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AbstractI examine the origin and development of institutions that assign and enforce rights to hard rock minerals located on federal lands in the United States. Hard rock mining gives a prime example of the 'artificial selection' of settled customs or working rules by jurists and legislators. The evolving structure of the industry, conditioned by technological and market factors, produced a parallel shift in the locus and control of sovereignty. In the early days sovereignty vested in the mining clubs. The enlarging scale and complexity of mining catalysed a change in both the uses and location of sovereignty. With the transition from prospecting to large-scale industrial mining, the 'right to use' mineral deposits obtained through patents became contingent on the cooperation of labour. At this stage, the capture of the state's monopoly on legitimate violence to protect the right to use became a crucial dimension of property. Mining companies have also enjoyed liberties with respect to the externalization of environmental costs. The emergent structure of rights, duties, capacities and exposures was instrumental in bringing forth a quantum increase in the mining of hard rock minerals necessary for industrial expansion. There is, however, an urgent need for reform of the mineral patent system.

Services cannot be subject to border controls in the same way as goods, which makes the charging and collection of VAT in these instances more complex. In many jurisdictions, VAT is collected on the cross-border supply of services via the reverse charge mechanism. This mechanism transfers the liability for the payment of VAT to the local recipient of the service (ie the customer), which creates a situation where foreign suppliers are not required to register in these jurisdictions and accordingly decreases the cost of compliance - a key contributor to the principle of VAT neutrality. In most cases, where the local recipient is liable for the payment of reverse charge VAT in respect of an imported service, a corresponding input tax credit is available where the service is on-supplied, resulting in a VAT neutral position for the local recipient. The problem arises where the reverse charge mechanism is applied inconsistently from country to country - where in some instances the VAT accounted for on imported services cannot be claimed as a credit due on the supply. In such instances, the reverse charge VAT represents an actual cost to the recipient of the service, which will then invariably be on-charged to the final consumer. In such cases, VAT will be levied on VAT and the final consumer will be subject to double VAT taxation. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the International VAT/GST Guidelines in April 2014 which has the "aim of reducing the uncertainty and risks of double taxation and unintended non-taxation that result from inconsistencies in the application of VAT in a cross-border context." These guidelines are not aimed at providing detailed prescriptions for national legislation but rather seek to identify objectives and suggest means for achieving them. These Guidelines are an important step in initiating a more harmonised approach to VAT. While not binding, they represent the key principles of a successful VAT structure that should be inherent in all VAT legislation. This paper is an analysis of the feasibility of implementing a harmonised approach to VAT in Africa, with particular regard to the application of the reverse charge mechanism, and the different means by which the incidence of double VAT taxation that results, can be prevented. This position is compared to that of the European Community (EC) in order to highlight the need for consistency in the application of VAT legislation of different African jurisdictions. The varying application of the reverse charge mechanism in African countries is one such example of how uncoordinated unilateral measures can result, and have the potential, not only to increase the cost of compliance and doing business in Africa, but also to create barriers and discourage, particularly, cross-border trade in services. By initiating a more harmonised approached to VAT legislation across Africa, the inconsistencies in the application of similar principles can be avoided, facilitating trade and easing the compliance burden on vendors.

AbstractTransboundary water resources are very challenging to manage, generating numerous unresolved management issues. North America possesses two different spatial contexts in which transboundary water resource management issues exist, the arid U.S.–Mexico border region and the humid U.S.–Canada border region. Past work on the U.S.–Mexico border has explored a range of institutional arrangements by which resources are managed, with a special focus on both existing and new institutions and how the locus of policy formulation may vary across scale. In this article, I explore water resource issues in the U.S.–Canadian transboundary context through a comparative examination of management frameworks in the westernmost section on the U.S.–Canada border. Specifically, I examine the Cascadia Corridor region within which the Salish Sea and smaller nested watersheds lie, exploring how concepts of devolution, regionalization, subnational participation, and spatial scale have unfolded in transboundary management efforts in the region.

The subtitle is from a Joni Mitchell song and the line continues "˜they paved paradise, put up a parking lot'. I felt something of that sentiment through a recent experience of losing the art therapy studio in which I had worked for 17 years. This experience made me think about the elements I missed and why they were important to me. In this paper I will briefly describe the studio spaces created within three different social contexts, all driven by government legislation, they are: the mental asylum, care in the community, and managed care. I will then focus on one particular element: the display of pictures in the room providing containment for the therapist.