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The article describe the problem of presidential unilateralism from the perspective of the system of checks and balances in the U.S. Topics include unique challenges that the former President Donald Trump's exercise of unilateral authority raised from his successful efforts to undermine congressional independence by depressing its will to check; origions of the Free Election Clause; and the historical excavation of the principle of legislative independence.

It is common for a legal system to allow a person, in certain circumstances, to gain ownership of land by possessing it for a period of time. This is certainly true of both Scotland and England, although what is precisely required for possession to be established may differ on particular points between the two. One point on which the two may differ is the effect of a unilateral permission to occupy that is given to someone currently occupying the land without any right to be there. This point has most recently been considered from the point of view of English law in Smith v Molyneaux [2016] UKPC 35, [2017] 1 P & CR 7. In this paper, that case and the issues it raises are considered from the point of view of Scots law. It is found that this point raises more general questions about the nature of the mental element of possession, the state of mind with which one must occupy the property in order to be considered a possessor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Carbon leakage is of interest in both academic and policy debates about the effectiveness of unilateral climate policy, especially in Europe, where the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) affects many traded sectors. We review how the literature identifies leakage and the pollution haven effect. We then evaluate whether EU ETS emission costs caused carbon leakage in European manufacturing, using trade flows in embodied carbon and value from the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP). We find no evidence that the EU ETS caused carbon leakage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article revisits the role of unilateral determination of contract terms under Spanish Law. In the tradition of ius commune, the object of the contract had to be determined from the outset, and leaving terms to the later determination by one party was seen as contradictory with the requirements of certainty of price and object. Civil codes in the Latin tradition followed that pattern, but nowadays, the Spanish Civil Code is perhaps the only one who remains faithful to this approach. In other European and Western legal systems, and in international instruments on Contract Law, the starting point is quite different. It is acknowledged that there are good reasons for parties to leave contracts incomplete, and to rely eventually on the unilateral determination of open terms by one of them. Thus, most legal systems leave ample room for unilateral determination of terms, subject to judicial control to curb abuses in the exercise of unilateral powers. The article shows strong reasons, grounded both on legal theory and Comparative Law, to promote a change of perspective in Spanish Law, even under the application of arts. 1256 and 1449 of the Spanish Civil Code. It is argued that the legitimate space for unilateral determination of contract terms is larger than currently perceived, based on arguments linked to other provisions in Spanish Law and some avenues explored already by case law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Scholarship on democratic responsiveness focuses on whether political outcomes reflect public opinion but overlooks attitudes toward how power is used to achieve those policies. We argue that public attitudes toward unilateral action lead to negative evaluations of presidents who exercise unilateral powers and policies achieved through their use. Evidence from two studies supports our argument. In three nationally representative survey experiments conducted across a range of policy domains, we find that the public reacts negatively when policies are achieved through unilateral powers instead of through legislation passed by Congress. We further show these costs are greatest among respondents who support the president's policy goals. In an observational study, we show that attitudes toward unilateral action in the abstract affect how respondents evaluate policies achieved through unilateral action by presidents from Lincoln to Obama. Our results suggest that public opinion may constrain presidents' use of unilateral powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The life estate agreement - advitalitas inter coniuges - one of the most important private law institutions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth period has not been subjected to exhaustive research so far. In the historical and legal literature devoted to matrimonial property law, no consensus was reached regarding the nature of life contracts. While most authors raise doubts regarding the obligation to make reciprocal provisions by both spouses as a prerequisite for an effective conclusion of the contract, the source materials do not seem to confirm this thesis. The contract forms used in the land and town courts, the opinions of the authors of the compendia, and the studies of the old Polish law and practice form the basis for the assertion about admission to legal turnover of unilateral lifetime subscriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past scholarship has offered varying explanations for why presidents choose to use executive orders. However, to this point, much of what we know of unilateral powers does not adequately address the role the bureaucracy plays in the president's decision. This research seeks to account for bureaucratic factors as a strategic presidential consideration in the employment of such directives. I classify executive orders from 1989–2012 based on which agency or agencies they apply to, and consider the importance of various characteristics (e.g. agency ideology, level of centralization, politicization, etc.) in determining which organs of the bureaucracy presidents will direct executive orders to generally. The results provide evidence that the White House directs fewer executive orders to agencies that have a politically independent leadership structure, and this result holds across a variety of measures judging an order's impact. The results demonstrate that the type of directive is crucial in determining a president's strategic decision to use executive orders, in line with previous research, and that agency centralization is one crucial component of this strategic calculation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prior scholarship overlooks the capacity of other actors to raise the political costs of unilateral action by turning public opinion against the president. Through a series of five experiments embedded in nationally representative surveys, we demonstrate Congress's ability to erode support for unilateral actions by raising both constitutional and policy-based objections to the exercise of unilateral power. Congressional challenges to the unilateral president diminish support for executive action across a range of policy areas in both the foreign and domestic realm and are particularly influential when they explicitly argue that presidents are treading on congressional prerogatives. We also find evidence that constitutional challenges are more effective when levied by members of Congress than by other actors. The results resolve a debate in the literature and suggest a mechanism through which Congress might exercise a constraint on the president, even when it is unable to check him legislatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of standards for unilateral changes under management rights provisions, and its impact on the expiration of the parties' agreement in the U.S. Topics discussed include court cases Graymont PA, Inc., Minteq International, Inc., and E.I. Du Pont de Nemours on the same; enactment of National Labor Relations Act for addressing the same; and duty to bargain and refrain from unilateral changes.

