Beyond Borders

Asian nations seek cooperation in the face of the financial crisis As the global financial crisis continues to spread worldwide, its impact on the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the ASEAN Plus Three countries-China, Japan and South Korea-is deepening, according to a semi-annual report recently released by the East Asian Economic News of the World Bank Faced with slumping exports and other challenges, Asian countries have come up with huge bailout packages in an ef...     

The influence of bankruptcy law on equity value of financially distressed firms: A European comparative analysis

The reaction of stock prices to bankruptcy filing has been frequently analysed in the financial literature. In this paper we adopt a different approach to that of traditional study, and endeavour to determine whether the reaction of markets is conditioned by the orientation of bankruptcy law. Our results lead us to conclude that it is actually the type of bankruptcy law that conditions the valuation of firm's stocks. We have also found that the drop in share value is greater in creditor-oriented systems, while the negative returns are lower in debtor-oriented systems.     

Great Expectations: Understanding Bali and the Climate Change Negotiations Process

This article reviews the December 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali. It considers expectations for the meeting and whether the event delivered on these expectations. It also evaluates the long-term context of the meeting and examines the discussions in Bali on the post-2012 period (when the Kyoto Protocol's first 'commitment period' expires). The article finds that the Bali meeting did not necessarily meet public expectations or respond directly to the latest scientific assessments calling for urgent action. However, the article also finds that Bali was successful in the context of the prevailing political and diplomatic realities and the immense complexity of the climate change challenge – a problem that does not lend itself to a 'quick fix' solution. The article concludes that Bali produced a solid outcome that gives direction to future talks and sets a clear deadline for their completion. Finally, it argues that, contrary to some experts' opinion, the lack of detail in the Bali outcome may prove to be a strength rather than a weakness, since it provides flexibility to negotiators as they try to craft a consensus by the end of 2009.     

Restraining Gulliver: Institutional reform and the strengthening of state capacity and compliance

Governance in the developing world is fraught with problems of corruption, weak institutions, and inadequate expertise among bureaucrats. Failing to enforce laws and regulations is one way in which these problems manifest themselves. In this paper, we evaluate changes across three institutions charged with oversight or administration of labor justice in Mexico. We find that both autonomy from the executive and professionalization are necessary to improve compliance with labor law over time. Our study shows that professionalization can occur in several ways, including through training, merit hiring, and introducing experienced external administrators. The implications of the study are that reforms that increase the independence and legal authority of oversight institutions should be complemented by efforts to strengthen the professionalism of bureaucrats.     

Worldmaking,Legal Education,and the Saga Comic Book Series

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - This article argues that to disrupt legal education in a radical sense, students need to become...     

The German community in 19<Superscript>th</Superscript> century Hong Kong

This article examines the development of the German community in Hong Kong between the 1840s and the outbreak of the First World War. It pays particular attention to the question of how the Germans, as a minority group in the crown colony, attempted to strike a good balance between integration and segregation, cultural assimilation and dissimilation, national identity and marginalization. Through investigating their social life, missionary activities and economic activities in Hong Kong, it shows that they, on the one hand, cooperated closely with the British who were in charge of key political and economic affairs, and on the other hand worked with the local Chinese on different social stratums. Although the unification of Germany in 1870 strengthened the sense of nationhood among German people in Hong Kong, they strove to strengthen the German cultural and economic network that already existed in and around the colony, without sacrificing their business and social interests which were interwoven with those of the British and the local Chinese. It is this strategy that enabled them to survive in Hong Kong until 1914.     

“Sex change” in skeletal remains: Assessing how heat-induced changes interfere with sex estimation

The true impact of heat-induced changes in human bone regarding their sex estimation has not been comprehensively documented having a potentially negative impact on forensic anthropology. The objective of this paper was to evaluate how heat exposure affects sex estimation based on both morphological and metric features. The study focused in both low-to-medium intensity burns and high intensity burns. Selected sexually dimorphic features were analysed in 51 experimentally burnt skeletons from the 21st Century Identified Skeletal Collection. Bones were burnt to maximum temperatures between 450 °C and 1050 °C achieved after 75 to 257 min. Morphological methods tested in this study comprised the recommendations for hipbone features from Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994) and from Bruzek (2002). On the other hand, metric references tested here were the ones from Wasterlain (2000), Curate et al. (2016) and Gonçalves et al. (2013) focused on the humerus, femur, calcaneus and talus. Agreement was tested with Gwet’s AC1 test and was further assessed by calculating the relative amount of perfect agreements. Results demonstrated that heat-induced changes affected not only the scoring of morphological features burnt at high temperatures but also the scoring of features burnt at lower intensities. On the other hand, metric features were only considerably affected in high intensity burns, no major changes being documented for low-to-medium intensity burns. For low-to-medium intensity burns, the Bruzek and Curate et al. methods revealed a better agreement between the pre- and post-burning scores. For high intensity burns, better agreement was obtained by using the Bruzek (2002) and Gonçalves et al. (2013) methods. As expected, heat-induced warping, fracture and metric change had a major impact on the pre- and post-observations’ agreement. Contrary to what has been systematically assumed over the years, this impact is also quite substantial in bones burnt at low-to-medium burn intensities so caution is advised during the analysis of this kind of burnt skeletal material.     

关于土地归属的初步讨论——以大陆法系传统、罗马法和俄罗斯法为视角

在以罗马法为基础的大陆法系传统中,关于土地归属的法律规定对俄罗斯法产生了一定的影响。分析在罗马法以及中世纪法中土地归属法律规定的复杂性,并且就资产阶级法典化过程中,通过个人所有权和他物权体系的构建,对土地归属问题复杂性的简化需要加以说明。此外,大陆法系传统概念在苏联时期俄罗斯法中所遭受的阻力,而所有权结构在俄罗斯联邦新民法典和土地法典中的扩张也值得重视。