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Nowadays, enforcement is one of the crucial elements of justice. Right to the property is guaranteed by the constitution and therefore exercising property rights is one of the key goals of justice, the latter is implemented through effective and efficient enforcement. The present study is mainly dedicated to the specifics of enforcing property rights. Methods used in the research involve qualitative study, the latter encompasses observation of rules and regulations in national and international practices based on primary and secondary legal and historical sources, including official legal documents, court decisions as first-hand material, as well as derived sources such as various articles, monographs, comments on laws and regulations, etc. The comparative method used in the study is aimed at demonstrating differences and similarities of enforcement rules and procedures in different legal systems, revealing their advantages and disadvantages, while practical examples focus on the identification of gaps to lay the path for better legal solutions. The complex scrutiny of the subject to the present research allows to review it from different angles and suggest legal recommendations to raise the efficiency of the enforcement system and subsequently provide a firm basis for justice.

The United States Trademark Act makes unenforceable marks that are “functional.” However, it does not define functionality. Because the Supreme Court decisions on functionality are few in number and ambiguous in meaning, the courts have differed sharply in their approaches to functionality, and their approach is constantly changing.

The true lender rule issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) briefly provided a uniform standard that could be applied to determine when a national bank is acting as a lender when it partners with other service providers. The rule was lauded for its objective standard that respected the form of legal documentation. The fintech marketplace lending platforms and banks that have been doing business for years under a bank partnership model viewed the rule as a welcome sign that the OCC did not support state efforts to recast the marketplace lending platforms as the true lender as a way to impose state law usury rules against national banks. Then Congress invalidated the rule under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) within six months of its effective date. Did the bank partnership model take one step forward and two steps back? In this article, we explore “true lender” issues, existing litigation and regulatory developments, and the implications following the invalidation of the rule. Key Findings ▪ If true lender arguments prevail and a nonbank is deemed the lender, federal preemption is inapplicable and state law limitations will apply, which in several states renders the loans unenforceable and requires repayments to the borrower. ▪ The invalidation of the true lender rule leaves market participants with the same lack of a uniform standard that existed before the rule and it creates uncertainty in what should be an efficient market for providing borrowers access to capital. ▪ We expect new legislation (e.g., recently enacted laws in Maine and Illinois) and new regulatory efforts aimed at finding that banks working with fintechs are not the true lenders and seeking to hold fintechs and their assignees liable for usury.

All too often, the law fails victims because it is placatory and unenforceable. The law fails to provide real support and redress when victims need it. Recent international attention has moved to consider the benefits of a victims’ law, one that provides for recognition, dignity and respect for victims by enhancing victim agency through a type of justice which is both substantive and enforceable. It aims to provide higher levels of transparency and accountability of public officials, including the police, prosecution and courts. Such a law builds upon previous attempts at enforceable rights by ascribing a more comprehensive human rights framework compatible with the fair trial process, by granting victims the right to be informed, present and heard within the investigative and trial process more broadly. This article will consider the feasibility of a victims’ law by examining what it offers the recently addressed or emerging forms of victimization. Three examples trending on the #victimslaw hashtag are selected for analysis—domestic and gendered violence; modern slavery and servitude; and coercive control, cyber-abuse and harm. The extent to which a victims’ law provides a meaningful way of ratifying international standards and norms against domestic law and policy is assessed against the needs of those most vulnerable victims of abuse and neglect.

Highly automated systems are becoming omnipresent. They range in function from self-driving vehicles to advanced medical diagnostics and afford many benefits. However, there are assurance challenges that have become increasingly visible in high-profile crashes and incidents. Governance of such systems is critical to garner widespread public trust. Governance principles have been previously proposed offering aspirational guidance to automated system developers; however, their implementation is often impractical given the excessive costs and processes required to enact and then enforce the principles. This Perspective, authored by an international and multidisciplinary team across government organizations, industry and academia, proposes a mechanism to drive widespread assurance of highly automated systems: independent audit. As proposed, independent audit of AI systems would embody three ‘AAA’ governance principles of prospective risk Assessments, operation Audit trails and system Adherence to jurisdictional requirements. Independent audit of AI systems serves as a pragmatic approach to an otherwise burdensome and unenforceable assurance challenge. As highly automated systems become pervasive in society, enforceable governance principles are needed to ensure safe deployment. This Perspective proposes a pragmatic approach where independent audit of AI systems is central. The framework would embody three AAA governance principles: prospective risk Assessments, operation Audit trails and system Adherence to jurisdictional requirements.

This paper documents the emergence of a large bank loan market in the absence of contracting institutions: the trusted assistant loan market in 19th century China. These loans were legally unenforceable, one-shot loans to poor scholars that funded the costs of assuming lucrative administrative appointments offering ample opportunities for corruption. The trusted assistant loan’s distinguishing feature was a legally unenforceable stipulation that the borrower incorporate an agent of the creditor into his administrative cadre. We model the enforcement of these loans through expertise leverage and test the model’s predictions using data from officials’ diaries and a bank loan book. JEL classifications:G21, O16, D86

The Philippine Sailfin Lizard (Agamidae: Hydrosaurus pustulatus) is a nationally protected Philippine endemic species. It is threatened by habitat destruction, pollution and overexploitation for the domestic pet trade, yet less is known about the international component of the trade. Here we investigate the international trade in Hydrosaurus spp. (H. weberi, H. amboinensis, and H. pustulatus) with an emphasis on H. pustulatus. We analysed international seizures combined with international online sales and trade data for the United States of America (USA). The export of H. pustulatus from the Philippines has been prohibited since 1991, except under special circumstances, yet they continue to be traded internationally, and we found evidence for trade in Asia, Europe, and North America. Most of these animals, however, were declared to be captive-bred. While imports to and exports from the US consisted mostly of other species of Hydrosaurus, H. pustulatus was by far the most coveted species online, with prices significantly higher for H. pustulatus than any of the other species. While not many seizures have occurred outside the Philippines, even wild-caught individuals were found to be ‘legally’ imported to the USA – in apparent violation of the Lacey Act. We recommend H. pustulatus to be listed in CITES Appendix III, in order for countries other than the USA to have a legal basis to seize wild-caught animals trafficked from the Philippines and to monitor trade in captive-bred specimens. Further, we suggest the use of automated cross-referencing between imported species and the national protection status of the species’ native range states to ensure that legislation violations are detected at the point of import.

Daily headlines stress the ways modern technologies disclose their most dystopian possibilities; this magazine is replete with examples of innovative technologies that prompt considerations of their unethical applications. Numerous approaches have already been proposed to advance critical thinking about the social, cultural, environmental, and economic implications of tech innovation, such as tech literacy and philosophy of technology. What these intellectual traditions have shown is that while the negative effects of technological innovations may be unprecedented, they can be foreseen, and, more importantly, mitigated through more intentional and skillful engineering. Nevertheless, systematic efforts to address these impacts remain peripheral to the engineering profession, with technological artifacts deemed value-neutral, and intervention often seen as luddite and unenforceable [1] . While this situation suggests a need for systemic changes across academic and industry contexts, it also points to an immediate need to address the uptake of critical thinking about the implications of tech innovation within the engineering community.

