This book addresses the role of public policy in regulating the autonomous artificial intelligence and related civil liability for damage caused by the robots (and any form of artificial intelligence). It is a very timely book, focusing on the consequences of judgment proofness of autonomous decision-making on tort law, risk and safety regulation, and the incentives stemming from these. This book is extremely important as regulatory endeavours concerning AI are in their infancy at most, whereas the industry's development is continuing in a strong way. It is an important scientific contribution that will bring scientific objectivity to a, to date, very one-sided academic treatment of legal scholarship on AI.

This work provides a comprehensive analysis of the role of non-judicial dispute settlement in international financial transactions. Whereas arbitration and non-judicial dispute settlement mechanisms are of growing importance in international economic transactions, their present and future role in financial transactions is not yet fully explored. This publication aims to fill this gap in the literature and includes analyses of bank remedies, direct negotiation and mediation in financial and business conflicts, debt renegotiations, restructuring of syndicated loans, arbitration in project financing, and the roles of the ICC, NAFTA and OAS. Some of the expert papers focus in particular on the role of arbitration and dispute resolution in Latin America, Greater China and Russia. The text is based on the edited and revised papers of an international conference - part of a global series of conferences held in 1999 on the "New International Financial Architecture" - organized by the Law Centre of European and International Cooperation (R.I.Z., Cologne), the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (London), the Asian Institute of International Financial Law (Hong Kong), and the SMU Institute of International Banking and Finance (Dallas).

The book provides a comprehensive and practical overview of arbitration in the People's Republic of China. The process of arbitrating a dispute is described from the perspective of a non-Chinese individual or business. Readers are guided through the typical course of events in an arbitration process. By avoiding both excessive technicality and undue simplification, the book appeals to both law professionals and business managers, and is useful for practitioners and non-experts alike. Recent developments in Chinese law on the matter, up to the first quarter of 2015, has been taken into account in order to provide readers with a pragmatic, up-to-date presentation of the topic. For the same reasons, illustrative reference is made to the Shanghai FTZ Arbitration Rules. The relevant provisions are noted throughout the text; the three appendices at the end of the book allow for easy referencing of the main legislation and regulations. The appendices include English versions of the most important PRC Statutes and Interpretations of Statutes on arbitration, the Arbitration Rules of the main Chinese arbitration institutions and the official Model Arbitration Clauses suggested by those institutions.

The exponential growth of disruptive technology is changing our world. The development of cloud computing, big data, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and other related autonomous systems, such as self-driving vehicles, have triggered the emergence of new products and services. These significant technological breakthroughs have opened the door to new economic models such as the sharing and platform-based economy. As a result, companies are becoming increasingly data- and algorithm-driven, coming to be more like "decentralized platforms". New transaction or payment methods such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, based on trust-building systems using Blockchain, smart contracts, and other distributed ledger technology, also constitute an essential part of this new economic model. The sharing economy and digital platforms also include the everyday exchange of goods allowing individuals to commodify their surplus resources. Information and innovation technologies are used in order to then match these resources with existing demand in the market. Online platforms such as Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon reduce information asymmetry, increase the value of unused resources, and create new opportunities for collaboration and innovation. Moreover, the sharing economy is playing a major role in the transition from exclusive ownership of personal assets toward access-based exploitation of resources. The success of online matching platforms depends not only on the reduction of search costs but also on the trustworthiness of platform operators. From a legal perspective, the uncertainties triggered by the emergence of a new digital reality are particularly urgent. How should these tendencies be reflected in legal systems in each jurisdiction? This book collects a series of contributions by leading scholars in the newly emerging fields of sharing economy and Legal Tech. The aim of the book is to enrich legal debates on the social, economic, and political meaning of these cutting-edge technologies. The chapters presented in this edition attempt to answer some of these lingering questions from the perspective of diverse legal backgrounds.

The impact of the European Community and European Community law on taxation is becoming increasingly important. EC law influences not only national tax law but also tax treaties. This book focuses on the question of whether anti-abuse provisions in tax treaties may be in conflict with EC law, especially the fundamental freedoms contained in the EC Treaty. This issue is dealt with from the perspective of Austria, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. Though most problems arise with regard to the limitation on benefits clauses contained in the tax treaties concluded between EC Member States and the United States, the book also addresses the compatibility with EC law of other anti-abuse clauses and assesses the consequences of a possible conflict. EUCOTAX (European Universities Cooperating on Taxes) is a network of fiscal institutes of European universities - nine in 1998. This network aims at initiating and co-ordinating both comparative education and comparative research on taxation. The comparative education is structured by various means, e.g. organizing winter courses and guest lectures. Comparative research is realised by means of joint research projects, international conferences and exchange of researchers from various countries.

