University of British Columbia
Allard Research Commons (Peter A. Allard School of Law)Not a member yet
4268 research outputs found
Sort by
What Can One Learn from Chinese Tax Administration? A Precis of The Administrative Foundations of the Chinese Fiscal State (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
No full textThe Administrative Foundations of the Chinese Fiscal State (Cambridge University Press 2022) explores how China developed a tax system to support its economic transformation. Among scholars who study taxation and economic growth, a familiar idea is that it is generally very difficult for poor countries to develop the state apparatus needed to raise revenue. The lack of revenue, in turn, prevents governments from providing critical public goods and services needed to spur economic growth. State capacity in taxation, therefore, is a major determinant of which countries become prosperous and which do not. An obvious question, then, is whether the evolution of Chinese state capacity in taxation has broader lessons to offer developing countries.
For readers interested in tax and development, the book presents two main discoveries. First, a fundamental distinctive feature of how China developed its fiscal capacity is how it initially embraced, and then abandoned, the paradigm of self-assessment. The story of this choice has not previously been told anywhere. The reason for the neglect, the book argues, lies in deficiencies in the theory or language conventionally used to analyze tax administration generally. Second, scholarship on tax and development, as well as policy advice rendered by international organizations, often equivocates on the meaning of state capacity, thereby sidestepping many of the important choices that policymakers in developing countries actually confront. They rely on a language that obscures the significance of what happened (and is happening) in China—and, one suspects, elsewhere. The book urges all students of tax and development to distinguish between the varieties of state capacity more clearly
Combating foreign bribery and corruption : an integrated corporate governance, sustainability, and artificial intelligence approach
No full textThe full abstract for this item is available in the body of the item, and will be available when the embargo expires
Artificial Intelligence & Criminal Justice: Cases and Commentary
Full text linkWhen I was given the chance to develop a seminar this year at UBC’s Peter A. Allard School of Law, I jumped at the opportunity to develop something new and engaging. After brainstorming ideas with students, it quickly became evident that there was substantial interest and enthusiasm for a seminar on the growing integration of artificial intelligence and the criminal justice system.
Embarking on this journey has been a steep learning curve for me as my students and I worked together to shape the course along with input from generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, along with open-source materials from the Canadian Legal Information Institute and the Creative Commons search portal.
Delving into the case law in Canada and the U.S., reading the critical commentary, listening to podcasts and webinars, and playing around with the latest AI tools has been a lot of fun, but also made me realize how crucial it is at this point in time to have a focussed critical exploration of the benefits and risks of AI in the criminal justice context.
I hope that this open access casebook will be a valuable resource for students, instructors, legal practitioners and the public, offering insights into how AI is already influencing various aspects of the criminal justice lifecycle – including criminality and victimization, access to justice, policing, lawyering, adjudication, and corrections. If you’re interested in a quick overview of topics covered in this casebook, you can download the companion: Artificial Intelligence & Criminal Justice: A Primer (2024)
Incentivizing consensus : the role of labor law in facilitating impasse resolution in the U.S. private sector
No full textThe full abstract for this item is available in the body of the item, and will be available when the embargo expires
Policy Forum: Comparing Canadian Output-Based Pricing Systems
No full textThe Canadian public widely anticipates the demise of the federal fuel charge in 2025, and politicians and journalists now frequently refer to “industrial carbon pricing” as the main line of defence still held in Canada’s greenhouse gas emission reduction plan. This commentary examines the most important component of this line of defence—namely, federal and provincial output-based pricing systems (OBPS). It assembles hitherto obscure information with respect to three OBPS design features: eligibility, stringency of emission reduction requirements, and total cost to emitters. The study finds that OBPS implementation is off to a weak start. Many sectors that do not genuinely compete with foreign firms are eligible to participate. Provinces encourage facilities to opt into OBPS—meaning, out of full carbon pricing—with little selection. Most provinces only require facilities to slowly reduce emissions relative to their past performance, instead of catching up to low-emission peers. And lowemission facilities face weak incentives to further reduce emissions due to weak or non-existent price signals on emissions-trading markets
Thinking Differently: Creating Spaces of Autonomy for the Revitalization of Indigenous Legal Traditions in the Context of Copyright
No full textThere is an urgent need to think differently. Colonialism, in its settler variant, has developed new and particularly dangerous strategies to advance its dual imperatives of the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and the erasure of Indigeneity as a politicized identity construct with a legitimate claim to law. This goal is advanced today through rights frameworks, which have generated a worrisome platform to support the logic of elimination by drawing Indigenous calls for autonomy, self-determination, and sovereignty into a settler colonial framework of authority. In this chapter, we highlight how these strategies function in the context of Canadian copyright law. Canadian copyright law is deeply implicated in a number of issues that matter greatly to Indigenous peoples today. One possible response by Indigenous peoples to the role played by copyright in relation to these issues is to work within the copyright system: to either engage with the system as structured or to seek to reform the copyright system to make it more responsive to Indigenous concerns. While protections may be secured through either of these methods, this chapter highlights a few of the risks associated with these approaches, in particular how they draw Indigenous peoples into the settler colonial framework of authority potentially resulting in a diminishment of Indigenous sovereignty. This argument suggests that in seeking to protect Indigenous modes of expression, we should be wary of reliance on rights. Instead, we should seek to create spaces of autonomy for the revitalization of Indigenous legal traditions