This article is a critique of selected issues of the Award handed down by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, referred to as “PCA” or “the Tribunal”, in the 2016 Philippines-China Arbitration. It points out that the Award was entirely in favour of the Philippines which had unilaterally initiated the arbitration; no regard whatsoever was paid to the position of China as expressed in various official Government documents. China refused to participate in the arbitration proceedings on the grounds that by written declaration it had withdrawn from the compulsory procedures for dispute resolution set out in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982 (UNCLOS). As such, China rejects the legal validity of the Award and has declared it to be unenforceable. In this article, the doctrinal research method is employed to carry out a comparative analysis of the opinion expressed by the Tribunal and the position adopted by China in terms of the interpretation and application of Article 298(1), in relation to China’s withdrawal from the procedures provided in Section 2 of Part XV. Since the publication of the Award, a significant amount of legal literature has been produced, much of which is supportive of the Award. This article presents an alternative viewpoint from a Chinese perspective. It is submitted in unison with the Chinese position that the Tribunal lacked jurisdiction to undertake the arbitration. The article selectively discusses the Chinese position based on China’s perception of historical title over the maritime features in the South China Sea and its view that the dispute concerns sovereignty over those maritime features which is outside the scope of UNCLOS. The article concludes that its aim is to underscore the need for an objective and unbiased approach to dispute resolution by tribunals in the field of international sea law and that the better way forward for both states is to continue negotiations.

Few topics in the law of contract have generated as much debate as determining the effects of contracts that infringe statutory or common-law rules. While South African law has in some respects adopted remarkably progressive positions in these debates, especially by displaying flexibility in determining when parties may claim restitution, it also still applies some constructs, rules or maxims in a manner that impedes determining the appropriate consequences of infringing rules or illegality. In this regard it is argued (i) that the concept of an ‘illegal contract’ should be treated with caution, since different commentators automatically link it to different consequences; (ii) that the continued reference to a construct styled the par delictum rule is not helpful when determining whether duties of restitution arise from these contracts; and (iii) that the ex turpi maxim creates the misleading impression that tainted contracts are invariably unenforceable, whereas the reality may be quite different.

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing is a growing phenomenon, fuelled by the notion that knowledge equals control. One ethical question that arises concerns the proband’s duty to share information indicating genetic risks in their relatives. However, such duties are unenforceable and may result in the realisation of anticipated harm to relatives. We argue for a shift in responsibility from proband to provider, placing a duty on test providers in the event of identified actionable risks to relatives. Starting from Parker and Lucassen’s (2004) 'joint account model', we adapt Kilbride’s (2018) application of the rule of rescue and balance it against the relative’s right not to know, placing responsibility on the providers of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Where the risk of disease to a relative is actionable, we argue providers ought to share results even in the face of the proband’s objections. Confidentiality issues are navigated by a pre-emptive consent model, whereby consumers agree to the sharing of certain information with their relatives ahead of testing and as a condition of testing. When a relative is informed, the proband’s privacy is protected by maximal deidentification, and the rights of the relative are met by a stepwise approach to informing that allows them to decide how much information they receive.

Do contracts influence behavior independent of the law governing their enforceability? We explore this question in the context of employment noncompetes using nationally representative data for 11,500 labor force participants. We show that noncompetes are associated with reductions in employee mobility and changes in the direction of that mobility (i.e., toward noncompetitors) in both states that do and do not enforce noncompetes. Decomposing mobility into job offer generation and acceptance, we detect no evidence of differences in job search, recruitment, or offer activity associated with noncompetes. Rather, we find that employees with noncompetes—even in states that do not enforce them—frequently point to their noncompete as an important reason for declining offers from competitors. Our data further show that these employees’ beliefs about the likelihood of a lawsuit or legal enforcement are important predictors of their citing a noncompete as a factor in their decision to decline competitor offers.

Basically the International Humanitarian Law regime is to prevent armed conflicts and war crime, considering the catastrophic effects of wars generally. This laudable objective clearly underscored the kind of optimism most states expressed on this noble cause. In the contrary, a study of International Humanitarian Law regime over the years has left scholars more critical. This has led to divergent views about who it protects and how. While some studies questioned its evolution to be Eurocentric, some others faulted it to be unviable, non-coercive and unenforceable. This paper constitutes a scholarship on these studies and it contends that, the international humanitarian law is a branch of public international law that deals with humanitarian interventions in wartime and war crimes. The legal framework of the international humanitarian law is rooted in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The missing link is that, the critics of the international humanitarian law based their argument on the operations of the judicial organ of the international humanitarian law, the International Criminal Court. The critics had seen the Court as a coercive tool in the hands of the western countries to witch-hunt African leaders. However, the operations of the Court should not be used as a premise to diminish the legality of the law to protect its legal personality as provided for in the Conventions. And it does not in any way invalidate the international humanitarian law of being law. This is the angle that this paper stands differently from the previous studies.

In September 2019, the en banc Fifth Circuit in Collins held that the FHFA, which oversees the operations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, exceeded its powers in entering into arrangement for financing with the Treasury Department. It further held that the FHFA’s structure is unconstitutional. With this case, the Fifth Circuit split from five other circuits and has cast uncertainty into the future of the FHFA, while simultaneously offering further possibility of investor recovery. After a January 2020 initial conference, the Supreme Court neither granted nor denied the parties’ appeals to hear the case. Concurrently, the Supreme Court is reviewing the constitutionality of the CFPB, a similarly structured agency to the FHFA. With a circuit split and the possibility of certiorari still pending for Collins, this case may still come before the Supreme Court, which would definitively rule on the constitutional status of the FHFA and the statutory claims. TOPICS:Legal/regulatory/public policy, exchanges/markets/clearinghouses, information providers/credit ratings, financial crises and financial market history Key Findings • If certiorari is granted and this case goes before the Supreme Court, it is uncertain whether the FHFA, which oversees the two biggest players in the RMBS sphere, will be allowed to operate. • Other independent agencies such as the CFPB that are structured in a similar way as the FHFA and may also not be constitutional in their current structure and previous actions taken by these agencies dating back to their inception may be unenforceable. • Investors chances of further recovery against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac post-crisis are uncertain until the issue of the Treasury Sweep, an agreement between the FHFA and the Treasury Department funneling Fannie and Freddie’s profits to the Treasury, is resolved. Remedies for investors who have been affected by the Treasury Sweep are uncertain.

