The Business Lawyer as Terrorist Transaction Cost Engineer

Lawyers have garnered a reputation for being unreasonable and excessively contentious. This popular sentiment is embedded in our culture. If lawyers cannot change that perception, a second-best outcome (from the perspective of lawyers) would be the formation of an understanding that there is a reason why they appear to act unreasonably, that it can be desirable for lawyers to act in a way that initially appears to be unreasonable. This Article attempts to build a basis for that understanding in the context of lawyers participating in large commercial transactions

Regulation of Public Sector Collective Bargaining in the States

While the unionization of most private-sector workers is governed by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the legal scope of collective bargaining for state and local public-sector workers is the domain of states and, where states allow it, local authorities. This hodge-podge of state-and-local legal frameworks is complicated enough, but recent efforts in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and other states have left the legal rights of public-sector workers even less transparent.In this report, we review the legal rights and limitations on public-sector bargaining in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, as of January 2014. Given the legal complexities, we focus on three sets of workers who make up almost half of all unionized public-sector workers: teachers, police, and firefighters, with some observations, where possible, on other state-and-local workers. For each group of workers, we examine whether public-sector workers have the right to bargain collectively; whether that right includes the ability to bargain over wages; and whether public-sector workers have the right to strike

Renewable energy support policy based on contracts for difference and bilateral negotiation

ABSTRACT: The European Union has been one of the major drivers of the development of renewable energy. The energy policies of most European countries have involved subsidized tariffs, such as the feed-in tariff in Portugal, the regulated tariff and the market price plus premium in Spain, and the Renewables Obligation in UK, that came into effect in 2002. Recently, UK has made some reforms and started to consider contracts for difference (CfDs) as a key element of the energy policy. This paper presents a support policy based on CfDs and bilateral negotiation. The first phase consists in a CfD auction and the second phase involves a bilateral negotiation between a Government and each of the selected investors. The paper also presents a case-study to analyze the potential benefits of the support policy. It was performed with the help of the MATREM system. The preliminary results indicate some advantages for the Government (and, in some cases, for the investors as well).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Obligations of trust for privacy and confidentiality in distributed transactions

Purpose – This paper aims to describe a bilateral symmetric approach to authorization, privacy protection and obligation enforcement in distributed transactions. The authors introduce the concept of the obligation of trust (OoT) protocol as a privacy assurance and authorization mechanism that is built upon the XACML standard. The OoT allows two communicating parties to dynamically exchange their privacy and authorization requirements and capabilities, which the authors term a notification of obligation (NoB), as well as their commitments to fulfilling each other's requirements, which the authors term signed acceptance of obligations (SAO). The authors seek to describe some applicability of these concepts and to show how they can be integrated into distributed authorization systems for stricter privacy and confidentiality control. Design/methodology/approach – Existing access control and privacy protection systems are typically unilateral and provider-centric, in that the enterprise service provider assigns the access rights, makes the access control decisions, and determines the privacy policy. There is no negotiation between the client and the service provider about which access control or privacy policy to use. The authors adopt a symmetric, more user-centric approach to privacy protection and authorization, which treats the client and service provider as peers, in which both can stipulate their requirements and capabilities, and hence negotiate terms which are equally acceptable to both parties. Findings – The authors demonstrate how the obligation of trust protocol can be used in a number of different scenarios to improve upon the mechanisms that are currently available today. Practical implications – This approach will serve to increase trust in distributed transactions since each communicating party receives a difficult to repudiate digitally signed acceptance of obligations, in a standard language (XACML), which can be automatically enforced by their respective computing machinery. Originality/value – The paper adds to current research in trust negotiation, privacy protection and authorization by combining all three together into one set of standardized protocols. Furthermore, by providing hard to repudiate signed acceptance of obligations messages, this strengthens the legal case of the injured party should a dispute arise

Payments for Ecosystem Services: Legal and Institutional Frameworks

Analysis and engagement with partners working on ecosystem services transactions, policies and laws over the past 10 years have demonstrated a clear need to better understand the legal and institutional frameworks that have the potential to promote or hinder the development of payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes, as well as the complex legal considerations that affect ecosystem services projects. In response, the IUCN Environmental Law Centre and The Katoomba Group have worked on a joint initiative to analyze the legal and institutional frameworks of water-related PES schemes and projects in four Andean countries: South America (Northeastern)-Brazil; Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. It has resulted in this report. Country-based analysts with experience in ecosystem services transactions have developed country and project assessments to define existing and recommend future regulatory and institutional frameworks that enable equitable and long-lasting ecosystem services transactions. Partners from North America (Central America)-Costa Rica; North America-Mexico; Ecuador and the North America-United States provided feedback on the assessments. The country assessments yielded lessons which were used to develop a set of recommendations on legal frameworks, property rights, enabling institutions, PES contracts, and governance issues supporting the future development of PES schemes

Policies and Procedures for the Termination of War Contracts

The concept of recognition and biofunctionality has attracted increasing interest in the fields of chemistry and material sciences. Advances in the field of nanotechnology for the synthesis of desired metal oxide nanostructures have provided a solid platform for the integration of nanoelectronic devices. These nanoelectronics-based devices have the ability to recognize molecular species of living organisms, and they have created the possibility for advanced chemical sensing functionalities with low limits of detection in the nanomolar range. In this review, various metal oxides, such as ZnO-, CuO-, and NiO-based nanosensors, are described using different methods (receptors) of functionalization for molecular and ion recognition. These functionalized metal oxide surfaces with a specific receptor involve either a complex formation between the receptor and the analyte or an electrostatic interaction during the chemical sensing of analytes. Metal oxide nanostructures are considered revolutionary nanomaterials that have a specific surface for the immobilization of biomolecules with much needed orientation, good conformation and enhanced biological activity which further improve the sensing properties of nanosensors. Metal oxide nanostructures are associated with certain unique optical, electrical and molecular characteristics in addition to unique functionalities and surface charge features which shows attractive platforms for interfacing biorecognition elements with effective transducing properties for signal amplification. There is a great opportunity in the near future for metal oxide nanostructure-based miniaturization and the development of engineering sensor devices

Acquire a practical overview of 'good faith' in commercial contracting

The twists and turns in the ongoing development of the implied common law good faith obligation in the commercial contractual arena continue to prove fertile academic ground. Despite a lack of guidance from the High Court, the lower courts have been besieged by claims based, in part, on the implied obligation. Although lower court authority is lacking consistency and the ‘decisions in which lower courts have recognised the legitimacy of implication of a term of good faith vary in their suggested rationales’, the implied obligation may provide some comfort to a party to ‘at least some commercial contracts’ faced with a contractual counterpart exhibiting symptoms of bad faith