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Institute
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Introduction: aims and points of departure. 1. The problem of the knowledge of law: whether previous general rules may support a casuistic decision. 2. The problem of legal ethics: whether there are autonomous rights, which do not depend on positive law. 3. The ways of modern dogmatics to deal with these problems. 4. The question remains the same.
In this paper, an analysis of Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall is presented as a hermeneutical key to investigate and criticize two examples of the oblivion of the reasonable distinction and the reasonable relationship between ethics and law proposed by a new Brazilian private law movement called Escola do Direito Civil-Constitucional (The Private-Constitutional School of Thought). Those examples of unreasonable relationship between ethics and law are: 1) the right to be loved and 2) the right to get a private education without paying for it.
In his works, Hans Kelsen elaborates several objections to the so-called “doctrine of natural law”, especially in his essay The Natural-Law Doctrine Before the Tribunal of Science. Kelsen argues that natural law theorists, searching for an absolute criterion for justice, try to deduce from nature the rules of human behavior. Robert P. George, in the essay Kelsen and Aquinas on the ‘Natural Law Doctrine’ examines his criticism and concludes that what Kelsen understands as the Natural-law doctrine does not include the natural law theory elaborated by Thomas Aquinas. In this paper, we will try to corroborate George’s theses and try to show how Aquinas’ natural law theory can be vindicated against Kelsens criticisms.
This article considers the Brazilian Legal System and the requirements of an act performed by public administration. To do so, it presents six main chapters. The first one considers Brazilian Constitution as it regards State form, legal and judicial systems. The second chapter presents the public administration stated in the Constitution. The requirements of a public administration act are presented in the third chapter. The improbity law, which determines how public administration acts should be performed, is presented on the fourth chapter. How one of the main judicial courts of Brazil has understood this law is the topic of the fifth chapter. The sixth chapter presents a proposal of how could be Phronesis used to solve misunderstandings about improbity in the Brazilian Legal System.
In 2003, a number of banks adopted the Equator Principles (EPs), a voluntary Code of Conduct based on the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) performance standards, to ensure the ecological and social sustainability of project finance. These so called Equator Principles Financial Institutions (EPFI) commit to requiring their borrowers to adopt sustainable management plans of environmental and social risks associated with their projects. The Principles apply to the project finance business segment of the banks and cover projects with a total cost of US $10 million or more. While for long developing countries relied on World Bank and other public assistance to finance infrastructure projects there has occurred a shift in recent years to private funding. The NGOs have been frustrated by this shift of project finance as they had spent their resources to exercise pressure on the public financial institutions to incorporate environmental and social standards in their project finance activities. However, after a shift of NGO pressure to private financial institutions the latter adopted the EPs for fear of reputational risks. NGOs had laid down their own more ambitious ideas about sustainable finance in the Collevecchio Declaration on Financial Institutions and Sustainability. Legally speaking, the EPs are a self-regulatory soft law instrument. However, it has a hard law dimension as the Equator Banks require their borrowers to comply with the EPs through covenants in the loan contracts that may trigger a default in a case of violation. ...
The mainstream law and economics approach has dominated positive analysis and normative design of economic regulations. This approach represents a form of applied neoclassical and new institutional economics. Neoclassical and/or new institutional economic theories, models, and analytical concepts are applied automatically to economic regulatory problems.
This automatic application of neoclassical economics to economic regulatory problems loses sight of the valid insights of non-neoclassical schools of economic thought and theories, which may illuminate important aspects of the regulatory problems. This thesis, therefore, advocates an integrated law and economics approach to economic regulations. This approach identifies the relevant insights of neoclassical and non-neoclassical schools of thought and theories and refines them through a process of cross-criticism. In this process, the insights of each school of thought are subjected to the critiques of other schools of thought. The resulting refined insights, which are more likely to be valid, are then integrated consistently through various techniques of integration.
Not only does neoclassical (micro and macro) law and economics overlook the valid insights of non-neoclassical schools of thought, it is also highly reductionist. It ignores the interdependencies of legal institutions, highlighted mainly by the comparative capitalism literature, and the structural interlinkages among socio-economic actors, highlighted by economic sociology and complexity economics. Rather, it takes rational individuals and their interactions subject to the constraint of isolated institution(s) as its unit of analysis. In place of this reductionist perspective, the thesis argues for a systemic approach to economic regulations. This systemic perspective replaces the reductionist unit of neoclassical regulatory analysis with a systemic unit of analysis that consists of the least non-decomposable actors’ network and its associated least non-decomposable institutional network. Then, the thesis develops an operationalized and replicable systemic framework for systemic analysis and design of institutional networks.