Currently, the divorce literature has mainly focused on the introduction of no-fault and unilateral divorce grounds to explain the positive relation between 'making divorce easier' and divorce rates. We use the case study of Belgium to demonstrate that both no-fault and unilateral might not be the ideal proxies for 'making divorce easier', because the procedural level of legislation is entirely disregarded. Therefore, we propose an alternative proxy which does manage to capture the time-varying legislative environment, namely the duration of the legal divorce process. We find that a reduction in the duration of the divorce process by a month increases the divorce trend with about 1.4 %. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the United Nations Charter or specific Security Council resolutions authorize nations to use force abroad, and there is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the U.S. Constitution and statutory law allow the President to use force abroad. These are largely separate areas of scholarship, addressing what are generally perceived to be distinct legal issues. This Article, by contrast, considers these two bodies of law together as they relate to the United States. In doing so, it makes three main contributions. First, it demonstrates striking parallels between the structure of the international and domestic legal regimes governing the use of force, and it explains how this structure tends to incentivize unilateral action. Second, it theorizes that these two bodies of law are interconnected in previously overlooked ways, such that how the executive branch interprets law in one context can be and often is informed by the other legal context. Third, it documents these interactions over time for several important components of the law on the use of force and shows that this dynamic has played a significant role in justifying the practice-based expansion of unilateral war powers. The Article concludes by arguing that both scholars and policymakers seeking to shape the law on the use of force need to take better account of this interactive dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the provisions of article 1169 of the Civil Code, the parties are free to conclude any contract; however, based on the principle of the mandatory force of contract, the parties are held to execute the contract as signed. According to article 1549 of the new Civil Code, in case the debtor fails to execute its obligations accordingly, the creditor is entitled to invoke one of the following remedies: execution by equivalent; foreclosure; rescission or termination of contract or the reduction of the debtor's performance or the use of any other legal mean available in order to achieve his right. Rescission can manifest under any of the two forms: judicial and extrajudicial. Extrajudicial rescission also has two forms: unilateral rescission and conventional rescission. Unilateral rescission operates based on the unilateral declaration of rescission. At first sight, the creditor's possibility to terminate the contract by rescission presents some practical issues regarding the conditions when it can be invoked, the form of the declaration, its legal effects (namely the real possibility of reinstating the parties in their previous position) and the statute of limitation of the right to invoke rescission. All these aspects were subject to our analysis, thus attempting to find the practical solution for enforcing this highly anticipated solution in the new social-legal context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some situations a number of agents each have the ability to undertake an initiative that would have significant effects on the others. Suppose that each of these agents is purely motivated by an altruistic concern for the common good. We show that if each agent acts on her own personal judgment as to whether the initiative should be undertaken, then the initiative will be undertaken more often than is optimal. We suggest that this phenomenon, which we callthe unilateralist’s curse, arises in many contexts, including some that are important for public policy. To lift the curse, we propose aprinciple of conformity, which would discourage unilateralist action. We consider three different models for how this principle could be implemented, and respond to an objection that could be raised against it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the problem of unilateral jurisdiction clauses in the U.S. Topics discussed include kinds of clauses that are defined as "unilateral jurisdiction clauses;" cases in which courts in France and Russia have held a unilateral jurisdiction clause to be unenforceable; and a case from Spain that shows evidence of potential continued support for asymmetrical clauses.

