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New technological development in autonomous and unmanned vessels challenges the international legal framework prevailing at sea. Currently, the regulations applicable to international shipping constitute regulatory barriers preventing their operation on a worldwide scale. Hence, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), responsible for international shipping, has been working to accommodate these new types of vessels within the existing legal instruments. This paper traces the IMO's steps to establish a new regulatory framework for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are agreements between states and victims an effective way to achieve reparations for human rights violations? We identify and evaluate a legal instrument hitherto ignored in analyses of the Inter-American Human Rights System: compliance agreements. These agreements emerged as a tool to negotiate the implementation of recommendations made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to states responsible for human rights violations. In the first part of the paper, we theorize the role of agreements in securing state compliance, and discuss the problem of self-selection in legal settlements. We then document the emergence of this legal instrument and its novel role in the Inter-American System. In the third part, we provide statistical evidence from event history, matching, difference-in-differences, and sensitivity analyses showing that agreements increase the probability of compliance and cut the expected time to compliance by more than half. Agreements thus contribute to a potential solution for the perceived crisis of compliance in the Inter-American Human Rights System. However, the Commission must offer greater transparency to facilitate the evaluation of this mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the evolution of ecological sensibilities in the Hague Academy's courses, examining their impact on international legal frameworks and market-based regulations. Topics include the historical development of ecological concerns in international law, the shift from public interventions to market mechanisms in resource management, and the debates between conservation and economic interests in different historical periods.

The investment protection treaty concluded between Germany and Pakistan in 1959 is generally regarded as a milestone in the development of international investment law. It has entered the collective memory as the first bilateral investment treaty (BIT). In this article, we analyse archival sources to investigate why Germany and Pakistan concluded this agreement at that specific time and what makes this treaty the first of its kind. Through historical analysis, we trace the domestic and related foreign policies that led to the BIT and discuss the negotiation process. Our analysis shows that the BIT was so closely linked with the German federal investment guarantee scheme (Bundesgarantien) that it is best understood as an extension of that policy. This also helps us to specify the underlying rationale for the treaties. We further highlight the influence of the financial industry – especially of Hermann Josef Abs – on the genesis of the BIT, which was less decisive than is often suggested. We identify features of the 1959 BIT that do characterize it as a new international legal instrument, but nuance claims about its degree of innovation as well as underlying motivations, and counter considerable retrospective myth making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role did judicial courts play in the constitution of the early modern Holy Roman Empire? Scholars have shown that the frameworks of judicialization (which highlights the peaceful channelling mechanisms of law) and of instrumentalization (which underscores the political uses and abuses of law) are unsatisfactory for fully describing the ways in which high courts shaped and participated in the constitutional landscape of the early modern Empire. Yet historiography on the Reformation cases continues to operate within this rule-of-law/politics dichotomy. This article offers a new way of considering the constitutional significance of the Reformation cases by analysing uses of a legal instrument—the protestatio —in the context of civil litigation. While the protestation is well-known for its uses in the context of imperial diets, its uses in court—and in particular its centrality to the Protestant litigation strategy—have been ignored. This study illuminates not only a more complete account of the role of law and litigation in the history of the Reformation, but also a hitherto neglected dimension of the role of courts in constituting relations among the Empire's rulers, centred on litigative practices and techniques—the constitutional culture of litigation. It argues that the work of litigation itself—not only in its jurisprudence or the substantive interpretations made, but also in the forms and language through which litigants were required to operate and argue—had a distinctively important role in constituting relations among the rulers of the early modern Holy Roman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practice constantly formulates efficient guarantees, adapted to economic and financial transactions, so much so that it feeds and inspires the law of OHADA security. With this enrichment, OHADA's security law itself becomes an instrument of legal engineering from which the parties can combine security, arranging and enrichen them within the limits set by the OHADA legislator. It can thus be said that the Uniform Act on the organization of security is a veritable "Iceberg". Its visible part highlights known safety features, while the submerged side contains a host of possibilities for the development of guarantee agreements. You just have to be creative and subtle in order to get the best out of OHADA's safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advocates for consistent application of the best interests of children in recognition of legal parenthood of children born out of international surrogacy arrangements (ISAs) and opposes its differential application to surrogate children who do not have a genetic link to their intending parents (IPs). Owing to the lack of European consensus and specialized legal instruments regulating recognition of legal parenthood in ISAs, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR/the