The Strata Management Act 2013 (Act 757) and the Strata Titles Act 1985 (Act 318) confer broad powers on strata communities to self-manage and self-regulate through body corporates (termed Strata Management Bodies). The policy behind these legislations promotes maximum autonomy and self-regulatory powers for Strata Management Bodies to, through their internal rule-making and decision-making processes, govern themselves in ways that best suit their needs and interests. Consequently, judicial and administrative recognition of Strata Management Bodies’ autonomy has left a lacuna of matters which are not justiciable by the Courts and/or the Strata Management Tribunal. This adversely affects homeowners’ ability to access substantive justice. This article, through doctrinal analyses of key Malaysian and Western Australian cases, sheds light on a selection of strata disputes illustrating the inadequacies of the law on strata title and strata management, and the lack of enforceable standards of good management practices. The article also explores how the apathetic application of general principles of company law to strata management bodies has left a lacuna of non-justiciability. Consequently, this article argues the case for strata law reform. It advocates for law reform that promulgate standards, rules and rights of good strata management as enforceable law, rather than mere general, high-level, unenforceable and unjusticiable principles.

This article focuses on the ways in which investment tribunals constituted under intra- EU BITS and the Energy Charter Treaty (in an intra-EU dispute) have reacted to the Court of Justice’s Achmea judgment of 6 March 2018. The first part of the article maps out the existing intra-EU arbitrations in which the issues arising from Achmea appear in one form or another. We then take a critical look at how the disputing parties have used Achmea in their argumentation and how the investment tribunals have dismissed these arguments and upheld their jurisdiction. The second part of the article is analytical. When the tribunals uphold their jurisdiction and decide on the merits, they knowingly deliver an award, which is unenforceable in the Respondent State and the entirety of the EU. By drawing parallels with decisions rendered by other international tribunals, we argue that the rendering of potentially unenforceable awards is not specific to intra-EU investment disputes. We then look at why international tribunals render potentially unenforceable awards. The third part of the article presents several suggestions of how intra-EU investment tribunals should tackle the Achmea conundrum, either by declining their jurisdiction pursuant to judicial comity or upholding their jurisdiction but dismissing the cases as inadmissible.

Rights are relationships in which the rightsholder is categorically entitled to be left alone (prerogative), to demand some kind of good or performance (claim), to be able to change the status of another (power), or to be exempt from others’ powers (immunity). Looked at ethically, rights are difficult to ground. In the real world, assertions of right tend to be based on specifics of relationships and of the type of situation involved. The existence of an ethical right is often controversial, and is unenforceable in any event. The almost infinite panoply of putative ethical rights-relationships must be reduced to legal rights. Legal rights are limited, written, enforceable, and have no justification except the legitimacy of the government that imposes and seeks to enforce them. Ethically-derived rights cannot serve as a theoretical basis for child welfare. Legal approaches generally prioritize children’s beneficent interests over their abstract rights. Among the putative rights that laws tend to deemphasize, at least in the US, is a presumed right to autonomy. Autonomy is a cluster concept that includes independence from others, choice, authenticity, etc. Empirical studies suggest that most people prioritize relationships, security, and (to a point) material well-being over autonomy. This is in contrast to much philosophical speculation. Furthermore, attention to child autonomy is often a pretext for supplanting parental values. Thus, I reject concern for autonomy as a prominent feature in settling parent-state disputes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a major problem that has been neglected for a long time for various reasons - proper ventilation of indoor spaces in public buildings, schools, the industry, but also in households. The national legislation of developed countries usually sets some ventilation requirements but their parameters often differ and, most importantly, they are practically unenforceable in everyday life. According to the WHO, the majority of the population of European countries spends up to 90% of their time indoors, which, by the way, significantly contributed to the massive spread of the disease, transmitted mainly by inhalation of aerosols containing the Covid-19 virus. Our paper aims to describe the current state of legislation on indoor environment quality, with some studies dealing with population behavior and its impact on their health. Another goal of our paper is to describe a method that can detect the air exchange quality in a building and predict development of an indoor environment in order to be able to take appropriate measures well in advance, either by technical means of forced ventilation or by conventional methods of manual ventilation. In the future, timely and adequate ventilation should not only be one of the important ways to reduce spreading of respiratory diseases in the population but also, more generally, an important way to increase the quality of life and health of the European population.

Net outcome‐type biodiversity policies are proliferating globally as perceived mechanisms to reconcile economic development and conservation objectives. The UK government's Environment Bill will mandate that most new developments in England demonstrate that they deliver a biodiversity net gain (BNG) to receive planning permission, representing the most wide‐ranging net outcome type policy globally. However, as with many nascent net‐outcome policies, the likely outcomes of mandatory BNG have not been explored empirically. We assemble all BNG assessments (accounting for ∼6% of England's annual housebuilding and other infrastructure) submitted from January 2020 to February 2021 in six early‐adopter councils who are implementing mandatory no net loss or BNG requirements in advance of the national adoption of mandatory BNG, and analyze the aggregate habitat changes proposed. Our sample is associated with a 34% reduction in the area of nonurban habitats, generally compensated by commitments to deliver smaller areas of higher quality habitat years later in the development project cycle. Ninety‐five percent of biodiversity units delivered in our sample come from habitats within or directly‐adjacent to the development footprint managed by the developers. However, we find that these gains fall within a governance gap whereby they risk being unenforceable, a challenge that is shared with other net outcome type policies implemented internationally.

Internal migration in India is estimated to be at around 100 million people and short-term seasonal migration for work is estimated to vary between 80 and 140 million. Employers may benefit from the increase in the supply of labour, and middle-class households may benefit from the lower price of household services provided by the migrants and their families. Local residents with comparable skills to those of migrants may find that they have to compete for jobs in the labour market. Many regions implicitly differentially prioritize the interests of local residents and of migrants whilst filling vacant jobs, resulting in a tradeoff between welfare rights and openness to migration. Migrants take into account the tradeoffs of poor working conditions and unwritten and unenforceable contracts, with the higher income in the destination region, and all considered migrate. We provide a framework for understanding this socio-economic outcome. In many urban contexts, migrants and other low-skilled workers gather at some focal point such as a busy market place or crossroad in the morning and meet with potential employers who negotiate the type of work to be performed, the wage, and the number of hours that the worker has to work. Surprisingly, there has been a paucity of research on the employer–employee match in the daily urban casual labour market. Working days are usually long—between 12 and 14 h in many instances—and the wage and working conditions are usually negotiated. The market wherein the bargain takes place is a flexible labour market where workers can be replaced by the employer at a minimal cost to the employer. In most of such contracts workers report that they have been cheated and face harassment. The requirements for complete contracting are severe in this market. It is difficult ex ante to specify what constitutes a satisfactory performance of the contract (as it is difficult to record and measure performance), and accordingly, it is difficult to enforce the contract via a third party. This leads to opportunism as the employer holds up the worker by requiring further responsibilities such as longer hours of work to be undertaken that were not negotiated in the first place. We postulate a bargaining approach to unearth the role of regulation and the determination of wages and work conditions in the informal casual labour market.

