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Decomposing the “Tacit Knowledge Problem:” Codification of Knowledge and Access in CRISPR Gene-Editing
Get PDFEnvironmental Protection: What Everyone Needs to Know
No full textAlthough climate change and pollution make near-daily appearances in the news, humans have not always recognized that the environment needs to be protected. Only after the publication of Rachel Carson\u27s Silent Spring in 1962 did environmental protection became a political and social priority.In Environmental Protection: What Everyone Needs to Know®, environmental lawyer Pamela Hill offers clear, engaging answers to some of the most pressing questions facing us today. She discusses the science behind current environmental issues, defining key terms such as ecosystems, pollutants, and endocrine disruptors. Hill explains why our environment needs protection, using examples from history and current events, from the Irish potato famine to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan. She also assesses the effectiveness of landmark laws and treaties, including the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Kyoto Protocol.To what extent is it acceptable to rank human interests over ecological interests? And is it fair to ask developing countries to reduce emissions, even though they bear little responsibility for our current environmental problems? Hill identifies the greatest environmental threats we are facing today and suggests what we need to do as citizens, businesspeople, and lawmakers to protect the environment for each other and for future generations.https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/books/1340/thumbnail.jp
Three Strikes for Copyright
Get PDFHow should copyright law change to take account of the internet? Should copyright expand to plug the internet’s leakiness and protect content that the internet would otherwise make more freely available? Or, should copyright relax its strict liability regime given diverse and productive reuses in the internet age and the benefits networked diffusion provides users and second-generation creators? Answering these questions depends on what we think copyright is for and how it is used and confronted by creators and audiences. In a new article studying these questions in the very focused setting of Wikipedia articles about baseball and baseball players (there are more than you might imagine!), Professor Abhishek Nagaraj demonstrates that where production of new knowledge depends on pre-existing information, strong copyright law can reduce both the quality and quantity of new content
The First Real-Time Blockchain VAT - GCC Solves MTIC Fraud
Get PDFFollowing years of study the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) appears ready to adopt the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and put in place a tax system that will stabilize revenue. A value added tax (VAT) and corporate income tax (CIT) are considered. A VAT Framework Agreement, that functions like the VAT Directive in the EU, has been agreed.
Although new, the GCC VAT is very worthy of attention. From a tax policy perspective, it is making notable improvements to EU VAT design. The GCC VAT is (potentially) the world’s first real-time, blockchain-secured, multi-jurisdictional VAT. This is a remarkable accomplishment, and it indicates that the GCC has learned and applied a number of global VAT and technology lessons.
One of the most visible flaws in the EU VAT is its openness to cross-border frauds – both intra-community and extra-community frauds. Missing traders are the problem. This is what the GCC has corrected.
The perpetrators of tax fraud are not at all concerned about the specific tax law that they are abusing; they are looking solely at revenue streams, and the probability that they will get caught. As a result, when a fraudster finds a single activity that attacks multiple tax systems, it becomes a favored vector, and we find a nexus of frauds clustered around a unitary fraud operation.
The government’s perspective is just the opposite of the fraudster’s. A focus on one kind of tax fraud may well resolve many more kinds of fraud. This appears to be what will happen as the GCC VAT is rolled out after January 1, 2018. The example considered in this paper involves the illicit cigarette trade. By resolving missing trader frauds, the GCC may (unintentionally) make a serious dent in the illicit cigarette trade and the theft of cigarette tax revenues (a manufacturer’s tax), precisely because the operation of the GCC VAT will increase the cigarette fraudster’s probability of detection.
A “tax fraud nexus” that could easily be replicated in the GCC (if an unmodified EU-style VAT were to be adopted) can be seen in the Danish chocolate frauds. These frauds were examined in the first program of the three part Danish documentary, How Fraudulent Denmark (Sådan Svindles Danmark). The documentary appeared on DR TV January 12 and 25, and February 1, 2016. The fraud vehicle was candy that was re-sold by traders who purchased expired chocolate from the Mars Denmark Company. The primary fraud, re-packaging and then re-selling expired chocolate was carried out in a manner that attacked two tax regimes – the chocolate tax (a manufacturer’s tax) and the VAT (a consumption tax). This scheme funded organized crime; a different scheme examined in the second program of the documentary funded Islamic terrorists. The GCC seems to be very aware of the missing trader fraud discussed in the documentary. Technology innovations that will suppress it are set out in Article 71 of the GCC Framework Agreement. No other VAT Framework or VAT Directive has such a provision
Economics of Criminal Procedure
No full textThis chapter reviews the economics of criminal procedure, proceeding through four topics in the literature. First, it reviews the implications of substantive criminal law theories for criminal procedure. The second part discusses the error cost model of criminal procedure, which is the dominant framework and posits that criminal procedure rules are designed to minimize the sum of error and administrative costs. The third part reviews the public choice model of criminal procedure. Under this model, criminal procedure rules are designed largely to regulate rent-seeking activity. The last part of this chapter discusses some of the empirical work on procedure that bears directly on deterrence and welfare effects
The Challenge of Climate Change and the Contribution of African Women to Engendering International Environmental Law
No full textAfrican women played a critical role in placing issues of gender on the global climate change agenda and in increasing the international community’s appreciation of the interrelationship among rights, economic development, and environmental sustainability. A large and growing body of literature examines the challenging consequences that climate change will present for African women. Fewer works explore the agency that African women have shown in facing challenges, finding innovative solutions, and fostering sustainable development.
