Small and smart: the role of Switzerland in the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols negotiations

This paper looks at Switzerland to examine the role of a small state during the negotiations of the Cartagena and the Nagoya Protocols to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The influence of this small country was substantial at some point in the negotiation processes and on important features of the protocols. The main explanatory factors for this influence are identified as the competence and the tactical skills of the Swiss delegations as well as the flexible and timely mandates they received. This was reinforced by the way the position formation process was organized at the domestic level, namely a lead ministry strongly committed to the process and an efficient coordination between domestic actors, including the delegations. The Swiss delegations were thus able to support the progress of the negotiations, and in parallel to secure some of their interest, by assuming entrepreneurial and intellectual leadership strategies in function of the evolution of domestic and international constraints and opportunities.     

Reasons why law students should have access to learning law through a skills-based approach

The Legal Education and Training Review identified gaps in law students’ key skills development and this paper considers how skills training in three key areas of mooting, negotiation and client interviewing can be maximised so that law students have a sense of themselves as lawyer as well as law student from the beginning of their legal education. The research identifies numerous benefits to learning law through skills-based activities, but also discovers some possible apprehensions about participating from a student perspective. This paper draws on data taken from students who engaged in short-term optional courses in client interviewing, negotiation and/or mooting and considers the responses to a survey conducted prior to participation, a reflective survey post-completion and a focus group exercise. In total 64 students responded to the questionnaire. The research explores the expected and actual benefits of participating in the courses, discusses how these impact on students’ perceptions of their employability and the types of activities considered most valuable. The article considers how, in light of the research, experiential learning can be put to best use within the law curriculum.     

International environmental agreements with agenda and interaction between pollutants

This paper analyzes how the sequence of negotiating agreements on each pollutant affects coalition behavior in international environmental agreements (IEAs) when multiple and correlated pollutants exist. I consider a model in which countries suffer from two pollutants with different externality characteristics and attempt to cooperate by sequentially negotiating on IEAs. The membership outcome depends on the environmental concern, abatement technology, spillover effect and most importantly the correlation between pollutants as either substitutes or complements. I find that cooperation in the first stage can facilitate later negotiations and that countries are prone to cooperate on a pollutant of common concern. Moreover, except for symmetric countries, different negotiation agendas may result in distinctive participation outcomes when pollutants are complements. Therefore, with systematic policy design, the negotiation sequence can serve as another method to encourage participation and cooperation in IEAs.     

WHAT FAMILY LAWYERS ARE REALLY DOING WHEN THEY NEGOTIATE

How should lawyers negotiate? This article outlines an empirical study of how lawyers rate each other in negotiation behaviors. After discussing what skills are needed for effective negotiation behavior, we then look more closely at how family lawyers in particular are negotiating. Examining some troubling data, we find that family lawyers appear to be more adversarial and less problem solving than other types of practitioners. We conclude by discussing why this might be so and what the family law bar and family law professors should be doing in the future to address this problem.     

Civil liability in the context of the Cartagena Protocol: to be or not to be (binding)?

As with most multilateral environmental negotiations, the on going negotiations for a liability and redress regime in the context of the Cartagena Protocol have proved difficult. While content issues, such as the standard of liability, the scope of the instrument, the nature of the damage and the burden of proof have dominated discussions, the question relating to the nature of the instrument has lurked quietly, but ominously, in the background. This issue came to a head at COP/MOP4 in Bonn - where the instrument was due to be adopted. This paper traces the development of the discussions on the nature of the instrument to be adopted. In particular it considers the slow rise to prominence of the administrative approach to liability at the expense of the civil liability system. This slow rise to prominence of the administrative approach leads to the adoption of a dual approach, meaning a binding instrument on the administrative approach and a nonbinding instrument on civil liability. The paper argues that the positions adopted by the various delegations on the nature of instrument illuminate the complexities of modern international environmental law making and may dispell some closely held beliefs about environmental law making, particularly as it relates to the role of the South.     