The furniture industry is considered one of the important industries in Egypt, which includes many complementary industries, and enter into the furniture industry many different raw materials, which vary in the methods of formation and assembly methods influenced by their physical, chemical and mechanical ....., so was the analysis of the general characteristics For different materials is the goal to solve the problem of lack of knowledge of how to deal with raw materials, by creating a database that helps the designer to choose the appropriate material for the operating environment and the effort on it, and determine the extent homogeneity between different materials and the appropriate combination between them through the convergence of the values of common characteristics, as in the use of platinum metal in the welding of glass, in order to achieve innovation and diversity in design and implementation, and achieve the highest quality of the product. .Study Significance: study significance the study significance lay attempt to handle a factual problem in the field of scientific that appear in not knowing knowledge of the physical and mechanical properties of local furniture-making materials, resulting in unenforceable designs, or designs lacking operational quality. .Objectives:Determine the physical and mechanical properties of the most important local materials employable in the furniture industry, and the mechanism of their impact on design, functional and aesthetic. Methodology:The research follows the applied analytical descriptive, where accurate analysis of the physical, mechanical properties of the raw materials and their impact on the quality of operation of the product. Results :By studying the general characteristics of the raw materials, it was possible to identify a group of properties, through which the selection of the appropriate material for the performance of the function of the vertical and horizontal loads, and to suit the surrounding environmental conditions (dry, humid, acidic, alkaline. ..), which achieves the quality of the product.- it was possible to know the homogeneity between the different ores and the appropriateness of combining them through the convergence of the values of the common properties.- we were identified properties affecting the formation processes of materials that can be manufactured, which helps in determining the appropriate material for the design

Egypt is a country renowned for its immense diversity of cultural heritage which has always been struggling with the multivariate impacts of illicit trafficking of artifacts and cultural objects, illegal excavations, pillaging of archaeological sites, and destruction of historical monuments and buildings. The aftermath of the Egyptian revolutions of 2011 and 2013, represented in the political unrest, the unenforceable laws and regulations, the dispersal of the police forces and the lack of governmental funding, has ultimately exacerbated this threat. Despite the exerted governmental efforts in combating illicit trafficking of cultural property on national and international levels, theft, looting, and illegal export remain constant hazards. The major objective of this article is to address the different aspects of the current inherent challenges that impede the implementation of an effective strategy for protecting and safeguarding the Egyptian cultural heritage from illicit trafficking. Moreover, it clarifies the focal key actions for the adoption of safeguarding measures, procedures and standards, while highlighting the necessary precautions needed for achieving the optimal protection for the Egyptian cultural property.

Existing approaches to campaign ethics fail to adequately account for the “arms races” incited by competitive incentives in the absence of effective sanctions for destructive behaviors. By recommending scrupulous devotion to unenforceable norms of honesty, these approaches require ethical candidates either to quit or lose. To better understand the complex dilemmas faced by candidates, therefore, we turn first to the tradition of “adversarial ethics,” which aims to enable ethical participants to compete while preventing the most destructive excesses of competition. As we demonstrate, however, elections present even more difficult challenges than other adversarial contexts, because no centralized regulation is available to halt potential arms races. Turning next to recent scholarship on populism and partisanship, we articulate an alternative framework for campaign ethics, which allows candidates greater room to maneuver in their appeals to democratic populations while nevertheless requiring adherence to norms of social and political pluralism.

This article considers the legal efficacy of terms found in the end-user licences (EULAs) of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). The article focuses on selected terms in the EULAs of well-known MMORPGs, Everquest and Runescape as well as a more recent MMORPG, Path of Exile. Although there are many examples of inappropriate and unenforceable terms in EULAs, computer games provide a particularly salient example. Eager for access to a game, players accept the EULA without question and, unaware of their rights or keen to avoid costly litigation, rarely challenge the terms. Given the value of the games industry to the international economy, the article recommends that international guidance for EULA content is needed.

“Nawacita” and Constitutional Law needs to be a legal approach to make improvements to the legal system, in order to encourage enforcement of the law with justice, then at least have to involve three pillars consisting of: (1) the substantive law (legal substance), which include legislative reform; (2) legal structure (law structure), including human resources law-enforcement officers (human resource), entered in it anyway coordination among law enforcement officers; and (3) the legal culture (legal culture), both culture and public law enforcement officers or citizens in general. Then, constitutional law and can be answered correctly, can be practiced within their Constitutional Act and may be unenforceable government in running the government. The key factor to keep in mind, eliminating egosektoral government agencies. Do not stop until the Act, a similar effort was also made to the laws which are in the executive area, such as government regulations, a presidential decree and ministerial regulation

The professional regulation of U.S. prosecutors is primarily the responsibility of state judiciaries, which regulate all attorneys, including prosecutors, through the adoption and interpretation of professional conduct rules and by enforcing these rules in the attorney discipline process. Although Bar associations have no formal role in regulating prosecutors, they wield informal influence by drafting and interpreting the professional conduct rules that state judiciaries adopt and by publishing standards that offer guidance to prosecutors. Ultimately, professional regulation has limited practical significance for U.S. prosecutors because many professional conduct rules are inapplicable or minimally applicable to their work, and because those rules that do apply (such as those governing attorneys’ advocacy) are uncontroversial and largely coextensive with constitutional law and other law governing prosecutorial misconduct. The rules do not significantly address prosecutors’ charging and plea bargaining decisions—controversial areas of practice relegated to prosecutorial discretion—and do not codify some professional expectations, such as those regarding prosecutors’ heightened duty of candor, that are expressed in court decisions and in unenforceable guidelines. Occasionally, the Bar has tried to persuade courts to adopt more demanding rules for prosecutors or to interpret existing rules more demandingly. Prosecutors have generally opposed these efforts, which have achieved limited success while exacerbating tensions between prosecutors and the Bar. Consequently, professional conduct rules do not fully capture the conventional understanding that prosecutors have a unique professional role that gives rise to different and, in some respects, more demanding professional obligations than those of other lawyers. The professional conduct rules have only limited influence and do not constrain some of prosecutors’ most controversial and troublesome decisions and behaviors.

The research predicts which public school teachers are likely to resign their union membership since agency fees were found unconstitutional in Janus v. AFSCME. We compare teachers in right-to-work states with comprehensive collective bargaining laws with teachers in former agency shop states, using unique district-teacher matched data constructed from the School and Staffing Survey. We find that teachers who are male, Hispanic, part-time, with alternative certification, work either in charter schools or in schools with more students qualifying for free lunches are more likely to become nonunion. Teachers who are black, work under a collective bargaining, have post-graduate degrees, are more experienced, work in larger schools or in areas with a higher cost of living, perceive more school problems or a poor school climate, work in an elementary school, or teach special education are more likely to remain union members now that agency shop provisions are unenforceable.

El objetivo de este estudio fue el efecto del tiempo desconocido sobre el compromiso en la ley iraní y los documentos internacionales. Lo cual se ha hecho en un método de biblioteca y mediante la revisión de los documentos. Sin embargo, es razonable que la implementación del compromiso en tales circunstancias en documentos internacionales sea razonable y estándar. Para documentos internacionales: el artículo 33 de la Convención de las Naciones Unidas sobre la Compraventa Internacional de Mercaderías (CISG), los Contratos de Comercio Internacional (UPICC), el artículo 107-27 de la Ley de Tratados Europeos (PECL) y el artículo 102-22 del Marco Común de DCFR de Referencia). Después de concluir el contrato, considerando todos sus términos y condiciones esenciales, por cualquier motivo, de manera deliberada o involuntaria, una de las partes puede negarse a ejecutar el contrato con el pretexto de que el contrato es inaplicable y la ley civil parece silenciosa. Lo hace, y no hay una solución explícita para nuestro derecho civil, a pesar de lo estipulado en documentos internacionales.