This provocative study investigates the question of whether, and to what extent, stringent EC process or production standards affect regulatory standards in the US and Canada through their effects on trade. Four highly controversial issues - animal trapping methods, beef growth hormones, genetically modified foods and food products, and protection of personal information in data transfers - are examined in great detail. The author combines legal research (EC regulations and directives, WTO cases, national and international regulatory standards and exceptions, records of negotiation and arbitration, and other sources), political and economic analysis, and information and insights gained from 67 personal interviews with officials and representatives of several types of interest groups. The result is a forceful and convincing portrayal of how the major powers are dealing with this most fundamental and complex problem affecting international trade today. This timely study is of extraordinary value in its potential to elucidate comparable manifestations of this fundamental problem in a wide variety of cases, issue areas, and countries, and in its interdisciplinary approach. As such it will be valuable to all lawyers, policymakers, and scholars in the field of international trade and regulatory politics.

This book explores the future of cyber technologies and cyber operations which will influence advances in social media, cyber security, cyber physical systems, ethics, law, media, economics, infrastructure, military operations and other elements of societal interaction in the upcoming decades. It provides a review of future disruptive technologies and innovations in cyber security. It also serves as a resource for wargame planning and provides a strategic vision of the future direction of cyber operations. It informs military strategist about the future of cyber warfare. Written by leading experts in the field, chapters explore how future technical innovations vastly increase the interconnectivity of our physical and social systems and the growing need for resiliency in this vast and dynamic cyber infrastructure. The future of social media, autonomy, stateless finance, quantum information systems, the internet of things, the dark web, space satellite operations, and global network connectivity is explored along with the transformation of the legal and ethical considerations which surround them. The international challenges of cyber alliances, capabilities, and interoperability is challenged with the growing need for new laws, international oversight, and regulation which informs cybersecurity studies. The authors have a multi-disciplinary scope arranged in a big-picture framework, allowing both deep exploration of important topics and high level understanding of the topic. Evolution of Cyber Technologies and Operations to 2035 is as an excellent reference for professionals and researchers working in the security field, or as government and military workers, economics, law and more. Students will also find this book useful as a reference guide or secondary text book.

Was the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) designed as a definitive trade agreement, or as a stepping stone? This book reviews NAFTA's performances on trade, investment, intellectual property rights, dispute-settlement, as well as environmental and labor side-agreements within a theoretical construct.

The European system of insurance supervision under Solvency II constitutes a parallel to supervision of credit institutions under Basel III. At the heart of this new European insurance supervisory regime are the Solvency II Directive, the attendant regulation, and the EIOPA Regulation. The present volume, "Treatises on Solvency II", includes articles on the bases of European insurance supervision and the associated three pillars of solvency, governance, and disclosure, all viewed predominantly from a legal standpoint.

Protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) has become a global issue. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) Agreement outlines the minimum standards for IPR protection for WTO members and offers a global regime for IPR protection. However, the benefits of TRIPS are more questionable in poorer countries where national infrastructure for research and development (R&D) and social protection are inadequate, whereas the cost of innovation is high. Today, after more than a decade of intense debate over global IPR protection, the problems remain acute, although there is also evidence of progress and cooperation. This book examines various views of the role of IPRs as incentives for innovation against the backdrop of development and the transfer of technology between globalised, knowledge-based, high technology economies. The book retraces the origins, content and interpretations of the TRIPS Agreement, including its interpretations by WTO dispute settlement organs. It also analyses sources of controversy over IPRs, examining pharmaceutical industry strategies of emerging countries with different IPR policies. The continuing international debate over IPRs is examined in depth, as are TRIPS rules and the controversy about implementing the 'flexibilities' of the Agreement in the light of national policy objectives. The author concludes that for governments in developing countries, as well as for their business and scientific communities, a great deal depends on domestic policy objectives and their implementation. IPR protection should be supporting domestic policies for innovation and investment. This, in turn requires a re-casting of the debate about TRIPS, to place cooperation in global and efficient R&D at the heart of concerns over IPR protection.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) are the first major multilateral treaties to impose obligations on governments concerning the protection and treatment of foreign investments. These obligations are enforceable by private companies. NAFTA and the ECT examines the effectiveness of the investment rules of these treaties and analyzes the mechanisms adopted to enhance compliance, and to facilitate the implementation and enforcement of the relevant rules and regulations. Coverage of this work includes: a conceptual analysis of the precise meaning and theoretical foundation of compliance, implementation, and effectiveness; an examination of issues of direct effect and direct international responsibility in terms of the practical question of the treaties' impact on the domestic regimes of states; an exploration of the issues of transparency and monitoring to achieve enhanced compliance; and a close look at a number of key links in the field - between the investment rules and the workings of national legal and governmental systems, between national and international law, between different disciplines involved (international law, international relations, international politics, and economics), and between transparency and compliance monitoring. NAFTA and the ECT also offers several helpful features, including results from a questionnaire-based survey circulated to the main players in the realm of foreign investment which offer insights on the prevalent perception of the industry towards NAFTA and the ECT; and suggested provisions and frameworks which would enhance the effectiveness of the investment rules. The issues probed and conclusions reached and the interdisciplinary and comparative approach taken should make NAFTA and the ECT a a useful resource for academics, policymakers, and others interested in the effectiveness of international investment agreements and the tools employed in their implementation and enforcement.

