First Amendment (Un)Exceptionalism: A Comparative Taxonomy of Campaign Finance Reform Proposals in the United States and United Kingdom

There is an urgent conversation happening among the world’s democracies about how to respond to the combined threat of online electioneering and foreign interference in domestic elections. Despite the shadow such activities cast over the 2016 presidential election in the United States, the US has been largely absent from comparative discussions about how to tackle the problem. This is not just because of a recalcitrant president. The assumption that America’s “First Amendment Exceptionalism” – the idea that American freedom of expression law is simply too much of an outlier to warrant useful comparative consideration – is strong on both sides of the Atlantic. This is especially true in regard to the regulation of political campaigns.This article challenges that assumption, and argues that America’s more libertarian approach to the legal regulation of political speech does not pose a barrier to fruitful comparative work in this area. It does so by comparing the law of the US to that of the UK. Specifically, it organizes reform proposals being considered in the US and UK into a common taxonomy, and sets out the legal standard governing each type of proposal in each country. Considering each country’s law through this organizational structure allows us to see that the legal differences between the US and UK, while significant, rarely bar the types of changes being considered in either nation. Indeed, the two countries have much to learn from each other’s efforts in this area, and lawmakers, regulators, and scholars should not hesitate to engage with the experiences of their transatlantic peers.In reaching this conclusion, the paper makes three distinct contributions. First, by clustering reform proposals into a taxonomy, it provides a structure for comparative work that will be useful not just in the US and UK, but in all countries working to bring their election laws fully into the internet era. Second, by providing an in-depth yet accessible guide to the legal structures undergirding election law in the US and UK, it provides a useful tool for scholars attempting to understand these systems. The US system in particular is often quickly dismissed by other nations, but without a deeper understanding of how and why US law has ended up as it has those nations risk inadvertently following in its footsteps. Finally, it identifies several concrete areas where the US and UK can benefit from each other’s expertise, thereby providing a roadmap for regulators, lawmakers, and reform advocates in both countries

The Guardianship of the public interest: a British tale of contestable administrative law

No abstract available

EC Maritime Transport Policy and Regulation

When designing robust controllers, H-infinity synthesis is a common tool touse. The controllers that result from these algorithms are typically of very high order, which complicates implementation. However, if a constraint on the maximum order of the controller is set, that is lower than the order of the (augmented) system, the problem becomes nonconvex and it is relatively hard to solve. These problems become very complex, even when the order of the system is low. The approach used in this work is based on formulating the constraint onthe maximum order of the controller as a polynomial (or rational) equation.This equality constraint is added to the optimization problem of minimizingan upper bound on the H-innity norm of the closed loop system subjectto linear matrix inequality (LMI) constraints. The problem is then solvedby reformulating it as a partially augmented Lagrangian problem where theequality constraint is put into the objective function, but where the LMIsare kept as constraints. The proposed method is evaluated together with two well-known methodsfrom the literature. The results indicate that the proposed method hascomparable performance in most cases, especially if the synthesized con-troller has many parameters, which is the case if the system to be controlledhas many input and output signals

EC Maritime Transport Policy and Regulation

No abstract available

Rethinking transparency and accountability in medicines regulation in the United Kingdom

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In the Beginning, There Was Social Policy: Developments in Social Policy in the European Union from 1972 through 2008

This paper argues that the evolution of social policy – vulgo: labor market mandates – in the European Union seems to follow a set path. Intervals of activism have been followed by challenges and checks to its development, but Treaty innovations (inter al.) have provided the impetus for further activism. The classic and first case in point was the Single European Act (1976), which presaged a new bout of legislation by widening the reach of qualified majority voting. The next was Maastricht, or the Treaty on European Union (1991) and the Agreement on Social Policy, which for the first time established a firm basis for social policy. An intermediate but instructive step was passage of the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) which formally incorporated the latter into the main body of the treaty rather than leaving it as a Protocol appended to the treaty, The most recent instance is the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, which was to morph into the Reform (or Lisbon) Treaty of December 2007. This agreement portends more fundamental reforms for two reasons. First, it implies new legislation in the area of labor relations (issues such as pay determination, the rights to strike/lockout, and the right of association) previously expressly excluded from social policy. Second, it will test some member states applying European law, which means that theoretical opt outs may be just that. And, if history is any guide, there will be subsequent consolidation to bring the labor standards set under legislation into line with European Court of Justice decisions and a further ratcheting-up of standards.

From the Margins to the Mainstream: Human Rights and the Good Friday Agreement

This Essay examines the process by which the language of human rights moved to center stage in the political process. It looks to peace processes elsewhere to determine whether the Agreement is deserving of the High Commissioner\u27s special praise and analyzes, from a human rights perspective, the content of the Agreement and the extent to which the promises made therein have been fulfilled to date