The article reports on the Bilateral tax treaties and functional approach to unilateral responses to tax treaty abuse. topics discussed include resistance to treaty termination, different types of unilateral responses available to treaty abuse, and U.S. geographical breadth and substantive approach to treaty abuse. The article also mentions hierarchical set of options for escalating treaty termination.

Scholarship on the unilateral presidency has focused on presidential policy making with the stroke of a pen. However, such studies overlook the influence that the public presidency can have on shaping the president's unilateral strategies. Our research question seeks to link these two elements by exploring the following question: under what conditions do presidents issue executive orders and proclamations as part of their public presidency? Using new data charting the use of these directives to target populations in society, we analyze the role of the political environment on engendering both more constituency-based executive orders and proclamations. The results suggest presidents issue more constituency-based proclamations, but not executive orders, when Congress and the executive branch are more likely to disagree on policy or when Congress is institutionally stronger compared to the president. Presidents are less likely to issue these orders during election years (for proclamations), in changing popularity, or when their party has returned to office. The implications suggest the importance of broadening the study of unilateral orders to link the public and administrative presidencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important vein of presidency scholarship has focused on the president's instruments of unilateral action through systemic considerations of executive orders, proclamations, and most recently, signing statements. This article considers an additional tool: presidential memoranda. I argue these memoranda contain important policy content advancing the president's agenda, and--like executive orders--they often indicate unilateral action. Memoranda use has surged as the issuance of executive orders has decreased, indicating that unilateralism is not declining, but rather, the means of such action may be shifting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the U.S. Supreme Court case Sackett v. EPA, which deals on the alleged violation of the U.S. Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). Topics discussed include the CERCLA's non-reviewable Unilateral Administrative Orders (UAOs), the coercive enforcement of the CERCLA among businesses and individuals, and the aspects of due process rights under the U.S. Fifth Amendment.