Both the systemic and integrated approaches are theoretically consistent and complementary. The systemic approach is in essence a way of thinking that requires a broad and rich informational basis that can be secured by using the integrated approach. Due to their complementarity, they give rise to what I call “the integrated and systemic law and economics approach.” The thesis operationalizes this approach by setting out well-defined replicable steps and applying them to concrete regulatory problems, namely, the choice of a corporate governance model for developing countries and the development of a normative theory of economic regulations. These concrete applications demonstrate the critical bite of the integrated and systemic approach, which reveals significant shortcomings of mainstream law and economics’ answers to these regulatory questions. They also show the constructive potential of the integrated and systemic approach in overcoming the critiques advanced to the neoclassical regulatory conclusions.
The operationalized integrated and systemic approach is both a law and economics as well as a law and development approach. It does not only provide an alternative to mainstream law and economics analysis and design of economic regulations. It also fills a significant analytical lacuna in the law and development literature that lacks an analytical framework for analysis and design of context-specific legal institutions that can promote economic development in developing economies.
[Tagungsbericht] Making finance sustainable: Ten years equator principles – success or letdown?
(2013)
In 2003, a number of banks adopted the Equator Principles (EPs), a voluntary Code of Conduct based on the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) performance standards, to ensure the ecological and social sustainability of project finance. These so called Equator Principles Financial Institutions (EPFI) commit to requiring their borrowers to adopt sustainable management plans of environmental and social risks associated with their projects. The Principles apply to the project finance business segment of the banks and cover projects with a total cost of US $10 million or more. While for long developing countries relied on World Bank and other public assistance to finance infrastructure projects there has occurred a shift in recent years to private funding. The NGOs have been frustrated by this shift of project finance as they had spent their resources to exercise pressure on the public financial institutions to incorporate environmental and social standards in their project finance activities. However, after a shift of NGO pressure to private financial institutions the latter adopted the EPs for fear of reputational risks. NGOs had laid down their own more ambitious ideas about sustainable finance in the Collevecchio Declaration on Financial Institutions and Sustainability. Legally speaking, the EPs are a self-regulatory soft law instrument. However, it has a hard law dimension as the Equator Banks require their borrowers to comply with the EPs through covenants in the loan contracts that may trigger a default in a case of violation. ...
This paper traces the development of National Socialist cultural and legal policy towards the arts. It examines the role of censure in this development starting with Hitler's first attempts at power in the Weimar republic. It then looks more closely into aspects of the development of new policies in and after 1933 and their implementation in institutions of the totalitarian state. As the paper shows, policies were carried out within a legal framework that included parliament and constitutional law but they were often also accompanied by aggressive political actions. Racial and nationalistic ideologies were at the heart of the National Socialist discourse about culture. This discourse quickly established modernity as its principal enemy and saw modernist culture (in the broad sense of the word), and especially art criticism, as being under Jewish domination. True German Kultur was set against this; Hitler himself promoted German art both through exhibitions and through policies which included the removal of un-German art and the exclusion of writers and artists who did not conform the cultural ideal. As Jewish artists and intellectuals in modernist culture posed the greatest threat to the establishment of a new German culture, Nazi policies towards the arts embarked on a process of censure, exclusion and annihilation. The purpose of these policies was nothing less than the elimination of all modernist (Jewish and ‘degenerate’) culture and any memory of it.
The revolution will be tweeted : how the internet can stimulate the public exercise of freedoms
(2012)
This article discusses how new technologies of communication, especially the Internet and, more specifically, social network services, can interfere in social interactions and in political relations. The main objective is to problematize the concept of public liberty and verify how the new technologies can promote the reoccupation of public spaces and the recovery of public life, in opposition to the tendency to valorize the private sphere, observed in the second half of the twentieth century. The theoretical benchmark adopted for the investigation is Hannah Arendt's theory about the exercise of fundamental political capacities in order to establish a public space of freedom, as presented in “On Revolution”. The “Praia da Estação” (“Station Beach”) case is chosen to test the hypothesis. In 2010 in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, different individuals articulated a movement through blogs, Twitter and facebook, in order to protest against the Mayor’s act that banned the assembling of cultural events in one of the main public places of the city, the “Praça da Estação” (Station Square). By applying Arendt's concepts to the selected case, it is possible to demonstrate that the Internet can assume an important role against governmental arbitrariness and abuse of power, as it can stimulate the public exercise of fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of assembly and manifestation.
In this concise volume, author and legal scholar Michael Stolleis provides an overview of the development of the modern German welfare state. Stolleis’ analysis focuses on labor law and social policy, while acknowledging the influence of economic, social, and cultural factors thereon. Origins of the German Welfare State does not emphasize a complete understanding of its subject; rather it seeks to provide insight into the development of German social policy in relation to the political/ historical eras in which it finds itself, leading to a deeper understanding of the foundations of social policy. ...
