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Public funded research and inventions play a central role in stimulating innovation in any country. Last year, the Government of India stealthily notified the Draft Model Guidelines on Implementation of IPR Policy for Academic Institutions. The Draft guidelines aim to provide a structure embedded in IPR for commercializing university inventions. They prioritise IPR over other methods of technology transfer from the academia to the industry. The draft guidelines put India in an elite comity of fast-developing and developed nations which have a similar policy framework in place. But is the spirit of collegiality a reason good enough by itself to embrace a policy? The article comprehensively analyses the draft guidelines, their purported rationale and consequences that their enforcement would entail. The article presents an Indian perspective against the backdrop of the American and English experience, with their respective academic institution's IP Policy frameworks, in an endeavour to extract tangible lessons for India. It is argued that with all the pious intentions with which the Draft Guidelines have been brought, they are misplaced, inapt and ill-judged. This is a post-print version of the published article. The article published in the journal can be accessed at: DOI: 10.1111/jwip.12181

The weighty and difficult issues associated with cross-border insolvency have generated considerable debate over the last two decades. Legislative reform has typically proven slow and fragmented. This article analyses the inherent power of common law courts to grant assistance in cross-border insolvency proceedings and the basis on which the inherent power is exercised. In doing so, it seeks to explore how the inherent power may continue to be of utility to common law courts. In particular, it considers the position in jurisdictions that are yet to adopt the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency or enact a substantial statutory regime for recognising and cooperating with foreign courts or representatives in insolvency proceedings. The article considers the benefits and disadvantages of continuing to recognise – and extend – the inherent power. It suggests that although there are fundamental differences concerning the exercise of the inherent power, it may be possible to agree on a number of principles that inform the application of the inherent power and its future development. Copyright © 2017 INSOL International and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hin-Pro International Logistics Limited v CSAV is an important case in the areas of anti-suit injunctions, contractual interpretation and private international law. Despite the ambiguities surrounding the jurisdiction clause contained in the bills of lading, the Court of Appeal construed the jurisdiction clause as ‘exclusive’ in the context of a ‘contractual background’, and affirmed the continuation of the anti-suit injunction granted by the Commercial Court. It is argued that the approach of applying the common law principles of contractual interpretation to a bill of lading is questionable. The approach used to apply English private international law is problematic in a number of ways. There are legitimate reasons for concern that the doctrine of comity in English private international law may become undermined as a result.

Are Supreme Court justices with prior experience in the executive branch more likely to defer to the president in separation of powers cases? While previous research has suggested that such background may signal judicial policy preferences but does not shape them, I argue here that institutional socialization may indeed increase future judicial deference to the president. Using an original data set of executive power cases decided between 1942 and 2007, I model justice-votes to test this hypothesis. I uncover three noteworthy findings: (1) a clear correlation between prior executive branch experience and support for the executive branch, (2) the degree of this support intensifies as executive branch tenure increases, a finding congruent with a socialization hypothesis, and (3) contrary to received wisdom, executive powers cases possess a clear ideological dimension, in line with the expectations of the attitudinal model.In 2005, on the well-respected legal blog Opinio Juris, law professor Julian Ku reflected on the likelihood that then Judge Roberts would be a strong supporter of executive power once on the Supreme Court. After noting that Roberts had clerked for former Chief Justice Rehnquist, also a supporter of a robust executive branch, Ku stated that "like Jackson, who served as Attorney- General for FDR, and Rehnquist, who served as an Assistant Attorney General for Nixon, Roberts' main government experience has been in the executive branch as associate White House Counsel and Deputy Solicitor General" (Ku 2005). The implication of this statement was clear: as a former member of the executive branch, Judge Roberts was expected to be more deferential to the president in cases involving executive power.The notion that background affects behavior might seem an obvious truth. When it comes to judicial decision-making, however, particularly for hard cases at the appellate court level, the study of social and background characteristics as systematic correlates for behavior has attenuated, thought to have fallen short on both theoretical (Sisk, Heise, and Morriss 1998) and empirical grounds (Heise 2002). The successor to the social background model has undoubtedly been the attitudinal model, which posits that such cases are mainly resolved according to the ideological policy preferences of the judges who hear them (Segal and Spaeth 1993). However, though ideological attitudes are the single best extralegal predictor of judicial decision-making, a great deal of variance remains unexplained. Moving to fill this gap, legal scholars have provided persuasive arguments as to the role that legal doctrine (Bailey and Maltzman 2008; Richards and Kritzer 2002), strategic interaction (Epstein and Knight 1998), the desire for comity (Hettinger, Lindquist, and Martinek 2007), and even the need for approval (Baum 2006) play in explaining judicial decision-making when the law is unclear.While not returning to their place of prominence, social background models remain useful, primarily in improving predictions of judicial decision-making where a reasonable connection can be drawn between the case area and the background in question. These studies have not only used better methods and reduced incomparability to uncover noteworthy correlations between social background factors and decision outcomes (Brudney, Schiavoni, and Merritt 1999; Schneider 2002; Sisk, Heise, and Morriss 1998), but have even successfully tested competing causal explanations (Boyd, Epstein, and Martin 2010).In this study, I follow this more recent vein of social background studies, contending that executive branch experience has predictive power in explaining separation of powers outcomes on the Supreme Court. Specifically, I build on work by Michael Dorf, who found that in the post-Warren Court era, Republican Supreme Court appointees with executive branch experience were more likely to be consistent conservatives than those who lacked such experience (Dorf 2007). …

