The Right to be Free from Domestic Violence in Macau

Domestic violence is a problem which historically has not received adequate attention in Macau. At the outset, it explains why the right to be free from domestic violence matters in Macau. I contend that the treatment of domestic violence is a human rights issue under international human rights law, focusing on the shift in the conceptualization of domestic violence from a private matter into a human rights issue. I denounce domestic violence as human rights violation. The second part depicts the draft law on Combating of Domestic Violence Act and analyzes the possible effects of Combating of Domestic Violence Act that can occur. Then, I intend to highlight the absence of attention to the positive duties of states—not negative duties to restrain from acting (such as a duty not to infringe upon the right to be free from domestic violence), but positive, affirmative duties to protect women.     

The fiduciary duties of healthcare directors in the "zone of insolvency"

Directors of healthcare organizations normally owe fiduciary duties to their shareholders or, in the case of nonprofits, to the charitable mission of the organization. As an organization descends to bankruptcy, however, the board's duties may shift. At some point, the board may be imposed with different and often conflicting obligations to the corporate enterprise as a whole, with a primary criterion being the interests of creditors. In this article, the authors analyze the murky areas of the Zone and give guidance as to when the board's duty may shift-and as to how directors should proceed both in determining their duties and in working to fulfill them.     

公司反收购与董事受信义务研究

本文论述了美国公司反收购的概念与形式;董事受信义务与反收购的价值判断;公司反收购司法之原则,董事受信义务在反收购规制中的作用。     

董事忠实义务及其扩张

董事忠实义务在本质上是董事信义义务,与勤勉义务并列,成为约束董事行为的法定机制。董事忠实和勤勉义务均建立在公司与董事之间的信义关系基础上,均以维护公司整体利益为宗旨,但规制重点不同。忠实义务主要规范董事与公司之间利益冲突关系,勤勉义务旨在推动董事发挥聪明才智,两者共同成为评价董事履职的主要标准。忠实义务与民法中禁止自己代理和双方代理的规则之间关系密切,但在制度功能和义务要素上仍有重大差别,不能彼此替代或混为一谈。随着现代社会中公司交易复杂化以及公司集团现象普遍化,规制公司与董事利益冲突的公司法规则正在从“绝对禁止”向“禁止缓和”发展,忠实义务主体则已适度扩张至控股或主要股东,成为补充调整股东与公司关系的特殊机制。     

Fiduciary disclosure of medical mistakes: the duty to promptly notify patients of adverse health care events

Fiduciary obligations are imposed by the common law to ensure that a person occupying a societal role with a high potential for the manipulation of vulnerable persons exercises utmost good faith. Australian law has recognised that the doctor-patient relationship, while not wholly fiduciary, has fiduciary aspects. Amongst such duties are those prohibiting sexual or financial abuse of patients or disclosure without express authority of confidential information. One important consequence of attaching such fiduciary duties to the doctor-patient relationship is that the onus of proof falls not upon the vulnerable party (the patient), but upon the doctor (to disprove the allegation). Another is that consent cannot be pleaded as an absolute defence. In this article the authors advocate that the law should now accept that the fiduciary obligations of the doctor-patient relationship extend to creating a legal duty that any adverse health care event be promptly reported to the patient involved. The reasons for creating such a presumption, as well as its elements and exceptions, are explained.     

Natural Law,Basic Goods,and Fiduciary Altruism

Even though fiduciary duties take the highest position in the spectrum of legal altruism, and legal fiduciary altruism sometimes differs from moral fiduciary altruism, natural law morality is not necessarily useless in helping to explain, determine, and justify concrete rules in fiduciary law. Five specific inspirations, in addition to divergences, can be drawn by a closer look at the seven basic goods of John Finnis’ natural law theory. First, the basic good of life may help to determine the boundary of the best interest test under the duty of loyalty. Second, the basic good of play, in particular the distinction between business community and play community may help to justify the separate treatment between civil agency and commercial agency regarding the unconditional power of immediate termination. Third, practical reasonableness may help to explain the rule against set-off under the duty of no conflict. Fourth, different cultural notions of sociability may lead to distinct understandings with regard to the no-profit rule. Fifth, different attitudes towards knowledge in various religious beliefs may create distinct understandings about the burden of informed consent.     

透视美国公司法上的董事忠实义务——兼评我国《公司法》对董事忠实义务之规定

集中管理模式之下的公司董事具有相当大的权力,股东与董事之间难免会产生代理成本,为此法律规定了董事对公司和股东负有信托义务。信托义务主要包括注意义务和忠实义务。我国现行《公司法》对董事忠实义务的规定不够完善,建议我国《公司法》扩大董事忠实义务责任主体的范围,规定举证责任分配,归入权的具体行使主体、行使方式、行使期限等。     

