Financial Torts and Investor Protection: Is the Europeanisation of Third State Cases a Viable Solution?

Due to the growing globalisation of financial markets, non-EU market operators which act outside the EU are increasingly causing direct harm to European investors. This issue, and its relevant impact on investor protection, has already been considered by the European legislature at the substantive level. This article seeks to demonstrate that, at the private international law level, the Europeanisation of third state cases would increase both the degree of investor protection and investors’ equal access to justice. Focusing exclusively on financial torts, the advantages arising from the application of Brussels I bis heads of jurisdiction to non-EU defendants are assessed with regard to insider trading and Credit Rating Agency liability cases. The paper also examines the main critical elements related to such an extension of the Brussels I bis regime, especially from a systematic perspective, and suggests possible future approaches to this issue.

     

Determined to Die! Ability to Act Following Multiple Self‐inflicted Gunshot Wounds to the Head. The Cook County Office of Medical Examiner Experience (2005–2012) and Review of Literature

Cases of multiple (considered 2+) self‐inflicted gunshot wounds are a rarity and require careful examination of the scene of occurrence; thorough consideration of the decedent's psychiatric, medical, and social histories; and accurate postmortem documentation of the gunshot wounds. We present a series of four cases of multiple self‐inflicted gunshot wounds to the head from the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office between 2005 and 2012 including the first case report of suicide involving eight gunshot wounds to the head. In addition, a review of the literature concerning multiple self‐inflicted gunshot wounds to the head is performed. The majority of reported cases document two gunshot entrance wound defects. Temporal regions are the most common affected regions (especially the right and left temples). Determining the capability to act following a gunshot wound to the head is necessary in crime scene reconstruction and in differentiation between homicide and suicide.     

Legitimacy for a Supranational European Political Order—Derivative,Regulatory or Deliberative?

This paper discusses some models purported to legitimise a European supranational legal order. In particular, the author focuses on an application of the so-called regulatory model to the complex structure of the European Community and the European Union. First of all, he tackles the very concept of legitimacy, contrasting it with both efficacy and efficiency. Secondly, he summarises the most prominent positions in the long-standing debate on the sources of legitimation for the European Community. Thirdly, in this perspective, he analyses several, sometimes contradictory, notions of the rule of law. His contention is that we can single out five fundamental notions of the rule of law and that some but not all of them are incompatible with or oppose democracy. Finally, the paper addresses the regulatory model as a possible application of the rule of the law to the European supranational order. The conclusion is that the regulatory model should be rejected if it is presented as an alternative to classical democratic thought, though it might be fruitful if reshaped differently and no longer assessed from a functionalist standpoint of deliberation.     

PARENTS AND DRUGS REVISITED: SOME FURTHER EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY*

Social control and social learning theories suggest divergent relationships between attachment to parents and children's drug use when level of parent drug use is considered. Social control theory proposes a uniformly negative relationship between children's drug use and attachment to parents whereas social learning theory proposes that the relationship is affected by parental drug use. The relationship between attachment to parents and children's drug use was investigated for each of three groups of low, moderate, and high parental drug use through estimation of a latent variable structural model of attachment to family on children's tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use. Results indicate that attachment to parents related inversely, but with different magnitudes, to children's drug use for youths whose parents use drugs at low or moderate levels. No significant relationship exists between attachment to family and children's drug use for youths whose parents are relatively high-level users. Neither ethnicity nor sex affected these findings. The implications of these results supporting social learning theory are discussed.