us. We are having a good time, better than you, liberate yourself").


title: First Vienna Award

text: The arbitration began in the Belvedere Palace, in Vienna, at noon on November 2, 1938. The Czechoslovak and the Hungarian delegations were allowed to present their arguments. Chvalkovský was brief and left the task of presenting the Czechoslovak case to Krno. Despite explicit demands by the Czechoslovak representatives, both arbiters refused to let Tiso and Voloshyn participate. Ribbentrop and Ciano reasoned that only the representatives of central governments could participate (Czechoslovakia, rather than the partially-autonomous Slovakia or Carpatho-Ruthenia). They assumed that Chvalkovský would be more submissive and that Tiso would complicate the negotiations. The negotiations were a formality, and a new border was drawn after half a day. When the award was announced by Ribbentrop around 7 p.m., the Czechoslovak delegation was so shocked that Tiso actually had to be talked by Ribbentrop and Chvalkovský into signing the document.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Czechoslovakia had to surrender the territories in southern Slovakia and southern Carpathian Ruthenia south of the line to the border with Romania. That included the towns of Senec (Szenc), Galanta (Galánta), Vráble (Verebély), Levice (Léva), Lučenec (Losonc), Rimavská Sobota (Rimaszombat), Jelšava (Jolsva), Rožnava (Rozsnyó), Košice (Kassa), Michaľany (Szentmihályfalva), Veľké Kapušany (Nagykapos), Uzhhorod (Ungvár), and Mukachevo (Munkács). Slovakia lost 10,390 km with 854,277 inhabitants – 503,980 Hungarians (58,99%), 272,145 Slovaks or Czechs (32,43%), 26,151 Jews (3,06%), 8,947 Germans (1,05%), 1,825 Ruthenians, 14,617 other and 26,005 foreign citizens according to the Czechoslovak census of 1930. By considering the average population growth since the last census, it is possible to estimate the total size of population at the time of the arbitration at 935,000 people, 300,000 of whom were Slovaks or Czechs Czechoslovakia lost also additional territory in Carpathian Ruthenia. Czechoslovakia lost the direct railway connection to Carpathian Ruthenia and to its ally Romania.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Between October 28 and 29, 1938, Béla Imrédy and the leader of the United Hungarian Party Andor Jaross made an agreement that representatives of the party who stayed in the redeemed territories would be part of a civic group of general staff, which would hold supreme authority. One of its parts (the Upper Country Unification Group) later became the basis for the Ministry for Upper Country, led by Jaross. All other political parties were banned, and obstacles were made for the introduction of other parties from Hungary. The United Hungarian Party then used its power for the persecution of Slovaks and of Hungarians who had disagreed with the activities against Czechoslovakia before the award.


title: First Vienna Award

text: After the Vienna Award, the Hungarian government and United Hungarian Party organised celebrations and a triumphant entry of the Hungarian Army into the redeemed territories. Organizers consciously imitated the entry of Hitler's army into the Sudetenland. The result of arbitration was met by the most of the Hungarian population by local statements of disagreement. Hungarian Honvéds were not welcomed also in some "pure Hungarian" villages, and in one village, their accommodation had to be arranged by force. The ceded territories were occupied by the Royal Hungarian Army ("Magyar Királyi Honvédség") between November 5 and 10, 1938. Hungary imposed a military administration on the redeemed territories. On November 11, Horthy solemnly entered the main town, Košice (Kassa). The military administration was changed to a civilian administration on December 21, 1938. The recovered Upper Hungary territories were incorporated into Hungary on November 12, 1938, by an act of the Hungarian Parliament. By following the former counties of the Kingdom of Hungary, the occupied territory was divided into two new counties with seats in Nové Zámky and Levice, and some lands became part of other Hungarian counties.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Tiso took the result personally, especially because he had failed to arrange the evacuation of Košice. He announced the results of the award on the radio late in the evening and blamed the central government for its long-term policy but accepted the result.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The First Vienna Award finally refuted interwar Hungarian propaganda that "Slovak brothers" dreamed about returning to the 1000-year Hungarian Empire and could not openly declare their opinion under Czech domination. It also led to worsening anti-Hungarian sentiment in Slovakia. Shortly after the award had been announced, János Esterházy, a leader of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, proposed for Hungary to return to Slovakia 1000 km of the territory that Hungary had received, predominantly Slovak lands between Šurany (Nagysurány) and Palárikovo (Tótmegyer), to ensure the long-term peaceful co-existence between both nations. His proposal was not accepted by the Hungarian government. The obvious violation of the ethnic balance between the two countries' minorities, which had repeatedly been endorsed years earlier by Hungary, and the short period between the award and a Hungarian attack against Slovakia in March 1939, caused anti-Hungarian sentiment and social movements to become a significant unifying element for Slovaks during the Second World War. Anti-Hungarian demonstrations were held on each anniversary of the award in which anti-Hungarian slogans were shouted and Hungarian houses or cultural institutions were damaged. On the third anniversary, a mob furious at the shooting of Slovaks by Hungarian police in Komjatice destroyed the Hungarian Cultural House.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Hungary annulled Point 4 of Article 27 of the Treaty of Trianon, which committed it to respect the new borders that were defined by the treaty. According to Deák, Hungary also violated Articles 48 and 49 of the treaty, which guaranteed independence and rights of new Czechoslovak state. In addition to territorial gains based on the First Vienna Award, Hungary ignored the results of the arbitration and tried to annex Carpathian Ruthenia few weeks later.


title: First Vienna Award

text: From the Middle Ages to well into the 18th century, Hungary and Poland had shared a historic common border and had always enjoyed good relations. After the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938, both countries had worked together to restore their historic common border. A step toward their goal was realised with the First Vienna Award (November 2, 1938).


title: First Vienna Award

text: Under pressure from Hitler, Slovakia declared total independence on March 14, 1939, and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. Two days earlier, Hitler had given Hungary permission to occupy the rest of Carpatho-Ruthenia within 24 hours but to abstain from attempting to annex the remainder of Slovakia, which Hitler wanted to turn into a strategically-located German ally, especially for his planned invasion of Poland. On March 14–15, what remained of Carpatho-Ruthenia declared its independence as Carpatho-Ukraine, and shortly afterward, between March 15 and 18, it was occupied by Hungary. After occupying Carpatho-Ukraine, Hungary occupied a small amount of Slovakia on March 15. Seeing no substantial reaction, Hungary on March 23 launched a larger attack on eastern Slovakia. The plan was to "advance as far west as possible". After a short Slovak-Hungarian War, with several Hungarian air raids, such as March 24 on Spišská Nová Ves, Hungary was forced by Germany to stop and negotiate. The negotiations (March 27 -April 4) gave Hungary further territories in Eastern Slovakia (1,897 km) with 69,630 inhabitants, almost all of whom were Slovaks or Rusyns. Unlike the earlier Vienna Award, the annexed territories were not justified on ethnic grounds. (The Hungarians justified it under the grounds that the Vienna Award had been an arbitration between Hungary and Czechoslovakia and that the latter had ceased to exist a few days earlier.)


