TMT contracts: Avoiding termination and achieving positive realignment: How legal counsel can make a difference - A UK perspective

“The task of a leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been” Henry A. KissingerWith stuttering growth in the Western economies where major sourcing and TMT (Technology, Media & Telecoms) contracts are pervasive, it is perhaps not surprising that internal and external legal counsel are increasingly being called upon to advise clients on termination options and strategies to effect or oppose a threatened termination for breach of contract. This short paper considers why this has happened and the other factors which are in play which have meant that advice on termination and the renegotiation of contracts in this context has become more common. Expertise in this area is part of an IT lawyer’s tool kit and we consider that this is an area where internal and external legal counsel can make a substantial difference in delivering solutions to their clients.In this paper I talk about termination and renegotiation interchangeably. The reason for this as will become clear is that all forms of termination, whether they are consensual or contested, will involve some form of renegotiation of the terms of the contract between the parties. This is because it is almost impossible except perhaps in the simplest of installations to predict the nature in which a supplier or a customer may wish to change the services provided, and consequently even the most carefully crafted of exit and transition clauses, schedules and plans will require some form of post-contract negotiation between the customer, the outgoing supplier and potentially a new supplier or suppliers. This will necessarily involve some form of renegotiation of the terms of the contract between the parties.This paper looks at renegotiation in the context of a termination scenario rather than dealing with renegotiation during the normal course of operation of the contract.     

Interest groups in Brazil: a new era and its challenges

This article provides general and specific insights into Brazil's developing interest group system. In doing so, it presents a theoretical foundation for understanding this group activity, past and present. The general insights of the role of interest groups under limited political participation and authoritarian regimes down to the 1980s plus the period of democracy since then, provide background for the specific insights of the article. The specifics focus on three aspects of Brazil's contemporary interest group activity: (1) utilization of a neo-institutional analytical approach for understanding the interest group environment; (2) an analysis of the types of lobbying activity that takes place in Brazil today, including a case study; and (3) an assessment of the level of development of the group system by placing it in a comparative perspective with both advanced liberal democracies and other Latin American countries. The findings show that Brazil is, indeed, taking on many of the characteristics of a developed interest group system; but its past, its political culture, its political economy, and, paradoxically, its new-found status as an international power, work to present several challenges to its group system and thus to a full democratization of the country. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Methodological considerations in the evaluation of offender interventions: the problem of attrition

Attrition from offender interventions presents methodological problems when the effectiveness of the intervention is under evaluation. This article proposes a treatment-received (TR) design, which incorporates one-to-one matching on criminogenic variables. This design permits the comparison of completer, noncompleter, and nonstarter groups with their paired comparisons and, hence, allows a more accurate evaluation of program completion and noncompletion effects. A sample of 173 offenders, referred to one of two general offending behavior cognitive skills programs within community settings, was matched one-to-one by criminogenic variables to offenders from an appropriate comparison group. Reconviction analyses were undertaken using intention to treat (ITT) analysis, TR analysis using the full comparison group, and TR analysis using matched comparison groups. The ITT design found no impact of group membership on reconviction. The TR designs, however, provided evidence of moderate effects of completion: For every three completers, five of the matched comparison group members were reconvicted. The analysis also suggested a noncompletion effect: Noncompleters were twice as likely as their matched comparison group to be reconvicted.     

仲裁费用的追偿——The “VAKIS T“一案

论述了有关仲裁费用追偿的问题。1996年的英国仲裁法规定胜诉方仅在四种情况下可以追回仲裁费用,而在系列仲裁中能否追偿仲裁费用则有一定的争议。结合“VAKIS T”一案,讨论了可以追偿系列仲裁中的仲裁费用的情形,并对合并仲裁和同步仲裁加以区分,最后针对无法追偿的仲裁费用提出了相应的解决方法。     

Ideo‐theology and the Jewish state: from conflict to conciliation?

The assassination of Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin provided the most vivid demonstration to date of religious‐nationalist opposition inside Israel to the principle of exchanging land for peace. This article sets out to explore this world view and its intellectual origins, exploring in the process how the use of sacred Judaic texts have become both the monopoly of religious‐nationalism and the template for politically inspired violence against those in Israel suspected of condoning territorial compromise. This article concludes that if the ideo‐the‐ology of religious‐nationalists is to be assuaged, a religious discourse supporting territorial retrenchment has to become part of the political fabric of the centre‐left in Israel.     

Capturing globalization: Prospects and projects

The Asian economic crisis of 1997 highlighted the inherent instability of the new worldwide economic order being created by highly mobile capital, and also its destabilizing social and political effects, especially in the transitional societies which had proved so hospitable to the champions of globalization and to proffered capital inputs. Whether these societies are destined to be subsumed and captured by globalization processes, or whether they and their citizens have any possibility of capturing some genuine benefits from advancing globalization, may rest on whether these transitional states and societies can assert, or at least influence, the terms of their engagement with those processes. This will not be possible, however, if people, societies and states capitulate in advance to the forces and processes of globalization as irresistible. This issue is explored through the grounded investigation of four key questions: do globalization processes serve any ends beyond themselves? How might one grasp the best, and make the most, of globalization? Is the logic of the market immutable and inflexible transculturally, or is it amenable to varying forms of cultural inflection and political supervision? Can what globalization delivers be drawn upon selectively, or is it instead a 'package-deal'?