After the pioneering German “Aktiengesetz” of 1965 and the Brazilian “Lei das Sociedades Anónimas” of 1976, Portugal has become the third country in the world to enact a specific regulation on groups of companies. The Code of Commercial Companies (“Código das Sociedades Comerciais”, abbreviately hereinafter CSC), enacted in 1986, contains a unitary set of rules regulating the relationships between companies, in general, and the groups of companies, in particular (arts. 481° to 508°-E CSC). With this set of rules, the Portuguese legislator has dealt with one of the major topics of modern Company Law. While this branch of law is traditionally conceived as the law of the individual company, modern economic reality is characterized by the massive emergence of large-scale enterprise networks, where parts of a whole business are allocated and insulated in several legally independent companies submitted to an unified economic direction. As Tom HADDEN put it: “Company lawyers still write and talk as if the single independent company, with its shareholders, directors and employees, was the norm. In reality, the individual company ceased to be the most significant form of organization in the 1920s and 1930s. The commercial world is now dominated both nationally and internationally by complex groups of companies”. This trend, which is now observable in any of the largest economies in the world, holds also true for small markets such as Portugal. Although Portuguese economy is still dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises, the organizational structure of the group has always been extremely common. During the 70s, it was estimated that the seven largest groups of companies owned about 50% of the equity capital of all domestic enterprises and were alone responsible for 3/4 of the internal national product. Such a trend has continued and even highlighted in the next decades, surviving to different political and economic scenarios: during the 80s, due to the process of state nationalization of these groups, an enormous public group with more than one thousand controlled companies has been created (“IPE - Instituto de Participações do Estado”); and during the 90s until today, thanks to the reprivatisation movement and the opening of our national market, we assisted to the re-emergence of some large private groups, composed of several hundred subsidiaries each, some of which are listed in foreign stock exchange markets (e.g., in the banking sector, “BCP – Banco Comercial Português”, in the industrial area, “SONAE”, and in the media and communication area, “Portugal-Telecom”).
In this article I advance an account of human rights as individual claims that can be justified within the conceptual framework of social contract theories. The contractarian approach at issue here aims, initially, at a justification of morality at large, and then at the specific domain of morality which contains human rights concepts. The contractarian approach to human rights has to deal with the problem of universality, i.e. how can human rights be ‘universal’? I deal with this problem by examining the relationship between moral dispositions and what I call ‘diffuse legal structure’.
This paper makes a case for the future development of European corporate law through regulatory competition rather than EC legislation. It is for the first time becoming legally possible for firms within the EU to select the national company law that they wish to govern their activities. A significant number of firms can be expected to exercise this freedom, and national legislatures can be expected to respond by seeking to make their company laws more attractive to firms. Whilst the UK is likely to be the single most successful jurisdiction in attracting firms, the presence of different models of corporate governance within Europe make it quite possible that competition will result in specialisation rather than convergence, and that no Member State will come to dominate as Delaware has done in the US. Procedural safeguards in the legal framework will direct the selection of laws which increase social welfare, as opposed simply to the welfare of those making the choice. Given that European legislators cannot be sure of the ‘optimal’ model for company law, the future of European company law-making would better be left with Member States than take the form of harmonized legislation.
Cryptocurrencies provide a unique opportunity to identify how derivatives impact spot markets. They are fully fungible, trade across multiple spot exchanges at different prices, and futures contracts were selectively introduced on bitcoin (BTC) exchange rates against the USD in December 2017. Following the futures introduction, we find a significantly greater increase in cross-exchange price synchronicity for BTC--USD relative to other exchange rate pairs, as demonstrated by an increase in price correlations and a reduction in arbitrage opportunities and volatility. We also find support for an increase in price efficiency, market quality, and liquidity. The evidence suggests that futures contracts allowed investors to circumvent trading frictions associated with short sale constraints, arbitrage risk associated with block confirmation time, and market segmentation. Overall, our analysis supports the view that the introduction of BTC--USD futures was beneficial to the bitcoin spot market by making the underlying prices more informative.
Governments, economists and intellectuals have called for common European bonds or increased own EU funds to address the recession induced by Covid19. Unfortunately, the German government, joined by the other members of the “Frugal Four” (Austria, Finland, the Netherlands), has categorically rejected to look into any such measures and favours using the ESM. This reaction created a déjà vu experience for citizens and governments of the heavily affected southern Member States of the EU. The proposal to use the ESM raises fears of another wave of austerity amounting to yet another lost decade for economic, social, and ecological development in Europe.
Akrasia, or weak-will, is a term denoting a phenomenon when one acts freely and intentionally contrary to his or her better judgment. Discussion of akrasia originates in the Plato's Protagoras where he states that “No one who either knows or believes that there is another possible course of action, better than the one he is following, will ever continue on his present course”. However, in his influential article from 1970, Donald Davidson argued that akrasia is theoretically possible yet irrational. Some other critics of Plato's stance point out that phenomenon of akrasia is common in our everyday experience, therefore it must be possible.