Unilateral presidential actions, such as executive orders, are widely cited as a key strategic tool for presidential power. However, is unilateral action evidence of unilateralism or might it represent executive acquiescence? We answer this by (1) specifying three competing models, each with a different presidential discretion assumption and generating alternative hypotheses; (2) extending the canonical item-response model to best measure executive-order significance; and (3) comparing competing theoretical models to data for 1947-2002. Theoretically, we show that legislative preferences may impact unilateral actions differently than previously thought and indicate how parties may be influential. Empirically, a model where the president is responsive to the chamber's majority-party median fits the data better than models assuming responsiveness to the chamber median or no presidential acquiescence. Unilateral action appears not tantamount to presidential power, as evidence implies that legislative parties, or the judicial actors enforcing their will, are key conditioning factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the legislative process, presidents may negotiate with Congress or use unilateral action as a bargaining tool, When presidents issue a unilateral order during the legislative process, do these orders "preempt" or "support" legislation We match unilateral orders with related legislative activity and find presidents are more likely to use unilateral order to "preempt" legislation when the issue is on the president's agenda or in the second half of their second terms but "support" legislation when of the same party as the bill sponsor. These findings suggest that presidents not only take advantage of Congressional incapacity but also exert unilateral power in support of legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debate on the use of unilateral presidential directives suggests that a president’s ability to shape and act without the consent of Congress is largely unchecked by traditional institutional arrangements while other research shows that presidents are more likely to be restrained by Congress. This article contributes to this debate by examining the source of authority used in unilateral orders. Using a new database of unilateral orders and a new theory, we reexamine when presidents use unilateral orders. We find that orders that invoke Congressionally based sources of authority are used when Congress is stronger while those that are presidency-based are used when Congress is weaker. These findings allow us to be more precise about how presidential unilateral strategy is shaped by institutional forces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In his 2014 State of the Union address Barack Obama pledged to act without Congress on a variety of fronts, following up his 'we can't wait' campaign of unilateralism before the 2012 election. The partisan furor this engendered tended to obscure the longstanding efforts of presidents to 'faithfully execute' the law in a manner that aligns with their policy preferences. This paper examines the broad logic of those efforts, and delineates five areas where the Obama administration has been particularly aggressive: in its (1) recess appointments; (2) refusal to defend federal law (notably, the Defense of Marriage Act) in court; (3) use of prosecutorial discretion in declining to pursue violations of immigration and drug laws; (4) use of waivers; and (5) its utilization of the regulatory process to interpret the meaning of statutes, as with the Clean Air Act and the Affordable Care Act. Presidents do have flexibility in many cases; but this ends where they seek to alter the plain 'letter of the law.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY This paper estimates the effects of unilateral divorce laws on divorce rates in the USA from a panel of state-level divorce rates. We use the interactive fixed-effects model to address the issue of endogeneity due to the association between cross-state unobserved heterogeneity and divorce law reforms. We document that earlier studies in the literature do not fully control for unobserved heterogeneity and result in mixed empirical evidence on the effects of divorce law reforms. While reconciling these conflicting results, our results suggest that divorce law reforms have temporal positive effects on divorce rates, thus confirming the 2006 findings of Wolfers. Via simulation experiments, we assess the degree to which faulty inclusion or faulty exclusion of interactive fixed effects affects the policy effect estimators. Our results suggest that faulty inclusion only results in efficiency loss whereas faulty exclusion causes bias. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the character of the right to reduce price due to physical or legal defects of the thing sold. An analysis of the provisions of the Civil Code, case law and literature leads to the conclusion that the right to reduce the price should be considered as a unilateral-modification clause. The author critically assesses the recognition of this right as a claim. The argument for this opinion of the author is that in adjusting the literal interpretation of Article 560 § 1 of the Civil Code, he takes into account both the systemic interpretation and functional interpretation (including teleological one). The author notes, however, that a consistent and unified position of the Supreme Court in which it recognizes that right as a claim, in practice, definitely confers such a character thereon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Iurisprudentia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Iurisprudentia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: Internalizing the global negative externality of carbon emissions requires the flattening of the extraction path of world fossil energy resources (=world carbon emissions). We consider governments with sign-unconstrained emission taxes at their disposal and seeking to prevent world emissions from exceeding some binding aggregate emission ceiling in the medium term. Such a ceiling policy can be carried out either in full cooperation or by a sub-global climate coalition. Unilateral action has to cope with carbon leakage and high costs, which makes a strong case for choosing a policy that implements the ceiling in a cost-effective way. In a two-country, two-period general equilibrium model with a non-renewable fossil-energy resource, we characterize the unilateral cost-effective ceiling policy and compare it with its fully cooperative counterpart. We show that with full cooperation there exists a cost-effective ceiling policy in which only first-period emissions are taxed at a rate that is uniform across countries. In contrast, the cost-effective ceiling policy of a sub-global climate coalition is characterized by emission regulation in both periods. The share of the total stock of energy resources owned by the sub-global climate coalition turns out to be a decisive determinant of the sign and magnitude of unilateral cost-effective taxes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article offers information on the effectiveness of enforcing the unilateral action to regulate international corporate bribery as a substitute to multilateral action in the U.S. t discusses the history, structure and significance of enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to assit foreign corporations in addressing extraterritorial corporate bribery conflicts. It analyzes the efforts of the U.S. Department of Justice to combat corporate bribery.