Court) via interpretation of Article 8 obligates prohibitionist home states of IPs to recognize legal parenthood coming out of such international arrangements only in instances where there is genetic link with one or both IPs. This leaves surrogate children with no genetic link to their IPs with no benefits stemming out of recognition of legal parentage often leaving them parentless and stateless. This work challenges the necessity for such limitations through analysis of two ECtHR cases, the Mennesson v. France and the Paradiso and Campanelli v. Italy , where differential consideration of the best interests of children was based on presence or lack of genetic link respectively. It concludes that non-recognition of parenthood is a disproportionate measure to protect legitimate aims of prohibitionist home states and advocates for expansion of their implied positive obligations to protect the best interests of surrogate children with no genetic link to their IPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses what would happen if a single woman in China wants to have children but not to marry. The legal framework regarding the reproductive rights of single women and relevant judicial practice will be discussed. In China, domestic legislation fails to regulate the reproductive rights in a uniform and systematic way. Although reproductive freedom has been granted to women by law in principle, single women have been excluded by many specific provisions governing the realisation of reproductive rights. To be specific, unlike couples, single women in China have little access to the application of assisted reproduction technology or the maternity insurance benefits. This puts them in a difficult position while exercising their reproductive rights. Although the legal basis of single women's reproductive rights has been emphasised by international and domestic legal instruments around the world, in China, ambiguous laws, inadequate supporting measures, and negative social opinions pose many legal and ethical obstacles that need to be overcome. This article puts forward some suggestions for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with Émilie Pottle, extradition, public and international law specialist, is presented. Topics discussed include repression of torture at international level and, under the UNCAT, human rights conventions and other legal instruments; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the and the Geneva Conventions share a common foundation and rationale for the repression of torture and criminalization of torture in domestic law and the prosecution.

The article focuses on torture at the international level and, more specifically, under the United Nations Convention against Torture (UNCAT), human rights conventions and other legal instruments. It mentions acts of torture committed by or under the responsibility of public officials for purposes connected with their public functions. It also mentions India's National Human Rights Commission has recognized that torture ‘flouts the basic rights of citizen and is an affront to human dignity.

This article discusses the evolution of the European Union's counterterrorism efforts over the past 20 years and its current level of influence on global counterterrorism. The authors argue that the 9/11 attacks played a significant role in shaping the EU's approach to counterterrorism, leading to increased cooperation and the creation of new supranational European legal instruments and institutions. The book also explores the EU's actions in different counterterrorism environments, including its partnership with the United States, its involvement in south Asia (Pakistan and Afghanistan), and its engagement in the Middle East (Iraq and Syria). The authors conclude that the EU has the ability to combat terrorism globally, although factors such as access and political power may limit its influence. Overall, this book provides a detailed and nuanced analysis of EU counterterrorism and its external dimension, making it a valuable resource for those studying European counterterrorism and EU influence on international counterterrorism. [Extracted from the article]

Europe has a history rich in examples of successful and problematic introductions of trees with a native origin outside of Europe (non-native trees, NNT). Many international legal frameworks such as treaties and conventions and also the European Union have responded to the global concern about potential negative impacts of NNT that may become invasive in natural ecosystems. It is, however, national and regional legislation in particular that affects current and future management decisions in the forest sector and shapes the landscapes of Europe. We identified all relevant legal instruments regulating NNT, the different legal approaches and the regulatory intensity in 40 European countries (no microstates). Information on hard and effective soft law instruments were collected by means of a targeted questionnaire and consultation of international and national legislation information systems and databases. In total, 335 relevant legal instruments were in place in June/July 2019 to regulate the use of NNT in the investigated 116 geopolitical legal units (countries as well as sub-national regions with their own legislation). Countries and regions were empirically categorized according to ad hoc -defined legislation indicators. These indicators pay respect to the general bans on the introduction of non-native species, the generally allowed and prohibited NNT, approval mechanisms and specific areas or cases where NNT are restricted or prohibited. Our study revealed a very diverse landscape of legal frameworks across Europe, with a large variety of approaches to regulating NNT being pursued and the intensity of restriction ranging from very few restrictions on species choice and plantation surface area to the complete banning of NNT from forests. The main conclusion is that there is a clear need for more co-ordinated, science-based policies both at the local and international levels to enhance the advantages of NNT and mitigate potential negative effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a critical analysis of 'the legal' in the legal determinants of health, with reference to the Lancet –O'Neill report on that topic. The analysis shows how law is framed as a fluid and porous concept, with legal measures and instruments being conceived as sociopolitical phenomena. I