The Commonwealth of Nations and the EU after the ‘Global’ Crisis: Rethinking Post-2015 ‘Global’ Development?

Abstract

The continuing ‘global’ crisis has accelerated divergences between regions, especially between the ‘rising’ global South, the European Union (EU) of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) and Cyprus, which belongs to both the Commonwealth and the EU. This article studies the emerging ‘vertical’ divergences between the EU and the global South, especially around the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements, and the parallel ‘horizontal’ divergences among Anglophone, Francophone (the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie) and Lusophone (the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) Commonwealths, with their inheritance of emulation and competition. It focuses on the possibilities of enhanced human/citizen security to propose an analysis that challenges established perspectives and points towards prospects for Commonwealth ‘schools’ of international relations/development.     

Climate Change: Legal Developments on Many Fronts

A dynamic set of diplomatic, political, and cultural forces is driving action on global climate change in many legal arenas. These include novel multi-state compacts to regulate certain emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), vigorous legislative initiatives by the new Congressional leadership, judicial actions seeking damages and injunctive relief, and private sector responses to the potential new liabilities and obligations associated with climate change. In this environment, pressure is mounting on the federal government to abandon its policy of encouraging voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and to adopt programs that will impose mandatory and uniform national emission requirements.     

Comparative advertising is not trade mark infringement

The Court of Appeal has indicated that the use of a competitor'sregistered trade mark for comparative advertising is not trademark infringement.     

The Allocation of Environmental Investigation Costs between the Defense and Indemnity Obligations under General Liability Policies

For policyholders responding to administrative demands of federal or state environmental agencies, the allocation of environmental consultant costs between a carrier's defense and indemnity obligations is a frequent source of disagreement. Likely due to the fact-sensitive nature of such disagreements, existing case law lacks consistency in the analysis of such issues. This article analyzes different legal standards adopted by courts to analyze this issue. Although each court recognizes the fact-intensive nature of the inquiry, some courts are quite detailed in their analysis while others simply seek to achieve a sense of “rough justice.” As a result, attorneys involved in such disputes must have both an understanding of the specific legal standards employed by the courts as well as an understanding of the specific facts that may ultimately tip the scales.     

FaSTR DNA: A new expert system for forensic DNA analysis

The automation of DNA profile analysis of reference and crime samples continues to gain pace driven in part by a realisation by the criminal justice system of the positive impact DNA technology can have in aiding in the solution of crime and the apprehension of suspects. Expert systems to automate the profile analysis component of the process are beginning to be developed. In this paper, we report the validation of a new expert system FaSTR DNA, an expert system suitable for the analysis of DNA profiles from single source reference samples and from crime samples. We compare the performance of FaSTR DNA with that of other equivalent systems, GeneMapper™ ID v3.2 (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA) and FSS-i³ v4 (The Forensic Science Service^® DNA expert System Suite FSS-i³, Forensic Science Service, Birmingham, UK) with GeneScan^® Analysis v3.7/Genotyper^® v3.7 software (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA) with manual review. We have shown that FaSTR DNA provides an alternative solution to automating DNA profile analysis and is appropriate for implementation into forensic laboratories. The FaSTR DNA system was demonstrated to be comparable in performance to that of GeneMapper™ ID v3.2 and superior to that of FSS-i³ v4 for the analysis of DNA profiles from crime samples.     

Project Overview and Emerging Themes

The law has traditionally been, and will remain, a fundamental tool for addressing health care reform in the United States. With this premise in mind, the "Legal Solutions in Health Reform" project was initiated. The project overview provides a broad understanding of the purpose and layout of the project; the formulation and definition of key legal issues; a brief review of each of the topics covered in the project; a survey of current health statistics in the United States; a discussion of the role of the federal versus state roles in health reform; a review of agencies and committees with jurisdiction over health reform issues; and a survey of means of enforcing health reform efforts.