The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastruc-ture maintained by intermediaries. Consumers entrust their photos to Apple instead of scrap-books; businesses put their documents on Amazon’s servers instead of in file cabinets; seemingly everything runs in the cloud. Were these belongings tangible, the relationship between owner and intermediary would be governed by the common-law doctrine of bailment. Bailments are mandatory relationships formed when one party entrusts their property to another. Within this relationship, the bailees owe the bailors a duty of care and may be liable if they failed to return the property. The parties can use contract to customize the relationship but not to disclaim entirely. Tracing the law of bailment relationships from its ancient roots to the present, this Article argues that cloud storage should be understood as creating a bailment relationship. The law of bailment, though developed in the Middle Ages, provides a robust framework for govern-ing twenty-first century electronic intermediaries. Though the kind of stored property has changed, the parties’ expectations and incentives have not. Yet the decline of litigation, the rise of arbitration, federal diversity jurisdiction, and the ever-growing dominance of contract has thus far prevented courts from applying the law of bailments to these new services. Recognizing cloud storage as a bailment would have significant implications. Most immedi-ately, it would suggest that important provisions in many cloud storage services’ contracts are unenforceable. A hand-collected dataset of 61 cloud storage contracts, reveals that most have include general disclaimers for any liability for lost data. These disclaimers are inconsistent with the duty of care that is the foundation of the law of bailment. In addition, understand-ing cloud storage as a bailment would have important implications for both the law of con-sumer protection and Fourth Amendment protections.

Background: The article refers to the consequences of introducing limitation of the taxpayer’s liability to general tax law in cases of understating or not reporting the tax base by the paying agent. Research purpose: The aim of the article is to define the structure of the taxpayer’s liability in connection with limiting their liability to the amount of advances not collected by the paying agent, as well as to define the legal nature of this limitation. The author also assesses the impact of limiting the taxpayer’s liability on the liability of the entity that maybe held liable for tax arrears as a third person, and also analyzes the relations between taxpayers and paying agents in the light of the provisions on unjust enrichment. Methods: The research in the article was carried out on the basis of dogmatic and theoretical methods. Conclusions: The limit on the taxpayer’s liability in the case of understating (not reporting) of the tax base by the paying agent does not lead to the formation of the tax liability as a natural obligation. In the structure of the taxpayer’s liability the debt stays unlimited, which means that the tax payment is fully due and effective, and does not result in a tax overpayment. It also means that the tax author­ity cannot issue a decision about the third person’s liability within limits wider than the limit of the taxpayer’s liability. The decision issued in a broader scope would be unenforceable. The paying agent who covers a part of tax that the taxpayer is indebted for does not acquire a claim under the provisions on unjust enrichment.

This memo explores how state law may render many ISA companies’ contracts unenforceable, and how the continued servicing of voided debts may amount to a violation of state and federal law. As the memo discusses, this finding may have far-reaching legal consequences for the growing share of the student loan industry involved in ISA servicing. Because they meet the definition of loans, ISAs must comply with various state and federal consumer protection statutes and regulations. An SBPC investigation reveals that various ISA providers may be violating many of these state laws, including state usury and licensing statutes, and that violations along these lines often render consumer debts void. The SBPC’s analysis indicates that state and federal law enforcement agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau already have the capability to hold companies accountable for servicing unenforceable debt.

Contractual clauses like FIDIC’s notice requirement for contractor’s claims has long been perceived to be unenforceable under Indian law, being hit by Section 28(b) of the Indian Contract Act 1872. However, a deeper appreciation of this theme shows something else. It requires an examination of the historical development of Section 28(b) and the surrounding judicial precedents. In light of this, it requires to be seen how/in what way a FIDIC Redbook’s notice requirement (noting its consequence and purpose) falls outside the scope of Section 28(b) of the Contract Act. The issue remains to be finally settled by Indian courts.

China is the world’s largest official creditor, but basic facts are lacking about the terms and conditions of its lending. Very few contracts between Chinese lenders and their government borrowers have ever been published or studied. This paper is the first systematic analysis of the legal terms of China’s foreign lending. The authors collect and analyze 100 contracts between Chinese state-owned entities and government borrowers in 24 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Oceania, and compare them with those of other bilateral, multilateral, and commercial creditors. Three main insights emerge. First, the Chinese contracts contain unusual confidentiality clauses that bar borrowers from revealing the terms or even the existence of the debt. Second, Chinese lenders seek advantage over other creditors, using collateral arrangements such as lender-controlled revenue accounts and promises to keep the debt out of collective restructuring (“no Paris Club” clauses). Third, cancellation, acceleration, and stabilization clauses in Chinese contracts potentially allow the lenders to influence debtors’ domestic and foreign policies. Even if these terms were unenforceable in court, the mix of confidentiality, seniority, and policy influence could limit the sovereign debtor’s crisis management options and complicate debt renegotiation. Overall, the contracts use creative design to manage credit risks and overcome enforcement hurdles, presenting China as a muscular and commercially savvy lender to the developing world.

Until recently, Nigeria did not have a robust Corporate Insolvency law regime. Fortunately, efforts were made recently to broaden the country’s Insolvency law with the enactment of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, 2020 (“CAMA 2020”). CAMA 2020 is essentially an amendment of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, 1990 (“CAMA 1990”) and is designed to update Nigeria’s Corporate and Insolvency law in conformance with global best practices. How well the Insolvency law provisions introduced by CAMA 2020 align with global best practices and whether they go far enough in addressing current insolvency problems in Nigeria remain to be seen. However, there is no denying the fact that the Insolvency provisions in CAMA 2020 are a significant upgrade of the rudimentary insolvency rules contained in CAMA 1990. One of the novel insolvency rules introduced in Nigeria by CAMA 2020 is contained in section 665 of the Act. Section 665(2) forbids a supplier of certain essential supplies (namely: water, gas, electricity and communication services) from making the provision of such essential supplies conditional on payment of outstanding charges owed the supplier by an insolvent company. The prohibition applies only where an insolvent company owes the supplier charges on supplies made to the insolvent company before the insolvent company entered administration or before it went into liquidation or before a voluntary arrangement took effect with respect to the said company or before a provisional liquidator was appointed (“pre-insolvency debt”). Section 665(2)(a) however permits a supplier of the above-mentioned essential supplies to make it a condition for the supply of the above-mentioned utility services to an insolvent company that the officeholder personally guarantees the payment for the supply of the above-mentioned utility services . As I will explain in greater depth in paragraph 2.1 of this paper, Section 665 is designed to prevent creditors who provide essential goods and services to insolvent companies from undermining efforts to restore insolvent companies to profitable trading. It is also designed to prevent creditors who provide essential goods and services to insolvent companies from jumping ahead of the queue to get paid by the insolvent before other creditors in breach of the law. I will argue in this paper that section 665 is deficient and may well be incapable of achieving its intended objectives. I will further contend that there ought to be a provision in CAMA 2020 that renders ipso facto clauses unenforceable. I will also make the case that the narrow scope of section 665 and the lack of a provision in CAMA 2020 which would make ipso facto clauses unenforceable are not in sync with modern trends in corporate insolvency law in other common law jurisdictions like the U.K, Australia, Canada, Singapore and the U.S