argue that the way that laws are grounded practically as part of a broader concept of politics and evaluated normatively for their instrumental value has important implications for the study of law itself. This, in turn, has implications for how we approach the transdisciplinary ambitions that form a key part of the report's recommendations to enhance law's capacity to promote better, more equitable population health at local, national, international and global levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article analyzes whether the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, the only multilateral international agreement that draws borders in East Asia, resolves the longstanding dispute over Dokdo between Korea and Japan. It uses the dispute to draw larger lessons about the nature of the treaty that ended World War II in the Pacific and how it structured the peace in Asia differently from that in Europe. It uses U.S. archival material to reconstruct the history of the making of the Treaty, which continues to be the most significant international legal instrument governing post-WWII Asia. Although the Republic of Korea demonstrated a long history of control over Dokdo, Japan annexed the island on February 22, 1905. Japan places much importance on the Treaty's silence because the Treaty otherwise required Japan to relinquish the territories it acquired before and during World War II. After the fall of the Nationalist government in China, the United States decided to rebuild Japan into a strong regional ally, and consequently negotiated a generous peace treaty with its former WWII enemy. This Article concludes that the Treaty left Dokdo, along with other important issues, open for future resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the relevance of the Western Sahara cases brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union to international law. These cases relate to the contestations of the consistency of a number of economic agreements concluded between the European Union (EU) and the Kingdom of Morocco, as well as the EU acts that approved them, with the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The issues arising from these disputes include the legality of the Court's jurisdiction to review the validity of a treaty which is already in force between parties and the rules of international law that the contested legal instruments have violated, perhaps entailing their invalidity under EU law. While the Court has rightly found that none of the aforementioned agreements is applicable to Western Sahara—since their territorial scope does not extend to a territory which is not subject to Moroccan sovereignty——this paper tries to answer a different question as to whether the Court's decisions are in line with international law. It is demonstrated that though the Court's competence to rule on the validity of EU unilateral acts is obvious, the establishment of its power to review the validity of a treaty which is in force, such as the fisheries agreement of 2006, is dubious because of the inconsistency of such power with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. In any event, the question which remains to be solved—and which was not submitted to the Court—pertains to the determination of the effects of the illegal application of the EU-Morocco agreements to Western Sahara on the rights of its people. It is concluded that such an application has violated the law of occupation and eventually international human rights law. These violations do not touch upon the validity of the contested legal instruments but relate to the question of responsibility for a wrongful act stemming from the illegal application of those agreements to occupied Western Sahara in a manner which is harmful to the interest of its people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the legal instruments for the trial of Charles I support and strengthen the argument that regicide was neither the inevitable, nor even the intended outcome of those famous proceedings. Some of the subtleties and nuances of the legislation erecting the high court of justice, and the charges drawn up against the king, help underline the case for saying that the primary objective of the trial of Charles I was to force him to submit to the authority of a rump house of commons, in acknowledgment of their revolutionary elevation to English constitutional supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is composed of materials reflecting the practice of private international law in China in 2016. First, this paper covers the report of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) released in 2017, notably the Report on the Work of the SPC in 2016 , which contains the statistics of the foreign-related civil or commercial cases accepted and concluded by Chinese courts. Second, the paper covers judicial interpretations that took effect in 2016. The important legal instruments that have been translated include: the Provisions of the SPC on Several Issues concerning the Trials of Independent Guarantee Cases and the Provisions of the SPC on Several Issues concerning the Adjudication of Cases Occurring in the Sea Waters under China's Jurisdiction (I). Third, this paper focuses on typical cases decided by various Chinese courts during 2016 that dealt with the following issues: agent ad litem ; jurisdiction (involving representative office and forum non conveniens); choice of law (classification of legal relationship, gambling debt, loan contract); proof of foreign law; recognition and enforcement of a Singapore judgment; validity of the dispute resolution clause containing both litigation and arbitration; recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards (involving the review at the request of the party or ex officio review by the court, procedure review, qualification of arbitrator, division of arbitration costs, excess of authority and division of an arbitral award, and public policy). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Marley v. Rawlings, the UK Supreme Court had to decide who should inherit the estate of Alfred Rawlings--who had mistakenly signed his wife's Will (instead of his own). In this article, I will examine the issues of interpretative methodology arising from this case. The Supreme Court resolved the dispute by exercising its statutory power to rectify the putative Will, but it failed to articulate clearly its interpretative methodology and failed to give sufficient reasons for its interpretative conclusions. I will argue that its reasoning is best understood as primarily consequentialist. The Supreme Court also commented on the proper approach to interpreting Wills--and addressed criticisms of Lord Hofmann's influential approach to contractual interpretation. I will argue that the Supreme Court's claim that all non-legislative legal documents should be interpreted using the same method is potentially misleading, and that its justification for restricting the courts' ability to correct mistakes by interpretation--that it invades the territory of rectification--is misdirected. For, while corrective interpretations may endanger legitimate third-party expectations, those expectations are beter protected by limiting the context information that is admissible in the interpretative process than by limiting the amount of 'red ink' that may be used in correcting a document through interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2008, the International Criminal Court has been subject to criticism for being somehow imperialist, and some criticism of the Court has pursued a distinctly antiimperialist narrative. Whilst such criticism is often motivated by political considerations, this article examines whether the narrative can be to a certain extent due to provisions of the Rome Statute itself, rather than contingent choices made by Court organs. This involves analysing the law for traces of what this article terms 'inherent imperialism'. This is where the text of an instrument implicitly envisages an unequal or hierarchical legal structure. If some of the Rome Statute's features can be considered inherently imperialist, this could provide a partial justification for some of the political attacks on the Court's choices. This article, by providing a theoretical framework, which interprets claims that the law is imperialist, aims to put the anti-imperialist attacks on the Court in perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cape Town Convention through the years has become a new standard in international legal framework. Paraguay, with a commercial territory yet to be discovered, is in its path towards significant action. Investment in infrastructure has undergone strategic actions. Thus, without proper regulations for the playing field in an era of globalization, certain barriers will drag commercial hardships both for local and international stakeholders operating in Paraguay. This article, with slight economic evidence, tends to mark the current status in commercial financing and persuade key officials on the need for incorporation of these international instruments. The adequacies for these instruments are suggested in format that solutions are offered for every element retrieved from interviews and academia. The rule of law means better economic development, political participation and safe commercial transaction. Paraguay has a set of proper remedies and procedural alternatives in order to execute contractual matters, giving a sustainable source of enforceability to its legal security. Nevertheless--no surprise here--its system is not risk proof, together with the fact that there is no local recognition of an international registry. In this matter, the two biggest assets that Capetown Convention may offer Paraguay are: a) the creation of the international registry for the filing of the security interest; and b) uniform remedies for any breach of contract. Last, this article intends to be a landmark initiative for a relationship between Cape Town Convention and Paraguay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an overview of the CISG methods of Interpretation and gap-filling methods and the developments and modern tendencies in the CISG interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis piece deals with a landmark case C-461/13, or the Weser case, in which the European Court of Justice settled a years-long dispute over the legal status of the environmental objectives laid down in the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC). The Court ruled that the objectives are legally binding: the Member States are for example obliged to refuse authorisation from individual projects estimated to compromise the objectives. The Court also took a strong stance on the so-called non-deterioration principle, ruling that it binds the Member States to such an extent that decline of the quality of the surface waters is no longer allowed. Being so, the Court did acknowledge the possibility of exemption from the now constituted norms, putting the derogation regime created in the Directive in the spotlight. Thus the alleged management planning instrument has turned into a more traditional, formalistic legal tool, affecting individual permitting procedures all across the Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directive 2014/52/EU, amending the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive, was adopted in April 2014 after a comprehensive review and consultation process conducted by the European Commission. The amendments are extensive, affecting almost every Article of the pre-existing legislation and introducing important additions. This note discusses the main changes, divided into four broad categories: 'purely' procedural requirements, screening, quality and monitoring. The intention is to highlight the potential benefits of the revision, as well as to indicate some remaining gaps and shortcomings. Although not revolutionary, the 2014 amendments constitute an important stage in the development of the EU EIA regime, in particular due to the more prominent role accorded to legal obligations in shaping the EIA process. The Directive is now a more detailed, structured and sophisticated legal instrument, which has the potential to deliver better environmental decision-making by encouraging deeper engagement with environmental issues by developers and competent authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the political process on the decision to start negotiations on a new human rights convention concerning the rights of older persons after the with the adopted of Resolution 67/139 in the 67th session, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). It mentions the resolution entitled legal instrument to promote and to protect the rights of older persons. It also mentions the efforts of non-governmental organizations for better health and well-being of older person.