These two arguments in favor of akrasia existence – theoretical and empirical – will be discussed from both – philosophical and psychological points of view. Especially, George Ainslie's argument that akrasia results from hyperbolic discounting will be taken into consideration to show how it affects traditional thinking about weak-willed actions.
Finally, the paper will discuss how the contemporary notion of akrasia may affect the idea of responsibility and free will. Implications for the philosophy of law will be shown, i.a. whether it is possible to claim that a given example of a weak-willed action was indeed free and intentional and one should be held responsible for its results.
The increase in the volume of litigation verified since the 1990’s, having the Brazilian society as context, made the judiciary open itself to new technologies which facilitate the access to justice, as well as to a faster resolution of the demands. However, the intense insertion of technical rationalization in the process and decision operations by the judiciary, during the last years, led to a legalization supported by presuppositions of technical-instrumental regulation. According to the goal policy established by the CNJ, the annoyance of the instrumental rationality is present “with respect to purposes”, which demands, more and more, a mere fulfillment of previously instituted goals from the law operators. The matter is to know if the implementation of new technologies to solve the growing litigation coming from the complexity of societies is enough to adjust the Law to a post-conventional platform. If the social complexity implies resources coming from new technologies, it’s not certain that such technologies, on their own, satisfactorily answer a judicial model which, seen under the eyes of the post- conventional legitimacy and regulation, is adequate to complex societies. This illustrates that a judicial model, able to deal with the social plurality, must take into account not only the rules of instrumental rationality, but also the fundamental issues of communicative rationality. This current work intends to evaluate if the applicability of the instrumental rationality in the judiciary equally allows the law to extent the useful conditions of the communicative rationality to the consensual formation of will and opinion in the Democratic State of Law.
This paper is aimed to re-elaborate questions and discuss them rather than presenting answers. It starts with the dialog concerning specific contributions of philosophy of language to Law, followed by the re-elaboration of some yet unanswered problems, as well as the discussion of possible paths for this issue.
Dieser Beitrag ist ein Besprechungsaufsatz zu Beatrice Brunhöbers 2010 erschienener Dissertation Die Erfindung „demokratischer Repräsentation“ in den Federalist Papers (Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen: Grundlagen der Rechtswissenschaft, Bd. 14), in der Brunhöber die innovative – und auch die Verfassungsentwicklung andernorts prägende – Kraft der Verbindung von Demokratie, politischer Repräsentation und Föderalismusidee durch die amerikanischen Verfassungsväter herausarbeitet. Auf der Basis von Brunhöbers Untersuchung geht es insbesondere darum, wie sich das von Hamilton, Madison und Jay entworfene ‚alte‘ Konzept zur Gestaltung eines starken Gemeinwesens (eingeschlossen das vertrauensbildende Prinzip der Gewaltenteilung) für einen integrativen Umgang mit den ‚modernen‘ Gegebenheiten pluralistischer Gesellschaften nutzbar machen läßt, im Blick die Gesamtheit (und Vielfalt) des Staatsvolkes als Geltungsfundament legitimer Herrschaft. Im Hintergrund steht die Frage nach Möglichkeiten zur Nutzbarmachung historischer Vergewisserungen für heutige Debatten überhaupt.
This collection edited by Dave De ruysscher, Albrecht Cordes, Serge Dauchy and Heikki Pihlajamäki considers what size or varieties of business were considered to be the best. The answer to this question depends on the time period under examination, and it also differs between jurisdictions. The chapters in the collection take a broad approach as they collectively cover a long time span and have a wide geographical spread. They consider examples from the Middle Ages, the early modern period and the 19th century. The places examined here are now in the jurisdictions of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain and England. As a whole, the chapters address some of the tension between the perceived advantages and disadvantages of big business against the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and also the limited liability corporation in comparison to the unlimited liability partnership form. The edited collection takes a deliberately integrative approach, as it combines concepts and ideas from legal studies with those of economic history, business studies and comparative political analysis. ...
This paper aims at an improved understanding of the relationship between monetary policy and racial inequality. We investigate the distributional effects of monetary policy in a unified framework, linking monetary policy shocks both to earnings and wealth differentials between black and white households. Specifically, we show that, although a more accommodative monetary policy increases employment of black households more than white households, the overall effects are small. At the same time, an accommodative monetary policy shock exacerbates the wealth difference between black and white households, because black households own less financial assets that appreciate in value. Over multi-year time horizons, the employment effects are substantially smaller than the countervailing portfolio effects. We conclude that there is little reason to think that accommodative monetary policy plays a significant role in reducing racial inequities in the way often discussed. On the contrary, it may well accentuate inequalities for extended periods.
