Promotion of Mediation in the New Century through Legislation

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) developed very quickly in the last century. With litigation being viewed as expensive and lengthy, ADR is known for its low cost, efficiency, flexibility and user-friendliness. Various forms of ADR have been developed to accommodate different types of disputes. The Chinese culture attaches great importance to the application of mediation to resolve disputes; however, mediation has also been widely used by other countries. Entering the new century, we have witnessed another round of wave for the promotion of mediation for various types of disputes. People are starting to seriously consider the means to promote mediation in the society.

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Harmonisation of Private International Law - Is It Possible At All?

The European Union (EU) entered a new stage in the process of reducing the deficit of democratic legitimation of its politics. April 1st marks the start of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI). The ECI is new instrument for EU citizens to participate directly in influencing the development and setting of European law.

The Lisbon Treaty of December 2009 brought about major changes in the architecture of the EU e.g. concerning competences of and decision-making by the European Council, the Council of Ministers, the European Commission and the European Parliament. A further innovation the Lisbon treaty brought about is the ECI. Its legal basis is Article 11: “Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties”.

European Citizen's Initiative - A Useful Instrument for NGOs to Influence EU-Law?

The European Union (EU) entered a new stage in the process of reducing the deficit of democratic legitimation of its politics. April 1st marks the start of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI). The ECI is new instrument for EU citizens to participate directly in influencing the development and setting of European law (e.g. regulations and directives).

To look back: The Lisbon Treaty of December 2009 brought about major changes in the architecture of the EU e.g. concerning competences of and decision-making by the European Council, the Council of Ministers, the European Commission and the European Parliament. A further innovation the Lisbon treaty brought about is the ECI. Its legal basis is Article 11: “Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties”.

Should Law Look East?

Time and space have long constrained legal debate. Careful legal scholarship takes time to craft; publication in book and journals are at the mercy of selection and review processes and production schedules; and delivery of scholarship requires a further wait for the publication to reach library book shelves in hard copy form or become digitally available in online databases. 

Despite the globalisation of law, libraries prioritise research relevant to the regions in which they are located, and online databases even comprehensive repositories such as West law, Lexis Nexis and Hein Online privilege research published in certain geographical jurisdictions, notably the United States, over others. Time fetters; space shackles; and legal debate, in the process, suffer.

The Limits of State Power in a Democratic Society

The coding is not only the expression of the political will of the law maker, it firstly is a complex juridical technique for the choosing and systematization of the normative content necessary and adequate to certain social, political, economic, institutional realities. Since Constitution is a law, yet it nevertheless distinguishes itself from the law, the problem is to establish which juridical norms it contains. 

The solving of this problem needs to consider the specific of the fundamental law and also of the requirements of the coding theory. The determining with all scientific stringency of the normative content of the Constitution is indispensable both for the removal of any inaccuracy in delimiting the differences from the law, for the stability and predictability of the fundamental law and last, but not the least, for the reality and effectiveness of its supremacy.

The Refugee Crisis - A Challenge for Europe and the World

Since 2010, the European Union (EU) had to deal mainly with the debt crisis in some of its member states, especially in Greece. The European leaders concentrated their energy on keeping Greece in the euro as the German chancellor Angela Merkel pointed out: “If the euro fails, Europe fails”. In order to avoid this scenario, many aid programs were adopted to give Greece a chance to recover. 

In 2015 and probably in 2016, Europe is again under pressure and it looks like that the new challenge is a larger risk for the future of the EU than the debt crisis ever was. I am talking about the recent refugee crisis and the difficulty to find common and durable solutions. This crisis is a result mainly of the Syrian civil war and the outbreak of armed conflicts or deterioration of on-going ones, among others, in Afghanistan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, and Ukraine.

Myopic Law Preferences and Non-coercive Market Equilibria

This paper investigates the economic conditions under which the performance of a Judiciary does not impede noncoercive fair socioeconomic allocations under “Strotz-myopia” regarding the law variable, i.e., under a static view of it in an otherwise dynamic context. The law, here, is the positive factor by whichconsumption volume is multiplied as a result of law introduction in anotherwise fully private social economy. 

Lexicographic preferences regarding the law is the keyword in establishing non-coercive equilibria either in the static context of a stone-age economy or in the dynamic context of a jungle economy, given in the latter the presence of farsightedness. Nevertheless, such equilibria are found here to exist even under myopia and regardless the presence of lexicographic preferences. We first detect them within a fully private social economy, and we next qualify them by introducing the Judiciary as state officials. 

The optimality regarding state finances imposes additional restrictions in establishing myopic non-coercive equilibria. In any case, anequilibrium will be stable if it is not influenced by the homotheticity or notof the preferences, i.e., by income distribution considerations. So, any suboptimal behaviour of the Judiciary should be attributed exclusively to the suboptimality of state finances: Macroeconomics does affect law administration.