The twenty-third volume of the "Comparative Law Yearbook of International Business contains chapters relating to agency and distribution, finance and investment, intellectual property, sports law, technology, and general commercial issues. The spread of jurisdictions treated includes Argentina, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Italy, Panama, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, and Venezuela. The range of subjects and jurisdictions in volume twenty-three attests to the diversity and scope of international business practice.

This book is dedicated to a fundamental conflict in modern states: those persons holding public office are no more than ordinary citizens. Therefore, their activities must - as a matter of principle - be subject to full judicial control. But at the same time, democratically legitimated politicians need some discretion in their decision-making. Allegations of politicians committing criminal offences in office quickly attract a great deal of media attention. Even politicians themselves frequently use such allegations to discredit their political opponents. However, to date this topic has not been fully addressed on an academic level. This book is a first step in this direction. The individual contributions cover topics such as: "bad" political decisions that result in a waste of taxpayers' money corruption and conflicts of interest in political decision-making immunities and procedural obstacles to the effective prosecution of politicians abuse of criminal law and criminal proceedings in the political arena criminal liability for decisions taken in situations of state emergency the role of criminal law in public opinion. Leading experts examine these and other issues from a comparative perspective.

International tax practice demands a constantly renewed understanding of tax treaty provisions and how they are applied. Practitioners working with Western European taxation must master the further complexity introduced by the interplay between Community law and national law, especially as it affects the administration of tax law in the various countries. This text is a detailed survey of tax treaty interpretation in the 15 EU states plus Norway. Presented as 16 national reports by authorities from each country, the analysis provided is the result of a conference sponsored by the European Commission and held in Rust, Austria, in January 2001. Each report gives an organized, in-depth summation of the discussion as it related to the country in question, amalgamating the research and commentary brought to the conference by sixty experts in all. "Tax Treaty Interpretation" builds on the 1993 analysis of Klaus Vogel and Rainer Prokisch for the International Fiscal Association (IFA), and takes full account of such developments as the following: court decisions since 1993; the OECD report on partnerships; changes in administrative practice at the national level; and recent Community law affecting taxation and tax practice.

Authorities in the fields of environmental and international law and policy, political science, environmental technology, and public administration compare and contrast the ways in which the United States and the European Union handle similar environmental issues. The contributors critically analyze the influence of culture and history on the way apparently "similar" developed democracies handle the same problems; they examine the center-state relationship as it applies to EU member countries in contrast to states within the United States; they look at the challenge of transboundary, international, and global environmental problems, and how these relate to the still-emerging geopolitical reconfigurations involved in such structures as NAFTA and the EU; and they examine how transnational resources are handled in the North American and EU contexts. Randall Baker has assembled leading experts who examine significant issues for policymakers and environmentalists in North America and Western Europe.

The survey underpinning this invaluable work was inspired by an increasing appreciation within the EU of the need to achieve some degree of direct tax harmony. The essential starting point for such an undertaking is a set of standardized rules for the computation of EU-wide income. Company law developments point to the International Accounting Standards (IAS) / International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) financial statements as a basis from which to work. IFRS are now required for published group accounts and are allowed for single-company financial statements. However, as explained in the text, there are serious drawbacks to basing any form of national taxation on IFRS as they stand. IFRS are not designed with tax policy objectives in mind and change too frequently to satisfy any claim to tax legal certainty. Public debate is hampered by a general lack of knowledge of tax accounting customs in other countries, especially as reliable works are often only available in the local language. This comprehensive survey conducted by the universities of Goettingen, Mannheim, and Erlangen-Nuremberg with the support of PricewaterhouseCoopers fills that gap. For the first time, details of the tax computations for corporations from all twenty-five member states of the EU have been collated in a common format and are compared with the IFRS treatment. The book is an invaluable reference work providing the practitioner with a broad range of information on the tax accounting rules in all EU countries. The reader seeking a general impression of the scope of the problem will quickly see the amount of adjustment needed if IFRS is taken as a starting point for designing a set of common tax accounting rules. The reader seeking a basis for taking an active part in the public debate will find a wealth of detail in the Appendices showing exactly how each country computes taxable income and grants tax incentives. The work, unrivalled in the literature, addresses a major knowledge deficit; its tabular form presentation allows exact comparison between all EU countries as well as between the present rules of any one country and the IFRS requirements.