Over the past two decades, digital piracy has wreaked havoc on the music industry, with industry revenues falling over 60% between 1999 and 2009. Despite rising income from streaming services, total revenues (in real dollars) today remain well-below their historic peaks. Adding misery to an already challenging situation, the Covid pandemic has decimated musicians’ ability to earn income from live performances. In California, legislation has been proposed which supporters claim will help these struggling recording artists by strengthening their position in negotiations with record labels. Economic analysis suggests otherwise. California Assembly Bill AB-1385 makes contracts between labels and recording artists nearly unenforceable, reducing the incentive for record labels to invest in recording artists—especially for new recording artists and recording artists serving less-popular genres—thus reducing recording artists’ income. Statutory limits on the exercise of options likewise reduce recording artists’ income. We expect AB-1385, if passed, to lead to a sizable contraction in the music business in California, as both record labels and recording artists are incented move to states where meaningful, voluntary contracts may be crafted and enforced.

This paper assesses the content, role, and adaptability of subjective beliefs about contract enforceability in the context of postemployment covenants not to compete (“noncompetes”). We show that employees of all stripes tend to believe that their noncompetes are enforceable, even when they are not. We provide evidence in support of both supply- and demand-side stories that explain employees’ persistently inaccurate beliefs. Moreover, we show that mistaken beliefs are not innocuous. Rather, believing that unenforceable noncompetes are enforceable causes employees to forgo better job options and to perceive that their employer is more likely to take legal action against them if they choose to compete. However, despite mobility-reducing effects ex post, we find no evidence that mistakenly believing that a noncompete is enforceable causes employees to be more likely to negotiate over such provisions ex ante. Finally, we use an information experiment to simulate an educational campaign that informs employees about the enforceability (or lack thereof) of their noncompete. We find that this information matters a good deal to employee beliefs and prospective behavior; however, information alone does not appear to entirely eliminate an unenforceable noncompete as a factor in the decision whether to take a new job. We discuss the implications of our experimental results for policy debate regarding the enforceability of noncompetes.

On November 3, 2020, voters in the state of Alabama approved the opaquely named “Authorize Legislature to Recompile the State Constitution Measure.” As described by the state’s Fair Ballot Commission, the ballot measure would permit the Alabama legislature to “(1) remove racist language” and “(2) remove language that is repeated or no longer applies,” among other things. The racist language in question? In one portion, the constitution still prescribed that “separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children.” Another section, though technically repealed by another amendment in 2000, remained in place memorializing that the “legislature shall never pass any law to authorize or legalize any marriage between any white person and a negro, or descendant of a negro.” Though both these provisions were deemed unenforceable under the federal Constitution following blockbuster Supreme Court decisions, the provisions remained on the books. And even in 2020, the measure to eliminate this language passed only by a margin of 67% to 33%. Proposals to remove the language had twice failed since the year 2000—although the vocal opponents of those proposals objected allegedly not to preserve the language itself, but rather on the grounds that revising the language would have various unintended consequences for taxation or school funding. Alabama’s language may have lasted longest, but many other state constitutions contained similar provisions well into recent history. Today’s state constitutions remain full of sections that can be characterized as “zombie provisions”—clearly or arguably unenforceable clauses and amendments that stick with us, toward sometimes unclear effect and with potentially harmful consequences. The “zombie” phenomenon is becoming more well known in an adjacent context, although zombie-ism appears with (perhaps alarming) frequency in different strands of legal scholarship. Pertinent for our purposes, both judges and scholars have used the term “zombie laws” or “zombie statutes” to describe legislation rendered unenforceable by a constitutional decision or other laws, but that nevertheless “remain[s] on the books.” Even more recently, several scholars have identified judicial opinions as another area pervaded by the undead. Despite widespread rejection of disturbing precedents on topics ranging from slavery to women’s rights, these “artifacts from morally unrecognizable eras” persist and resurface in modern case law, raising questions about whether they should ever have precedential value, the harms continued invocation of these decisions may perpetuate, and how and whether courts should repudiate them. This Essay canvasses the zombie phenomenon in modern state constitutions. Although there are strong parallels to zombie legislation, state constitutions deserve their own treatment. To be sure, in many cases, subject matter addressed in one state’s code can be found in a different state’s constitution, like the multitude of amendments in Alabama’s constitution governing the playing of bingo games in various counties. And like statutes, direct democratic participation shapes the content of many state constitutional provisions. But as sources of law, state constitutions exist somewhere on a spectrum, with statutes at one pole and the federal Constitution on the other. As constitutions, these state documents are meant to apply for long durations and are subject to particular amendment procedures, making them more resistant to change than the average statute (though certainly not as fixed as the federal Constitution). These similarities and differences merit separate discussion of the zombie provisions of state constitutions and what, if anything, should be done about them. This Essay proceeds in three parts. First, it uses the state constitutions to examine the ambiguities in what counts as a “zombie,” identifying both core and more peripheral cases, as well as some constitutional provisions that do not quite qualify as zombies but nonetheless seem potentially worrisome. Next, it considers the harms that zombie provisions may cause, exploring these harms alongside those identified in related contexts ranging from covenants running with land to unenforceable or unenforced statutes. The final Part considers in detail both the arguments for and against removal and the different methods by which zombie provisions might be rejected or removed. Since 2020, there have been several efforts in individual states to remove currently unenforceable state constitutional provisions. This Essay is thus a timely exploration of what makes these provisions problematic as well as some of the nuanced and difficult questions involved in any decision to neutralize them.

We offer the first large scale descriptive study of residential leases, based on a dataset of ~170,000 residential leases filed in support of over ~200,000 Philadelphia eviction proceedings from 2005 through 2019. These leases are highly likely to contain unenforceable terms, and their pro-landlord tilt has increased sharply over time. Matching leases with individual tenant characteristics, we show that unlawful terms are surprisingly likely to be associated with more expensive leaseholds in richer, whiter parts of the city. This result is linked to landlords' growing adoption of shared forms, originally created by non-profit landlord associations, and more recently available online for a nominal fee. Generally, such shared form leases contain worse rules for tenants than the proprietary leases they replace. Over time, it has become easier and cheaper for landlords to adopt such common forms, meaning that access to justice for landlords strips tenants of rights. We observe few within landlord effects: rather, property owners specialize in particular areas in the city. This specialization leads black tenants to be more susceptible to eviction based on crime or drug use on the premises, an effect concentrated in whiter neighborhoods. Our results offer a significant advance in the empirical study of consumer contracting, building the field by examining individual differences in adherents, geography-effects, information costs and time trends.

