The Identities of Private International Law: Lessons from the U.S. and EU Revolutions

This article, first presented as part of a conference entitled What is private international law? , responds to this question through analysis of four different identities through which private international law has been viewed. It begins by exploring two contrasting classical approaches, under which private international law is concerned with the international ordering of state power, or with the national recognition of private rights. It then turns to examine the US and EU private international law revolutions, and the very different further identities of private international law which have emerged as a consequence of each. After reflecting critically on the experiences of these revolutions, the article offers some concluding thoughts as to how the identity or identities of private international law can or should be constructed, arguing that there are valuable lessons and potentially propitious elements in each of the four examined identities

Federalism in the European Union and the United States Subsidiarity, Private Law, and the Conflict of Laws

The United States has long been a source of influence and inspiration to the developing federal system in the European Union. As E.U. federalism matures, increasingly both systems may have the opportunity to profit from each other’s experience in federal regulatory theory and practice. This article analyzes aspects of the federal ordering in each system, comparing both historical approaches and current developments. It focuses on three legal topics, and the relationship between them: (1) the federal regulation of matters of private law; (2) rules of the conflict of laws, which play a critical role in regulating cross-border litigation in an era of global communications, travel and trade; and (3) “subsidiarity,” which is a key constitutional principle in the European Union, and arguably also plays an implicit and under-analyzed role in U.S. federalism. The central contention of this Article is that the treatment of each of these areas of law is related —that they should be understood collectively as part of the range of competing regulatory strategies and techniques of each federal system. It is not suggested that “solutions” from one system can be simply transplanted to the other, but rather that the experiences of each federal order demonstrate the interconnectedness of regulation in these three subject areas, offering important insights from which each system might benefit

The Privatisation of Private (and) International Law

Privatisation is much studied and debated as a general phenomenon, including in relation to its legal effects and the challenges it presents to the boundaries of public and private law. Outside the criminal context there has however been relatively limited focus on privatisation of the governmental functions which are perhaps of most interest to lawyers—law making, law enforcement and dispute resolution—or on the international legal implications of privatisation. This article argues that modern legal developments in the context of private law and cross-border private legal relations—generally known as party autonomy in private international law—can be usefully analysed as two distinct forms of privatisation. First, privatisation of certain allocative functions of public and private international law, in respect of both institutional and substantive aspects of private law regulation, through the legal effect given to choice of court and choice of law agreements. Second, privatisation of the institutional and substantive regulation of private legal relationships themselves, through arbitration and the recognition of non-state law. Together, these developments have established a global marketplace of state and non-state dispute resolution institutions and private laws, which detaches private law authority from its traditional jurisdictional anchors. Analysing these developments through the lens of privatisation highlights a number of important critical questions which deserve greater consideration— this article further examines in particular whether this form of privatisation in fact increases efficiency in either private international law decision-making or private law dispute resolution, as well as its distributive and regulatory effects

ALCOHOLS AS COMPONENTS OF TRANSPORTATION FUELS

Alcohols have the potential to revolutionize energy fuel supply and use, particularly in transportation. This worldwide potential is based on (a) the variety of widely available raw materials from which alcohols can be made (coal, natural gas, petroleum, and biomass), (b) the improved and demon­ strated technology for alcohol manufacture and use, and (c) the favorable combustion characteristics of alcohols, namely clean burning with high octane performance

Patient prioritization and resource allocation in mass casualty incidents

Mass-casualty incidents, such as multi-car traffic accidents, plane crashes, and terrorist bombings, create a sudden spike in demand for emergency resources in an area. Providers of emergency medical services must act quickly to make decisions that will affect the lives of injured patients. Particularly important is triage, the process of classifying patients and prioritizing them for transportation from the scene of the incident. The most widely used standard for mass-casualty triage, START, prescribes a fixed priority ordering among the different classes of patients, without explicitly accounting for resource limitations. We develop policies to improve the resource allocation phase of START by explicitly incorporating resource limitations. Next, we develop policies for assigning resources when two or more incidents occur at the same time and demand the same set of resources. Current standards, such as START, do not prescribe how to handle such situations---these decisions are most often made in an ad hoc manner. Finally, we examine the problem of efficiently routing a large number of patients affected by a major disaster, such as a biological, chemical, or nuclear incident, to facilities where they can be treated. We provide insight on how resources can be used effectively to treat patients as quickly as possible. Throughout this work, we focus on policies that are analytically justified, intuitive, broadly applicable, and easy to implement. Using numerical results and simulation, we demonstrate that implementing policies based on quantitative analysis can make a meaningful impact by increasing the expected number of survivors in a mass-casualty incidentDoctor of Philosoph

A New Species of Bufo (Anura: Bufonidae) From Africa's Dry Savannas

Texas Memorial Museu