'El libro de S.I. Strong, Katia Fach Gomez y Laura Carballo Pineiro sigue la estructura de algunos textos clasicos de Derecho Comparado, como los de Rudolf Schelsinger y John Henry Merryman, cotejando los elementos generales de los dos grandes sistemas juridicos del Derecho Civil y el Common Law, analizando las semejanzas y diferencias de ambos sistemas con un fin eminentemente practico: atender a las necesidades de aquellos que trabajan cruzando las fronteras linguisticas para analizar un analisis comparado.' - Rodrigo Polanco Lazo, Universidad de Chile and Universidad de Berna, Suiza Comparative Law for Spanish-English Lawyers (Derecho Comparado para Abogados Anglo- e Hispanoparlantes) provides lawyers and law students who are conversationally fluent in both Spanish and English with the information and skills needed to undertake comparative legal research in their second language and facilitate communication with colleagues and clients in that language. Key features include: fully Spanish-English bilingual enables lawyers to develop the broad practical skills critical to success in today's increasingly international legal market covers a variety of substantive and procedural areas of law and includes information on legal and business practices in a number of English- and Spanish-speaking jurisdictions contextualizes information about foreign legal systems and develops readers' linguistic and legal skills through both immersion and instruction. Suitable for use by both individuals and groups, helping practitioners, academics and law students at any stage of their professional development, this book is perfect for anyone who wishes to move from conversational fluency in a second language to legal fluency. Comparative Law for Spanish English Lawyers / Derecho comparado para abogados anglo- e hispanoparlantes, escrita en ingles y espanol, persigue potenciar las habilidades linguisticas y los conocimientos de derecho comparado de sus lectores. Con este proposito, terminos y conceptos juridicos esenciales son explicados al hilo del analisis riguroso y transversal de selectas jurisdicciones hispano- y angloparlantes. El libro pretende con ello que abogados, estudiantes de derecho y traductores puedan trabajar en una segunda lengua con solvencia y consciencia de las diferencias juridicas y culturales que afectan a las relaciones con abogados y clientes extranjeros. La obra se complementa con ejercicios individuales y en grupo que permiten a los lectores reflexionar sobre estas divergencias.

The book illustrates how the trend of associating migrants and refugees with criminality is on the rise. In political discourses and popular media alike, migrants and refugees are frequently portrayed as being dangerous, while cultures intent on welcoming newcomers are increasingly seen as being naive, and providing assistance to migrants is more and more frequently subject to administrative or criminal penalties. At the same time, nondemocratic trends and practices that violate human rights and equality are gaining momentum in Europe, the US and Australia. Racism, xenophobia and anti-Islamism are simultaneously becoming more open and public; they are no longer restricted to clandestine platforms but are increasingly being mainstreamed into the political programs of parties that are entering both the EU parliaments and member state legislatures. Similar developments can be seen in the US and Australia. Such transformations in societies, governments, and institutions seem to reflect a growing amnesia regarding the lessons of the two World Wars of the 20th century, and the role that Europe, the US and Australia played in developing a post-war legal framework based on a shared, if imperfect, commitment to human rights. The book presents individual national analyses to reveal an emerging trend of "crimmigration" regardless of the peculiarities of national legislatures and internal political dynamics. By collecting original contributions from scholars based in and focused on each of these regions, it addresses above all the causes and impacts of the criminalization of migration in the early 21st century. It tackles the direct causes of these trends and encourages readers to rethink their broader political and socio-historic context. Importantly, the book does so by highlighting the ties between the criminalization of migration and equality, racism, and xenophobia. As the politics of migration become more perilous for political alliances like the EU as well for individual migrants, it is more important than ever to critically examine the cause and consequences of migrant criminalization. This collection does so from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and political traditions, seeking to overcome the distractions of charismatic politicians and the peculiar factions of national political systems, in order to reveal the underlying trends and disturbing patterns that are of interest to a broad, internationally-focused audience.

