Anti-money laundering by international institutions: a preliminary assessment

This paper presents an evaluation of the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) program. It briefly discusses why this can be seen as the birth of a “regime for financial integrity”. We find that some areas of the AML/CFT framework are consistently weaker than others in the area of prevention measures. Specifically, we have two findings: the first, positive one, points to a substantial adequacy of the repressive measures; the second, negative one, points to a substantial failure of countries to adopt adequate preventive measures, and calls for renewed efforts to improve implementation of preventive measures across the board, with specific regard to the activity of financial sector regulatory and supervisory authorities. Also, Eurozone countries outperform all other groups in the sample. Finally, the limited availability of country information and the multiplicity of assessors and methodologies make it difficult to evaluate the performance of the program. Therefore, we suggest greater transparency and availability of detailed countries’ information, and follow up assessments of the weak areas of a country’s AML/CFT framework at higher frequency than the established 5 years.

Market structure and disempowering regulatory intermediaries: Insights from U.S. trade surveillance

Public agencies outsource a wide variety of tasks to nonstate actors, or what can be referred to as regulatory intermediaries. In certain circumstances, these agencies may seek to disempower those regulatory intermediaries by reclaiming, duplicating, or transferring the outsourced task. When will these disempowerment attempts be successful? This article presents the Market Structure Hypothesis, which contends that the level of competition between regulatory intermediaries will, all things equal, determine whether disempowerment attempts succeed. To test this hypothesis, this article examines the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's attempts to acquire the independent capacity to conduct nationwide trade surveillance in the 1980s (Market Oversight Surveillance System) and 2010s (Consolidated Audit Trail). Evidence derives from archival materials, a Freedom of Information Act Request, and 60 interviews in Oxford, London, Toronto, New York City, and Washington, DC. The empirical results corroborate the hypothesis' expectations, contributing to our understanding of public-private partnerships and shedding new empirical light on an understudied topic of securities regulation.     

国际法与国内法关系的法理学思考——兼论亚洲国家关于这一问题的观点

本文旨在从法理学的高度来探讨国际法与国内法的关系。以法律规范的和谐统一作为科学地认识国际法与国内法关系的逻辑点 ,通过对法的调整机制和内在特质所具有的普遍性进行分析 ,提出了关于国际法和国内法关系的“法律规范协调说”。     

国际经济法的性质--以WTO规则为例的研究

经济的国际法是国际经济法的基本框架,国际经济法缺乏体系性、确定性和一致性,WTO对发展中国家有许多不利之处,必须在本国经济的发展和开放中对此保持清醒的认识.     

The Pinochet Case: International Criminal Justice in the Gothic Style?

Book reviewed in this article:
Woodhouse, Diana (ed), The Pinochet Case: A Legal and Constitutional Analysis     

新时代的机构编制管理:战略定位、辩证关系与改革路径

机构编制管理关系到行政成本的高低和行政机构的效能。机构编制管理中的突出问题在于编制配置不科学、不合理,规范化和制度化建设相对滞后。新时代的机构编制管理需要站在治国理政和治理能力现代化的战略高度,平衡“管牢”与“管活”双重目标,处理好事业发展需要与总量控制、“条线”要求与编制管理整体、短期成效与长期成本、编制增加与编制减少、编制管理部门收紧与财政部门宽松之间的辩证关系。在此基础上,通过立法保障、全盘统筹、规划引领、观念更新、机制联动等多维度改革为国家治理能力现代化奠定坚实的组织基础。     

China’s Structural Power and the Fate of the BCIM Economic Corridor

ABSTRACT

In 2013, China and India officially established an economic corridor (the Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar Economic Corridor, BCIM-EC) that would cut across Myanmar and Bangladesh. But while the formal process of cooperation among the four countries is in place, many obstacles to its implementation remain at the international, national and local levels. Is meaningful collaboration possible within the BCIM-EC framework? In terms of two dimensions of structural power as conceptualised by Susan Strange, security and trade, China’s structural power in Myanmar is much stronger than India’s. It is therefore likely that this imbalance will prevent the BCIM-EC project, which currently appears to be overshadowed by China’s Belt and Road Initiative, from having a fruitful outcome.     

The international rule of law

ABSTRACT

The rule of law is a moral ideal that protects distinctive legal values such as generality, equality before the law, the independence of courts, and due process rights. I argue that one of the main goals of an international rule of the law is the protection of individual and state autonomy from the arbitrary interference of international institutions, and that the best way to codify this protection is through constitutional rules restraining the reach of international law into the internal affairs of a state. State autonomy does not have any intrinsic value or moral status of its own. Its value is derivative, resulting from the role it plays as the most efficient means of protecting autonomy for individuals and groups. Therefore, the goal of protecting state autonomy form the encroachment of international law will have to be constrained by, and balanced against the more fundamental goal of an international rule of law, the protection of the autonomy of individual persons, best realized through the entrenchment of basic human rights.