Regulator-Required Corporate Compliance Program Audits

This paper critically examines the ability of compliance program audits to provide adequate assurance of compliance system performance. The empirical evidence comes from the use of compliance program audits in monitoring compliance with enforceable undertakings agreed upon between companies (that have allegedly breached the law) and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. The evidence suggests that the primary value of compliance program audits in this context is as a management review that induces better compliance. Nevertheless, it may be the formal regulatory expectation of verification (and the belief that it is possible) that gives the compliance review its power to encourage management to listen and respond to auditors' recommendations for improvement.
The danger is that the review aspect of the audit will be captured by management concerns. This is evident in a tendency for the audit methodology to focus on management systems at the expense of forensic investigation of harm done (or likely to be done) to consumers and investors, and in a failure to seek out public opinion and input. This style of audit undermines the basic regulatory objective of democratic accountability for corporate responsibility. I conclude by using the literature on critical social audits to show that there is, nonetheless, significant potential for compliance program audits to open corporate management to democracy, and to make some suggestions as to how this might be possible.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
The Law of Energy for Sustainable Development , edited by Adrian J. Bradbrook, Rosemary Lyster, Richard Ottinger and Wang Xi , published by Cambridge University Press, 2005, 630pp, £75.00, hardback.
Fresh Water and International Economic Law , edited by Edith Brown Weiss, Laurence Boisson de Chazournes and Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder , published by Oxford University Press, 2005, 506pp, £70.00, hardback.
Handbook of Global Environmental Politics , edited by Peter Dauvergne , published by Edward Elgar, 2005, 560pp, £125.00, hardback.
Emerging Forces in Environmental Governance , edited by Norichika Kanie and Peter M. Haas , published by United Nations University Press, 2004, 320pp, US$36.00, paperback.
Economic Globalization and Compliance with International Environmental Agreements edited by Alexandre Kiss, Dinah Shelton and Kanami Ishibashi , published by Kluwer Law International, 2003, 352pp, £85.00, hardback.
German Environmental Law for Practitioners , edited by Horst Schlemminger and Claus-Peter Martens , 2nd edition, published by Kluwer Law International, 2004, 833pp, £119.25, hardback.
The International Climate Change Regime: A Guide to Rules, Institutions and Procedures , Farhana Yamin and Joanna Depledge , published by Cambridge University Press, 2004, 730pp, £40.00, paperback.     

Postmortem interval estimation by creatinine levels in human psoas muscle.

A new method was tested for estimating time after death in the middle range of postmortem interval (weeks). Creatinine muscular concentration in human cadaver is positively correlated to postmortem estimation. Temperature should be mainly related to the creatinine transformation rate. A stronger correlation was found at 11 degrees C up to 30 days and at 20 degrees Celsius up to 15 days.     

STATESMEN IN DISGUISE*

It is a daunting honour to tread in the illustrious footsteps of those who have previously delivered this Oration. It is also a personal pleasure, because Sir Robert Garran was the gracious and tolerant chairman of the Canberra University College Council that gave me my first academic post. Impressive but totally unpretentious, Sir Robert was a man that I could look up to, literally as well as figuratively. In 1938, however, I was scarcely aware that Garran had been the first Commonwealth public servant, a permanent head for thirty-one years and, as Attorney-General John (later Sir John) Latham put it a few days after Garran retired in January 1932, "guide, philosopher and friend to every Federal Cabinet" during those years¹     

Voters and roll call voting: The effect on congressional elections

The subject of this research is whether ideological preferences play a major role in explaining voters' refusal to reelect some members of the U.S. House of Representatives. If ideological control is important, one would expect to find a large difference between the voting record of a rejected incumbent and his or her replacement. In distinction, whenever voters must replace a congressman or congresswoman because that person had died in office or chose to run for higher office, the hypothesis of ideological tracking implies that the newly elected member of Congress will resemble his or her predecessor. The data confirm these hypotheses and show, as well, that ideological control exists within parties and not only between them; that the degree of voters' ideological control is as great over senior congressmen and congresswomen as over junior ones; and that voters' concern about ideology has increased over the last two decades.     

Winners and losers and Why: A Study of Defamation litigation

This article summarizes the results of a study of 534 reported defamation cases decided over a period beginning in 1976 and ending just before the Hutchinson and Wolston decisions of mid-1979. A major aspect of the study was the comparison of media and nonmedia defamation cases, which appear quite different. Each case was studied to identify, among other things, the plaintiff and the defendant, the statement that provoked the suit, the context of that statement, the role of state and federal law in resolving the case, and the procedural stages at which each case was resolved. A follow-up study to identify changes since Hutchinson and Wolston is in progress.     

Forensic dental training in Australia

To facilitate in the identification of victims of a major disaster a trained dental manpower reserve is required. In the state of New South Wales, Australia, an annual three-day training course has been designed to familiarize dentists from both the public and private sectors with identification techniques. The course is aimed to preserve the flexibility of personnel so that they can be utilized in a variety of roles rather than rigidly structuring the make up of a team. It is envisaged though, that in a mass disaster situation teams would be specialized into dental autopsy, antemortem or comparison roles.