The article focuses on proportion of populations of concern to executive committee of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) including refugees, asylum-seekers, stateless persons and returnees. It mentions UNHCR engages in activities in support of youth of its concern and in host communities and humanitarian assistance and other decision-making processes. It also mentions international legal instruments relating to the protection of children.

The article offers a technically oriented comparison of the substantive law provisions of the Financial Collateral Directive (FCD) and Chapter 5 of the Geneva Securities Convention (GSC) to determine the extent of these legal instruments' compatibility.

Different international regimes are built from legal instruments that vary in terms of whether they are multilateral, bilateral, or a combination thereof. We investigate the reasons for such variation. The choice between multilateralism and bilateralism is a function of the tradeoff between each instrument's relative flaw. Multilateralism is wasteful in incentives, as the same agreement is offered to all states regardless of their compliance costs. Bilateralism mitigates this problem by allowing for more tailored agreements but in the process multiplies transaction costs by requiring many of them. We use a formal model to generate propositions on the design of 'lateralism' and the related issue of membership size and offer illustrations in the context of four regimes: foreign direct investment, human rights, climate change, and international trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders the origins of the concept of ‘persecution’ in international refugee law, thus changing the way the history of the refugee definition has been conventionally understood in refugee law scholarship. It suggests that the concept of persecution, which in legal terms has come to be viewed as a mid-twentieth century characterization of the refugee, was in fact implicit in all the international legal instruments concerning refugees developed from the 1920s onwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital appears to have significant consequences for economic development, yet we know little about how social capital develops or the role of government institutions in promoting or hindering that development. The two key approaches to social capital, as civic engagement or as generalized trust, are combined in a single model focusing on the role of contract enforcement in their development. Contract enforcement is shown to have nonmonotonic effects on civic engagement, generating nonmonotonic effects on the evolution of generalized trust. In particular, moderate levels of contracting institutions may crowd-in civic engagement and trust, whereas high levels of contracting institutions have the opposite effect. Furthermore, the model generates a low-trust trap in which contracting institutions are ineffective at promoting civic engagement or trust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The modern assessment of Henry VII's use of bonds and recognizances to control the behaviour of his subjects is based upon incomplete evidence. This article focuses on new material from The National Archives of the U.K. to begin an analysis of the early Tudor deployment of bonds to address disloyalty and conspiracy. Memoranda of bonds agreed in chancery indicate that Henry VII quickly adopted such tools of enforcement to confront the backlash against his own usurpation in 1485. The success of these measures in keeping King Henry on the throne during his deepest crises helps to explain their more familiar use as instruments of policy after 1500. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the theoretical and behavioral impact of conventional arbitration and final-offer arbitration (FOA) when parties are bargaining over an uncertain value. In this context, one player receives a fixed payment while the other player receives the uncertain residual. Although both forms of arbitration have identically sized contract zones, we show theoretically that in FOA the contract zone shifts in favor of the residual claimant. In addition, as the variance of the possible values rises, the contract zone shifts further in favor of the residual claimant. In laboratory testing, the contract zone roughly reflects the central tendencies of behavior; however, both forms of arbitration increase conflict relative to a no-arbitration baseline. This is caused by residual claimants being more aggressive when arbitration is available while fixed-payment recipients are not. However, both parties play a role in the conflict escalation due to the increased proposal variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a contracting model with unforeseen contingencies in which the court is an active player. Ex ante, the contracting parties cannot include the risky unforeseen contingencies in the contract they draw up. Ex post, the court observes whether an unforeseen contingency occurred and decides whether to void or uphold the contract. If the contract is voided by the court, the parties can renegotiate a new agreement ex post. There are two effects of a court that voids contracts. The parties' incentives to undertake relationship-specific investment are reduced, and the parties enjoy greater insurance against the unforeseen contingencies that the ex ante contract cannot account for. In this context, we fully characterize the optimal decision rule for the court. The behavior of the optimal court is determined by the trade-off between the need for incentives and the gains from insurance that voiding in some circumstances offers to the agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we add to the foundations of incomplete contracting literature. We study the hold-up problem with ambivalent investment, where investment benefits the investing party if ex post the right decision is undertaken but harms the investing party if the wrong decision is made. In this context, we show that the power of contracts to provide investment