title: First Vienna Award

text: Until mid-March 1939, Germany had considered that "for military reasons a common Hungarian-Polish frontier was undesirable". Indeed, Hitler had warned Hungary not to touch the remainder of Slovakia when he authorized Hungary to occupy the rest of Carpathian Ruthenia in March 1939. He meant to use Slovakia as a staging ground for his planned invasion of Poland. In March 1939, Hitler changed his mind on the common Hungarian-Polish frontier and decided to betray Germany's ally, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which had already in 1938 begun organising Ukrainian military units in a "sich" outside Uzhhorod under German tutelage. Polish political and military authorities saw the "sich" as a danger to the neighbouring southeastern Poland, with its largely Ukrainian population. Hitler, however, was concerned that if a Ukrainian army that was organised in Carpathian Rus' accompanied German forces invading the Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalists would insist on the establishment of an independent Ukraine. Hitler, who had his own plans for the natural and farming resources of Ukraine, did not want to have to deal with an independent Ukrainian government.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Hitler soon had cause to regret his decision regarding the fate of Carpatho-Ukraine. In six months, during his 1939 invasion of Poland, the common Hungarian-Polish border would become of major importance when Horthy's government, because of the long friendship between Poles and Hungarians and as a matter of Hungarian honour, declined Hitler's request to transit German forces across Carpathian Rus' into southeastern Poland to speed Poland's conquest. That, in turn, allowed the Polish government and tens of thousands of Polish military personnel to escape into neighbouring Hungary and Romania and then to France and French-mandated Syria to carry on operations as the third-strongest Allied belligerent, after Britain and France. Also, for a time, Polish and British intelligence agents and couriers, including the notable Krystyna Skarbek, used Hungary's Carpathian Rus' as a route across the Carpathian Mountains to and from Poland.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Slovaks in the redeemed territory joined the existing Slovak minority in Hungary, but only about 60,000 Hungarians remained in the Slovakia. The new border did not respect the principle of ethnic borders requested by Hungary as a "correction of injustices of Treaty of Trianon" or the Hungarian census of 1910. The most obvious violations of the ethnic principle occurred in areas around Nové Zámky–Vráble–Hurbanovo, the area around Jelšava and the area around Košice. Only 8 of 79 villages around Košice had a Hungarian-majority population, besides the 42,245 Slovaks in Košice.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Hungary performed a new census in the redeemed territory in December 1938. The census took place in an atmosphere of expulsions, persecutions, restrictions of civil rights and psychological coercion by the Hungarian authorities. In addition, it was performed under direct control of military bodies and violated several principles for taking a census of nationalities. According to the official results, the population consisted of 86.5% Hungarians and 9.8% Slovaks. The total size of Slovak population was reduced to 121,603, with 67 villages losing their Slovak majority, the Slovak population decreasing by 74,100 and the Hungarian population increased by 77,715. Contrary to the Czechoslovak census of 1930, the Hungarian census again counted not the nationality declared by citizens but the "mother tongue" registered by census commissars, as had the Hungarian census from 1910. The two censuses significantly differed in the view on Jewish population. In Czechoslovakia, Jews were allowed to declare separate Jewish nationality, but in the Hungarian census, they could not put their own mother tongue, and their real numbers can be estimated only by their declared religion.


title: First Vienna Award

text: For a full comparison of the censuses, it is necessary to take into account the population transfer after the border change (voluntary or forced), the demographic changes during the previous 20 years of Czechoslovakia (such as the arrival of Czechoslovak state employees and colonists and natural domestic migration) and the bilingualism of the population and the reliability of previous statistics, particularly of the 1910 census from the peak of Magyarization.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The Vienna Award escalated in Slovakia into the first deportations of Jews. Tiso and his collaborators looked for a scapegoat, which was found in Jews because of their demonstration in favour of Bratislava to be part of Hungary on the evening before the arbitration. Between November 4 and 5, 1938, Slovakia's autonomous government deported 7,500 Jews into the new Hungarian-Slovak border. Tiso justified the step as "letting them go where they wanted". Hungary refused to accept them, who included some who were elderly or children, and the deported Jews found themselves imprisoned in no man's land during the cold autumn weather. Hundreds of Jews stayed in a camp in Veľký Kýr and Miloslavov, where they were unable to move to residences in either Slovakia or Hungary.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The non-Hungarians in the territory ceded by the First Vienna Award can be divided into three groups: those who left already before the Award came into force, those who remained in their place during the war until it was reintegrated to Czechoslovakia and those who were expelled from the region. The Czechoslovak press reported after the Munich Agreement that border adjustments with Hungary were imminent and so the Czechoslovaks had five weeks to decide whether they stayed or left. According to Janics, the officials and farmers who opted to move out (81,000 people) were given administrative, military and public safety support and were provided road vehicles and railway wagons to transport their property. Deák estimates the number of state employees and Czech colonists who left the territory before the arrival of the Hungarian Army as half, and the total number of Slovaks who left the territory before December 1938 (voluntarily or forcibly) is unknown and can be estimated only by comparison of the censuses of 1930 and 1938 and the assumed population growth. His estimate has about 50,000 Slovaks.


title: First Vienna Award

text: From the start, Hungary breached several points of the agreement on the evacuation and the transfer of territory, particularly its commitment to preventing violence on territory under its administration. Hungarian nationalism considered the Czech and Slovak colonists, who had obtained their lands in the ethnic Hungarian territories by the nationalist Czechoslovak land reform, as aliens. Some of the colonists left before the award, and others stayed where they were, but a number of them were expelled by force and intimidation. Tilkovszky puts the number of expelled families at 647.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Deák documents that the expulsion of "colonists" was not realised as an arbitrary act of nationalists but that the Hungarian General Staff gave an order to expel all Slovak and Czech colonists on November 5, 1938, which also included their family members and descendants. On November 11, 1938, the Hungarian General Staff issued a new edict, which imposed measures against colonists, ordered their immediate expulsion and defined them as enemies of the state. The organised persecution of non-Hungarian population was based on those orders. Soldiers and police could freely perform home inspections without needing official authorisation and could confiscate stocks of food, livestock and grain. The term "colonists" covered agricultural colonists but was interpreted by the Hungarian government as any non-Hungarians that had settled in the concerning territories since 1918 for any reason, even for those who declared to have Hungarian nationality. Beside Slovaks, Moravians and Czechs, the forced expulsions affected Germans Forced expulsions were frequently preceded by arrest and imprisonment related to physical torture. In others, it involved transportation to border with Czechoslovakia with military assistance.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The colonists were followed by state employees, Slovak farmers (including those who inherited land or bought it in a standard legal way with their own money) and then anybody denoted as an unreliable. Lists of unreliable persons had been prepared by members of the Hungarian United Party before the First Vienna Award. The measures took place violently, with shooting, casualties and the looting of Slovak and Czech stores and property. Military bodies usually did not react to complaints, or they openly declared that they would not do anything against offenders and violence.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Under such conditions, many Slovaks and Czechs decided to leave the territory. In addition, they signed official statement that they had moved voluntarily and all of their property, even for items that were allowed to be exported, was passed into the ownership of Hungary. In Gbelce (Köbölkút), three Czech colonists were shot dead and one hanged. Civil servants had to leave the territory within 48 hours and were replaced by those from Hungary.


title: First Vienna Award

text: As a reaction to the expulsion of colonists, Czechoslovakia started to take countermeasures and declared that further expelled civilians would be settled on land belonging to members of the Hungarian minority and Hungarian citizens (the Hungarian aristocracy owned 50,000 ha of agricultural land and 14,000 ha of woods in Slovakia). Hungary promised that it would stop mass expulsions and that it was open to negotiations on property issues.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Changes in the Hungarian policy were driven by several factors. The new Hungarian foreign minister, István Csáky, stated that the Hungarian steps had not had the expected effects but had increased anti-Hungarian sentiment, caused disillusionment of the last supporters of Hungary and pushed the Slovak government into co-operation with the central Czechoslovak government. The Hungarian government continued the expulsions but claimed that they were not mass expulsions, that Slovaks and Czechs had left the territory voluntarily and that Hungary had not forced them to do so.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Although Miklós Horthy had promised to guarantee the freedom of the Slovak language and culture in the redeemed territories, Hungary failed to protect its new minorities. The promise of the Slovak government of "adequate help and protection" of its non-Hungarian citizens and its recommendation to stay in the territory the live were also naive and counterproductive and led to unnecessary losses of lives and property.


title: First Vienna Award

text: All non-Hungarian organizations were dissolved, and their property was confiscated or given to Hungarian organisations. In Nové Zámky, Jewish citizens were interned in a colony abandoned by Slovaks and Czechs shortly after the event, Jewish lease agreements were cancelled and office spaces were given to Christians.


title: First Vienna Award

text: About 150 schools had been built by the Slovak League, and they were declared to be the property of the Hungarian state. According to Jablonický, Deák and other authors, 862 of 1,119 teachers lost their jobs by the end of 1938, and others followed in the next years. Janics put the total number of teachers at 1,088 and added that most of them had left voluntarily when the award came into effect. In early 1939, the Slovak government protested the expulsion of Slovak teachers and the liquidation of Slovak schools and threatened reciprocal measures against Hungarian-minority schools if Hungary's policy continued.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The expulsion of teachers was often related to violence and public degradation. In Losonc, Hungary deported 54 Slovak teachers on the demarcation line (Deák documents further examples of steps that eliminated Slovak schools). Slovaks lost 386 primary schools, attended by 45,709 Slovak children, and 29 council schools ("burgher schools"), attended by 10,750 children. Four grammar school were closed in Kassa and six in other towns. The remaining Slovak government employees, such as railway workers, were forced to enroll their children into Hungarian schools. In several Slovak villages, police dispersed parents' associations, and parents who demanded Slovak schools were beaten. Parents from Regeteruszka and Balogd who demanded Slovak schools were imprisoned for two weeks. In several places, Hungarian police burned Slovak school supplies, requested for them to be burned by the school director or simply confiscated them.