Exemplary Damages in Equity: A Law and Economics Perspective

In Harris v Digital Pulse Pty Ltd (2003) 56 NSWLR 298, the NewSouth Wales Court of Appeal held that exemplary (or punitive)damages are not available for breach of fiduciary duty or otherequitable obligation. The decision runs counter to authoritiesin Canada, New Zealand and some U.S. states. Punitive (exemplary)damages is a hotly debated topic in the United States and ithas attracted considerable interest among law and economicsscholars, particularly in the tort litigation context. Thisarticle analyzes the Digital Pulse case from a law and economicsperspective. Polinsky and Shavell (among others) argue thatthe function of punitive damages is to achieve optimal deterrencein cases where the probability that the plaintiff will discoverand successfully litigate the defendant’s wrongdoing isless than 1. Given the high costs of monitoring fiduciary behaviour,it might be tempting to conclude that exemplary damages shouldbe routinely awarded for breach of fiduciary obligation. Thearticle explains why this view is wrong. On the other hand,given the availability of gains-based remedies (the accountof profits and the like) for breach of fiduciary obligation,it might be tempting to conclude that exemplary damages arenever justified in fiduciary cases. The article explains whythis view is wrong too. The main conclusions are that: (1) exemplarydamages should be available for breach of fiduciary duty andthe like, but not as a matter of course; and (2) exemplary damageswere probably not warranted in Digital Pulse itself.     

Fiduciary duties of interlocking directors within a nonprofit health system

In response to regulatory and financial pressures, entities participating in the healthcare industry have joined with others in order to maintain, even improve, their market positions. In the non-profit sector of the industry, partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions have included arrangements whereby some corporate partners have interlocking directors. After review of the fiduciary duties of care and loyalty owed by corporate board members, and their application to traditional performance and conflict of interest situations, the authors address two scenarios raising interlocking director issues.     

公司收购中目标公司控股股东的诚信义务探析

目标公司的控股股东既可以通过股东大会的表决机制作出有利于自身,但对其他股东不利的决定;也可以利用直接或间接任免高级经营者的人事权,支配经营者在面对收购时是否采取行动上,优先考虑其利益,漠视公司和其他股东利益,将目标公司置于被掠夺、蚕食的境地,少数股东则沦为被压榨、排挤的对象。为了公平地维护和实现公司、少数股东的利益,就必须使前者对后者承担诚信义务。虽然控股股东与董事的诚信义务在内容上均由忠实义务和谨慎注意义务构成,但二者并不完全相同。在不同的收购类型和各种具体的反收购行动中,控股股东诚信义务的内容也各有所侧重。     

Pegram v. Herdrich: On peritonitis, preemption, and the elusive goal of managed care accountability

Managed care presents the paradox of organizations having real power over people's lives without there being clear or consistent means of ensuring accountability. In Pegram v. Herdrich, the United States Supreme Court struggled with whether "fiduciary duties" under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) could be used to counterbalance the incentives that HMOs have to deny necessary care. Given press coverage of the case, however, it was easy to get the impression that the managed care industry itself was on trial in Pegram. This report examines the political and legal forces underlying the dispute and analyzes the Supreme Court's unanimous rejection of the notion of federally imposed duties for HMOs. In the absence of ERISA fiduciary obligations, attention must now shift to developments in state tort law, the scope of federal ERISA preemption, and the prospect of legislative reform. The report concludes with an exploration of how the elusive goal of managed care accountability might be pursued in the wake of Pegram.     

The Modernization of Trustee's Fiduciary Duties in the Chinese Trust Law: A Perspective from the Uniform Trust Code in the United States

Trust is the greatest and most distinctive achievement of English law, grown and developed over the passage of time, to meet new demands towards providing new solutions to problems, resulting in its widespread and inventive use worldwide. Although the trust system was introduced by the enactment of a specialist Trust Law of the People’s Republic of China in 2001, there is no significant growth in the use of the trust system in civic life. The personal fiduciary relationship between the settlor and trustee is the foundation of a trust. The trustee has an affirmative equitable duty to act solely in the interest of the beneficiaries. Whether people can rely on the trust system and use it universally is highly dependent on a trustee’s fiduciary duty. In the United States, thirty-four states and the District of Columbia have adopted some substantive provisions of the very valuable Uniform Trust Code (UTC). To promote the development and appropriate application of Chinese Trust Law, this article examines the differences between trustee obligations under the American UTC and Chinese Trust Law, and then proposes the amendment suggestion for Chinese Trust Law. This article consists of five parts. In addition to the Introduction, Part I of this article overviews the provisions of a trustee’s fiduciary duties in Chinese Trust Law. Part II discusses and compares the differences and similarities on trustee’s fiduciary duties in Chinese Trust Law and the UTC. Part III explores the comparative consideration of a trustee’s fiduciary duties, and provides the proposals for legal reform. Finally, this article brings forward a brief conclusion.     

Fiduciary Duty under the Microscope: Stewardship and the Spectrum of Pension Fund Engagement

UK pension fund trustees’ interpretations of their fiduciary duties may shape pension fund approaches to corporate stewardship and engagement envisioned by the UK Stewardship Code. Data from interviews with pension fund trustees, executives, investment intermediaries and pensions experts reveals interpretive pluralism of the concept of fiduciary duty in the area of pension funds. This article develops a model identifying the spectrum of pension fund engagement, linking interpretations of fiduciary duty to intensity and methods of engagement in practice. The findings help disambiguate the concept of ‘Fiduciary Duty’, highlighting the practical challenges of Stewardship Code application. These insights are relevant to the ongoing revisions of the Stewardship Code and policy clarifications of the nature of fiduciary duty by the UK Financial Conduct Authority. The paper encourages trustees, regulators and others to consider what role pension fund trustees should have in stewardship, which may not be directly relevant to their fiduciary duties as trustees.     