Competition and diversity in media and communications are fundamental to a healthy economy and democracy. In India and internationally there is no consensus on the exact manner and scope of interventions that are appropriate to protect competition and pluralism in media markets. Many emerging economies including India are seeking to adopt their own regulation in this area taking their lead from the UK. The issues have been brought into sharp focus in India in recent years. First, the enactment and implementation of modern - but sector neutral - competition law under the Competition Act 2002 has caused a step change in regulation towards an economics and effects-based approach. Second, in 2013 the India telecoms regulator launched controversial reform proposals to apply a media-specific approach to ownership regulation. As academics, lawyers, businesses, regulators and policy-makers in India cast a glance at the international experience, this book examines the legal, economic and policy issues relating to regulation of ownership and control of media markets. The focus of comparative assessment is on examples from the European Union, EU Member States and the US.

This book examines how the modern criminal trial is the result of competing discourses of justice, from human rights to state law and order, that allows for the consideration of key stakeholder interests, specifically those of victims, defendants, police, communities and the state.

The essays in this collection are based on papers originally presented at the sixth meeting of the European-American Consortium for Legal Education, held at the University of Helsinki, Finland in May, 2007. EACLE is a transatlantic consortium of law faculties dedicated to co- eration and to the exchange of ideas between different legal systems and cultures. Each year the EACLE colloquium considers a speci?c legal qu- tion from a variety of national perspectives. The 2007 initiative on "The Internationalization of Law and Legal Education" was coordinated by the staff of the University of Helsinki Faculty of Law and the Academy of F- land Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research. We would like to thank those who attended the 2007 meeting for their insightful remarks, and for their inspiration, suggestions, and encouragement in making this volume and the EACLE consortium so effective in fostering greater trans- lantic cooperation on law and legal education. Thanks are also due to the faculty, staff and students of the Center for International and Comparative Law who prepared this volume for publication, and particularly to Morad Eghbal, James Maxeiner, Kathryn Spanogle, Jordan Kobb, Astarte Daley, Suzanne Conklin, P. Hong Le, P- tima Lele, Nicholas McKinney, Shandon Phan, T.J. Sachse, Katherine Si- son, Toscha Stoner-Silbaugh, Bjorn ] Thorstensen, Ryan Webster, and Cheri Wendt-Taczak."

The Contract is the core tool of governance in a free market economy. An EU Contract Law Code is now on the political agenda because all three legislative bodies in the EU and most member states favour it in principle. In its communication of July 2001, the Commission proposed three major options: to enhance the existing EC Contract Law by eliminating inconsistencies; introducing a European Code which substitutes national laws; and introducing a European code which only supplements national laws. This book achieves three things: For the first time, European academia is discussing these three options in an extensive and systematic way - with pros and cons, in a transparent and systematic way, along broad lines and often also important details. The book contains the views of all protagonists - from all those who really drafted the models to all those who illustrated the potential of decentralized rule-making and invented the very idea of an Optional Code. And it is the first book in which the optional Code, which is the alternative most likely to come, is thoroughly analysed at all. The book also contains a full map of design possibilities. It is the executive summary of what European academia thinks of the future of European Contract Law and a European Code. It is the Academic Green Paper on European Contract Law.

Disgorgement of profits is not exactly a household word in private law. Particularly in civil law jurisdictions - as opposed to those of the common law - the notion is not well known. What does it stand for? It is best illustrated by examples. One of the best known being the British case of Blake v Attorney General, [2001] 1 AC 268. In which a double spy had been imprisoned by the UK government before escaping and settling in the former Soviet Union. While there wrote a book on his experiences, upon which the UK government claimed the proceeds of the book. The House of Lords, as it then was, allowed the claim on the basis of Blake's breach of his employment contract. Other examples are the infringement of intellectual property rights, where the damages of the owner are limited, but the profits of the wrongdoer immense. In such cases, the question arises whether the infringing party should be disgorged of his profits. This volume aims at establishing the notion of disgorgement of profits as a keyword in the discourse of private law. It does not purport to answer the question whether or not such damages should or should not be awarded. It does however aim to contribute to the discussion, the arguments in favour and against, and the organisation of the various actions.

This Yearbook reviews significant legal developments in international commerce and offers an important forum for legal practitioners to address and compare practical legal issues of direct interest to their areas of specialisation. Each volume of the Yearbook features a comprehensive range of articles written for and by leading practitioners and advisers working in the international business sector. Volume 16 addresses key issues in general commercial law, company law, environmental law, foreign investment and litigation, procedure and dispute resolution. The Yearbook is published under the auspices of the Center for International Legal Studies.