The debates about the interrelations between reason and law have undergone a change after the eighteenth century. References to the recta ratio of jusnaturalistic tradition have not disappeared, but other comprehensions of legal reason have developed. The European debate over legal positivist science has contributed to this in a manifestation of the rationality of law. This transformation may be considered the basis for the development of true “legal technologies” throughout the twentieth century. On the other hand, in the context of theories of positive law which have taken the relation between ethics and legal reason as a problem, the formation of discourses on coercion (Austin and Holmes), on validity (Kelsen and Hart) and on justification (Alexy and Dworkin) has also contributed to the emergence of new models of legal rationality. In this paper, it is highlighted that the construction of these models is linked to the “points of view” which theories have proposed as legitimate for the interpretation of legal phenomenon. And it is suggested that the discussion over points of view (defined as “focuses”, term which is close to the notion of “attitude”, “stance” or “place of speech”) may aid in the debate on the normativity of law.
This article presents a structural overview of corporate disclosure in Germany against the background of a rapidly evolving European market. Professor Baums first makes the theoretical case for mandatory disclosure and outlines the standard, regulatory elements of market transparency. He then turns to German law and illustrates both how it attempts to meet the principle, theoretical demands of disclosure and how it should be improved. The article also presents in some detail the actual channels of corporate disclosure used in Germany and the manner in which German law now fits into the overall development of the broader, European Community scheme, as well as the contemplated changes and improvements both at the national and the supranational level.
The paper was submitted to the conference on company law reform at the University of Cambridge, July 4th, 2002. Since the introduction of corporation laws in the individual German states during the first half of the 19th century, Germany has repeatedly amended and reformed its company law. Such reforms and amendments were prompted in part by stock exchange fraud and the collapse of large corporations, but also by a routine adjustment of law to changing commercial and societal conditions. During the last ten years, a series of significant changes to German company law led one commentator to speak from a "company law in permanent reform". Two years ago, the German Federal Chancellor established a Regierungskommission Corporate Governance ("Government Commission on Corporate Governance") and instructed it to examine the German Corporate Governance system and German company law as a whole, and formulate recommendations for reform.
Universal banking means that banks are permitted to offer all of the various kinds of financial services. This includes classical banking activities like the credit and deposit business, as well as investment services, placement and brokerage of securities, and even insurance activities, trading in real estate and others. German universal banks also hold stock in nonfinancial firms and offer to vote their clients' shares in other firms. This paper deals with universal banks and their role in the investment business, more specifically, their links with investment companies and their various roles as shareholders and providers of financial services to such companies. Banks and investment companies have, as financial intermediaries, one trait in common: they both transform capital of investors (depositors and shareholders of investment funds, respectively) into funds (loans and equity or debt securities, respectively) that are channeled to other firms. So why should a regulation forbid to combine these transformation tasks in one institution or group, and why should the law not allow banks to establish investment companies and provide all kinds of financial services to them in addition to their banking services? German banking and investment company law have answered these questions in the affirmative. This paper argues that the existing regulation is not a sound and recommendable one. The paper is organized as follows: Sections II - V identify four areas where the combination of banking and investment might either harm the shareholders of the investment funds and/or negatively affect other constituencies such as the shareholders of the banking institution. These sections will at the same time explore whether there are institutional or regulatory provisions in place or market forces at work that adequately protect investors and the other constituencies in question. Concluding remarks follow (VI.).
The corporate governance systems in Europe differ markedly. Economists tend to use stylized models and distinguish between the Anglo-American, the German and the Latinist model.1 In this view, for instance, the Austrian, Dutch, German, and Swiss systems are said to be variations of one model. For lawyers the picture is of course, much more detailed as particular rules may vary even where common principles prevail. Many comparative studies on these differences have been undertaken meanwhile.2 I do not want to add another study but to treat a different question. Are there as a consequence of growing internationalization, globalization of markets and technological change, also tendencies of convergence of our corporate governance systems? My answer will be in two parts. As corporate governance systems are traditionally mainly shaped by legislation, the first part will analyze the influence of the economic and technological change on the rule-setting process itself. How does this process react to the fundamental environmental change? That includes a short analysis of the solution of centralized harmonizing of company law within the EU as well as the question of whether EU-wide competition between national corporate law legislators can be observed or be expected in the future. The second part will then turn to the national level. It deals with actual tendencies of convergence or, more correctly, of approach by the German corporate governance system to the Anglo-American one.
The article describes the legal structure of the Daimler-Chrysler merger. It asks why this specific structure rather than another cheaper way was chosen. This leads to the more general question of the pros and cons of mandatory corporate law as a regulatory device. The article advocates an "optional" approach: The legislator should offer various menus or sets of binding rules among which the parties may choose. (JEL: ...)