Statute of Canada Chapter 47, when it is proclaimed in force, will largely adopt the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-border Insolvency. The current and proposed cross-border provisions could be considered Canada's “Northern Lights”, evolving constantly, but aligning with the objectives and scope of the UNCITRAL Model Law. While Chapter 47 is a modified version of the Model Law, it continues Canada's regime as one of modified universalism, with a strong commitment to comity and coordination. There are likely to be contests for control over the scope of foreign proceedings, although arguably, no more so than under the language of the Model Law. The most critical issues to resolve in the short term are definitions of COMI where corporate groups are involved, and the issue of the scope and extent of possible concurrent main proceedings, both areas left to the discretion of the courts in their interpretation of the legislation's domestic, as well as cross-border, provisions. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

On July 20, 2005, the Canadian Civil Marriage Act became law, extending equal access to civil marriage to same-sex couples while respecting religious freedom. This article briefly traces the distinctive juridical factors that have contributed to the legislation: the constitutional comity or dialogue among Parliament, the courts and the people resulting from the constitutional entrenchment of a Charter of rights and freedoms; the growth of the substantive concept of equality in Canadian law; and the impact of the constitutional division of powers and the nature of Canadian federalism. Together, these factors contributed to a constructive debate centered on respect for diversity.

International custody disputes involving parents and children from Islamic nations and the United States have yielded a spectrum of interpretation of Islamic Shari'a law and the best interests of the child. The lack of a determinative treaty between the United States and all but one Islamic nation has led to an inconsistency of criterion in determining whether to extend comity to a custody decree from a court of an Islamic nation. The domestic law statutes, which determine jurisdiction in these matters, have provisions for international application and recognition of foreign custody decrees. The recognition of custody decrees from the courts of Islamic nations is contingent upon the satisfying of procedural and substantive thresholds. Focusing on the substantive, the author opines that American courts have a responsibility to understand certain aspects of the law, culture, and religion of Islam in order to accurately determine if the threshold has been meet.

Anti-trust issues increasingly reach beyond national borders. This paper addresses the question whether such issues can reasonably be solved by an extraterritorial application of national competition law or whether they call for an international competition policy of its own. The analysis is based upon 20 case studies which are examined with regard to the suitability of the effects doctrine and the principles of comity as conflict resolution mechanisms. The case studies demonstrate that conflicts in international anti-trust are more likely to arise where national competition laws differ from each other or where national authorities are pursuing selfish national policy objectives.

Historical Over the last four centuries, European-based Roman Catholic missionary orders have followed the European colonial expansion into Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific, establishing missions, evangelizing the local people and teaching western cultural values. From the end of the eighteenth century, western European and North American, together with the smaller Australian and New Zealand Anglican and Protestant missionary societies and church mission boards, sent missionaries into the same areas, establishing churches, hospitals and health-care programmes, schools and colleges and rural development programmes. The selection of mission areas usually, but not always, accompanied or followed colonial expansion. The particular location of missions was determined more or less unilaterally by the mission boards and societies involved. In the country where mission was being carried out comity arrangements were often developed, dividing the region into areas that were allocated to particular missions so as to cover the whole area, and minimize competition between the various agencies. In some places mission agencies collaborated in establishing united theological colleges, tertiary colleges and large hospitals. By and large, indigenous people in any place became Methodist, Lutheran or Baptist, etc., because that was the church having been allocated for its missionary enterprise to the area in which they lived. Over the two hundred years there have been massive migrations of people within regions because of industrialization and urbanization, wars and ethnic or tribal conflicts, and climatic change. As people have moved, they have taken with them their denominational allegiance and established churches of different denominational tradition side by side. In 1910, representatives of the various missionary sending churches and societies, together with a very few representatives of the new, younger churches, came together in Edinburgh, Scotland to reflect on the missionary calling and enterprise. That meeting was characterized by supreme confidence that the missionary enterprise could succeed in winning the whole world for Christ within a generation. It generated new missionary energy and vigor throughout the Christian world. However there was also some serious questioning of several aspects of the missionary movement. In particular, the few representatives of the Indian and Chinese churches who were present raised questions about: * Relationships between missionaries and indigenous church leaders - issues of power, equality and authority. * Relationships between the mission structure and the indigenous church structure - should these remain separate or be integrated? Who has the right to make decisions about policy, style and application of resources? * Relationships between the missions and between the churches they were establishing - the unity of the church of Jesus Christ, and the multiplicity of missions and the competition between them as countersigns of the gospel of Christ, and a hindrance to evangelization. Since 1910 there have been eleven ecumenical mission conferences drawing together mission agencies and representatives of the newer/younger/third world churches to discuss issues of relationships, theology, strategy, etc. These later conferences have been characterized by the participation of a progressively increasing proportion of representatives of the ever-growing churches of the south/third world, and by the participation of the Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholic Church and its missionary orders. Another development to which I shall need to return has been a parallel decrease in the proportion of the Protestant and Pentecostal missions and churches that are participating in this ecumenical dialogue on international mission. For a time the "Evangelical" churches and missions ran a series of mission conferences parallel to the "ecumenical" conferences. …