This book examines the subject of constitutional unamendability from comparative, doctrinal, empirical, historical, political and theoretical perspectives. It explores and evaluates the legitimacy of unamendability in the various forms that exist in constitutional democracies. Modern constitutionalism has given rise to a paradox: can a constitutional amendment be unconstitutional? Today it is normatively contested but descriptively undeniable that a constitutional amendment-one that respects the formal procedures of textual alteration laid down in the constitutional text-may be invalidated for violating either a written or unwritten constitutional norm. This phenomenon of an unconstitutional constitutional amendment traces its political foundations to France and the United States, its doctrinal origins to Germany, and it has migrated in some form to all corners of the democratic world. One can trace this paradox to the concept of constitutional unamendability. Constitutional unamendability can be understood as a formally entrenched provision(s) or an informally entrenched norm that prohibits an alteration or violation of that provision or norm. An unamendable constitutional provision is impervious to formal amendment, even with supermajority or even unanimous agreement from the political actors whose consent is required to alter the constitutional text. Whether or not it is enforced, and also by whom, this prohibition raises fundamental questions implicating sovereignty, legitimacy, democracy and the rule of law.

This reference work compares the formation of contract in the legal systems of England, France, Iran and other Islamic systems. The preliminary part gives a historical sketch and describes the sources of law for the four legal systems and then describes the development and general theory of contract law in the four systems. Part one then analyzes in detail the basic notions of formation of contract including the range of psychological elements and their means of expression. The author goes on to describe and compare the function and determination of offer and acceptance in the four legal systems. Part two analyzes the mechanism of formation of import of a contract in respect of both offer and acceptance. The book has been extensively researched and includes references to Roman law and other modern legal systems. The work has been indexed and cross-referenced.

Does a justice system have a welfare function? If so, where does the boundary lie between justice and welfare, and where can the necessary resources and expertise be found? In a time of austerity, medical emergency, and limited public funding, this book explores the role of the family justice system and asks whether it has a function beyond decision-making in dispute resolution. Might a family justice system even help to prevent or minimise conflict as well as resolving dispute when it arises? The book is divided into 4 parts, with contributions from 22 legal scholars working across Europe, Australia, Argentina and Canada. - Part 1 looks at what constitutes a family justice system in different jurisdictions, and how a welfare element is included in the legal framework. - Part 2 looks at those engaged with a family justice system as professionals and users, and explores how far private ordering is encouraged in different countries. - Part 3 looks at new ways of working within a family justice system and raises the question of whether the move towards privatisation derives from the intrinsic value of individual autonomy and acceptance of responsibility in family disputes, or whether it is also a response to the increasing burden on the state of providing a welfare-minded family justice system. - Part 4 explores recent major changes of direction for the family justice systems of Australia, Argentina, Turkey, Spain, and Germany.

In his Judicial Deliberations: A Comparative Analysis of Judicial Transparency and Legitimacy (Oxford 2004), the American-French scholar Mitchel Lasser has, among other things, tried to re-establish the strengths of the French cassation system. Using Lasser's approach and ideas as a starting point, in this book judges from the French, Belgian and Dutch Cassation Courts reflect on the challenges that their Courts are facing. The book also contains a series of contributions from scholars analyzing the wide range of factors that determine the legitimacy of these courts' decisions. Specific attention is given to the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights that has been so important for the moral legitimacy of the European legal order, and to courts in post-communist systems, which face many similar challenges and are even under greater pressure to modernize. The book is a multidisciplinary contribution to the international debate about the legitimacy of the highest courts' rulings as well as the concept of judicial leadership and offers a new perspective in the USA versus Europe debate. It is recommended reading for academics, judges, policymakers, political scientists and students. Nick Huls is a Professor of socio-legal studies at the Faculty of Law of the Erasmus University Rotterdam and Leiden University's Faculty of Law, The Netherlands. Maurice Adams is a Professor of law at Tilburg University, The Netherlands, and part-time Professor of comparative law at Antwerp University in Belgium. JaccoBomhoff is a Lecturer in law at the Law Department of the London School of Economics in the UK.