title: First Vienna Award

text: However, that pressure was generally not sufficient. For instance, in Nagysurány, Slovaks excluded from their community anybody who had enrolled children to Hungarian schools. The overcrowding of Hungarian classes with Slovaks had a negative impact on the quality of education of local Hungarian population.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The slow adoption of Hungarian confirmed that the idea of the Hungarian state had remained fictitious for Slovaks.


title: First Vienna Award

text: In the fall of 1943, the Hungarian government came to the conclusion that direct Magyarization trends would be replaced by educational activities in the mother tongue of minorities. The plan did not take place because of Hungary was later occupied by Germany.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The Hungarian government ordered the revision of trade licences for Jews in the redeemed territory but not for the rest of Hungary. That made 80% of Jews lose their license with significant impact on economic life. In towns like Kassa, Érsekújvár and Losonc, every second shop was closed.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Slovakia lost 41% of its agricultural soil, which produced approximately 80% of products required for food supply. That was a notable loss for Slovakia but was not a clear benefit for Hungary. The existing problems with overproduction caused problems for local farmers and for Hungary's economic policy. Only half of Southern Slovakia's 400,000 tons of wheat production was used locally, and the other half had no consumers. The border between the redeemed territories and Hungary proper was closed during the military administration and so distribution in that direction was impossible. The situation improved only partially during the civilian administration, when grain and livestock prices remained low. The Hungarian government tried to improve the situation by state intervention purchases, but that failed to resolve the long-term implications of the overproduction. The prices of agricultural goods decreased by 20–30%. Existing cartels in Hungary had limited possibilities to grow the most profitable crops. That resulted in The Economic Association of Nitra County demanding the right "to grow sugar beet under the same conditions as during Czech rule". That request was refused. On February 24, 1939, the government cabinet restricted growing of red pepper only to limited areas around Érsekújvár.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Czechoslovakia had provided more job opportunities by constructing roads, regulating rivers and building projects. Those were stopped after the arbitration. Unemployment rates increased, and unlike Czechoslovakia, Hungary did not provide any unemployment benefits or state health insurance for workers in agriculture. Retirement and disability pensions were also lower. Unemployed workers who had received support under Czechoslovak rule requested the same from Hungary. Salaries and working conditions had worsened, but taxes had increased. The exchange rate was disadvantageous for local citizens (7-1) and automatically decreased salaries by 20%. Hungarian soldiers profited from the exchange rate and bought up the remaining cheap Czechoslovak goods at the expense of their sellers. New goods from Hungary had become 20–30% more expensive. Electricity, the radio and railway tickets had also become also more expensive.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Local Hungarians had difficulties understanding the problems because interwar propaganda had portrayed the reunification of the ethnic Hungarian territories as beneficial for both parties. However, in many aspects, Czechoslovakia had given Hungarians more civic and social rights than Hungary would just a year later. The Hungarian government answered by appealing to Hungarian patriotism. In April 1939, Hungarian professors wrote demands to the Hungarian government and protested price increases and their bad social situation.


title: First Vienna Award

text: Social problems on the concerning territories were discussed in the cabinet meeting on December 22, 1939. Interior Minister Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer who was responsible for issues of common goods, the health service and social policy, proposed a solution based on unification. Upper Country Minister Andor Jaross disagreed with that solution and proposed providing the Czechoslovak welfare system for those in the redeemed areas for a transitional period but had no objections to decreasing it to the Hungarian level.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The cabinet finally agreed on a compromise. The elimination of Czechoslovak laws from the acquired territories was understood as a duty but had to be done gradually. The first step was to decrease the value of a retirement pension from its Czechoslovak value (150 pengő) to its Hungarian value (60 pengő) through a transition value of 120 pengő. Health insurance for workers in agriculture was preserved in the form of Czechoslovak regulation for the moment, but it was changed from compulsory to voluntary. In Slovakia, the Czechoslovak system of welfare was preserved after the breakup of Czechoslovakia.


title: First Vienna Award

text: In terms of international law, the Vienna Award was later ruled to be null and void. Although it was presented as a voluntary act of two sovereign states in arbitration, the Czechoslovak government had accepted arbitration under a presumed threat from both arbiters (Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy) and under heavy influence of the Hungarian demands. According to Deák, under international law, the act is considered to have been illegal, and its result could not be accepted as valid. Just as for the Munich Agreement, which was later nullified, Czechoslovakia's interests were largely ignored, and the arbiters had used their military prowess to pressure those in the agreement. The Vienna Award was also found to be illegal at the end of World War II. From that legal standpoint, the Vienna Award never existed as a valid legal act.


title: First Vienna Award

text: On December 11, 1940, the British Foreign Office confirmed to the Czechoslovak government that Britain was not bound to Munich Agreement regarding Czechoslovak borders. It interpreted the Munich Agreement to have been signed properly but to have become invalid on March 15, 1939. Negotiations on the British standpoint continued until halfway into 1942. On June 9, 1942, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov confirmed the restoration of Czechoslovakia to its borders before the Munich Agreement. On September 26, 1944, Italian Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza informed a Czechoslovak representative that Italy had considered the Munich Agreement and the First Vienna Award to have been invalid from the start. That was confirmed in the peace treaty with Hungary (Treaty of Paris), which was signed February 10, 1947. Article 1 (4a) stated, "The decisions of the Vienna Award of November 2, 1938, are declared null and void". The treaty went on to declare that the border between Hungary and Czechoslovakia was to be fixed along the former frontier between Hungary and Czechoslovakia as it existed on January 1, 1938, except for three villages south of Bratislava, which were given as a bridgehead to Czechoslovakia.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The Munich Agreement, the First Vienna Award and the participation of minority parties in the breakup of Czechoslovakia resulted in the redefinition of postwar Czechoslovak minority policy. Prewar Czechoslovakia had guaranteed a relatively large number of minority rights, with Hungarians having more civic and social rights of Hungarians than in Hungary, but Hungarians became the target of serious discrimination after the war. The Hungarian question had to be resolved by population exchange between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, Slovakization and deportations of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia (particularly to the Sudetenland).


title: First Vienna Award

text: The Government Program of Košice (April 5, 1945) accepted the principle of collective guilt for the German and Hungarian minorities. Articles X and XI ordered the seizure of their property, and Article XV the closure of minority schools. Measures against the minorities were reasoned by the "terrible experience of Czechs and Slovaks with German and Hungarian minorities, which largely become a willing tool in the services of aggressive policy from outside; and especially Czechoslovak Germans cooperated directly in the extermination campaign against the Czech and Slovak nation". The government program was followed by series of regulations in the same spirit. Except for antifascist fighters, the Hungarians lost their Czechoslovak citizenship by a presidential decree on August 2, 1945. "About amnesty for acts performed during anti-fascistic fight" prevented punishment of the cruelest crimes against the Hungarian minority.Both countries had a population exchange (68,407 Hungarians and 59,774 Slovaks). A further 31,780 Hungarians were expelled because they had settled in the territories only after the Vienna Award.


title: First Vienna Award

text: The communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 did not immediately improve the status of Hungarians, but relationships began to normalise in the second half of 1948. During his visit in Budapest on March 15, 1948, the chairman of the Czechoslovak Constitutional National Assembly declared that the Hungarian people were not responsible for the past oppression of Slovaks, the crimes of Hungarian noblemen or the regime of Miklós Horthy. In October 1948, the Czechoslovak parliament restored Czechoslovak citizenship to Hungarians who were residents in Slovakia on November 1, 1938, and had not been convicted of crimes. The issue of the return of property disappeared in the context of communist collectivisation and so became irrelevant.


title: First Vienna Award

text: On April 16, 1949, both countries signed an agreement on friendship and co-operation. On July 25, 1949, the Hungarian government committed to return artistic and historical relics that had been seized after the First Vienna Award. The final agreement was signed on November 11, 1951, with a validity of ten years but was not fully respected.


title: Harajuku Girls

text: The Harajuku Girls are four Japanese and Japanese-American backup dancers featured in stage shows and music videos for Gwen Stefani during her solo pop/dance-record career. The women also act as an entourage at Stefani's public appearances.