The legal aspects of circular economy have until recently been subject to only minimal analysis. This is partly due to the absence of specific legal frameworks; what does exist has been exhortatory and ultimately unenforceable. Moves towards imposing legal obligations are growing, and thus the need for deep and broad legal analysis becomes imperative. This chapter outlines some of the legal issues that will need to be considered in any moves towards circular economy. There is a focus on the importance of property and ownership, as well as a critical examination of the limited extent of academic work in this area. The need to reduce and remove potential contradictions between different legal regimes is highlighted.

The dramatic revelations of the #MeToo movement have ex- posed the extent to which workplace sexual harassment is en- demic and concealed across different industries. #MeToo has also shed light on the use of non-disclosure agreements (“NDAs”) by harassers to conceal their pattern of repeated mis- conduct. While there has been strong public condemnation of NDAs in the wake of the #MeToo movement, there is limited case law on the question of whether contracts such as NDAs are legally enforceable when used to settle claims of sexual har- assment that do not amount to criminal conduct. While federal and state legislatures continue to debate the benefits of legislating against such agreements, this Note ana- lyzes the viability of the common law public policy analysis to hold such NDAs unenforceable. Given that most states do not have specific statutes directly addressing sexual harassment NDAs, courts should look to a broad range of state legislation as relevant in considering the public policy interests counseling toward finding such NDAs unenforceable. Accordingly, this Note analyzes public policy considerations derived from three types of state law: restrictions on the use of NDAs in instances of sexual harassment, prohibitions of workplace harassment, and limitations on the concealment of public hazards. Even in states without any such legislation, this Note urges state courts, when determining whether to enforce sexual har- assment NDAs, to more actively weigh the benefits of enforcing the contractual will of private parties against potential harms to the public welfare. Workplace sexual harassment is a public policy issue that is worsened by the continued use of NDAs. In concealing workplace sexual misconduct, NDAs prevent soci- ety, through private and state actors, from addressing the problem itself and threaten public safety and welfare by allow- ing offenders to potentially harm future workers. Without NDAs as protection, companies will be exposed to reputational damage and potential shareholder litigation when sexual har- assment news becomes public knowledge. Indeed, this threat of future reputational harm could be an effective way to encour- age corporations to change their internal policies relating to workplace misconduct.

In April 2020, the United Kingdom Supreme Court upheld compensation for a woman whose negligent medical care had left her dependent on surrogate motherhood (SM) to have a family, even though SM might be by lawful commercial services in California, USA. Paid SM is criminal in the UK. Altruistic SM arrangements are legal, but unenforceable. The trial judge felt bound by precedent to disallow compensation for lawful commercial SM abroad, as contrary to public policy. The Court of Appeal reversed this ruling, since public policy is not immutable, and had changed. The Supreme Court agreed, acknowledging an evolution in popular attitudes concerning what a family is, and how it might be formed. Government policy was observed to accommodate SM in suitable cases. Movement was perceived towards legislative reform, and judicial recognition of paid SM arrangements abroad that are not exploitative or abusive of surrogates, commissioning parents, or resulting children was considered appropriate.

On December 10, 2019, the World Trade Organization (WTO) lurched into a crisis when its Appellate Body became paralyzed due to actions of the Trump Administration. Obligations under the WTO agreements are now effectively unenforceable, threatening the collapse of the WTO itself. There is no viable path forward for the WTO to restore the Appellate Body to its full powers without the agreement of the United States. A study of current U.S. trade policy, however, indicates that such an agreement is likely not forthcoming or that U.S. demands to end the crisis will be too high a price to pay. The Trump Administration has adopted a doctrine of U.S. trade infallibility, which holds that in any trade dispute in or outside of the WTO, the United States is always right and should always win. The United States will ignore and heap scorn on any WTO decisions that it loses and will recognize and lavish praise on those that it wins. The United States claims the right to enforce U.S. trade remedies against any nation without regard to WTO law or international law. The United States prefers bilateral negotiations to the multilateral negotiations supported by the WTO. The doctrine of U.S. trade infallibility is an extreme form of nationalism, which is fundamentally incompatible with the multilateralism of the WTO. The crisis in the WTO might mark the end of the high tide of multilateralism as a global norm. Instead, a dangerous new era of vicious nationalism may be emerging in which nations pursue their own interests at the expense of others and create the conditions for global conflict. Only a new round of multilateral negotiations among all WTO members focused on the dispute settlement system can save the Appellate Body and the WTO itself.

Forum selection clauses are a staple of modern business law. Parties agree, ex ante, on where they can sue one another and then rely on the courts to enforce these agreements. Although the number of contracts containing forum selection clauses has skyrocketed in recent years, there is a dearth of empirical information about enforcement practice at the state level. Are there any states that refuse to enforce them? How frequently are they enforced? Under what circumstances, if any, will these clauses be deemed unenforceable? The existing literature provides few answers to these questions. This Article aims to fill that gap. It surveys more than 200 state statutes and nearly 900 state cases involving outbound forum selection clauses to contribute to the scholarly discussion in two important ways. First, it provides a much needed, and heretofore missing, empirical account of when outbound forum selection clauses will be enforced in state courts. Second, the Article offers a rich descriptive account of why outbound forum selection clauses sometimes go unenforced. It shows that state courts generally refuse to enforce these clauses for one of two reasons: 1) they are contrary to public policy; or 2) they are unreasonable, a famously malleable term that encompasses a relatively stable subset of reasons. The data presented in this Article offers important insights to actors who interact with outbound forum selection clauses on a regular basis—litigators, judges, and scholars. Armed with this information, litigators can take care to avoid pitfalls that may result in a clause being deemed unenforceable. Judges can gain a better sense for how their colleagues in other states address the myriad challenges posed by these clauses. And scholars can draw upon this data to evaluate whether there exists a difference between state and federal practice in this area and, if so, whether this difference presents a problem under the Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins.