incentives depends on three factors: the commitment value of contracts, the amount of quasirents that the investing party can expect in the case of out-of-contract renegotiation, and the degree of ambivalence of investment. First, contracts provide first-best investment incentives when parties can commit to a contract regardless of the type of investment. Second, with sufficiently ambivalent investment, if parties cannot commit not to renegotiate a contract and if the investing party's bargaining power is intermediate, contracts cannot improve investment incentives above those provided by no contract. In contrast, a simple buyer or seller option contract is optimal when the investing party's bargaining power is extreme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the section seven and eight of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which focus on nationality. Section seven offers the child with legal instruments to achieve nationality and protection against statelessness, while section eight offers the requirement that state parties assume to respect the child's right to uphold his or her identity. It states that this information is vital in the global acknowledgment of the right to acquire nationality.

We show that the joint liability lending contracts derived in Ghatak (2000) violate an ex post incentive-compatibility constraint which says that the amount of joint liability cannot exceed the amount of individual liability. We derive and characterise optimal separating joint liability contracts incorporating this constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THIS ARTICLE aims at studying the private law disputes that arise from contracts concluded in the framework of space activities, and particularly those that relate to the operation of telecommunication satellites. Public law disputes, linked for instance to the allocation of frequencies or to States' liability for their outer space activities, are thus outside the scope of this study. Until very recently, space contracts gave rise to very limited litigation. Their public character explains why the parties were reluctant to request judicial intervention. Indeed, satellite operators and manufacturers were often public law international organizations or publicly owned companies. However, over the last 10 years, parties have increasingly had recourse to private litigation to settle the disputes arising from the performance of contracts related to the manufacture, launch and operation of satellites. This evolution is due both to the fact that these contracts are now quite commonplace, and to the increasing competition between manufacturers and launchers in a market that is no longer as profitable as it used to be. In this regard, an author recently emphasized that incidents giving rise to litigation are more frequent, due to 'the pressure for lower manufacturing costs - reduction of the manufacturing time frames - or else to the shorter launching campaigns and therefore to quicker satellite tests'. It is clear that the ferocious competition between manufacturers on a contracting market contributes to reducing their margins. The question arises as to whether the reduction of manufacturing costs induced by this situation is really compatible with the high technical and operational requirements of satellite operators. The main topic of this article is whether the settlement of disputes arising from the performance of contracts relating to the manufacturing, launching and operation of satellites has any special characteristics in comparison with litigation in other... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of the ‘reasonable expectations of the parties’ plays an important justificatory role in contract law, yet the notion has not been subjected to any sustained analysis in the contract law literature. This article examines the various roles that reasonable expectation plays in contract law and explores the different understandings of the notion that are revealed. It identifies three possible bases for reasonable expectations—an institutional basis, an empirical basis and a normative basis—and examines how reasonable expectations arguments in contract reflect each of these differing justificatory bases. This makes appeals to reasonable expectation in contract law problematic since the differently grounded expectations of the contracting parties are usually the precise site of conflict between them. It is therefore doubtful that conflicts between contracting parties can be resolved solely by identifying and protecting their ‘reasonable expectations’. In the conclusion some speculative comments are offered as to why, given its limited explanatory power, the notion has proved attractive in attempts to explain contract law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper studies some empirical implications of models with limited risk sharing due to the imperfect enforceability of contracts. We test whether the amount by which public transfers reduce private transfers is affected by features of the economy, such as the variance of income and its persistence. These implications are unique to models with imperfect enforceability. We use data from Mexico collected to evaluate a public transfer programme. It included a randomised component that we exploit as a source of exogenous variation. Our results support the theoretical model in that the crowding out of private transfers is larger in villages where the variance of income is smaller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the regional strategies for the prevention, management and resolution of conflict in Africa is presented. It examines the preparedness of certain African regional actors to protect displaced persons in times of conflict and prescribes formulas to strengthen their capabilities. The author highlights the important role of these African regional actors in protecting the rights of displaced persons but asserts that they need to develop and institute new mechanisms and legal instruments as well as to strengthen those that pre-exist.