The previous proposal for a company law directive on takeovers in 1990 was rejected in Germany almost unanimously for several different reasons. The new "slimmed down" draft proposal, in the light of the subsidiarity principle, takes the different approaches to investorprotection in the various member states better into account. Notably, the most controversial principle of the previous draft, viz. the mandatory bid rule as the only means of investorprotection in case of a change of control, has been given up. Therefore a much higher degree of acceptance seems likely. The Bundesrat (upper house) and the industry associations have already expressed their consent; the Bundestag (Federal Parliament) will deal with the proposal shortly. The technique of a "frame directive" leaves ample leeway for the member states. That will shift the discussion back to the national level and there will lead to the question as to how to make use of this leeway (cf. II, III, below) rather than to a debate about principles as in the past. It seems likely that criticism will confine itself to more technical questions (cf. IV, below).
The corporate governance Systems in the U.K. and in Germany differ markedly. German large firms have a two-board structure, they are subject to employee codetermination, their managements are not confronted with public hostile takeover bids, and banks play a major role in corporate governance, through equity stakes, through proxies given to them by small investors, and through bankers positions on the supervisory boards of these firms. One of the main issues of corporate governance in large firms, the Problem of shareholders passivity in monitoring management in Berle-Means type corporations, is thus addressed by an institutional Provision, the role of the banks, rather than by a market-oriented Solution as we find it in the U.K. with its market for corporate control through the threat of hostile takeovers. These two different approaches to corporate governance have been compared several times recently, and it was argued that a bank-based or institutional Solution has clear advantages and should be preferred. Cosh, Hughes and Singh, for example, argue at the conclusion of their discussion of takeovers and short-termism in the U.K. that the institutional shareholder [in the UK] should take a much more active and vigorous part in the internal governance of corporations. . . . In Order for such a proposal to be effective both in disciplining inefficient managements and promoting long-term investments, far reaching changes in the internal workings and behaviour of the financial institutions would be required. The financial institutions would need to pool their resources together, set up specialised departments for promoting investment and innovations - in other words behave like German banks. The following remarks seek to continue this discussion from the German perspective. The article will first attempt to evaluate the monitoring potential of our domestic bank or institution-oriented corporate governance System and then, in a further patt, compare it with that of a market-oriented Solution. lt will be argued that both Systems focus on different Problems and have specific advantages and drawbacks, and that there are still quite a few puzzles to be solved until all pros and cons of each of these monitoring devices tan be assessed. The perception that both Systems focus on different Problems suggests combining institutional monitoring with a market for corporate control rather than considering them to be contrasting and incompatible approaches. The article is organized as follows. Section II will describe the legal structure of the large corporation in Germany in more detail. Section Ill explains why a market for corporate control by the threat of public hostile takeover bids does not exist in Germany. Section IV then Shows how corporate governance in publicly held corporations with small investors is organized instead, and deals with the role of banks in corporate governance in these firms. Section V of the atticle then will try to compare the monitoring potential of a marketoriented and our bank or institution-oriented corporate governance System. Concluding remarks follow.
The task of this Paper as originally described in the outline of the current project was to compare the German banking System, as one type of relationship banking , with the Japanese main bank System. This was, of course, not simply meant in the sense of a mere description and comparison of different institutions. A meaningful contribution rather has to look at the functions of a given banking System as a provider of capital or other financial Services to their client firms, has to ask in what respect the one or the other System might be superior or less efficient, and has to analyze the reasons for this. Such a thorough analysis would have to answer questions like, for instance, to what extent investment is financed by (lang or short term-)bank loans, whether German banks have, because of specific institutional arrangements like own equity holdings, seats on Company boards or other links with their borrowers, informational or other advantages that make bank finance eheaper or easier available; how such banks behave with respect to financial distress and bankruptcy of their client firms, and what their exact role in corporate governance is. While preparing this Paper I found that in Order to give reliable answers to these questions there had to be several other conferences comparable to the present one that had to focus exclusively on our domestic System. Hence what this Paper only tan provide for at this moment is a short overview of the German banking System and its special t r a i t s ( Universalbankensystem and Group Banking ; part I), describe and analyse some aspects of bank lending to firms (Part II), and the role of German banks as delegated monitors in widely held firms (Part Ill). A description of the historical development of the specific links between banks and industry and their impact on the economic growth of Germany during the period of the industrialization and later on would be specifically interesting within the framework of a Conference that discusses the lessons and relevante of banking Systems for developing market economies and for transforming socialist economies. However, historical remarks had to be omitted completely, not least because of lack of own knowledge, time and space, but also because this history is already well documented and available in English publications, too.