Abstract The meaning of recognition of governments varies in time and between individual States. At a minimum it entails that the recognising State wishes to be bound by the international legal consequences of recognition. How to recognise a government is not defined, as the decision whether or not to recognise a government is a unilateral act and at the discretion of each individual State. The most important criteria for recognising a government are the effective control and the legitimacy doctrine, although some States have decided to abolish the recognition of governments all together. Applying the criteria for recognition of governments to the conflict in Libya in 2011, it is concluded that the recognition of the Transitional National Council by some States while the Gadaffi regime was still in control over large parts of the territory is probably not supported by the effective control or legitimacy doctrine. This could invoke State responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) are an increasingly important part of the global trading system. At the same time Border Carbon Adjustments (BCAs) are begining to be considered a necessary policy tool to address the carbon leakage and competitiveness concerns associated with emissions pricing systems. This confluence of events raises the question: is there a useful role for BCAs in the implementation of PTAs? This paper argues that the inclusion of BCAs in PTAs has several distinct advantages; it may avoid the trade retaliatory measures that could arise from the unilateral imposition of BCAs, it does not rely on cumbersome and often ineffective multilateral discussions, and it might be legally feasible as it provides a method of, to some extent, circumventing barriers to the unilateral imposition of BCAs posed by WTO rules. The paper also explores options for implementing BCAs in PTAs by looking at the importance of the BCA rate, the role of rules of origin, and the manner in which bilateral negotiations can be beneficial, even in cases where BCAs are, in the end, implemented unilaterally. The paper concludes that PTAs can indeed play a useful role in implementing BCAs, suggesting that this is a policy worth further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Societas et Res Publica is the property of University of SS. Cyril & Methodius in Trnava, Faculty of Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article considers private law as a system of equal freedom and states that in corrective justice, the explanation for a private law obligation must show equal concern for both plaintiff and defendant. It also discusses the problems associated with corrective justice in relation to acquisition of property. It further expands on the problem of unilateralism in relation to the theory of property proposed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant.

The authors discuss the expansion of investment choices which are compliant to Islamic law through a total return swap (TRS) which is based on unilateral promise. They state that exchange traded funds (ETFs) can enhance diversification of Islamic investments. The authors note that the spread between the cost of mobilized funds and the return on advanced funds has increased bank profits.

Presidential executive orders and proclamations seldom meet with significant opposition from courts or Congress, for a variety of reasons. But Congress has repeatedly contested presidential directives for environmental matters and public lands. This article examines this exception to the rule of congressional deference to unilateral executive policymaking. In order to elucidate the institutional and political dynamics of these inter-branch conflicts, this article examines five instances in which Congress tried to thwart an activist president's use of unilateral powers for public lands. In each of these cases, the president sought to unilaterally impose environmental policies and Congress resisted, but the president essentially prevailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the interaction between the concepts of promise and donation under private law in Louisiana and Comparative Law. As stated, while promise and donation can both be characterized as unilateral juridical acts, it is possible to separate out promises to donate and acts of donation. It states that donation is essentially a unilateral act, which requires only the act of will of the donor to facilitate the transaction. It states that the that the Civil Code of Louisiana provides for 'unilateral contracts'. It reports that Louisiana has some extensive provisions related to the interaction of donation and succession rights.

This article seeks to answer one of the key questions facing the EU in the future: what effect will the new right to withdraw have on the EU? Will it lead to a gradual fragmentation of what was supposed to be ‘an ever closer union of unlimited duration’? Or will it even mark the beginning of the end of the Union? In order to answer these complex questions, this article first briefly analyses the pre-Lisbon situation regarding withdrawal. It then critically examines the newly inserted Article 50, which codifies the right to withdraw. Having done so, it will then examine whether non-legal considerations, such as political and economic reasons, will render withdrawal a theoretical rather than realistic option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history, doctrine and theory of unilateral contracts in the U.S. It states that the degree in which the insurance policy is mainly uncommon even within the zoology of traditional contract characterization. It suggests that the common law should qualify insurance policies as bilateral agreements and assess their terms and conditions. Moreover, it notes that could should reject the presumption that insurance contracts are unilateral, rather should persist being faithful to contract law's preferences.