This book is the first study to examine the issue of the legality of parallel imports of trademarked goods under the most important legal systems on an international level, namely under GATT/WTO law, EU law and the laws of the ten major trading partners of the European Union. Part I consists of a general approach to the phenomenon of parallel importation and of a presentation of the theories that have been suggested to resolve the above-mentioned issue. The rule of exhaustion of rights, of which there are three types (rule of national, regional and international exhaustion of rights), is proposed as the most effective instrument to deal with the issue in question. Part II examines the question of exhaustion of trademark rights in light of the provisions of GATT/WTO Law. Part III analyzes the elements of the EU provisions on exhaustion of trademark rights (Articles 7 of Directive 2008/95/EC and 13 of Regulation (EC) 207/2009) and some specific issues relating to the application of these provisions. Part IV presents the regimes of exhaustion of trademark rights recognized in the European Union's current ten most significant trading partners. The book is the first legal study to welcome, in light of economic analysis, the approach adopted by GATT/WTO law and EU law to the question of the geographical scope of the exhaustion of the trademark rights rule. It includes all the case law developed on an international level on the issue of the legality of parallel imports of trademarked goods and a comprehensive overview of the scientific literature concerning the phenomenon of parallel imports in general and the legality of parallel imports of trademarked goods. All the views expressed in the book are based on the European Court of Justice's most recent case law and that of the courts of the most important trading partners of the European Union.

This book reveals how conflicting worldviews are at the root of public controversies on policy and trade issues. It highlights the particularly controversial disputes at the level of the World Trade Organization in the case of regulating beef-hormones and GMOs, aiming to show how negotiators of international agreements, members of dispute settlement bodies, and policy makers in general could have recourse to concepts of other disciplines such as epistemology and philosophy in order to address deadlocked legal disputes. Ultimately, the book is a manifesto for independent and critical research.

Since its accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in December 2001, China has been committed to full compliance with the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. This text considers the development of intellectual property in China, and offers an interdisciplinary analysis of China's compliance with the TRIPS Agreement using theories originating in international relations and law. It notes that despite significant efforts to amend China's substantive IP laws to prepare for WTO accession and sweeping changes to domestic legislation, a significant gap existed between the laws on paper and as enforced in practice, and that infringements to the agreement are still prevalent. The book examines how compliance with international rules can be promoted and encouraged in a specific jurisdiction. Making a case for a wider, more interdisciplinary and global outlook, it contends that compliance needs to align with the national interests of relevant countries and jurisdictions, as governments' economic interests support the greater enforcement of the IP laws.

One of the primary functions of law is to ensure that the legal structure governing all social relations is predictable, coherent, consistent and applicable. Taken together, these characteristics of law are referred to as legal certainty. In traditional approaches to legal certainty, law is regarded as a hierarchical system of rules characterized by stability, clarity, uniformity, calculable enforcement, publicity and predictability. However, the current reality is that national legal systems no longer operate in isolation, but within a multilevel legal order, wherein norms created at both the international and regional level are directly applicable to national legal systems. Also, norm creation is no longer the exclusive prerogative of public officials of the state: private actors have an increasing influence on norm creation as well. Social scientists have referred to this phenomenon of interacting and overlapping competences as multilevel governance. Only recently have legal scholars focused attention on the increasing interconnectedness (and therefore the concomitant loss of primacy of national legal orders) between the global, European and national regulatory spheres through the concept of multilevel regulation.

