This open access book aims to elaborate on the legal prerequisites to establish the liability of corporations for transboundary environmental harm, not only by identifying existing liability rules, principles and standards but also by analysing their potential for further legal development. The authors consider international and transboundary liability law to currently be an underutilised tool for international environmental protection. The book seeks to address this by exploring what is needed in terms of legislative action and identifying options for judicial pliability, thereby providing an important legal contribution in furthering the development of an effective international and transnational environmental liability law regime.
An interview with Yves Ternon, historian and President of the International Scientific Council for the Study of Armenian Genocide. The term genocide, which you call 'crime of crimes', is fairly recent. It dates from 1943 and has appeared in Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin original. Its inclusion in international criminal law dates back to 1948 and had to wait fifty years to see the first convictions for genocide in 1998 (under the CFI for Rwanda). How did we get to the inclusion of this crime in international criminal law? Adapted from the source document.
Competition law was viewed as a key instrument under democracy to address entrenched corporate power, in the context of liberalisation. This article examines South Africa's competition law regime and the changing strategies of large firms through three industry case studies. In the industry studies we assess, first, how corporate strategies have evolved to protect market power and the rents derived from this power and, second, how the competition regime has affected economic power and its exercise. We reflect on the overall record of the competition authorities in light of the outcomes observed.
A company represents a community that gathers diverse interests and, in that respect, it is a favourable environment to study conflicts of interests. For a long time, the law has punished company executives who have favoured their personal interest to the detriment of the company's interest. The multiplication of conflict situations, which are often difficult to diagnose, has recently led to a useful addition to positive law with recommendations that favour prevention and transparency, in particular through declarations of interests. Questions remain, though, about the efficiency of such declarations. Adapted from the source document.
Spurred by a rapidly changing legal environment and a desire to differentiate and maximize the success of our graduates, Northwestern Law recently completed a major strategic planning initiative resulting in a revolutionary report entitled Plan 2008: Preparing Great Leaders for the Changing World. Plan 2008 is the most recent installment of a long-term process to enhance our student quality and programs. The new initiatives build upon a strategic plan that we have been refining since its implementation in 1998. Under the prior plan, we introduced the evaluative admissions interview and work-experience policy for applicants.1 We also added a number of programs and initiatives that either introduce our students to or focus on many of the foundational competencies identified in Plan 2008. Under Plan 2008, a Working Group consisting of faculty, staff, students, and alumni, along with the assistance of Blaqwell, Inc., a legal consulting firm, gathered extensive information on legal education, legal profession trends, developmental frameworks and training programs of law firms and other professional service firms both in the United States and the United Kingdom, and alumni career trajectories, and talked directly to the lawyers affecting the trends. Managing partners, general counsel, and other leaders of top law firms, government, and nonprofits exchanged invaluable, frank perspectives with us in focus groups that took place throughout the United States (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.) and in London. To our knowledge, no other law school has undertaken such a systematic and market-driven strategic planning approach to date. This article provides a broad summary of our Working Group's research, findings, and recommendations.
Non-state armed groups are the main threats to states' national security in the 21st century, to defend against which, states require useful methods. Recently, use of children by these groups, especially in the Middle East, has turned into one of the most important discussable issues that need to be evaluated in the context of the law of armed conflict. This study aims to discuss legal regime of the military use of children in armed conflict. The main purpose of the study is to analyze the use of child soldiers by the Syrian-Iraqi Salafi-Jihadist Group in its combat operations. In this respect, initially, the legal definition of child soldiers and the role of them in armed conflicts will be discussed. Based on this, different forms of the child soldiers' involvement in armed conflicts and the international criminal responsibility for their war crimes will be examined as an applicable law in the context of international criminal law.
Starting from the secular fact of an increasing government´s share, a retrospective on Adolph Wagner´s writings seems worthwhile. A leading German economist of the Bismarck era, he first formulated the famous 'law of increasing state activity' for industrializing nations. After analyzing his way of making his case, a couple of flaws inherent to the theoretical interpretations and empirical verifications of his law are discussed. Basically, these flaws are attributable to the neglect of three important factors in Wagner's rationale, namely that his law was destined for industrializing rather than industrialized nations and the growing importance of public enterprises and of the prevention principle instead of repressive actions of the state in case of violation of rules. On the other hand, very modern interpretations of Wagner suggesting that he had the growing excess burden of taxation in mind when discussing the limits of government's share do not seem justified.
Locating the beginning of the modern state-church debate at the end of the Protestant Reformation, the article (1) briefly traces the development of Pufendorf's theory of the church as a collegium under state law & the opposing doctrine of the Catholic Church as a societas perfecta independent of the state; (2) surveys the state-church relationship in Germany, Switzerland, & France; & (3) summarizes the development in Swedish law toward greater freedom of religion up to the most recent reforms, decoupling the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden from the state machinery (while retaining ultimate state control). Noting that, apart from the Church of Sweden, religious groups may only, now as previously, organize themselves in private-law associations, it concludes that the recent reform has preserved the traditional Swedish structure along majoritarian lines by endorsing Pufendorf's theory, thus in a sense further pursuing the Protestant Reformation in Sweden. 84 References. Adapted from the source document.
Nearly all U.S. law schools include an Advanced Legal Research course as an elective course for second and third-year students. The justification for the course is obvious, and proponents of advanced courses have succeeded easily in convincing law school curriculum committees to approve chem. Most Advanced Legal Research courses also use "real-world figures" (guest speakers) ro supplement and enhance the instruction provided by the professors of the courses.3 The experiences and current positions of rhe "real-world" speakers are diverse, including librarians, attorneys, publisher/vendor representatives, and government officials. This article discusses the reasons for using real-world figures in Advanced Legal Research courses, who some of those real-world figures are, and the advantages and disadvantages of outside speakers in the classroom. It also includes, where appropriate, illuscrarions from the use of realworld figures in the Advanced Legal Research course at the University of Alabama School of Law.
One of the two key measures to encourage birth within the Law on Financial Support to the Family with Children is salary compensation during parental leave. The very nature of maternity leave as a financial measure (based on the previous version of the Law) additionally contributed to the birth postponement in the period of stable employment. Under the conditions of high unemployment of young women, this measure seems to have deepened the problem because women were waiting for permanent employment on the basis of which they could obtain the right to maternity leave, young women often postponed birth for many years, objectively reducing the chances of conception. The new version of the Law formulates the specific conditions for gaining the right to salary compensation in a different way, which will almost certainly result in a much greater coverage by this measure. On the other hand, the method of calculating the compensation base is such that the average amount of compensation in relation to the previous version of the Law could be lower, so it can be concluded that the legislator wanted to achieve as much coverage as possible with a relatively similar amount of budgetary allocations. These amendments to the Law could have a positive effect through increased coverage and greater impact through creating a pro-family climate in a country that supports the family. Secondly, population groups that work on temporary and occasional jobs, and especially young people engaged in short-term contracts (under six months), whose work arrangements are often interrupted, will now be covered. Thirdly, the formulated conditions in this manner will potentially allow faster acquisition of the right to compensation at a lower age. Fourth, gaining rights at a lower age will potentially influence the pace of fertility and indirectly to the birth quantum. Regardless of the fact that by adopting the latest version the Law is undoubtedly improved, there is still a huge space for its significant improvement. As it was pointed out that ...