title: Harajuku Girls

text: The Harajuku Girls are Maya Chino ("Love"), Jennifer Kita ("Angel"), Rino Nakasone ("Music") and Mayuko Kitayama ("Baby"). The name of the group is a reference to Harajuku, a neighborhood of Tokyo. The stage names of the women are derived from Stefani's "Love. Angel. Music. Baby.", which was the name of her first album as well as her clothing brand.


title: Harajuku Girls

text: In 2014, Stefani announced she would be producing an animated series that was based on the characters Love, Angel, Music, Baby, and G, a character who was first introduced in the Harajuku Lovers perfume line. The series "Kuu Kuu Harajuku" follows the girls, known together as HJ5, as they fight evil and try to pursue their music.


title: Harajuku Girls

text: The Harajuku Girls were originally hired in 2004 as backup dancers for the promotion of Gwen Stefani's debut solo album "Love. Angel. Music. Baby.". The "Harajuku Girls" continued to appear alongside Stefani, and were featured in the music videos for "What You Waiting For?", "Rich Girl", "Hollaback Girl", "Luxurious", "Crash", "Wind It Up", "The Sweet Escape", and "Now That You Got It". Gwen appeared on "Friday Night with Jonathan Ross", and introduced the dancers as her "imaginary friends".


title: Harajuku Girls

text: In 2021, Angel and Music, while dressed as Love and Baby, appeared in Stefani's music video for her comeback single "Let Me Reintroduce Myself".


title: Harajuku Girls

text: Maya Chino (stage name "Love") grew up in Tokyo. She started out doing ballet when she was three years old and also tap danced. Before dancing with Gwen Stefani, she was a backup dancer for South Korean singer BoA. She later moved to Los Angeles, California, and teaches hip hop lessons to children at an academy called HORIPRO Music Academy. She is also one of the Head Instructor/Choreographers for HMA's HIPHOP Team "RIZE".


title: Harajuku Girls

text: Jennifer Kita (stage name "Angel/Lil Angel"), is a Japanese-American from Torrance, California. After graduating from South High School, Jennifer moved to San Diego and studied hip-hop at Mesa College. She later joined the dance troupe Culture Shock San Diego, where she performed for two years, then joined the hip hop entertainment company Urban FX, where she danced for a year.


title: Harajuku Girls

text: Jenny’s big break came when she appeared in Britney Spears’ Pepsi ad campaign ‘The Joy of Pepsi’ in 2001 which was broadcast on television during commercial break at the Academy Awards.


title: Harajuku Girls

text: After her stint with Gwen Stefani, Jenny went on to tour with Madonna on the Sticky & Sweet Tour from 2008–2009 and performed with various artists such as Snoop Dogg, Ricky Martin, Psy and Shakira.


title: Harajuku Girls

text: Rino Nakasone (stage name "Music"), born on June 11, 1979, grew up in Okinawa. She became interested in dance after watching music videos by Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson and mimicking their moves. At the age of nineteen she went to Los Angeles to study dance. She later taught dance at a performing arts centers, and joined an all-female dance group "Beat Freaks", which competed and was runner-up in "America's Best Dance Crew". She most recently appeared in the new dance multimedia production "Siren Assassins" as Queen Jade. She was formerly married to Lee-J Razalan, the manager of Beat Freaks and a fellow dancer. She is the choreographer for famous Korean boy band Shinee with their debut song, "Noona is so Pretty/Replay" and various others including "Love Like Oxygen", "Juliette", "Lucifer", and "Hello" as well as choreographing Girls' Generation's "Genie", "Oh!" and "Hoot", Super Junior's "No Other", f(x)'s "Chu~♥", "NU ABO", "Gangsta Boy" and "Hot Summer", and BoA's "Dangerous" and "Copy & Paste".


title: Harajuku Girls

text: Mayuko Kitayama (stage name "Baby"), born on February 14, 1984, grew up in Osaka. She eventually moved to New York, where she practiced in several dancing studios, after dancing in Japan for several years. During 2004, she appeared as one of the back-up dancers for Britney Spears's Onyx Hotel Tour.


title: Harajuku Girls

text: Asian-American entertainer and comedian Margaret Cho criticized Stefani and the group for reinforcing negative ethnic stereotypes of Asian women. Nakasone responded that Stefani was inspired by Japanese fashion culture and that she felt honored to have been in the group. In an interview in the January/February 2006 edition of "Blender" magazine, Cho called Stefani's Harajuku Girls a minstrel show that reinforces ethnic stereotypes of Asian women.


title: Harajuku Girls

text: Writer Mihi Ahn of Salon.com said of Stefani's Harajuku Girls: "Stefani has taken the idea of Japanese street fashion and turned these women into modern-day geisha".


title: Harajuku Girls

text: When Stefani released a new single in 2014, media publications again criticized the Harajuku Girls as Stefani's act of cultural appropriation. Eliana Dockterman from "Time" commented on the release of Stefani's comeback single "Baby Don't Lie" (2014), remarking that she must apologize for her "Harajuku Girls" era before fans should begin embracing her new music. She found the dancers in the troupe represented "some extremely racist stereotypes", comparing the usage of the dancers to puppetry. Regarding the backlash she received from the dancers, Stefani responded: "I get a little defensive when people [call it culture appropriation], because if we didn't allow each other to share our cultures, what would we be?" She reflected that "when ["Harajuku Girls"] first came out, I think people understood that it was an artistic and literal bow down to a culture that I was a superfan of"; Stefani also stated she was "horrif[ied]" that critics had claimed she referred to her dancers as "not real people". When asked if she regretted her use of the Harajuku Girls, Stefani responded:


title: Harajuku Girls

text: No. There's always going to be two sides to everything. For me, everything that I did with the Harajuku Girls was just a pure compliment and being a fan. You can't be a fan of somebody else? Or another culture? Of course you can. Of course you can celebrate other cultures. That's what Japanese culture and American culture have done. It's like I say in the song: it's a ping-pong match. We do something American, they take it and they flip it and make it so Japanese and so cool. And we take it back and go, "Whoa, that's so cool!" That's so beautiful. It's a beautiful thing in the world, how our cultures come together. I don't feel like I did anything but share that love. You can look at it from a negative point of view if you want to, but get off my cloud. Because, seriously, that was all meant out of love.


title: Enya (album)

text: Enya is the debut studio album by Irish singer, songwriter, and musician Enya, released in March 1986 by BBC Records in the United Kingdom and by Atlantic Records in the United States. It was renamed as The Celts for the 1992 international re-release of the album by WEA Records in Europe and by Reprise Records in the United States. The album is a selection of music she recorded for the soundtrack to the BBC television series "The Celts", aired in 1986. Four years into her largely unnoticed solo career, Enya landed her first major project in 1985 when producer Tony McAuley asked her to contribute a song to the soundtrack. After its director David Richardson liked her demo, Enya accepted his offer to compose the entire score with her longtime recording partners, producer and arranger Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan.


title: Enya (album)

text: "Enya" received mostly mixed reviews from critics when it was released in 1986. It was a mild commercial success, peaking at No. 8 in Ireland and No. 69 on the UK Albums Chart. The album continued to sell; it was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of one million copies. Despite its commercial performance, the album helped Enya secure a recording contract with Warner after chairman Rob Dickins became a fan of its music. After the commercial success of Enya's next two albums, the album was reissued as "The Celts" and outperformed its original sales. It reached a new peak of No. 10 on the UK Albums Chart and sold a further one million copies in the United States. In 2009, "The Celts" was reissued in Japan with a bonus track.


title: Enya (album)

text: Following her work on the soundtrack to the romantic comedy film "The Frog Prince" (1984), Enya's first major project as a solo artist followed when, in 1985, she was invited by producer Tony McAuley to compose a track for his 1986 BBC television documentary series "The Celts". As a coincidence, Enya had recorded a track named "March of the Celts" before she was asked to be involved, and decided to submit it to the project. Initially, each episode of the series was to feature a different composer, but series director David Richardson liked Enya's track so much, he commissioned her to compose the entire score.


title: Enya (album)

text: Enya worked with her usual recording partners, arranger and producer Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan. The album was recorded in two locations; at Aigle Studio, a 16-track studio installed in the Ryans' home, then located in Artane, a northern suburb of Dublin, and a sound studio at BBC Enterprises at Wood Lane, London. When they recorded at the BBC studio, Nicky had to teach the audio engineers how he and Enya worked as their unusual recording process confused them at first. Nicky said he told them "to forget everything [they had] learned and just bear with us for at least a week". One such example was Nicky's use of reverb, which he set to 24 seconds instead of the more common placement of one-and-a-half seconds.


