Globalization and regulatory change: The interplay of laws and technologies in E-commerce in Southeast Asia

Electronic commerce has brought about business and technological changes globally, and these global changes have given rise to major legal reforms across nations. In the fast-changing global digital economy, states need strategies to maintain competitiveness of their markets while simultaneously ensuring the secure and effective use of technologies involved in conducting electronic transactions. This paper examines how the use and recognition of electronic signatures are regulated in Southeast Asia – the region that has shown the most significant growth in global e-commerce in past few years. Based on a comparative analysis of the laws of four representative ASEAN member states – namely Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam, this paper argues that there is a regional trend towards adopting more liberal and technology-neutral standards for electronic signatures. Electronic signature regulation in Southeast Asia is now built upon limited technological neutrality (or the so-called “two-tiered” approach) as a shared regulatory understanding, but this approach is operationalized differently in each state due to distinctive national contexts. Within the common legal framework, each state has developed its own system of control and management with respect to higher-level signatures (using advanced technologies). The principle of technological neutrality, a concept originally developed for the regulation of technologies in response to the liberalization of telecommunications market, has been the central theme of discussions on the e-transactions policy-making scene. As the author shows, in the process through which states localize the global standards of technological neutrality, ASEAN as a vehicle of regulatory change has played an essential role in translating this principle to the national context.     

Robots,standards and the law: Rivalries between private standards and public policymaking for robot governance

This article explains the complex intertwinement between public and private regulators in the case of robot technology. Public policymaking ensures broad multi-stakeholder protected scope, but its abstractness often fails in intelligibility and applicability. Private standards, on the contrary, are more concrete and applicable, but most of the times they are voluntary and reflect industry interests. The ‘better regulation’ approach of the EU may increase the use of evidence to inform policy and lawmaking, and the involvement of different stakeholders. Current hard-lawmaking instruments do not appear to take advantage of the knowledge produced by standard-based regulations, virtually wasting their potential benefits. This fact affects the legal certainty with regards to a fast-paced changing environment like robotics. In this paper, we investigate the challenges of overlapping public/private regulatory initiatives that govern robot technologies in general, and in the concrete of healthcare robot technologies. We wonder until what extent robotics should be governed only by standards. We also reflect on how public policymaking could increase their technical understanding of robot technology to devise an applicable and comprehensive framework for this technology. In this respect, we propose different ways to integrate the technical know-how into policymaking (e.g., collecting the data/knowledge generated from the impact assessments in shared data repositories, and using it for evidence-based policies) and to strengthen the legitimacy of standards.     

An Aquatic Decomposition Scoring Method to Potentially Predict the Postmortem Submersion Interval of Bodies Recovered from the North Sea

This study aimed to develop an aquatic decomposition scoring (ADS) method and investigated the predictive value of this method in estimating the postmortem submersion interval (PMSI) of bodies recovered from the North Sea. This method, consisting of an ADS item list and a pictorial reference atlas, showed a high interobserver agreement (Krippendorff's alpha ≥ 0.93) and hence proved to be valid. This scoring method was applied to data, collected from closed cases—cases in which the postmortal submersion interval (PMSI) was known—concerning bodies recovered from the North Sea from 1990 to 2013. Thirty‐eight cases met the inclusion criteria and were scored by quantifying the observed total aquatic decomposition score (TADS). Statistical analysis demonstrated that TADS accurately predicts the PMSI (p < 0.001), confirming that the decomposition process in the North Sea is strongly correlated to time.     

Enhancing Information Sharing in Family Drug Courts: A Lean Six Sigma Case Study

Given the variety of stakeholders involved in cases within family drug courts, efficient communication and information sharing, which are needed to support decision‐making, can be quite challenging. Through a case study in one family drug court system, this research employed an action research approach to improve the information sharing process following the Lean Six Sigma methodology. The solutions implemented through this study contributed to improving the quality of the services provided by this court system and its overall productivity. In addition, this research extends our knowledge about methods for improving court systems from which others can learn to guide future improvement efforts.     

The legal and administrative processes in adoption: views and experiences of newly formed adoptive families

The early stages of adoptive placements are important in achieving successful long-term outcomes for adopted children and their families. This paper reports on findings from the Wales Adoption Study, in which adoptive parents shared their views and experiences of the legal and administrative processes in obtaining an adoption order. Parents described a range of difficulties that added to anxieties and delays. These arose mainly through poor communication about the steps in the legal process and avoidable administrative errors or oversights. Some parents also experienced lack of information and support regarding agreed contact arrangements and work with their child to help them make sense of their adoptive status.     

论职务协助的程序

在行政法上,职务协助是一个重要却备受冷落的制度。综观各国行政法制发达的国家,都规定了较为系统的职务协助或者相关的制度。然而,我国行政法学界对此似乎缺乏应有的关注,研究的广度和深度都还有待于进一步加强。     

论行政监管权与法治

行政监管制度在中国建立的十几年间,监管效果并不理想,市场经济和现代监管制度尚未完全建立,监管权力失灵已经开始显现,这种消极现象不可能通过市场经济自身的力量消除,必须遵循法治原则,通过法律对行政权力进行规制。     

试论中国共产党女党代表及其发展历程

从第一个女党员缪伯英、第一个女党代表向警予到党的十七大445名女党代表,这一发展历程,既是中国妇女参政及政治地位不断提升的重要标志,又说明中国共产党坚持以马克思主义妇女理论为指导,重视发挥女党代表的先进作用和提高她们的政治地位,这在中国共产党的发展史上是值得书写的。     

高校腐败犯罪研究

我国高校腐败犯罪数量突升,大案、要案居高不下;犯罪主体年轻化,领导干部涉案多;贪污受贿犯罪为主,窝案串案比例大;犯罪领域众多,后勤基建成高发区。造成这种状况,既有市场经济消极作用的原因,也有高校内部权力过于集中、管理制度存在缺陷、监督严重不力等方面的原因。因此,必须采取多项有效的防治对策,才能遏制高校腐败犯罪的发展。     

正当法律程序在土地征收程序中的适用研究

土地征收制度适用正当法律程序,可以规范行政机关的行为,限制土地征收权的滥用,增加土地征收程序的透明度和公平性,避免暗箱操作和肆意妄为等现象的出现,以保证被征收者的权益。随着经济和社会的发展,征收土地作为经济发展建设需要的情形屡见不鲜;但是,目前的土地征收程序尚存在不少缺陷,需要进一步改革和完善。本文以2010年6月9日发生在我国台湾地区大埔农地征收事件为思考,探讨我国大陆地区目前土地征收程序所存在的缺陷,并期以正当法律程序来建构我国公平合理的土地征收程序,以实现各方利益平衡,更好地促进经济和社会的发展。