Other than in Belgium, German banks may hold even controlling equity participations in industrial firms (and such firms may own banks) and do so to a large extent. Vis-a-vis the European development this leads to two questions: From the perspective of the (Belgian and other) competitors of these banks, whether their own domestic System might be disadvantageous to them. And from a public interest perspective, which advantages and drawbacks are connected with the different regulations in Europe. The article first informs about the legal framework and some statistical facts. Then the various and different reasons why banks acquire and hold shares on own account are analyzed. The following Parts deal with the various public policy arguments whether equity links between banks and industrial firms should be prohibited or not (safety and soundness of banking; autonomie de Ia fonction bancaire ; abuse of confidential information and conflicts of interest; antitrust considerations; negative and positive impacts on the respective firm). In its last part the article deals with recent proposals in the German political debate to limit stockholdings of banks. The article argues that a step-by-step approach to the Single Problems and issues (conflict of interests; anticompetitive effects etc.) should be preferred to a general limitation of stock ownership of banks.
In my following remarks I will focus on a differente which we find in German law as well as in other legislations, the differente b e t w e e n entrepreneurial investments among firms and merely financial investments. Whereas OUT law of groups of companies o f Konzernrecht contains quite an elaborated set of rules, the rules governing financial investments, especially Cross-border financial investments, seems to be somewhat underdeveloped.
Until the late 1980s, asset securitisation was an US-American finance technique. Meanwhile this technique has been used also in some European countries, although to a much lesser extent. While some of them have adopted or developed their legal and regulatory framework, others remain on earlier stages. That may be because of the lack of economic incentives, but also because of remaining regulatory or legal impediments. The following overview deals with the legal and regulatory environment in five selected European countries. It is structured as follows: First, this finance technique will be described in outline to the benefit of the reader who might not be familiar with it. A further part will report the recent development and the underlying economic reasons that drive this development. The main part will then deal with international aspects and give an overview of some legal and regulatory issues in five European legislations. Tax and accounting questions are, however, excluded. Concluding remarks follow.
The following descriptive overview of the German corporate governance system and the current debate is structured as follows. Part II will give some information on the empirical background. Part III will describe the formal legal setting as well as actual practices in some key areas. Part IV will then deal with some issues of the current debate.
This paper will sketch out some of the developments in European company law as seen from the current moment, which might be referred to as post- 2003 Action Plan, and from my purely personal viewpoint. I will thus restrict myself to presenting the current and expected legislative projects of the EU, with particular focus on the plans and activities of the Commission, and for the moment bracket out both a number of important and interesting decisions of the European Court of Justice and the debates among European legal scholars.
In early 1991 the United States Treasury Department of the Bush Administration recommended in ib proposal for Modemizing The FinancialSystem l that, in addition to other remarkable breaks with the traditional United States financial Services framework, the current bank holding Company structure be replaced with a new financial Services holding Company that would reward banks with the ability to engage in a broad new range of financial activities through separate afbliates, including full-service securities, insurance, and mutual fund activities. The Treaaury Department pointed out that commercial banking and investment banking are complementary Services and that the Glass-Steagall Separation was unnecessary. The Treasury Department gave many reasons for the need for financial modernization and why such a modemized System would work better. As an example that demonstrates the advantages of the System proposed by the Treasury Department, the proposal pointed to the German banks and called the German model of a universal banking System the most liberal banking System in the world. -What makes the German universal banking System so unique and desirable? The following outline of the history and the current structure of the Getman banking System is intended to give readers a background tc determine whether the German banking System could be a model for the System of the future.
On 27 and 28 September 2007, a commission formed on the initiative of the authors held its first meeting in Aarhus, Denmark to deliberate on its goal of drafting a "European Model Company Law Act" (EMCLA). This project, outlined in the following pages, aims neither to force a mandatory harmonization of national company law nor to create a further, European corporate form. The goal is rather to draft model rules for a corporation that national legislatures would be free to adopt in whole or in part. Thus, the project is thought as an alternative and supplement to the existing EU instruments for the convergence of company law. The present EU instruments, their prerequisites and limits will be discussed in more detail in Part II, below. Part III will examine the US experience with such "model acts" in the area of company law. Part IV will then conclude by discussing several topics concerning the content of an EMCLA, introducing the members of the EMCLA Working Group, and explaining the Group's preliminary working plan.
Shareholder voting is back on the agenda of public debate for several reasons. One is the investors’ internationalization of capital investments and the raising of funds globally by companies. It can be predicted that considering the growing together of capital markets the trend to international investments will increase not least because the introduction of the Euro will create a uniform European stock market. This leads to the question how the law deals with this development and its problems. The EU Commission has commissioned a comparative study dealing, inter alia, with shareholders’ representation at general meetings in the EU member states.1 The aim is to simplify the operating regulations for public limited companies in the EU. Furthermore, the internationalization of shareholdings leads the investors to ask how their interests are protected abroad. Are the mechanisms of shareholder protection sufficient for foreign investors? In particular the formation of transnational companies like Daimler-Chrysler will change corporate governance systems. It remains to be seen whether and how foreign institutional investors will use measures of - in this case - German corporate law to control the management. From a microeconomic point of view the question is what specific features of a given corporate governance system might contribute to better performance of firms. The following remarks will however, be confined to one specific aspect of corporate governance only, the exercise of shareholders’ voting rights at the general meeting.