title: Enya (album)

text: A total of 72 minutes of music was recorded for the series. Roma recalled that Enya was given "various pastiches" that Richardson wished to incorporate into the episodes, which Enya then used as a guide for to write music to complement them. "Enya" includes 39 minutes of selected pieces from the soundtrack. The album's front cover depicts Enya posing with stuffed wolves.


title: Enya (album)

text: Several of the album's track titles are titled or based on various historical figures and stories. In writing about the song in 2002, Roma pointed out that "Aldebaran" is named after the brightest star in the constellation of Taurus. In the Arabic language, the title translates to "the follower" as it follows the Pleiades cluster of stars, and the song is based on future Celtic people "passing Aldebaran on their journey to new territories, continuing their migratory pattern which was so predominant in their early history." The track was recorded in its entirety at Aigle Studio as Nicky expressed the difficulty in having to recreate the recording process elsewhere. "The Celts" was used as the main title theme for the television series. "Boadicea", which means "victorious", is a reference to the queen Boudica of the British-Celtic Iceni tribe in East Anglia who led a resistance against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire in 60 A.D., but was defeated and subsequently poisoned herself. As a song about her was already written, Richardson wished for a new track that depicted the idea of "being spellbound" by Boudica, which turned into "I Want Tomorrow". In the liner notes of the album's 1992 reissue, "I Want Tomorrow" is described, simply, as "thoughts of the present" and "March of the Celts" "echoes from the past". "Deireadh an Tuath", which translates from Irish as "End of the Tribe", refers to past spirits and the fertile soil that helps ensure the future of the Celtic people, which is celebrated in the annual Gaelic festival Samhain, held on 31 October. "The Sun in the Stream" was inspired by the legend of the Salmon of Knowledge, a creature written about in various texts in Irish mythology who "possessed all the truth in the world".


title: Enya (album)

text: "Fairytale" is a track based on a story of early Irish literature about "love, jealousy, secrets and endurance" between Midir, a fairy king, and his love for a princess, Étaín. In the story, Etain is banished and transformed into a pool of water and emerges from it as a butterfly. "Epona" is the name of the horse goddess Epona of the Gallo-Roman religion. "Triad" is a track formed of three sections; "St. Patrick" is a traditional song that refers to St. Patrick who spent six years in captivity after he was captured by the Celtic people. "St. Patrick" lyrics were adapted from ancient hymn "Deus Meus Adiuva Me". The second part, "Cú Chulainn", Irish for "hound of Cullan", is named after the culture hero Cú Chulainn. "Oisin", the final section, meaning "little fawn", is based on the mythological character Oisín. "Bard Dance" refers to the bard, a man of ancient Celtic times who entertained the king. "Dan y Dŵr", which translates to "Under the Water" in the Welsh language, is based on the intentional flooding of the village of Capel Celyn in Wales in order to accommodate a reservoir.


title: Enya (album)

text: "Enya" was released on audio cassette and vinyl in March 1986 by BBC Records the United Kingdom, two months before the series aired on television. The album was released in the United States by Atlantic Records, which categorised it as a new age album and placed an imprint saying so on the disc, which Nicky Ryan later thought was "a cowardly thing to do". The album gained enough public interest to reach No. 8 on the Irish Albums Chart. In the United Kingdom, it entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 79 for the week of 6 June 1986, climbing to its peak of No. 69 on its fourth and final week on the chart, the week of 27 June.


title: Enya (album)

text: Enya released "I Want Tomorrow" as a single on 9 March 1986 as a 7-inch and compact disc with "The Celts" as the B-side. A maxi single was also released with the aforementioned tracks and "To Go Beyond (I)" and "To Go Beyond (II)". Following the album's reissue in 1992, "The Celts" was released as a single on 2 November 1992 with "Eclipse", a previously unreleased track from the "Enya" sessions, as a B-side. Another unreleased track, "Spaghetti Western Theme from The Celts", was released in 2005 as a B-side for Enya's 2005 single "Amarantine". It was released in memory of McAuley following his death in 2003.


title: Enya (album)

text: Filmmaker David Bickley reused music from the soundtrack in "The Memory of Earth", an instalment in his documentary trilogy "Mythological Lands". "Boadicea" was also used in the soundtrack of the 1992 American film "Sleepwalkers". "Epona" appears in the 1991 Steve Martin romantic comedy "L.A. Story".


title: Enya (album)

text: In 1992, after Enya gained worldwide commercial success with her albums "Watermark" (1988) and "Shepherd Moons" (1991) for Warner Music, "Enya" was remastered by Arun Chakraverty and redesigned with new artwork designed by Sooky Choi with photography by David Scheinmann. The album was reissued on 16 November 1992 as "The Celts" by WEA in Europe and Reprise Records in the United States. "The Celts" outperformed its original sales, reaching a new peak of No. 10 on the UK Albums Chart for two weeks from the week of 28 November 1992. It returned for two separate weeks in 1993, one week in 1996, and six consecutive weeks in 1998. In the United States, the album sold a further one million copies. It contains a new version of "Portrait" that is named "Portrait (Out of the Blue)", which was originally released as the B-side to Enya's 1988 worldwide hit single, "Orinoco Flow". In 2009, "The Celts" had a limited Japanese reissue on Super High Material CD with "Eclipse" added as a bonus track.


title: Enya (album)

text: "Boadicea" has been sampled by numerous artists. The Fugees sampled it for their song "Ready or Not" on "The Score" (1996). A lawsuit against the group for copyright infringement was prepared as they had not asked for permission and did not give her credit. However, after Enya confirmed that the group were "anti-crime and drugs and their message was quite positive", she decided not to follow through with the suit. As a compromise, later pressings of "The Score" included stickers placed on the cover giving Enya credit.


title: Enya (album)

text: On the 1999 album "Astronomica" by American heavy metal band Crimson Glory, the intro track "March For Glory" is an interpretation of Enya's "Boadicea".


title: Enya (album)

text: In 2003, R&B artist Mario Winans sampled "Boadicea" for his song "I Don't Wanna Know". Producer P. Diddy personally contacted Enya for permission and gave her 60 percent of the royalties, and included her name on the song's subtitle as "Mario Winans featuring Enya and P. Diddy". It went on to reach No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart in 2004. "Boadicea" was also sampled on the answer song to "I Don't Wanna Know", "You Should Really Know" by The Pirates featuring Shola Ama, Naila Boss and Ishani, which peaked at No. 8 in the UK in 2004. "Boadicea" with "Ready or Not" was also sampled by R&B group Nina Sky on their single "Time to Go" featuring rapper Angie Martinez, from the mixtape presented by Cipha Sounds. In 2008, Italian DJ Francesco Zeta sampled "Boadicea" for his song "Fairyland", he made another version in 2012, subtitled "ReAmp", that also used the Hardstylesample. In 2011, a small sample of "Boadicea" was used on "Der erste Winter" by German singer Cassandra Steen for the album "Mir so nah". In 2012, hip hop artist Meek Mill sampled "Boadicea" on his mixtape "Dreamchasers 2" on a song named after the Fugees' song, "Ready or Not". In 2015, Masika Kalysha sampled the song on "Hella Hollywood". In 2016, Salvatore Ganacci's song "Dive" sampled "Boadicea", and Enya was credited as a featured artist. On Nigerian-American singer Rotimi's 2019 album "The Beauty of Becoming", he sampled the song on a track entitled "In My Bed", which also featured the rapper Wale.


title: Enya (album)

text: Technically, no music videos were released to promote the album. However, two episodes of "The Celts" featured music video-style interludes featuring Enya performing "I Want Tomorrow" and "Aldebaran". (A music video for "The Celts" would later be produced for the Warner Bros. reissue.)


title: Enya (album)

text: A November 1986 review appeared in Australian newspaper "The Age" by Mike Daly. He compared the sound of the album to Clannad following their shift in musical style in the early 1980s, "echoing, shimmering vocals and instrumentals". He questioned if it was "a beautiful, melodic example of New Age music, or perhaps New Folk?" Daly continued to pick out "I Want Tomorrow", "The Celts", "The Sun in the Stream", and "To Go Beyond (II)" as highlight tracks.


title: Enya (album)

text: All music composed by Enya; all music arranged by Enya and Nicky Ryan; all lyrics by Roma Ryan, except where noted. The lyrics to "St. Patrick" adapted from the Irish hymn "Deus Meus, Adiuva Me" by Mael Ísu Ua Brolcháin, though it is credited as "Traditional".