DOES THE BUSINESS JUDGMENT RULE HELP PROMOTE CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY?

The business judgment rule (BJR) is a U.S. corporate law concept that has gained international recognition. It has been moulded, particularly in the definition of the Delaware courts, to protect the managerial business discretion, in other words to protect directors’ decisions from judicial review. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) questions the relationship between corporation with a business purpose and society. More and more attention is drawn to the various impacts of corporate decisions on society, asking for the necessity for directors to take these impacts into consideration when making business decisions. At the centre of CSR and the BJR are the fiduciary duties of the directors — the duty of diligence and the duty of care — and the question as to if the directors have breached their duties and if they have fulfilled them in a CSR compatible manner. This paper discusses how the BJR helps promoting CSR by discussing the advantages and disadvantages (real or apparent) of the BJR with respect to CSR.     

The Implied Duty of Mutual Trust and Confidence: An Emerging Overarching Principle?

There is an argument in academic circles that the implied dutyof mutual trust and confidence will evolve to form an all-embracingsuper-principle under which each of the more ‘traditional’implied duties will rest, including the employer’s impliedduty to exercise reasonable care for the welfare and well beingof the employee. The theme of this article is that, on balance,there is no evidence for the emergence of the implied duty ofmutual trust and confidence as a super-principle. If anything,the recent trends in the case law emphasise the distinctivenessof the employer’s duties to exercise reasonable care andtrust and confidence. The article’s aim was to demonstratethat both duties are separate, free-standing duties, sittingon an equal plane in terms of importance. To rationalise one,or all of the implied duties (i.e. the duty to exercise reasonablecare and/or all of the other ‘traditional duties’),as one of the means by which the super-principle of trust andconfidence is, or may be expressed, is to a large extent, aspirational.     

Correlativity

In a celebrated article, published nearly a century ago, Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld endeavored to elucidate the various types of jural relations. Hohfeld’s scheme has been justly regarded as a seminal contribution to analytical jurisprudence, and has stimulated lively debate since. This Essay aims to refute one of Hohfeld’s fundamental and most influential theses: the axiom of right–duty correlativity. To do so, it employs the simplest refutation strategy in first-order logic, namely providing a valid counterexample. Part I discusses earlier attempts to do likewise, and explains why they failed. For the most part, previous illustrations of ostensibly standalone rights or standalone duties neglected relevant parties who could owe the correlative duties or hold the correlative rights, respectively. Part II puts forward a simple argument: There are abstract duties in private law that ban certain types of conduct without reference to specific victims. Those duties are not necessarily correlative with rights, although their breach may generate secondary duties with corresponding rights. In particular, tort law allows plaintiffs to recover for harm caused by breach of duty that occurred before they acquired legal personality. This is tantamount to recognizing duties that are not correlative with rights, and therefore invalidates the correlativity axiom.     

Doctors as fiduciaries--revisiting the past with an eye on the future

A substantial proportion of the body of literature dealing with the question of whether or not a doctor stands in a fiduciary relationship with a patient in Australia assumes or asserts that this should be the case, despite strong indications to the contrary in Australian case law. Three key bases for making such assertions, the internationalist, revisionist and remedialist approaches, are identified and critiqued. It is argued that each of these approaches to justifying the characterisation of the doctor-patient relationship as a fiduciary one is flawed and unlikely to meet with success in future litigation. Additionally, there are issues of economic and resource allocation conflict in doctor-patient relationships. The implications for these conflicts in the doctor-patient fiduciary debate are briefly considered. It is concluded that, contrary to the dominant assertion in the extant literature on the subject, in Australia at least, the scales tip against, rather than towards, the characterisation of the doctor-patient relationship as a fiduciary one.     

投资银行诚信法律责任简析--以华尔街十大投资银行被罚为线索

投资银行对客户、投资者乃至整个社会承担一种特殊的诚信义务,这种义务集中表现在传统承销、经纪业务和证券研究咨询业务之间的利益冲突方面。违反这种诚信义务,投资银行要承担契约、侵权和诚信法律责任,受民事、行政和刑事法律制裁;加强对投资银行诚信义务和责任的监管是目前以美国为代表的发达国家证券、银行立法及司法的动向,对我国颇具借鉴意义。     

信义义务下的美国小股东保护制度及其借鉴

由于封闭公司的异质性，多数决原则、集中控制、商业判断规则等传统的公司规范不适宜于封闭公司。为此，美国制定法和判例法不断修正和调整信义义务规范，通过宽泛地适用信义义务规则，课以公司控制者更严格的信义义务要求和标准，加重其信义义务责任，甚至类比适用合伙原则，给予小股东，特别是小型封闭公司小股东充分、有效的保护和救济，值得我们借鉴。