EARLY NEUTRAL EVALUATION IN DIVORCE CASES

Parties in a divorce case are faced with the challenge of dealing with highly charged emotional and financial issues simulataneously. Early Neutral Evaluation is a beneficial weapon in the dispute resolution arsenal that can help decrease the level of conflict between parties. This Note discusses the development of Early Neutral Evaluation as a form of dispute resolution and proposes the establishment of court-organized mandatory Early Neutral Evaluation programs to settle financial matters in a divorce case.     

EU Merger Control: From Separate Jurisdictional Zones to a More Cooperative Architecture—A Possible Way Forward?

The paper is a call to re-ignite the debate over the future shape of the EU’s concentration or merger control architecture in the longer-term. The paper contributes to this debate by considering the efficacy of replacing the current merger control architecture of separate jurisdictional zones with a more cooperative approach. It demonstrates that the adoption of the cooperative architecture would result in a number of benefits relative to the operation of the current architecture. For in effectively resolving a major problem that has dogged the operational effectiveness of the current architecture since it became law in 1990, the misallocation problem, the proposed architecture would also lead to a strengthening of the application of the principle of subsidiarity in this field, be supportive of the reinterpreted more appropriate authority goal, and resolve the multiple notification issue. Further, by ending the multiple notification issue, the valued one-stop shop approach to merger regulation would be reinforced. Yet the paper recognises that the cooperative architecture itself is not concern free, for the cooperative approach in granting Member state regulators the right for the first time to apply EU merger law, albeit in certain circumstances only, creates the possibility of inconsistent decision-making across this network. This would distort the regulatory level playing field, undermining what the architecture is supposed to guarantee, the Single European Market. With this in mind, necessary safeguards are explained. The paper concludes by briefly commenting upon key systems that need to be in place to ensure the operational effectiveness of the cooperative architecture. Of course, and at the cost of stating the obvious, improving the protection of competition in the field of merger control in the longer-term requires a willingness on the part of the key stakeholders to look beyond the current architecture of separate jurisdictional zones.     

The GE/Honeywell merger controversy and the path to analytical convergence in international merger assessment: A critical commentary

Globalisation, with its concomitant rise in international merger activity, allied to the proliferation of merger control regimes vetting such activity, increases the likelihood of two or more competition authorities reaching divergent decisions in the same case. This article reveals that this situation arose in the proposed merger between two US-based companies, General Electric (GE) and Honeywell, with the EU prohibiting the merger, and the US Department of Justice approving it. Further, it discusses the analytical and interpretational differences which led to those divergent outcomes. The analytical debate centres on the appropriateness of the two theoretical approaches used to assess proposed mergers, with the EU using the range effects of competitive harm approach and the US giving greater weight to an economic efficiencies merger defence. The fallout from the GE/Honeywell case has given added impetus to progress analytical convergence in relation to the vetting of international mergers. This has found expression at the multilateral level, which links to EU initiatives. The article predicts that the EU is highly likely to incorporate an economic efficiencies defence into its merger control law, bringing it into line with other key players. Of course, analytical convergence cannot guarantee that interpretational differences will not arise, as was evident in aspects of the GE/Honeywell case. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Trade Liberalisation and the Australian Labor Party

The three most substantial decisions to reduce Australia's trade barriers — in 1973, 1988 and 1991 — were made by Labor Governments. Labor's policy shift preceded the conversion of social democratic parties in other countries to trade liberalisation. To understand why this was so, it is necessary to consider trade policy as being shaped by more than interest groups and political institutions. Drawing on interviews with the main political figures, including Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Button, this article explores why the intellectual arguments for free trade had such a powerful impact on Labor's leadership, and how those leaders managed to implement major tariff cuts, while largely maintaining party unity.     

The Caribbean Carretera: Race, Space and Social Liminality in Costa Rica

A single highway connects the Caribbean province of Limón to mainstream society in the highlands of Costa Rica. This paper explores the ways in which that highway affects the status hierarchy of mainstream society in Costa Rica, and how the construction of whiteness as an unexamined racial qualifier for total social incorporation constrains the perception of blacks as social liminars and blackness as a state of communitas. The argument elaborates the work of Victor Turner on ritual liminality to suggest the structural ambiguity of Afro-Latin Americans in the context of Costa Rica.