title: Sonny Curtis

text: Sonny Curtis (born May 9, 1937) is an American singer and songwriter. Known for his collaborations with Buddy Holly, he was a member of the Crickets and continued with the band after Holly's death. Curtis's best known compositions include "Walk Right Back", a major hit in 1961 for the Everly Brothers and "I Fought the Law", notably covered by the Bobby Fuller Four and the Clash.


title: Sonny Curtis

text: Curtis was born in Meadow, Texas, United States. As a guitarist, he played on some of Buddy Holly's earlier 1956 Decca sessions, including the minor hit "Blue Days Black Nights" and a song he wrote, "Rock Around With Ollie Vee". In 1955 and 1956 he, along with Buddy Holly, opened concerts for rising new star Elvis Presley. Although he had gone on the road with other musicians by the time Buddy Holly put together the Crickets in 1957, Curtis joined the Crickets in late 1958, shortly before Holly's death in 1959, and soon took over the lead vocalist role in addition to lead guitar. The Crickets' post-Holly recordings were put on hold after Holly's death, and Curtis was drafted in late 1959. During basic training, he was given a three-day pass and met Crickets' drummer Jerry Allison, who was then playing with the Everly Brothers, in Los Angeles. Curtis played him the song "Walk Right Back", which Allison had him immediately take to the Everlys; they recorded the song that weekend and were later rewarded with a "Billboard" top 10 hit. The song was also a hit in 1978 for Anne Murray.


title: Sonny Curtis

text: In late 1960, the Crickets' album "In Style with the Crickets" was finally released, including the original versions of two of Curtis's best known compositions, "I Fought the Law" and "More Than I Can Say" (co-written with Allison and a UK 4# hit by Bobby Vee and a US 2# hit by Leo Sayer). Along with Allison, he participated in Eddie Cochran's last recording sessions, including the song "Three Steps to Heaven." In 1964, he released the single "A Beatle I Want to Be". He has continued to record and perform intermittently as part of the band over six decades, most recently in their album "The Crickets and their Buddies" (2004), where they reprised most of their hits with help from many noted fellow musicians. Curtis did leave the Crickets several times to pursue his solo career, but even during those periods made occasional guest appearances, in performance and on record, with the Crickets. His song "The Real Buddy Holly Story" was written in response to the inaccuracies in the movie "The Buddy Holly Story".


title: Sonny Curtis

text: "I Fought the Law" was later covered in the studio or in concert by many artists, including The Bobby Fuller Four, the Clash, Dead Kennedys, Bryan Adams, John Cougar Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Social Distortion, Mike Ness, Hank Williams Jr., Waylon Jennings, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Hoodoo Rhythm Devils, Green Day, the Ramones, the Grateful Dead, Stray Cats, Mary's Danish, Mano Negra, the Big Dirty Band, Lolita No.18, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Attaque 77, Die Toten Hosen, Status Quo, Nanci Griffith, and the Men They Couldn't Hang. For the 2003 film, "Intermission", Colin Farrell recorded a version of the song, singing it in the guise of his character in the film.


title: Sonny Curtis

text: Later, Curtis wrote the theme song of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", "Love Is All Around", which he also recorded for the show. Curtis also co-wrote the 1989 Country Song of the Year, "I'm No Stranger to the Rain", recorded by Keith Whitley. Other songs he has written include "The Straight Life" (recorded by Glen Campbell, and later by Bobby Goldsboro) and "A Fool Never Learns" (recorded by Andy Williams). Anne Murray also recorded the Sonny Curtis songs "I Like Your Music" and "You Made My Life a Song" on her 1972 LP "Annie".


title: Sonny Curtis

text: In 1991, Sonny Curtis was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2007, Curtis was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, as a member of the Crickets. In 2012, Curtis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Crickets (along with Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin, and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan) by a special committee, to make amends for the Crickets having been rebuffed and not included with Buddy Holly when Holly was first inducted in 1986.


title: Tort reform

text: Tort reform refers to changes in the civil justice system in common law countries that aim to reduce the ability of plaintiffs to bring tort litigation (particularly actions for negligence) or to reduce damages they can receive. Such changes are generally justified under the grounds that litigation is an inefficient means to compensate plaintiffs; that tort law permits frivolous or otherwise undesirable litigation to crowd the court system; or that the fear of litigation can serve to curtail innovation, raise the cost of consumer goods or insurance premiums for suppliers of services (e.g. medical malpractice insurance), and increase legal costs for businesses. Tort reform has primarily been prominent in common law jurisdictions, where criticism of judge-made rules regarding tort actions manifests in calls for statutory reform by the legislature.


title: Tort reform

text: Tort actions are civil claims for actions that cause a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. In common law jurisdictions, torts are primarily created through judicial precedent rather than legislation, and tort reform centres on proposals for legislation altering the precedent-based rules of tort law. Scholars and lawyers have identified conflicting aims for the law of tort, to some extent reflected in the different types of damages awarded by the courts: compensatory, aggravated, and punitive. British scholar Glanville Williams notes four possible bases on which different torts rested: appeasement, justice, deterrence and compensation. As a result of the wide range of rationales upon which the tort system is based and the variety of distinct purposes it aims to serve, criticism of tort law is generally targeted at its failure to achieve one or more of these aims. In particular, the inefficiency of tort law at securing fair and equal compensation for similarly situated plaintiffs and the uncertainty, cost, and complexity it creates for economic actors averse to lawsuits are motivating factors for tort reform advocates.


title: Tort reform

text: With regard to torts other than intentional torts, tort law is based on the principle of fault or negligence, requiring the party "at fault" for a particular harm to provide compensation, typically in the form of damages. Typical harms can include loss of income (while the person recovers); medical expenses; payment for pain, suffering, or even loss of a body part; or loss of future income (assuming that said loss can be proven to be reasonably likely to occur. See speculative damages). The classical purpose of tort is to provide "full compensation" for proved harm. This is known under the Latin phrase "restitutio in integrum" (restoration to original state). However, since the emphasis under tort law is on the violation by an individual of a purported duty of care, compensation is determined to a large extent by the extent to which the "at fault" party violated the applicable standard of care with regard to the plaintiff rather than solely by the harm purportedly suffered and distinguishes between negligent and intentional torts (e.g. negligent infliction of emotional distress vs intentional infliction of emotional distress). Consequently, compensation recoverable through tort suits vary even in circumstances where the injury itself is identical, especially when the "at fault" party is judgment proof or merely negligent rather than intentional in causing the purported harm. Consequently, some legal scholars propose to replace tort compensation with a social security framework that serves victims without respect to cause or fault.


title: Tort reform

text: Proposals for tort reform primarily centre on addressing perceived deficits in four areas of tort law: personal injury lawsuits, medical malpractice, product liability, and defamation torts (i.e. libel, false light, and slander). Additionally, the emergence of absolute liability and constitutional torts in Indian tort law has become a focus of tort reform. While similar reforms may be proposed for all these areas of tort law, the debate surrounding each tends to remain separate, with the debate surrounding purported abuse of the defamation tort system generally discussed separately by policymakers addressing SLAPP lawsuits.


title: Tort reform

text: Defamation suits, particularly when brought by a large organisation or wealthy individual against a less wealthy critic, may serve to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defence until they abandon their criticism or opposition. As a result, many jurisdictions (especially in North America) have enacted legislation incorporating elements of common tort reform proposals specifically with regard to lawsuits brought against individuals purportedly exercising freedom of speech. The California Code of Civil Procedure and Ontario's Protection of Public Participation Act do so by enabling defendants to make a special motion to strike or dismiss which, if successful, would terminate the lawsuit and allow the party to recover its legal costs from the plaintiff. Another concern with defamation torts is alleged forum shopping by plaintiffs who seek out jurisdictions with harsher defamation laws and little connection to either the plaintiff, the respondent, or the particular instance of alleged defamation. In response to this trend, the United States adopted the SPEECH Act which expressly limits the enforceability of offshore judgements in defamation cases.


title: Tort reform

text: Over the course of the twentieth and twenty first century, tort reform in the area of defamation law has resulted in an expansion of defences, including affirmative defences, available to defendants. For instance, the United Kingdom's Defamation Act 1952 and Singapore's Defamation Act 1957 both provide that if a defendant relying on the truth of purportedly defamatory statement as an affirmative defence is only successful in proving the truth of part of the allegedly defamatory statement, the defence may still be available if the charges not proved do not materially injure the reputation of the plaintiff. Similarly, while is no corresponding provision in India, Indian courts treat this principle as persuasive precedent.


