De Facto Precedent at the Court of Justice of the European Union

This paper seeks to demonstrate that although there is no official doctrine of precedent in judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the research affirms that there is a de facto system of precedent. This means that whilst, de jure, there is no official precedent status of the case law of the CJEU, the Court does give precedential value to its own case law through interpretive practices to ensure the uniform application of law and legal certainty throughout the Member States of the European Union (EU). When one looks at the elements of precedent it is apparent that this goes beyond its legal value (i.e. authority or bindingness) or conscious jurisprudential choice – language also plays a role. This article will examine discussions and models of precedent in common law and civil law legal systems in both theory and practice, before going on to examine the theories and practices of precedent at the CJEU

Optimization of labor allocation at a syringe production facility : work study

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 46).At MD Company (Singapore), the syringe value stream faces escalating labor cost and high labor turnover. Two labor allocations were proposed previously to optimize current labor resources, with the aim of controlling the labor cost effectively without affecting the production. Proposal Two, which had demonstrated significant increase in productivity and reduced labor cost through computer simulations, entailed an addition of two workers each in the new dedicated inspector and material handler job designations. The associated new job scopes combine tasks which are currently assigned broadly to production technicians working on the syringe production floor. A work study approach was undertaken with the broad aim of reducing waste from the new job scopes, as well as to verify headcount used in the simulation of Proposal 2. Dedicating tasks to individuals presented opportunities to reduce repetition and to achieve collective savings via changes in methods. Within the work study, a method study provided a theoretical basis of how best to carry out the new job scopes, while a time study established time needed to perform a given set of tasks. Results found were consistent with that from simulation of Proposal 2. Further improvements were made in reducing inspection cycle time through streamlining of inspections. Identification and separation of tasks which are not performed constantly paved the way for one of the two material handlers to be hired on an overtime basis. Future iterative identification of waste and its removal could help current work converge to an optimal work standard.by Gar Yan Ng.M.Eng

Adaptation of Courts to Disruption

This article reflects on how courts in the USA and UK have remained active and resilient to provide access to justice, or due process, during times of emergency and disruptive events.. The focus here is not to define emergencies per se, but to analyse the impact of the emergencies and disruptive events that interrupt the functioning of courts and access to justice. The article provides a brief examination of the emergencies and the disruptions and the expected responses to those interruptions. The question for this paper is how do courts, adapt (or be adapted) in times of emergencies that disrupt their ordinary operation, both in terms of continuity of operations, but also in terms of protection of rights through judicial review? This paper will examine mainly two common law examples (England and USA) of how the courts adapted to such disruptions

FROM GOVERNMENT TO GOVERNANCE, FROM JUDICIARY TO…?

It is clear from the research on the political and legal constitutions around regulatory power that it is a complex picture. The question for this paper is whether there is a relationship between regulatory governance and institutions and the judiciaries, i.e. are they constrained by the rule of law in the same way as classical administration? The first part of this paper will start to chart out an expansion and contraction of judicial power in relation to executive powers. The second part will provide a comparison between England and France’s regulatory systems and their relationships to their respective judiciaries. The conclusion sets out to answer the main question of where the judiciary sits in an a complex political, economic and legal tapestry to control a hybrid institution that sits outside of a legal constitution

Judicial Performance and Experiences of Judicial Work: Findings from socio-legal research by Sharyn Roach Anleu & Kathy Mack: Commentary

