作为规制与治理工具的行政许可

源于私人生活中财产权人授权他人分享自己财产权实践的行政许可,正成为一种引人注目的政府规制与治理工具。作为治理工具,行政许可承载了一系列不同的社会目标,规制有时只是其中一个主要目标。当行政许可被限定为规制工具时,可以假定其核心是实现对特定行为的控制,具体机制包括信息收集、准入控制、行为监管以及许可的执行。尽管许可制度具有筛选市场主体并对他们进行识别和规制等积极作用,但同时也存在巨大的负面作用,如限制和阻碍竞争、可能导致权力滥用,而且许可制度是有成本的。政府在采取许可制度过程中,应考虑其他能够达成相同制度目标的替代性工具。     

A Tarasoff for Europe? A European Human Rights perspective on the duty to protect

It has long been recognised by British courts that a psychiatrist can be permitted to depart from his/her duty of confidentiality, in order to issue a warning where a patient is deemed to present a real and serious threat to other parties. Until recently, however, it seemed that s/he would not be bound to give such a warning, or to take other steps to protect third parties. The approach adopted throughout much of the USA, and famously expounded in the Tarasoff judgment, appeared to have no relevance to British law. This article considers the possibility that the European Court of Human Rights' ruling in Osman v UK may be set to bring about a radical change in this respect, introducing something akin to the Tarasoff approach into the UK, and indeed throughout Europe. As well as the possible legal basis for such a duty, and the circumstances in which it would arise, it will consider how a psychiatrist might reconcile any such duty with other, more established, legal and ethical duties.     

Why green grabs don't work in Papua New Guinea

In recent years, private companies have acquired long-term leasehold titles to more than five million hectares of what was formerly customary land in Papua New Guinea (PNG), but hardly any of this land has been devoted to production of the four green commodities in which PNG might have some comparative advantage – sustainable palm oil, bio-ethanol, biodiversity and carbon credits. Nearly all of it is dedicated to so-called ‘agro forestry’ projects that appear to be short-term salvage logging projects justified by the promise of a purely virtual form of large-scale agricultural production. I argue that the ‘agro foresters’ have been more successful than the green investors because of a set of political and institutional factors that distinguish PNG from many of the other countries where land grabbing has become the order of the day.     

Geographical Connections: Law,Islands, and Remoteness

Liverpool Law Review - The paper introduces a special issue dedicated to cross-disciplinary research on insular condition and insularity. Situated at the crossroads of legal and geographical...