title: Tort reform

text: Tort reform advocates argue that by limiting the threat of frivolous lawsuits, the medical industry would migrate away from practising defensive medicine. This would reduce the number of unnecessary tests and procedures, typically performed under patient request, thereby reducing the costs of medical care in general. As an argument against the current system, tort reformers link the rising costs of premiums for physicians' medical malpractice insurance to the rising cost of personal and group policy health insurance coverage. California's Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act has been cited as a model for tort reform in health care. Others deny that medical malpractice suits play a significant role in the cost of health care. Including legal fees, insurance costs, and payouts, the cost of all US malpractice suits comes to less than one-half of 1 percent of health-care spending. Other recent research suggests that malpractice pressure makes hospitals more efficient, not less so: "The recent focus by the American Medical Association and physicians about the dramatic increases in medical malpractice insurance premiums, and their suggestion of a cap on non-economic damages, deserves a closer look. According to Baicker and Chandra (2004), increases in premiums are not affected by past or present malpractice payments, but may increase due to other unrelated factors. Chandra, Nundy, and Seabury (2005) find that the rising cost of medical services may explain the bulk of the growth of "compensatory awards". They also find that the greatest ten percent of the malpractice payments have grown at a smaller pace than the average payment for the years 1991 and 2003. This means that the "medical malpractice crisis" is not necessarily fueled by the growth in malpractice payments. Furthermore, malpractice pressure actually forces our hospitals to be technically more efficient. This implies that existence of the medical malpractice system is beneficial, and its strength should not be diluted by either putting caps on non-economic damages or by decreasing the statute of limitations." Some say that federal licensing is a better approach and a strong central regulatory body is the answer to deal with negligent physicians who cross state lines.


title: Tort reform

text: According to economist Reed Neil Olsen, "...tort law generally and medical malpractice specifically serve two legitimate purposes. First, the law serves to compensate victims for their losses. Second, the threat of liability serves to deter future accidents." Tort reformers maintain that the present tort system is an expensive and inefficient way to compensate those injured.


title: Tort reform

text: According to a 2004 study of medical malpractice costs, "program administration—defence and underwriting costs—accounts for approximately 60 percent of total malpractice costs, and only 50 percent of total malpractice costs are returned to patients. These costs are high even when compared with other tort-based systems, such as automobile litigation or airplane crashes, that determine fault and compensate victims. Moreover, most patients that receive negligent care never receive any compensation. The Harvard Medical Practice Study found that only one malpractice claim was filed for every eight negligent medical injuries." Of the legal changes proposed by tort reformers, this study found that states capping payouts and restricting non-economic damages saw an average decrease of 17.1% in malpractice insurance premiums. However, more recent research provided by the insurance industry to the publication Medical Liability Monitor indicated that medical malpractice insurance rates had declined for four straight years. The decrease was seen in both states that had enacted tort reform and in states that had not, leading actuaries familiar with the data to suggest that patient safety and risk management campaigns had had a more significant effect. Similarly, Klick/Stratman (2005) found that capping economic damages saw an increase in doctors per capita.


title: Tort reform

text: There is no guarantee, however, that any savings from tort reform would be efficiently distributed. Tort reform in Texas during the 1990s created $600 million in savings for insurance companies while the fraction of policy dollars needed to cover losses fell from 70.1 cents in losses in 1993 to 58.2 cents in 1998. Opponents of these liability-limiting measures contend that insurance premiums are only nominally reduced, if at all, in comparison to savings for insurance companies. Further, opponents claim that parties are still being injured at similar or higher rates, due to malpractice not being deterred by tort claims and the attraction of lower quality physicians to "tort reformed" states.


title: Tort reform

text: In Texas, tort reform measures have imposed a requirement in medical malpractice cases that only a physician practising or teaching in the same specialty as the defendant can serve as an expert witness in the matter. Additionally, a report from that witness showing evidence of negligence must be filed with the court within 120 days of the filing of the case. Failure to do so results in liability for the defendant's legal fees. Filing an action but failing to find a suitable expert or failure to file adequate reports within the time frame provided can result in hardship for a plaintiff who may already be crippled by physical injuries and bankrupted by medical fees.


title: Tort reform

text: In Indian tort law, the principle of absolute liability provides that "where an enterprise is engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous activity", the enterprise has an absolute and unrestricted obligation to provide compensation any harm caused in any way by the activity. Unlike the related doctrine of strict liability applied to product liability litigation, absolute liability does not defences such as mistake of fact, force majeure, or a third party's mistake. Consequently, it creates legal uncertainty as it enables unpredictable events to give rise to liability. The strictness of this approach, under which even acts of God are not recognised as a defence, is severely criticised especially since it disregards the "generally accepted parameter of minimum competence and reasonable care" and endangers the growth of science and technical industries, as investors have to take the risk of liability given that there is no defence to the rule.


title: Tort reform

text: A large portion of the debate surrounding tort reform focuses on product liability. In most common law jurisdictions and in member states of the European Union, the doctrine of strict liability applies. Proponents of tort reform argue that liability serves to increase the cost of goods for customers and that it serves to encourage regulation through litigation. Opponents of tort reform argue that it would negatively impact public safety. Conversely, proponents of tort reform argue that strict liability creates risk of moral hazard as it may cause consumers to under-invest in care and disregard product safety prior to making a purchase. Furthermore, requiring manufacturers to internalise costs they would otherwise externalise increases the price of goods and, in elastic, price-sensitive markets, price increases cause some consumers to seek substitutes for that product. As a result, manufacturers may not produce the socially optimal level of goods.


title: Tort reform

text: In law and economics literature, there is consequently a debate as to whether liability and regulation are substitutes or complements and thus whether the enforcement of predictable regulation known to manufacturers in advance can adequately assure consumer safety while providing greater legal certainty for manufacturers than strict liability


title: Tort reform

text: Personal injury law is one of the most controversial topics in tort reform. In New Zealand, the tort system for the majority of personal injuries was scrapped with the establishment of the Accident Compensation Corporation, a universal system of no-fault insurance. Proponents of tort reform argue that the success of that system in guaranteeing compensation where the tort system would not is an indication that tort law is inefficient at securing compensation for victims. By contrast, critics of tort reform are uncomfortable with the idea of abandoning personal liability for injuries as this could result in moral hazard.


title: Tort reform

text: One rationale for tort reform is the purported ineffectiveness of tort law in securing equal compensation. If someone has an accident then they have a statistical 8% chance of finding a tortfeasor responsible for their injury. If they are lucky enough to have been injured by someone else's fault, then they can get full compensation (if the tortfeaser is not judgment proof). For others—for those injured by natural accidents, by themselves, by disease or by environmental factors; no compensation is available, and the most that can be gained for their losses will be meager state benefits for incapacity. Equality of treatment is the central issue for reforms in the Commonwealth, particularly in New Zealand.


title: Tort reform

text: This was the basis for much of Professor Patrick Atiyah's scholarship as articulated in "Accidents, Compensation and the Law" (1970). Originally his proposal was the gradual abolition of tort actions, and its replacement with schemes like those for industrial injuries to cover for all illness, disability and disease, whether caused by people or nature. Such a system was developed in New Zealand following recommendations from the Royal Commission in 1967 for 'no fault' compensation scheme (see The Woodhouse Report). Over the 1980s Atiyah's views shifted. He still argued that the tort system should be scrapped. But instead of relying on the state, he argued people should have to take out compulsory first party insurance, like that available for cars, and this model should be spread progressively.


title: Tort reform

text: One argument focuses on the costs of litigation and how payment of compensation raises the cost of insurance. Because most tort claims will be paid from the pockets of insurance, and because the public generally pays into insurance schemes of all kinds, tort reform proponents assert that reducing tort litigation and payouts will benefit everyone who pays for insurance.


title: Tort reform

text: Another argument is that the costs of the tort system, and in particular medical malpractice suits, raise the costs of health care. This argument is most often encountered in relation to litigation in countries that do not have universal health care. The difficulty in this area is to distinguish between public and private health care providers. In the UK, the cost was £1.6B a year as for 2014, increasing at 10%+ yearly Rising from £446m a year a decade earlier. The UK, however, has exceptionally low claims, as tort claims have been restricted, for instance in disallowing loss of chance cases. The Medical Defence Union actively combats, and attempts to settle all cases where potential negligence claims are at stake. While successful, the costs of litigation to the health system are steadily growing. In the United States, it is easier for victims of medical malpractice to seek compensation through the tort system. The American medical record in hospitals is poor, with around 195,000 deaths due to negligence per year, which itself leads to a higher number of claims. It is open to debate as to whether a change in the law of tort either way would lead to significant reductions in cost or changes in practice. According to "Bloomberg Businessweek", "Study after study shows that costs associated with malpractice lawsuits make up 1% to 2% of the nation's $2.5 trillion annual health-care bill and that tort reform would barely make a dent in the total."