The power of presidency in UN climate change negotiations: comparison between Denmark and Mexico

In December 2010, the 16th Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ended with adopting Cancun Agreements as official decisions under the UN process. The international community determined the meeting a success. This was a substantial change compared to the previous year’s Copenhagen climate conference, which failed to reach consensus at the official level and thus having come under severe criticism as “diplomatic failure.” This article aims to explain the stark contrast between the two consecutive COP meetings and argues that the leadership style of the president of the conference is one important factor propelling negotiations forward. While the current literature scarcely addresses the role of the president, this article explores multiple variables that condition the president’s effectiveness in moving negotiations forward. This article concludes that the Mexican government successfully chaired the negotiations with excellent agenda management and process management capability, which the Danish government lacked. In particular, its transparent and embracing manner in handling subgroup meetings and the production of a single negotiation text facilitated trust among negotiators, which in turn made the parties tend to cooperate better. More importantly, the case study reveals that the Mexican government had a significant influence on given conditions of the negotiation process, such as the international environment surrounding the negotiation and the decision-making rules.     

WHAT SHOULD FAMILY LAWYERS KNOW? RESULTS OF A SURVEY OF PRACTITIONERS AND STUDENTS1

The contemporary practice of family law demands that lawyers know far more than the law. Results of a recent survey of professionals and law students suggest that today's family lawyer needs knowledge and skills that are often missing from law school curricula. Survey respondents emphasized the importance of strong interpersonal skills like listening, negotiation, and working with clients in emotional crisis, as well as keen understanding of financial issues in family law, the impact of separation and divorce on children, and the ethical dimensions of family law practice. Law students held contrasting views to law faculty and to practicing attorneys on a number of measures, ranking adversarial courtroom skills as more important and placing less emphasis on skills, knowledge, and attributes related to ethics.     

A historical institutionalist view on merging LULUCF and REDD+ in a post-2020 climate agreement

In the context of the UNFCCC negotiation process on a global climate agreement, policy makers are looking for approaches on how to significantly raise the mitigation ambition of all relevant sectors, including the land use sector. Aside of the formal negotiations some Parties to the UNFCCC have started an informal dialogue and discuss how to merge the fragmented accounting rules for mitigation relevant land use activities, in particular those concerning forest-sector emissions. Stressing that ‘history matters’, we use a historical institutionalist perspective to assess the institutional pathways of the different accounting rules for developed and developing countries, their mutual relationship, and in how far they are supportive or counterproductive for this endeavour. Our empirical analysis shows that Parties tend to use any modification phase in the negotiation process to water down already achieved agreements, and that negotiating modalities after targets have been agreed is not conducive either. In the efforts of specifying the Paris agreement, merging existing rules into a common accounting framework is likely to further compromise the exisiting weak rules and modalities, and potentially what negotiators consider as ‘environmental integrity’. With this, a formal negotiation of common rules for the accounting of the land use sector may yield an outcome below what has been achieved since the negotiations on a post-2020 agreement started in 2005. We conclude that politically acceptable approaches for the land use sector that also contribute to the overall objective of raising ambition should avoid reopening already agreed decisions on rules and modalities.     

“A part to play”: the value of role-play simulation in undergraduate legal education

This article explores the argument for increased student participation in experiential learning approaches within the UK undergraduate law curriculum. It is supported by the findings of a very small-scale research study undertaken by the writer into law students’ perceptions of the efficacy of role-play simulation as a means of studying mediation, in an optional credit-based module within the final year of a UK undergraduate qualifying law degree. In order to provide situational context, the first part of this article will briefly address the experiential learning possibilities for undergraduate law students, a discussion of the study involving qualitative research methodology, which was used to demonstrate that role-play simulation as a method of experiential learning has a place within the UK undergraduate law curriculum. The final part of this article will consider the findings of the study which demonstrated that, inter alia, role-play simulation can be motivational, helps to build student confidence, enables deeper learning, assists graduate skills acquisition and arguably enhances employability. Based on the findings of this study and other empirical evidence, the article suggests that greater emphasis could be placed on experiential approaches such as role-play simulation for credit-based law courses, including those “core” foundational courses which form part of the undergraduate qualifying law degree in the UK, but achievement of this aspiration is not without its challenges.     

