The Convention on the Future of the EU: The European Commission and Treaty Reform

Treaty reform has become an almost constant feature in the European Union. This article challenges the traditional intergovernmentalist assumption that state representatives are the only significant actors in this process by looking in some detail at the role played by the European Commission. The article first sets out the institutional framework within which the Commission participates in the negotiations. It then demonstrates that the Commission's influence – even though limited in the actual decision-making – is evident with respect to agenda-setting and legitimation of treaty reform. Finally, we look at the impact of the convention method on the nature of treaty reform

Oklahoma

In Naylor Farms, Inc. v. Chaparral Energy, LLC, the plaintiff royalty owners (collectively, Naylor Farms) contended that Chaparral systematically underpaid royalties on production from approximately 2,500 Oklahoma oil and gas wells by improperly deducting from royalty payments certain costs that the plaintiffs contended should have been borne solely by Chaparral under Oklahoma law. The district court granted Naylor Farms’ motion seeking certification of a class of royalty owners under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the present proceedings, Chaparral has appealed the district court’s order granting class certification

Guesswork

The security of systems is often predicated on a user or application selecting an object, a password or key, from a large list. If an inquisitor wishing to identify the object in order to gain access to a system can only query each possibility, one at a time, then the number of guesses they must make in order to identify the selected object is likely to be large. If the object is selected uniformly at random using, for example, a cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generator, then the analysis of the distribution of the number of guesses that the inquisitor must make is trivial. If the object has not been selected perfectly uniformly, but with a distribution that is known to the inquisitor, then the quantification of security is relatively involved. This thesis contains contributions to the study of this subject, dubbed Guesswork, motivated both by fundamental investigations into computational security as well as modern applications in secure storage and communication. This thesis begins with two introductory chapters. One describes existing results in Guesswork and summarizes the contributions found in the thesis. The other recapitulates some of the mathematical tools that are employed in the thesis. The other five chapters of contain new contributions to our understanding of Guesswork, much of which has already experienced peer review and been published. The chapters themselves are designed to be self-contained and so readable in isolation

Oklahoma Oil and Gas Update

The author reviews updates and developments to oil and gas law in Oklahoma

Oklahoma

The case of White Star Petroleum, LLC v. MUFG Union Bank, N.A. presented two questions of state law certified to the Oklahoma Supreme Court by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Oklahoma: (1) Are the “trust funds” create[d] by Title 42 O.S. § 144.2, entitled “Creation and Appropriation of Trust Funds for Payment of Lienable Claims,” limited to obligations due nonoperator joint working interest owners, or do such funds include payments due [to] holders of mechanic’s and materialmen’s liens arising under and perfected by Title 42 O.S. § 144? (2) Does the Oil and Gas Owners’ Lien Act of 2010 grant an operator and non-operator working interest owner a lien in proceeds from purchasers of oil and gas which is prior and superior to any claim of the holder of a mechanic’s and materialmen’s lien asserted under Title 42 O.S. § 144? The above questions were certified to aid in the bankruptcy court’s resolution of two particular adversarial proceedings