The United Church of Christ in the Philippines The United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) was established in 1948 as a union of five Protestant denominations from the United States, incarnated in the Philippines, at the turn of the century. These five churches included the Congregational, Presbyterian, United Brethren, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the Philippine Methodist churches. That pivotal moment in 1948 was the culmination of long years of struggle towards establishing union; at the same time it was the start of the forging of a new future as an independent national united church in the Philippines. The union of 1948 entertained a marriage of five friends, under the solemn vow "unity in diversity." It was a marriage of some commonalities and of many differences. All were about the same age in years, mid to lower forties, having accomplished similar feats in the building of schools, hospitals and churches, and having sown the seeds of mission primarily in the rural rather that urban areas to respect the Roman Catholic domination of the urban centres. It was a likely and compatible marriage. However, the honeymoon would not be easy; these five friends would not be the easiest of bedfellows. Traditions ran deep, and any consensus on whose church polity would prevail and - even more painful and earth-shaking - what is to be made of worship and sacrament, would be no easy love quarrel to resolve. Fortunately, the courtship and arranging of this marriage had been in the making from the early years of infancy on through adolescence and into the early adulthood of these young mission churches. Hardly out of the crib, within a year of arrival upon Philippine soil, the Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries organized the "Ministerial Alliance for the benefit of a common cause and mutual helpfulness," in 1900. The following year, the Evangelical Union, a composition of nine Evangelical Christian missionary agencies, was formed with the goal of uniting "all the evangelical forces in the Philippine Islands for the purpose of securing comity and effectiveness in their missionary operations." In 1915, at the age of adolescence, there was even an effort to elope. A merger of all Protestant mission churches into the "Evangelical Christian Church of the Philippine Islands" was proposed. This effort stumbled on the question of whether authority should rest in congregational independence or in a centralized ecclesiastical body. The painful debate aborted the realization of this merger. But relentless in pursuit of a dream, as a young adult inspired by the successful formation of the United Church of Canada in 1925, the United Evangelical Church of the Philippines was successfully formed in 1929, bringing into union the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists and the United Brethren into common polity, worship and sacrament. This became the necessary inspirational venture establishing fact and experience to the vision and idea of union among Protestants of various traditions that would spark the dream of greater unity in the years to come. The desire for union was as real as the quest for evangelism and burned passionately among Filipinos in the years leading up to 1948. As Dr Frank C. Laubach observed in 1925, "Filipinos, particularly the young, educated generation, felt that denominational names were obstructing the progress of the Gospel and placing Protestantism in a most vulnerable position . . . and expressed their conviction that a united Church would meet with the universal approbation of the Filipino people and that a large number of leaders, who now refuse to enter any of the denominations, would throw aside their scruples and join a united movement." (T. Valentino Sitoy Jr., Several Springs; One Stream, p. 321.) Union has been, and continues to be, at the heart of the very existence of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines. …

* Author's italics throughout. beneficial consumptive use of such waters by 1,000,000 acre-ft. per annum. (c) If, as a matter of international comity, the United States of America shall hereafter recognize in the United States of Mexico any right to the use of any waters of the Colorado River system, such waters shall be supplied first from the waters which are surplus over and above the aggregate of the quantities specified in paragraphs (a) and (b) ; and if such surplus shall prove insufficient for this purpose, then the burden of such deficiency shall be equally borne by the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin, and whenever necessary the States of the upper division shall deliver at Lees Ferry water to supply one-half of the deficiency so recognized in addition to that provided in paragraph (d). (d) The States of the upper division will not cause the flow of the River at