美国FTA范式探略

FTA是美国在多边谈判无果后的次优选择。目前,美国已把实施FTA视为其战略工具,试图将多边无果的谈判转而在区域、双边层面进行,然后逐一推进至多边领域。美国主导的NAFTA范式和具有"超WTO"范式特性的FTA,既是美式FTA发展的产物,也预示着对未来多边谈判的重大影响,迫使发展中国家在多边谈判和与美国的FTA谈判中陷入不得不面对的艰难困境。美式FTA带给未来多边谈判和发展中国家参与全球化战略的不利影响以及发展中国家需要付出的实施代价应引起我们高度重视,以便最大程度地维护国家的经济利益和经济安全。     

DI‐LE‐CA approach to teaching European law

The Queensland University of Technology badges itself as “a university for the real world”. For the last decade the Law Faculty has aimed to provide its students with a ‘real world’ degree, that is, a practical law degree. This has seen skills such as research, advocacy and negotiation incorporated into the undergraduate degree under a university Teaching &; Learning grant, a project that gained international recognition and praise. In 2007–2008 the Law Faculty undertook another curriculum review of its undergraduate law degree. As a result of the two year review, QUT's undergraduate law degree has fewer core units, a focus on first year student transition, scaffolding of law graduate capabilities throughout the degree, work integrated learning and transition to the workplace. The revised degree commenced implementation in 2009. This paper focuses on the “real world” approach to the degree achieved through the first year programme, embedding and scaffolding law graduate capabilities through authentic and valid assessment and work integrated learning.     

Learning in Law Annual Conference Website – A Review

There is pressure to increase the substantive content covered in the business law curriculum. Yet, a content-laden curriculum risks students taking the “surface” approach of rote learning sets of disjointed legal rules without any real grasp of the relevant legal concepts involved or how legal knowledge can be applied to solve the dynamic and untidy problems they will face in their impending business careers. Drawing on relevant educational and legal literature, this article presents a case for more problem-based learning (PBL) to be used in undergraduate business law courses. It suggests that a hybrid form of PBL has the potential to promote deeper and more self-directed learning. PBL also provides an opportunity to make learning the law a more relevant, motivating and authentic experience for business students. Such an improved learning experience is likely to better prepare business students for the legal challenges they will face in their future careers.     

A field trip in the first week at university: perspectives from our LLB students

ABSTRACT

Field trips are a major part of the pedagogy of experience. Generally, core theoretical knowledge is developed in class before a practical field application is facilitated to link knowledge. Field trips are both observational and participatory. This paper describes how the Bachelor of Laws students at an Australian university undertook a field trip to the Parliament during their first week at university. In contrast to traditional transmission of content knowledge and teaching legal rules, this field trip was purposefully designed as an early memorable, motivating experience for students to reflect on personal learning by connecting theory and context. This structured program had supporting activities and an aligned summative assessment. Findings of this qualitative study suggested that students and academics concurred that field trips are important for learning though their perceptions about it differed. For the students, it was a valuable learning experience which contextualised learning, developed an appreciation of different learning approaches, provided networking opportunities and set them thinking about potential future careers. Study outcomes indicate that curriculum designs that integrate experiential learning and linkage activities to professional settings across the entire law course are worth exploring and embedding into the curriculum.     

Negotiating Effective International Environmental Agreements: Is an Objective Approach to Differential Treatment Possible?

The negotiation of international environmental agreements is rendered less effective and more costly than necessary on account of the incentives for rent seeking. This article argues that the problem of rent seeking in this context is complicated by the legitimate demand for the differential treatment of relevant heterogeneity, when insufficient information is available to distinguish between demands based on legitimate differences and rent-seeking. In order to reduce the overall costliness of the totality of international resource agreements, the general rule should be that differential treatment should be provided only in exceptional circumstances. A corollary to this rule is that differences that do not affect future negotiating costs may be considered in current negotiations. This points to differences that are exogenous to the bargaining process, such as a country's physical location. It is argued that development status of a country is another such factor, since the incentives to pursue development are unlikely to be affected by its recognition in current negotiations. Furthermore, the failure to recognise development status as a legitimate basis for differentiated treatment implicitly rewards the early identification and exploitation of unmanaged resources. Restriction of differential treatment to a small number of such differences enables the focusing of negotiations, and the structuring of discussions. A case study of the Montreal Protocol illustrates how the differential impacts of a uniform standard may be estimated, once the range of impacts is delimited.     