Examines the use of citations analysis as an empirical tool for understanding aspects of the legal system in the United States. Improvement of the performance of the system with use of citations; Efficacy of the system as judicial-management tool; Role of economic models on the use of citations analysis in law.

Provides information on a study which showed that the legislature has a decisive influence on the choice of regulatory instruments. Description of a generic legislative model of instrument choice; Existence of an equilibrium; Description of legislative institutions and effective lobbying; Conclusion.

An optimal contract design problem is considered. Contract, which are incomplete and simple are used to investigate the extent to which constrained revisions can mitigate inefficiencies resulting from contractual incompleteness. An optimal contract is characterized in two cases. First, when a contract is being used to facilitate trade between two risk-neutral parties who must make relationship-specific investments, it is possible to implement the first-best by a simple contract. Second, when a contract is being used to share risk, it is generally not possible to implement the first-best. When one party is risk neutral, however, it is possible to implement the first-best by assigning all the ex post decision rights to that party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends recent developments in general equilibrium theory and applies them to the problem of measuring the real output of an economy's insurance sector. These developments permit a priced commodity to be a complex incentive-compatible contract. These contracts are not bundles of more basic commodities. These contracts are elementary in the same sense that event-contingent goods deliveries are elementary in the Arrow-Debreu framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel interpretation of the fact that high nominal interest rates accompany low levels of real GNP. It constructs a model in which money and bonds are both held as a result of legal restrictions on the banking system. Open market operations ma,, increase the equilibrium rate of interest and raise the cost of credit. This increase in the cost of credit causes firms to write labor contracts in which layoffs occur more frequently. The nature of optimal labor contracts is derived explicitly from assumptions about the information that is available to firms and to workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In repeated principal-agent models, long-term contracts can improve on short~term contracts only if they commit either principal or agent to a payoff in some future circumstance lower than could be obtained from a short-term contract negotiated if that circumstance occurs, We show that efficient contracting under moral hazard alone does not require long-term commitment from the principal. Provided a short-term contract can punish the agent sufficiently (in a sense made precise], it requires no commitment from the agent either. Then linking payoffs in one period to outcomes in previous periods does not improve the tradeoff between incentives and risk sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes contracts as means of strategic commitment, that is, commitment against outside parties to the agreement. It considers the example of an incumbent firm which enters a contractual relationship with its workers in order to deter entry, it assumes away the possibility for the parties to precommit not to make Pareto-improving renegotiations of the agreement once entry has taken place Under symmetric information, the contract is thus found to be useless for entry deterrence. If the incumbent firm or workers possess some private information, excessive post-entry production levels can however be sustained ex post, since output reductions may not be incentive compatible. While reformation asymmetries are usually welfare-decreasing when the goal is optimal risk sharing, they can thus be welfare-improving for the contracting parties when commitment against outsiders is the goal of the contract. The role of the renegotiation process as a constraint on sustainable agreements is stressed in the paper, and the general relevance of strategic contractual commitment is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]