This commentary examines the contribution in this edition by Roach Anleu &amp; Mack, based on arguments that reducing judicial performance evaluation (ergo any professional performance) to that which is easily measurable removes the human aspect of that performance, and is therefore less accurate. Here, &ldquo;measurable&rdquo; is meant as focusing only on the &ldquo;outward performance&rdquo;, &ldquo;interaction with stakeholders&rdquo; and how judges perform in relation to numbers of cases. Compared to such organisational standards, judicial codes of ethics or other written codes reflect the more traditional values of the judiciary, such as independence and impartiality. This can be seen e.g. in the experiences of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in supporting the use of judicial performance standards. The argument in the paper, supported by this commentator, is that such exercises are superficial and more depth is needed to capture the entirety of the judicial experience using the model presented. Este comentario analiza el art&iacute;culo de Roach Anleu y Mack en este n&uacute;mero, en base a los argumentos de que limitar la evaluaci&oacute;n del rendimiento judicial (ergo cualquier rendimiento profesional) a lo que es f&aacute;cilmente medible elimina el aspecto humano de ese rendimiento, y es por lo tanto menos preciso. Aqu&iacute;, por &ldquo;medible&rdquo; se entiende lo que est&aacute; centrado &uacute;nicamente en el &ldquo;rendimiento exterior&rdquo;, la &ldquo;interacci&oacute;n con los interesados&rdquo; y el rendimiento de los jueces en relaci&oacute;n con el n&uacute;mero de casos. En comparaci&oacute;n con estas normas de organizaci&oacute;n, los c&oacute;digos judiciales de &eacute;tica u otros c&oacute;digos escritos reflejan los valores m&aacute;s tradicionales de la judicatura, como la independencia o imparcialidad. Esto puede verse, por ejemplo, en las experiencias de la Organizaci&oacute;n para la Seguridad y la Cooperaci&oacute;n en Europa en apoyar el uso de las normas de rendimiento judicial. El argumento del art&iacute;culo, apoyado por esta autora, es que estos ejercicios son superficiales y se necesita m&aacute;s profundidad para capturar en su totalidad la experiencia judicial utilizando el modelo presentado. DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2541088</p

A discipline of judicial governance?

The problem this article seeks to deal with is that legal standards are insufficient to support the needs of judicial governance in Europe (i.e. in terms of efficiency, public accountability and modernisation (in terms of technology) in interfacing with and meeting public needs. Given this problem, I will look at what approach should be taken instead. This article posits that an inter-disciplinary approach, taking in law, politics, economics and management, should be taken: i.e. a discipline of judicial governance.I am going to reintroduce the principle of accountability from a different perspective than the traditional constitutional and legal perspective that focuses mainly upon judicial independence, procedural law and human rights. My theory is that there should be an inter-disciplinary approach to judicial governance. Legal standards are insufficient by themselves to hold the judicial office to account, given the requirements for increased accountability by politicians (for the functioning of courts); the public (for unpopular and seemingly unjust outcomes of judgments); and internally to their peers, both judicial and administrative (for the functioning of individual organisations and judges)

Optimization of employee transportation network

A transportation network for employees at a local company faced problems with unbalanced utilization and passenger complains caused by occasional overcrowding in vehicles. The objective of this work was to develop a method for planning transportation routes and establish its reliability in consistently delivering a near or optimal solution. Two models were built each with a different Integer programming formulation- Formulation I and II. Formulation I consists of vehicle cost and penalty cost components in its objective function so that the optimal solution would balance actual cost and passenger service level. The model was implemented in the EXCELbased Risk Solver Platform but could not find a feasible solution for even a small set of 4-node problem. Formulation II, built upon experience from the first model, had an improved cost function that excluded the penalty cost component. An implementation in XPRESS-MP and subsequent verification with enumeration solutions proved its ability to solve both the 3-node and 4-node problems to optimality. A profile of objective value over various vehicle capacity values served as a guide to setting passenger service level. The XPRESS-MP model was implemented in Stage II of this work on a 13-node problem based on actual data. The solution was compared with manually generated routes and was found to outperform the latter by at least 9%. Even with passenger service level imposed on the model, a 5% cost saving was attained. Proactive efforts in data collection and maintenance are encouraged to ensure successful full scale implementation of this model in the future.​Master of Science (IMST

AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE CENTRAL PROVIDENT FUND

Bachelor'sBACHELOR OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (HONOURS