MEDIATION AND THE PROCESS OF FAMILY LAW REFORM

The family law system needs fixing. The real question is how to go about fixing it. The concept of mediation and its process should be vital in the rethinking and restructuring of the system. This article discusses how mediation can be used in policy-making to get all the stakeholders in the family law system to creatively and non-judgmentally work toward reform. The author contends that increased legal access and speedy low-cost dispute resolution should be at the top of the reform agenda. Courts and professional offices are valued for their consumer-friendliness, stressing nonadversarial settings and cleint education. Unbundling is urged to be not only accepted but also promoted as a practice to meet the legal needs of families. The article concludes with the argument that effective reform should incorporate the principles of mediation, and the reform process should take advantage of models of consumer friendliness from both the public and private sectors .     

THE POTENTIAL OF THE FAMILY LAW EDUCATION REFORM PROJECT FOR FAMILY LAWYERS1

Family lawyers are major beneficiaries of the reforms set out in the Family Law Education Reform Project (FLER) Report. This commentary from a veteran family law practitioner explores the needs of the family law bar for the training of law students in practical, interdisciplinary, client‐centered lawyering that goes beyond the traditional case method. I trace many of the current innovations evolving in family law practice and how FLER reforms will not only benefit law schools but also have a major impact in the courts and private practice sector.     

THE FAMILY LAW EDUCATION REFORM PROJECT FINAL REPORT

The Family Law Education Reform Project (the FLER Project) is co‐sponsored by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts and the Center for Children, Families and the Law at Hofstra Law School. This Final Report is based on a series of dialogues between family law academics and practitioners from many disciplines, a FLER Project survey, and research conducted by law students at Hofstra University and Northeastern University. 2     

THE RULE OF LAW IN THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS ON CHINA

In line with the ideas of its founding fathers, the European Union is a legal system built on the rule of law, internally and internationally which was highlighted by the Treaty of Lisbon （Art. 21）. The EU therefore has to pursue the implementation of the principle of the rule of law also in its external relations. This paper frames the rule of law not only in the context of the Union but also in the United Nations （III. 1） and provides concrete illustrative examples for the implementation on the international scene by the EU. Section IIl deals with the Cotonou Agreement, the European Neighbourhood Policy, Central Asia, South Korea and Myanmar/Burma. Special attention is paid to the case of China （III.3f） where the preoccupation with the rule of law poses a particular challenge which is not side-stepped by the Union. In pursuing this policy, the EU contributes to the development of rule of law in international law and governance.     

THE OBJECTIVE OF THE COMPANY

The important role that corporate governance has played in a wide range of public companies is self-evident. Recent major corporate failures are more or less related to bad corporate governance and the increasing corporate scandals call for good corporate governance not only in China but all around the world. Corporate governance is principally about how companies are structured and directed, which is indeed a quite broad field. It is a good direction to discuss how to improve the overall corporate governance level in China through the perspective of perfecting shareholder protection. However, while running companies for shareholder interests is getting increasingly more criticisms, the so-called stakeholder model and entity model are raised as alternative approaches. Accordingly, it is the purpose of this paper to find the most appropriate corporate objective which could be applied as the starting point for future corporate governance discussion by providing a right direction for assessing and evaluating corporate performance and accountability of management. Through the comparative studies of the three models, this paper concludes that shareholder primacy is a more effective and efficient approach with regard to advancing social welfare and controlling director’s accountability among others; the other two models cannot justify substituting the shareholder model as the corporate objective.