This book is about one of the most controversial dilemmas of contract law: whether or not the unexpected change of circumstances due to the effects of financial crises may under certain conditions be taken into account. Growing interconnectedness of global economies facilitates the spread of the effects of the financial crises. Financial crises cause severe difficulties for persons to fulfill their contractual obligations. During the financial crises, performance of contractual obligations may become excessively onerous or may cause an excessive loss for one of the contracting parties and consequently destroy the contractual equilibrium and legitimate the governmental interventions. Uncomfortable economic climate leads to one of the most controversial dilemmas of the contract law: whether the binding force of the contract is absolute or not. In other words, unstable economic circumstances impose the need to devote special attention to review and perhaps to narrow the binding nature of a contract. Principle of good faith and fair dealing motivate a variety of theoretical bases in order to overcome the legal consequences of financial crises. In this book, all these theoretical bases are analyzed with special focus on the available remedies, namely renegotiation, rescission or revision and the circumstances which enables the revocation of these remedies. The book collects the 19 national reports and the general report originally presented in the session regarding the Effects of Financial Crises on the Binding Force of Contracts: Renegotiation, Rescission or Revision during the XIXth congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law, held in Vienna, July 2014.

This work contains the proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Dutch-Japanese Law, which took place at the University of Utrecht in August 1996. The doctrine of tort law was chosen as the central theme for this conference. The meaning of tort law has been extended to such a degree that socially accepted responsibilities are attributed to specifically determined natural and legal persons. This book elaborates on various trends in tort law, such as medical liability, traffic liability, product liability, and environmental liability. A comparison with the Japanese legal system provides interesting insights into this particular issue, because the Japanese system is of a dualistic nature. By studying the development of the law in both Japan and the Netherlands, existing links are strengthened and new contacts between Dutch and Japanese academic lawyers are established.

This work is based on papers presented at a conference entitled "The Sex of Labour Law in Europe/Le Sexe du droit du travail en Europe", which was held at the European University Institute in Florence. The contributors argue that law in general, and especially social and labour law, is not asexual, and that law has been written from a male point of view. As a consequence, many rules and regulations do not take into account a typical female point of view and therefore appear to disregard the position of women, which leads in many cases to sexual inequality. The contributors give a detailed account of the position of women in labour law in their own jurisdiction. The text should be of interest to academics and practitioners involved in labour law, human rights, gender studies and women's studies.

This edited volume covers the challenges currently faced by consumer law in Europe and the United States, ranging from fundamental theoretical questions, such as what goals consumer law should pursue, to practical questions raised by disclosure requirements, the General Data Protection Regulation and technology advancements. With governments around the world enacting powerful new regulations concerning consumers, consumer law has become an important topic in the economic analysis of law. Intended to protect consumers, these regulations typically seek to do so by giving them tools to make better decisions, or by limiting the consequences of their bad decisions. Legal scholars are divided, however, regarding the efficacy and effects of these regulations; some call for certain policies to be abolished, while others support a regulatory expansion.

In the global era, controversies abound over temporary labour migration; however, it has not previously been subjected to a sustained socio-legal analysis on a comparative basis, critiquing the underpinning concepts conventionally accepted as fundamental in this area. This collection of essays aims to fill that void. Complex regulatory challenges arise from temporary labour migration. This collection examines these challenges and the extent to which temporary labour migration programmes can be ethical, equitable and efficacious and so deliver decent work for workers. Whilst the tendency for migration law to divide labour law's worker-protective mission has been observed before, the authors of the chapters comprising this collection seek not only to interrogate why and how this is so, but to go further in examining the implications and effects of a wide range of regulatory mechanisms on temporary labour migration.

Prized by practitioners since the first edition appeared in 1998, "Dispute Resolution in Asia" provides a much wider spectrum of Asian laws and approaches to dispute resolution than is traditional in comparative studies. It examines arbitration, litigation, and mediation in thirteen countries, with detailed practical essays each written by a senior lawyer with vast knowledge and experience of dispute resolution in his or her own country. Contributions vary in style and content and thus reflect the diversity of legal systems and cultures in Asia. The third edition of this popular book has been expanded by the inclusion of a chapter on Korea and a discussion of investment treaty arbitrations. All chapters have been revised and updated to incorporate recent developments, such as the enactment of relevant new legislation in Malaysia. Statistics on arbitration centres in Asia are also included. As a comprehensive practical guide to the practice and procedure of dispute resolution in the important trading countries of Asia, this book will be of great value to corporate counsel and international lawyers and business people, as well as to students of dispute resolution.