title: Tort reform

text: Another argument is that tort liability may stunt innovation. This argument usually comes in connection with product liability, which is strict liability in most common law jurisdictions and the European Union. If a product is faulty, and injures somebody who has come across it (whether they are the buyer or not) then the manufacturer will be responsible for compensating the victim regardless of whether it can be shown that the manufacturer was at fault. The standard, which originated in the twentieth century with cases such as Donoghue v Stevenson, is lower in other injury cases, so that a victim would have to prove that a tortfeasor had been negligent. It can be argued that strict liability deters innovation, because manufacturers could be reluctant to test out new products for fear that they could be subjecting themselves to massive tort claims.


title: Tort reform

text: Proponents of tort reform also criticise the extent to which legal costs can approach or exceed the value of the compensation awarded in damages, especially in contrast with compensation allocated through insurance or social security systems. In Britain, for instance, it has been argued that 85p is spent on litigation for every £1 of compensation paid. In contrast, the social security system costs 8p or 12p for every £1 delivered.


title: Tort reform

text: An additional rationale for tort reform is the ability of plaintiff's attorneys to use the discovery process of common law jurisdictions to impose costs on defendants in order to force settlements in unmeritorious cases to avoid the cost and inconvenience of discovery. The use of discovery in tort litigation favours the wealthier side in a lawsuit by enabling parties to drain each other's financial resources in a war of attrition. For example, one can make information requests that are potentially expensive and time-consuming for the other side to fulfill; respond to a discovery request with thousands of documents of questionable relevance to the case; file requests for protective orders to prevent the deposition of key witnesses; and take other measures that increase the difficulty and cost of discovery. It has been argued that although the goal of discovery is to level the playing field between the parties, the discovery rules instead create a multi-level playing field that favours the party that is in control of the information needed by the other party. Instead of encouraging discovery, the rules are described as encouraging lawyers to find new ways to manipulate and distort or conceal information.


title: Tort reform

text: Discovery, unique to common law jurisdictions, essentially grants powers to private parties and their counsel which are "functionally equivalent" to the power to issue self-executing administrative subpoenas. Consequently, commentators in civil law jurisdictions regard discovery destructive of the rule of law and as "a private inquisition." Civil law countries see the underlying objectives of discovery as properly monopolised by the state in order to maintain the rule of law: the investigative objective of discovery is the prerogative of the executive branch, and insofar as discovery may be able to facilitate the creation of new rights, that is the prerogative of the legislative branch.


title: Tort reform

text: Proponents of tort reform argue that the open-ended discovery process of common law jurisdictions enables plaintiffs arguing in bad faith to initiate frivolous tort lawsuits and coerce defendants into agreeing to legal settlements in otherwise unmeritorious actions. Strictly defined, a frivolous lawsuit is one that cannot reasonably be supported under existing legal precedent or under a good-faith argument for a change in the law. More broadly, the term is also used to describe tort lawsuits where there is only a remote link between the conduct of the defendant and the injuries alleged by the plaintiff or where the damages sought are perceived to be too high for the purported tortious conduct. The costs associated with discovery in frivolous lawsuits are a nuisance for individuals against whom such litigation is brought in bad faith. Curtailing frivolous lawsuits, especially those brought by lawyers acting in bad faith or charging contingent fees, is a major objective of tort reform. Opponents of tort reform argue that summary judgment in such cases adequately addresses those issues. In common law jurisdictions which allow for extensive pre-trial discovery, the burden and (where the American rule is applied) cost of litigation are not necessarily addressed by summary judgment. In particularly oppressive defamation lawsuits, the special motion to strike aims to address this issue by pausing all discovery between the time the motion is filed and the judge's ruling on the motion. Presently, most jurisdictions regard the prosecution of "frivolous" lawsuits as grounds for disciplinary proceedings against attorneys and potential ground for disbarment.


title: Tort reform

text: Some advocates of tort reform also complain of regulation through litigation, the idea that litigation is being used to achieve regulatory ends that advocates would not be able to achieve through the democratic process. Private attorney general suits in America are frequently criticised as examples of regulation through litigation. Similarly, public interest litigation in India has been criticised for undermining parliamentary sovereignty and enabling the court system to exert inordinate power over the legislative and executive branches of government. For instance, the emergence of constitutional torts has been criticised as an undemocratic example of judicial activism. Controversy further arose when judges began to read such obligations of the state into Article 21 of the Indian Constitution However, opponents of tort reform assert that public interest litigation in India has served to secure "social and distributive justice."


title: Tort reform

text: A wide variety of tort reforms have been implemented or proposed in different jurisdictions, each attempting to address a particular deficiency perceived in the system of tort law. Generally, these can be broken down into two categories: reforms limiting damages recoverable by a plaintiff and procedural reforms limiting the ability of plaintiffs to file lawsuits.


title: Tort reform

text: A large portion of tort reforms seek to limit the damages a plaintiff can be awarded. The rationale underlying these reforms is that, by limiting the profitability of tort lawsuits to plaintiffs, they will reduce the incentive to file frivolous lawsuits. There are several varieties of reforms to the system of damages.


title: Tort reform

text: A common element of tort reform is to try to limit the amount of damages that an injured party may recover from a defendant, even if the injured party is left inadequately compensated as a result of the camp.


title: Tort reform

text: Non-economic damages caps place limits on noneconomic damages and collecting lawsuit claim data from malpractice insurance companies and courts in order to assess any connection between malpractice settlements and premium rates. Such caps can be general or limited to a particular category of cases.


title: Tort reform

text: Non-economic damages include pain and suffering. While tort compensation can often be accurately calculated for property damage, such as where damages are in the amount of repair or replacement value, it is difficult to quantify the injuries to a person's body and mind. There is no market for severed legs or sanity of mind, and so there is no price which a court can readily apply in compensation for the wrong.


title: Tort reform

text: Some courts have developed scales of damages awards, benchmarks for compensation, which relate to the severity of the injury. For instance, in the United Kingdom, the loss of a thumb is compensated at £18,000, for an arm £72,000, for two arms £150,000, and so on. Even more difficult to reckon are damages for the pain and suffering of an injury. But while a scale may be consistent, the award itself is arbitrary and there is no objective basis for the setting of amounts or objective justification for their not being substantially higher or lower.


title: Tort reform

text: Punitive damages caps limit the amount of punitive damages awardable to a plaintiff. In most civil law jurisdictions, punitive damages are unavailable and are considered contrary to public policy since the civil justice system in many countries does not accord defendants the procedural protections present in the criminal justice system thus penalising an individual without allowing them the ordinary procedural protections that are present in a criminal trial. The rationale for restricting punitive damages is that such damages encourage a vindictive, revenge seeking state of mind in the claimant and society more generally. In the UK, "Rookes v Barnard" limited the situations in which punitive damages can be won in tort actions to where they are expressly authorised by a statute, where a defendant's action is calculated to make profit, or where an official of the state has acted arbitrarily, oppressively or unconstitutionally. In the United States, though rarely awarded in tort cases, punitive damages are available, and are sometimes quite staggering when awarded.


title: Tort reform

text: Another possible modification of tort law, in jurisdictions where it is not already the norm, is to implement the English rule whereby the losing party to a case covers the victorious party's legal costs. In Commonwealth countries as well as certain American states, the losing party must pay for the court costs of the winning party. The English rule Is also a prevailing norm in European civil law jurisdictions. For example, after authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh lost their plagiarism litigation over "The Da Vinci Code" in a British court, they were ordered to pay the defendants' $1.75 million in attorneys' fees. The "American rule" differs; in most cases, each party bears its own expense of litigation. Supporters of tort reform argue that loser-pays rules are fairer, would compensate winners of lawsuits against the costs of litigation, would deter marginal lawsuits and tactical litigation, and would create proper incentives for litigation, and argue for reforms that would require compensation of winning defendants some or all the time. Certain proposed or implemented tort reforms adopt the English rule if the respondent should prevail but retain the American rule otherwise (e.g. California's special motion to strike in defamation suits).