This Article considers the issue of post-adoption contact agreements (PACAs). PACAs are agreements between birth parents and adoptive parents, negotiated pre-adoption, that define the types and frequency of contacts that the birth parents will have with a child after the adoption is final. Most private adoptions of infants in the United States are now open, and birth parents choose the adoptive parents in most of these open adoptions. About two-thirds of these adoptions include the negotiation and execution of a PACA. PACAs are generally treated by the courts as simple contracts. But treating a PACA as a straightforward contract ignores the fact that about half of the states hold PACAs to be unenforceable if the adoptive parents refuse to perform, negating the rights that should be enforced to promote the well-being of birth parents and adopted children. Indeed, studies of the adoption triad (birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptee) show that open adoption with ongoing contact benefits all three parties emotionally and psychologically. However, because many courts and legislatures view public policy in favor of the adoptive parents, who acquire all parental rights when an adoption is complete, the interests of the birth parents – who almost always hold a lower socioeconomic status than the adoptive parents – are not given equal weight. The best interests of the child are similarly ignored. This Article argues that viewing PACAs through a contractual lens fails to take into account the market conditions that govern adoption and the power differential separating birth parents and adoptive parents. Drawing on feminist theory and applying principles of legal realism, it further argues that, when a PACA is viewed as a contract, breach becomes an available and even tempting choice for adoptive parents, especially because there is no easy remedy for promise breach even in states that purport to honor PACAs. When adoptive parents fail to honor the PACA, birth parents and children suffer. Therefore, this Article argues for a shift in the PACA paradigm by looking to the law of child custody and visitation for a model of enforcement. The Article does not argue for a reinterpretation of the constitutional liberty interests of parents to raise and make decisions regarding their children; under the proposed scheme, all parental rights remain vested in the adoptive parents. But this Article suggests the creation of a new kind of right for birth parents: contact rights. Because contact and communication with adoptees would become rights for birth parents, courts would have to treat adoptive parents’ withholding of communication and contact as violative of the birth parents’ rights, much as they do in the custody and visitation context. In the best interests of the child and in furtherance of the birth parents’ contact rights, therefore, the court would start from a presumption of enforcing the contact agreement and would work to maintain relationships between birth parents and adoptees. In turn, this presumption would allow birth parents to make educated decisions when choosing adoptive parents, and adoptive parents would give serious consideration to just how much contact they are willing to provide. Adopted children would benefit from contact with both sets of parents. This article is timely and important because it recognizes and addresses a real inequity in a highly prevalent form of family formation: open adoption. Today’s national conversation includes a sense of urgency about the role of courts and private actors in protecting children and their best interests, and today’s intersectional feminism requires us to consider how poor women and women of color may be disadvantaged – even exploited – by wealthier white women who can use legal loopholes to become parents without honoring commitments to those who bear their children. Finally, courts and legislatures are in the process of developing legal strategies to deal with new types of family formation; as they do so, this article offers original ideas and important guidance on how to honor the rights and needs of birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees.

There is a broad consensus worldwide that anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact. Likewise, the fact is that the UN&rsquo, s efforts to address climate change over the last 28 years have not been successful enough. It is evident that the global average temperature is on the rise (1.1 &deg, C above pre-industrial levels in 2019). A particular concern comes from the fact that the Paris Agreement on keeping increases in the global average temperature to below +2 &deg, C is an unenforceable ambition, since the focus is more on consequences than causes. In addition, economic policies regarding global taxes, as well as adaptation and mitigation measures, are questionable, as there is no evidence that changes in the climate system will proceed at the same rate in the coming years. This paper proposes an engineering approach that considers all relevant aspects of the climate change problem and proposes a new policy, named the &ldquo, Climate New Deal&rdquo, It deals with: (i) Reorientation from a high-carbon economy to a green economy, (ii) The intensive use of radically new technology, e.g., &ldquo, Seawater Steam Engine&rdquo, technology for the simultaneous production of thermal and electric energy and drinking water, and (iii) The intensive use of energy efficient technologies and RES technologies, especially in transport.

Parties to small claims disputes at the Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) have the option to file a Notice of Objection to the CRT decision. This Notice of Objection makes CRT decision void and unenforceable, and provides the parties the opportunity to re-litigate the matter via de novo trial at provincial court. This paper tracks all CRT small claims decisions that were objected in a 12 month period, and using Richard Susskind’s categories of justice, attempts to determine whether the Notice of Objection is a justice enhancing mechanism. The results show that 36.8% of claims that were objected to never even began the process of re-litigating with the provincial court. Filing the claim with the provincial court increased the time the litigants spent interacting with the judicial system by an average of 7.2 months, and never resulted in a ruling that fully overturned the CRT’s decision. The empirical research shows that the NoO mechanism is not a justice-enhancing mechanism for CRT small claims litigants. The NoO mechanism should therefore be removed, and small claims should be subject to judicial review, bringing them in line with the rest of the CRT claims.

When sellers set the price for ex-ante unobservable and ex-post unenforceable quality, price signals credence quality. Hedge funds resemble incomplete long-term contracts for credence goods under buyer-determined auctions. I show that hedge funds' ability to solicit investments at higher management fees signals their capacity to generate higher net returns. This result is more pronounced during bust cycles and closer to financial hubs, i.e., when management quality signaling is more valuable.

EnglishAbusive terms and litigation costs allocation Unfair terms have been prohibited by French law in consumer contracts since 1978 and in all standard form contracts since 2016. In both cases, the sanction consists in considering the clause unenforceable. This sanction does not deter the drafter from inserting unfair terms in the contract. We are interested in an alternative sanction, according to which the drafter bears all litigation costs. We build on a standard Cournot model of competition in quantities, in which we add unfair terms as well as the parties’ expenses in litigation costs. We show that the English rule helps to deter the drafter of the contract from inserting unfair terms. francaisLes clauses abusives sont interdites dans les contrats de consommation depuis 1978 et dans l’ensemble des contrats d’adhesion depuis 2016. Dans les deux cas, la sanction consiste a reputer la clause non ecrite. Cette sanction ne permet pas de dissuader le redacteur d’inserer des clauses abusives. Nous nous interessons a une sanction alternative consistant a faire peser sur le redacteur du contrat l’integralite des frais de litige. Nous partons d’un modele standard de concurrence a la Cournot, dans lequel nous integrons des clauses abusives ainsi que les depenses des parties en frais de litige. Nous montrons que la regle anglaise permet de dissuader le redacteur du contrat d’inserer des clauses abusives. Classification JEL : K10, K12, K13, K41, D01.

The United States has hailed the 2020 U.S-China Economic and Trade Agreement (USCTA) as a breakthrough in suspending the trade war between the United States and China. Under the USCTA, China committed to purchase $200 billion of U.S. goods and services and to implement significant new protections for U.S. intellectual property rights. However, the true significance of the USCTA lies in its role in as part of a larger U.S. scheme to usurp the role of the World Trade Organization in resolving international trade disputes. The USCTA is an ominous portent of the future of the WTO. The United States scheme has a three part design: first, cripple the WTO dispute settlement process so that WTO obligations become unenforceable; second, create a parallel dispute resolution mechanism in the USCTA to resolve USCTA and WTO disputes involving China that is under complete U.S. control; and third, induce China into violating its WTO obligations by granting the United States special privileges that can no longer be challenged by other WTO members due to the paralysis of the WTO dispute settlement system. Although proponents of the WTO have stated that the paralysis of the WTO dispute settlement system is a life or death moment, these proponents must realize that this is only the first step in a larger U.S. scheme against the WTO. The United States is continuing to erode the WTO through its use of trade agreements that create an alternative mechanism allowing the United States to enforce WTO obligations. Each country that signs such an agreement, like China, becomes an accomplice in the U.S. plot to usurp the WTO. Each new agreement represents a fresh deterioration of the WTO system, which will only accelerate as the United States induces more nations to violate the WTO. The only way to save the WTO is for leading WTO nations to call for a full scale multilateral negotiation on the WTO dispute settlement system that involves all WTO members. Proponents of the WTO must realize the urgency of the present crisis and act now before the decline of the WTO becomes irreversible.