This chapter considers the contributions of Black women and women of African descent to the development of a more inclusive body of international environmental law. First, it explains the projected impacts of climate change with particular reference to the African continent and the challenges climate change presents for African women. The difference gender makes during natural disasters and in the aftermath of extreme weather events for women of the African Diaspora is also discussed. Next, it examines the evolution of the international environmental law of climate change and the increasing inclusion of women’s concerns in recent years. Then it explores how African women’s mobilization has successfully moved the discussion of climate change to now mandate that gender issues enter the mainstream of climate change law and policymaking. It is argued that the activism and adaptive strategies of African women could serve, and women’s human rights should command, greater attention from policymakers in the development and climate arenas. Finally, it concludes with an examination of the ways the activism of African women has served to highlight the importance of appreciating the interrelationship among environmental conservation, human rights, and human security
Revealing Not-for-Profit Third-Party Funders in Investment Arbitration
No full textThe traditional view of investment arbitration tribunals is that the mere presence of a third-party funder has no effect on the arbitration proceedings. For example, the tribunal in Oxus Gold plc v Republic of Uzbekistan, UNCITRAL, Final Award, 17 December 2015, para 127, articulated the traditional view that third-party funding has no impact on the merits portion of the arbitration process: It is undisputed that Claimant is being assisted by a third-party funder in this arbitration proceeding. The Arbitral Tribunal has mentioned this fact in its Procedural Order Nos. 6 and 7. However, this fact has no impact on this arbitration proceeding. The treatment of third-party funding may vary from tribunal to tribunal, however, since there are arguably no mandatory substantive precedents in investment arbitration regarding third-party funding. Nevertheless, most tribunals that have addressed third-party funding in their awards – if at all – have done so on the assumption that the funder is a separate entity from the funded party and has profit-making as its primary motive. Because of the traditional third-party funder’s status as a mere financier, tribunals have essentially been able to simply acknowledge the presence of the funder and move on to addressing other aspects of the case
Heuristic Interventions in the Study of Intellectual Property
Get PDFIn this Essay, I review and elaborate on Dan\u27s Burk\u27s On the Sociology of Patenting with three heuristic interventions for the study of intellectual property law. These interventions derive from sociology and anthropology, and to some extent also from critical literary theory. Unoriginal in the social sciences, these heuristic interventions remain largely original to the study of law within law schools and traditional legal scholarship (as opposed to the study of law from within the social sciences and humanities). Burk joins a small but growing group of legal scholars, reaching beyond legal doctrinal analysis and the economic analysis of law to explain intellectual property law as a social practice. The interventions he begins and this essay explains in further depth reframe the understanding or analysis of intellectual property (1) from individuals to institutions, (2) from causation to explanation and (3) in the context of the domestication of IP in contemporary social and political culture. In this way, Burk\u27s Article and this essay demonstrate how law (not only intellectual property or patent law) is a social practice both reflecting and forming social structures, the understanding of which requires attention to organization and culture as much or more than statutes, cases, administrative filings, and economic theory
Blockchain, Bitcoin, and VAT in the GCC: The Missing Trader Example
Get PDFBlockchain is coming to tax administration and will cause fundamental change. This article considers the potential for blockchain technology as it applies to the introduction of a value added tax in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Blockchain technology disrupts centralized ledgers. Blockchain improves efficiency, security and transparency. Perhaps no centralized ledger system presents more challenges than that of the modern tax administration. The central data storage system of a modern tax authority contains all return, payment, and audit activity for all taxpayers arranged tax-by-tax for three years or longer periods of time.
It is likely that blockchain will come first to jurisdictions like the GCC, where there is no pre-existing tax system to be “disrupted.” This is the familiar technological “leap-frog” effect where jurisdictions without an established infrastructure in place can quickly move to new technologies without needing to pass through the entire development process. This is a common occurrence in African economies.
For those who are attentive to the coming blockchain disruption there are some precursor developments already visible. In the restaurant sector, Quebec mandates encryption of transaction data, requires the monthly submission of a digital summary report, performs AI-base risk analysis on the aggregate data streams to identify fraud patterns, and completes most audits remotely. Rwanda has gone further. It implemented a DICE compliance regime for all businesses, and requires full transactional data transmission daily (not just summary reports submitted monthly). Rwanda performs the same AI-based risk analysis for fraud detection. In addition, Rwanda appears ready to adopt a cross-border DICE system with neighboring Tanzania
Rules and Reliability: How Arbitrators Decide Cases
Get PDFA former President of the American Arbitration Association (AAA) once mused that most studies of arbitration were devoted to discussion about applicable law or procedural rules. He then suggested that it was “far more important to try to analyze how and why arbitrators make up their minds.”
This distinction bears a nice rhetorical ring. On the one hand, rules and laws. On the other hand, the real world of “how and why” arbitrators decide, a theme whose sex appeal derives in large measure from its clear focus on one of humankind’s favorite topics: ourselves.
On reflection, however, the juxtaposition of rules and reality melts into insignificance for most business arbitration. On at least three levels, rules affect how arbitrators decide cases: (i) the law applicable to the merits of a dispute, such as whether New York allows liability insurers to withhold reimbursement for a reasonable settlements; (ii) the grounds for award annulment and recognition applied by reviewing courts; and (iii) the so-called procedural soft law of arbitration found in guidelines elaborated by professional associations and arbitral institutions, affecting matters like witness examination, conflicts of interest and document production. The last of these, the procedural soft law of arbitration, provides a starting point in exploring how arbitrators make up their minds