In this project the author uses multilevel regulation as a term to characterize a regulatory space in which the process of rule making, rule enforcement and rule adjudication (the regulatory lifecycle) is dispersed across more than one administrative or territorial level and amongst several different actors, both public and private. The author draws on the concept of a regulatory space, using it as a framing device to differentiate between specific aspects of policy fields. The relationship between actors in such a space is non-hierarchical and they may be independent of each other. The lack of central ordering of the regulatory lifecycle within this regulatory space is the most important feature of such a space. The implications of multilevel regulation for the notion of legal certainty have attracted limited attention from scholars and the demand for legal certainty in regulatory practice is still a puzzle. The book explores the idea of legal certainty in terms of the perceptions and expectations of regulatees in the context of medical products - specifically, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, which can be differentiated as two regulatory spaces and therefore form two case studies. As an exploratory project, the book necessarily explores new territory in terms of investigating legal certainty first in terms of regulatee perceptions and expectations and second, because it studies it in the context of multilevel regulation.

This overview of the role played by the precautionary principle in international trade law, European law and national law compares how precautionary considerations have been applied in the fields of pesticide regulation and the regulation of base stations for mobile telephones in Sweden, the UK and the US. A number of problems in the current application of the precautionary principle are identified and discussed. For example, it is shown that a firm reliance on a wide and open-ended precautionary principle may lead to problems with the consistency, foreseeability, effectiveness and efficiency of measures intended to reduce environmental or health risks. It is suggested that the precautionary principle indeed may be an important tool, but that in order to be acceptable it must be coupled with strong requirements on the performance of risk assessments, cost/benefit analyses and risk trade-off analyses.

The third volume of this yearbook provides articles, comments, and analyses of developments throughout 1998. A special focus section highlights the most significant legal issues raised by the formation of a single currency in the ongoing process of economic and monetary union in the European Union. Commentary is provided on subjects including international financial standards and the transition economies, legal and practical aspects of recovering debt from Russian financial institutions, New Zealand's alternative approach to banking supervision, and regulation of foreign bank access in China. Recent developments, as with previous editions, cover all major areas of the world. This year includes analysis of China's new securities law, the development of the Financial Supervisory Authority in the UK, regional integration and trade liberalization in southern Africa, and problems created by government intervention in the Hong Kong stock market. This volume should be useful to anyone with an interest in international financial and economic law throughout the world.

This comprehensive, three-volume set focuses on the legal and business aspects of sports in the USA and abroad. The authors have presented the subject matter from a practical and pragmatic perspective, yet with analytical precision and attention to fine points of detail. This work is composed of five parts. Part I deals with the law and business of sports in the United States, with the primary emphasis on the legal aspects of professional sports. Part II deals with the internationalization of sports from various perspectives, principally North American team sports. In Part III the law and business of sports is explored in 18 foreign (from an American's standpoint) jurisdictions. Part IV treats the legal and, to some extent, business aspects of broadcasting and sports, both in the United States and in selected foreign jurisdictions. Finally, Part V focuses upon sports marketing in its variegated forms in the USA, as well as its international perspectives.

In the age of economic globalisation, do art and heritage matter? Once the domain of elitist practitioners and scholars, the governance of cultural heritage and the destiny of iconic artefacts have emerged as the new frontier of international law, making headlines and attracting the varied interests of academics and policy-makers, museum curators and collectors, human rights activists and investment lawyers and artists and economists, just to mention a few. The return of cultural artefacts to their legitimate owners, the recovery of underwater cultural heritage and the protection and promotion of artistic expressions are just some of the pressing issues addressed by this book.

Contemporary intersections between art, cultural heritage and the market are complicated by a variety of ethical and legal issues, which often describe complex global relations. Should works of art be treated differently from other goods? What happens if a work of art, currently exhibited in a museum, turns out to have originally been looted? What is the relevant legal framework? What should be done with ancient shipwrecks filled with objects from former colonies? Should such objects be kept by the finders? Should they be returned to the country of origin? This book addresses these different questions while highlighting the complex interplay between legal and ethical issues in the context of cultural governance. The approach is mainly legal but interdisciplinary aspects are considered as well.

