Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal最新文献

{"title":"Reports of a Blockchain Revolution in Trade Finance Are Greatly Exaggerated","authors":"J. Winn","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3526521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3526521","url":null,"abstract":"The term “blockchain” describes technologies that selectively incorporate some design elements first popularized by the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Belief in the potential of blockchain (or “distributed ledger”) technologies to revolutionize financial markets appears in some quarters to border on religious fanaticism. Trade finance (i.e., financing cross-border transactions in goods and services) is one major global financial market burdened with anachronistic business models and obsolete technologies, and thus ripe for disruption. But that fact alone does not demonstrate that that blockchain will be the engine of digital transformation when it finally occurs. Magical thinking about technology that cannot live up to the hype about it can usually be distinguished from the early stages of the success of a disruptive new technology merely by asking 1) whether what is being discussed is a pilot project (in which case it can be ignored for the time being); and if not, then 2) what share of the relevant market the commercialized version of the technology has achieved (anything less than 1% may be considered still a pilot no matter what its promoters claim). By 2019, the only blockbuster success for blockchain remained the speculative cryptocurrency markets that originally spawned it a decade earlier, but the hype surrounding blockchain has been intense enough to overshadow any serious discussion of its lack of success. A pragmatic approach to the challenge of transforming trade finance starts by acknowledging the bewildering variety of business contexts and immense diversity of local interests that any new global trade finance system would have to accommodate. Furthermore, blockchain enthusiasts appear oblivious to the progress that parties engaged in cross-border trade have already made in updating trade finance systems. The eventual triumph of countless local instances of incremental innovation over the hubris of ill-informed evangelists of disruption may be obscured by “blockchain washing,” however, if blockchain enthusiasts manage to affix the label blockchain to whatever solution ultimately emerges.","PeriodicalId":218878,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125326468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prospective Policy Study on Artificial Intelligence and EU Trade Policy","authors":"K. Irion, Joseph Williams","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3524254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3524254","url":null,"abstract":"Artificial intelligence holds enormous promise for our information civilization if we get the governance of artificial intelligence right. For the EU – and the Netherlands in particular – ensuring responsible artificial intelligence is a top priority. With the exception of privacy and personal data protection, the tenets of responsible artificial intelligence are not (yet) codified in EU law. The EU is now drafting new rules to provide for ethical and human-centric artificial intelligence. What makes artificial intelligence even more fascinating is that the technology can be deployed fairly location-independent. Data and machine learning code can be moved across today’s digital ecosystem and the predictive outcomes of an artificial intelligence system can be applied at a distance. The fluidity of artificial intelligence inevitably holds repercussions for the societies it interacts with which can affects individuals’ fundamental rights and societal values.<br><br>Cross-border trade in digital services which incorporate applied artificial intelligence into their software architecture is ever increasing. That brings artificial intelligence within the purview of international trade law, such as the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and ongoing negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on trade related aspects of electronic commerce. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs commissioned this study to generate knowledge about the interface between international trade law and European norms and values in the use of artificial intelligence. The study embarked on research of artificial intelligence with a comprehensive look at areas where EU external trade and EU governance of artificial intelligence intersect.","PeriodicalId":218878,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121252333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Belt and Road: The China Dream?","authors":"Karen Jackson, Oleksandr Shepotylo","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3111258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3111258","url":null,"abstract":"China is committed to a very ambitious infrastructure development project, referred to as the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’. This involves the implementation of massive infrastructure investments that, among other things, will reduce transportation costs. This paper employs a structural gravity approach to analyze how the reduction in transportation costs between China and the EU would change trade flows and consumer welfare in China, EU and the rest of the World. We also look at how these welfare improvements compare to the gains from signing shallow and deep free trade agreements with the EU, as well as analyzing how the BRI interplays with the US-led mega trade deals: TTIP and TPP. Our results indicate substantial gains from the BRI for China and the EU. A 30 percent reduction in transportation costs between China and the EU would increase the welfare of a representative consumer in China by 1.51 percent and the EU by 0.97 percent. Combining the BRI with a deep FTA would increase welfare by 4.90 and 2.94 percent respectively. Furthermore, the potential negative effect of the TPP on China is more than compensated by the BRI initiative.","PeriodicalId":218878,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123645305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Impact of Tariff Regulation on the Economic and Financial Results of Water Service Operators in Italy: A Ten-Year Perspective (2007-2018) - Synthesis","authors":"P. Peruzzi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3519071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3519071","url":null,"abstract":"More than a year has passed (July 2018) since the publication of \"The impact of tariff regulation on the economic and financial results of water service operators\" (Canitano & Peruzzi, 2018) and in this edition we are able to provide a time line that runs from 2007 to 2018, two years longer. The aim of the research is always the same, that of \"an analysis of the changes that have occurred in the economic regulation of water companies, interpreting them in the light of the financial statements of a group of fifty water companies. The companies, with the MTI, have seen their profitability grow which has increased their incoming cash flows to such an extent as to allow them to make a higher volume of investments, distribute substantial dividends and at the same time increase their capitalization. This could suggest that, at least as regards the financial potential offered by the Italian regulator with the MTI, the companies could have made a greater volume of investments than that achieved so far.","PeriodicalId":218878,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129207508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Creation of Investor–State Arbitration","authors":"Taylor St John","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3516614","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3516614","url":null,"abstract":"Is investor–state arbitration a radical departure from earlier mechanisms for resolving disputes between foreign investors and states? On one hand, the first investment treaty arbitration was decided in 1990 and was ‘dramatically different from anything previously known in the international sphere.’ On the other hand, scholars convincingly present investor–state arbitration as a direct descendant of legal practices in previous centuries.<br><br>There is no shortage of antecedents for investor–state arbitration, so why is it perceived as ‘dramatically different’ from what had gone before? In the second half of the 20th century, consent to investor–state arbitration was provided prospectively (before disputes arose) and pursuant to generalized jurisdiction (for any treaty breach); these are the key differences from previous practices. <br><br>Two institutional developments were crucial for creating prospective, generalized consent. First, the ICSID Convention emerged. Second, provisions providing consent to investor–state arbitration were added to investment treaties. This chapter focuses on these two developments. It reconstructs the choices that officials faced, their constraints, and the reasons why they made the choice for investor–state arbitration against other alternatives. To do so, it uses primary documents from five archives: the American, British, German, and Swiss national archives as well as the World Bank archives.","PeriodicalId":218878,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal","volume":"210 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122910209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Telecommunications and Media Services in Preferential Trade Agreements: Path Dependences Still Matter","authors":"Mira Burri","doi":"10.1007/978-3-030-46955-9_8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46955-9_8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":218878,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129388741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Foundations of the Internal Market: Free Trade Area and Customs Union under Articles 28-31 TFEU","authors":"S. Enchelmaier","doi":"10.5553/elr.000138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5553/elr.000138","url":null,"abstract":"This contribution places the provisions of the Treaty creating a free trade area and customs union between the Member States (Articles 28-31 TFEU) in their wider context. It then focuses on the interpretation of Article 30 in the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Throughout, it casts sideways glances at corresponding provisions of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). As it turns out, the abolition of customs duties and charges having equivalent effect, and the establishment of a customs union between Member States, were important milestones in the development of European unification. They became overshadowed later by more spectacular developments in the case law on the free movement of goods, persons and services. As a consequence, the importance of the customs provisions is widely underrated. Brexit concentrates the minds in this respect, as an important economy is about to rearrange and even recreate the basic building blocks of its international trading relations.","PeriodicalId":218878,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124581742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Legal Effect of the ‘Paris Rulebook’ under the Doctrine of Treaty Interpretation","authors":"Petra Minnerop","doi":"10.5040/9781509932511.ch-005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509932511.ch-005","url":null,"abstract":"This part of the book examines the legal effect of the so called Paris Rulebook under the doctrine of treaty interpretation. The Paris Rulebook is a composition of decisions and annexes, adopted by the ‘Conference of Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties under the Paris Agreement’ (CMA) in Katowice in 2018. These further decisions play a significant role for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which in itself does not explain in sufficient detail how Parties intend to achieve the ambitious temperature goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and more ambitiously, to 1.5°C. The role of the Paris Rulebook is much greater if it can be shown that it has a decisive legal effect in accordance with general international law. This legal effect that the Paris Rulebook has for the implementation of the Paris Agreement is looked at from the perspective of a conceptual analysis of Art. 31 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) in this chapter. The International Law Commission (ILC) of the United Nations has adopted draft conclusions to establish the legal effect of subsequent agreements of Parties for the interpretation of a treaty, based on Art. 31 and Art. 32 of the VCLT. These draft conclusions offer analytical tools derived from state practice and international jurisprudence. The interpretative effect of subsequent agreement of Parties on key parts of the Paris Agreement will thus be examined with criteria recognised in international law and a legal effect on Parties’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs), their accounting for and reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the operation of the Paris Agreement’s oversight mechanism such as the so called ‘global stocktake’ and the compliance procedure can be identified.","PeriodicalId":218878,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126410598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Standards as Transatlantic Trade Barriers: Is There a Future for EU-US Regulatory Cooperation?","authors":"Iulianna Romanchyshyna","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3490517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3490517","url":null,"abstract":"Despite that transatlantic trade negotiations are in halt, an economic and strategic case for cooperation continues to prompt the EU and US to look for other options to engage in reducing trade barriers. One of the areas that carry a great potential is regulatory cooperation, on which, despite the TTIP’s ‘deep freeze’, the parties have made several follow-ups within the bilateral meetings. Following this route, it is likely that eventually some of the problematic regulatory cooperation topics that have been troubling policymakers when TTIP was under discussion would reemerge. This paper addresses the possibilities for transatlantic cooperation on standards. It describes the main features of the EU and US standards development systems to pinpoint their fundamental differences, which confine the possibilities for future cooperation. It also outlines the risks that closer forms of cooperation could entail, as well as discusses some opportunities to address divergences in standards across the Atlantic.","PeriodicalId":218878,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122441154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Concept of Inheritance by Right of Representation: A Comparative Analysis of Civil Law in Russia and France","authors":"N. Rostovtseva","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3481024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3481024","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines one of the most important concepts of intestate succession – inheritance by right of representation. The following analysis is based on civil law in Russia and France. The paper provides an overview of the meaning and the role of the right of representation, determines those who can inherit by right of representation under the Russian and French civil codes as well as the grounds for succession; examines the limitations on inheritance by right of representation under civil law in both states; identifies the legal nature of the rights of the representing heirs. Specific attention is paid to the issue of representation of the parent who is the commorient of the decedent. As a result of the comparative study, the author makes proposals on the improvement of the concept of inheritance by right of representation in Russia and France","PeriodicalId":218878,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: International & Comparative Law eJournal","volume":"384 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113998943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}