Legal education in Scotland: update from the Higher Education Academy

Law students’ future clients and employers, and the broader community, all deserve graduates to be equipped with not only substantive legal knowledge, but also a range of skills and practical knowledge. However, most law schools face resource pressures that mean that traditional skills development methodologies (which are often resource intensive) can only be used judiciously. In this resource-poor environment, skills development methodologies which incorporate new technologies can be one way to assist law students to develop the professional skills they require. Online learning tools have the potential to be resource friendly, and law schools may therefore be able to utilise them to ensure that maximum learning potential is achieved from the limited resources available. Considering an online or blended skills development framework is also supported by evidence that new technology learning tools can usefully contribute to skills development. In this article the potential for online learning to replicate aspects of an apprenticeship model of learning is explored, as a means of explaining this contribution. This analysis is intended to facilitate consideration of a broad panoply of learning tools for skills development, and inform educators considering adding a new technology component to student skills development.     

Breaking the mold: a new type of multilateral sustainable development negotiation

Participants in the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were reminded time and again that there is no model for the process to develop the SDGs. They resolved to not repeat the closed process used to develop the Millennium Development Goals, but the OWG began work when failures to reach consensus and fatigue with multilateral environmental negotiations dominated delegates’ minds, rather than examples of successfully negotiated outcomes. The OWG Co-Chairs were faced with the daunting task of guiding delegates’ efforts to develop a proposed set of crisp SDGs and targets that all could agree to, and thus, had to accomplish the following goals: (1) reduce delegation rigidity, both of individual Member States and within coalitions; (2) maximize the sense of participation, transparency, and ownership to get the most buy-in at the end; and (3) develop a sense of trust that would change the relationship between Member States. To do this, the OWG Co-Chairs broke the mold of UN multilateral negotiations that Member States and observers had become familiar with and created a different approach. This article examines how the OWG accomplished these goals and overcame the shortcomings of other multilateral negotiating processes on sustainable development to produce a widely supported consensus outcome at a time when governments have struggled to achieve agreement in many multilateral negotiation tracks.     

Converging Markets

The crucible in this scenario for the international climate regime is the emergence of an effective and liquid international carbon market with participation of private entities. In order to make the carbon market effective a bilateral negotiation track will develop, operating in parallel with the multilateral track under the UNFCCC. The purpose of the bilateral track is to integrate the various emissions trading schemes involving private actors. This bilateral track feeds into the UNFCCC negotiations, which still represents the main arena for the international climate negotiations. Through the bilateral, bottom-up negotiations, a multistage system develops, with differentiated rights and duties, complemented by a package of coordinated support mechanisms. The advantages of such a bottom-up approach prove to be, inter alia, fewer negotiating parties, new negotiation arenas, and a new set of selective incentives. The result is a continuously evolving agreement with the potential to gradually broaden participation and deepen the reduction commitments of the international climate regime. Moreover, the bilateral agreements for linking schemes with private actors also represent a fallback in the event of a collapse in the multilateral negotiations.The article has been written by funding from the Central Research Institute for the Electric Power Industry in Tokyo and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It also represents an output of research financed by the Research Council of Norway, project no. 144768/520. The authors thank all three institutions for the funding, as well as the many participants at the workshops where the ideas in the paper have been presented. Their criticism and suggestions have been very stimulating, indeed.     

Uncle Jack,Jaycee and the equitable doctrine of estoppel: using Second Life to support the development of advanced oral communication skills in law students

The ability to communicate appropriately, effectively and persuasively to a diverse audience is a mandated learning outcome for all Australian law students. Communication skills include both written and oral skills. This article examines and evaluates a project aimed at reconceptualising and, thereby, expanding the learning and teaching of oral communication skills in law through the digital presentation of a hypothetical problem using Second Life.     

Hostage negotiation in Costa Rica

This article compares legal and procedural constraints that operate on United States and Costa Rican hostage negotiations. In an effort to better understand the Costa Rican police system, comparisons are drawn between United States law enforcement agencies, United States military services and the Costa Rican police system. The introductory material lays the foundation for a discussion of hostage negotiation as it is practiced in Costa Rica prior to and after hostage negotiation training.