This book is a systematic comparative study of WTO and EU law relevant for universal service provision, and a timely contribution to the ongoing scholarly and policy debates about the concept and scope of universal service. Universal service is one of the most significant regulatory issues worldwide and it is likely to remain so. The central question dealt with by the author is how the technologically intensive sector of telecommunications services can be regulated in a socially fair way in the light of liberalisation and the immense importance of ICTs in the Information Society. The author investigates whether the legal frameworks of WTO and EU can meet the challenges of the rapid and dramatic technological and social change and formulates relevant policy recommendations. The book is of interest to both scholars and practitioners in several disciplines, such as EU and WTO law, telecommunications law and regulation, political science regarding market regulation and governance as well as European integration and WTO. Olga Batura is affiliated to the Leuphana Law School, University of Luneburg, Germany, and to the European Humanities University in Vilnius, Lithania.

The book provides an introduction to shipping in all its aspects. It is a valuable source of information for students of traditional maritime law as well as for those who seek to understand maritime and shipping services on a global scale. The text includes information and analytical content on national and international practices in shipping, including the age-old dichotomy between freedom in international shipping and the persistent demands of states to control specific maritime areas, as well as the tension between, on the one hand, the desire on the part of sovereign states to regulate and protect their shipping interests and, on the other, the abiding concern and unquestioned right of the international community to regulate the global shipping industry effectively, in order to ensure maritime safety, protection of the environment and fair competition.

This volume traces the evolution of the field of law and economics from its European roots to its neoclassical "Chicagoan" period to its current identity as a more fluid, transatlantic discipline. Paying special attention to the work of German economist Juergen Backhaus, who was instrumental in the reintroduction of the European perspective to the field, this book analyzes this gradual shift in the law and economics debate and provides a state-of-the-art of the literature currently being produced by the field's most active scholars. Beginning with a discussion of the history of the field and Backhaus' role in its development, the volume provides a survey of issues central to the current debate such as legal processes in both Europe and the U.S., constitutional political economy, regulatory law, and the ongoing evolution of the European Union. The importance of this volume is two-fold, as it firmly grounds the discipline in history while establishing a future research agenda. This book will be of use to researchers studying law and economics as well as those interested in institutional analysis.

This book offers the analysis of the relationship between the Cape Town Convention and national laws on secured transactions. The first part of the book considers why national implementation is so important in the case of the Cape Town Convention and identifies how innovative the Convention is as a uniform law instrument. The second part includes chapters on those states that are Parties to the Cape Town Convention, which analyse how the Convention is implemented under the domestic law. The third part includes chapters on those states that are not Parties to the Convention, which compare their national laws and the Convention to find unique features of the Cape Town Convention's rules. The fourth part discusses the meaning of Protocols on aircraft, railway rolling stock and space assets from the practitioner's point of view. As a whole, the book offers insights into the new stage of uniform private law and shows the need for further examination of the subject, which will be essential for international and national legislators, academics of comparative and international private law as well as practitioners who are the users of the uniform law regime.

Under globalization, the resolution of commercial disputes across national borders is assuming ever greater importance. This study explores a range of possible approaches, both within the established legal infrastructure, and through alternatives, not only arbitration, but also non-confrontational means such as negotiation and mediation/conciliation. The Japanese experience in dispute processing is taken as a means of exploring the ways in which international harmonization efforts such as the UNCITRAL Model Law impact on individual nations. As an Asian nation which has adopted and adapted a variety of Western practices under modernization and democratization, Japan is in a unique position to offer a balanced global example - a model for a more comprehensive approach to disputes as an integrated multi-layered system. The book should be of interest to the scholar and practitioner of trans-national/cultural commercial dispute processing as well as those who are involved in the law reform technical co-operation.

This book gives readers the theoretical and empirical methods to analyze applied economics. They are institutional economics, information economics, environmental economics, international economics, financial economics, industrial organization, public economics, law and economics, and spatial economics. Because the chapters of this book deal with current topics in these categories, they are relevant not only to researchers and graduate students but also to policy makers and entrepreneurs. As there is uncertainty about the global economy, it is necessary to consider optimal, efficient behavior to survive in the confused world. The book is organized in three parts. Part 1 deals with institutional economics, information economics, and related topics, approached through game theory. Part 2 focuses on environmental economics, international economics, and financial economics, through a microeconomic or econometric approach. Finally, Part 3 concentrates on public economics, social security, and related fields, through microeconomics or macroeconomics.