Taking shareholder protection seriously? : Corporate governance in the United States and Germany
(2003)
The paper undertakes a comparative study of the set of laws affecting corporate governance in the United States and Germany, and an evaluation of their design if one assumes that their objective were the protection of the interests of minority outside shareholders. The rationale for such an objective is reviewed, in terms of agency cost theory, and then the institutions that serve to bound agency costs are examined and critiqued. In particular, there is discussion of the applicable legal rules in each country, the role of the board of directors, the functioning of the market for corporate control, and (briefly) the use of incentive compensation. The paper concludes with the authors views on what taking shareholder protection seriously, in each country s legal system, would require.
Taking shareholder protection seriously? : Corporate governance in the United States and Germany
(2003)
The attitude expressed by Carl Fuerstenberg, a leading German banker of his time, succinctly embodies one of the principal issues facing the large enterprise – the divergence of interest between the management of the firm and outside equity shareholders. Why do, or should, investors put some of their savings in the hands of others, to expend as they see fit, with no commitment to repayment or a return? The answers are far from simple, and involve a complex interaction among a number of legal rules, economic institutions and market forces. Yet crafting a viable response is essential to the functioning of a modern economy based upon technology with scale economies whose attainment is dependent on the creation of large firms.
We first analyze legal provisions relating to corporate transparency in Germany. We show that despite the new securities trading law (WpHG) of 1995, the practical efficacy of disclosure regulation is very low. On the one hand, the formation of business groups involving less regulated legal forms as intermediate layers can substantially reduce transparency. On the other hand, the implementation of the law is not practical and not very effective. We illustrate these arguments using several examples of WpHG filings. To illustrate the importance of transparency, we show next that German capital markets are dominated by few large firms accounting for most of the market’s capitalization and trading volume. Moreover, the concentration of control is very high. First, 85% of all officially listed AGs have a dominant shareholder (controlling more than 25% of the voting rights). Second, few large blockholders control several deciding voting blocks in listed corporations, while the majority controls only one block.
Using loan-level data from Germany, we investigate how the introduction of model-based capital regulation affected banks’ ability to absorb shocks. The objective of this regulation was to enhance financial stability by making capital requirements responsive to asset risk. Our evidence suggests that banks ‘optimized’ model-based regulation to lower their capital requirements. Banks systematically underreported risk, with under reporting being more pronounced for banks with higher gains from it. Moreover, large banks benefitted from the regulation at the expense of smaller banks. Overall, our results suggest that sophisticated rules may have undesired effects if strategic misbehavior is difficult to detect.
Stability maintenance at the grassroots: China’s weiwen apparatus as a form of conflict resolution
(2013)
This working paper explores the history and potential of “stability maintenance” (weiwen) as a form of conflict resolution in China. Its emphasis on conflict resolution is novel. Previous examinations of the weiwen apparatus have concentrated on its political function, namely to manage resistance within society and maintain the authority of the party-state. This avenue of investigation has proved fruitful as a means of characterising the political motivation and the higher-level strategies involved in stability maintenance. Nonetheless, there remain significant conceptual and empirical gaps relating to how stability maintenance offices and processes actually function, particularly out of larger cities and at local levels. The research described in this paper aims to consider the effectiveness of stability maintenance as a part of the “market” for conflict resolution in local China, and to test the hypothesis that conflict resolution as facilitated by weiwen is the most pragmatic and effective means of actually resolving conflicts in the current Chinese political context, notwithstanding the closeness of the stability maintenance discourse to state authority and its relative distance from rule of law-based methods of dispute resolution...
Using granular supervisory data from Germany, we investigate the impact of unconventional monetary policies via central banks’ purchase of corporate bonds. While this policy results in a loosening of credit market conditions as intended by policy makers, we document two unintended side effects. First, banks that are more exposed to borrowers benefiting from the bond purchases now lend more to high-risk firms with no access to bond markets. Since more loan write-offs arise from these firms and banks are not compensated for this risk by higher interest rates, we document a drop in bank profitability. Second, the policy impacts the allocation of loans among industries. Affected banks reallocate loans from investment grade firms active on bond markets to mainly real estate firms without investment grade rating. Overall, our findings suggest that central banks’ quantitative easing via the corporate bond markets has the potential to contribute to both banking sector instability and real estate bubbles.
This paper documents that resource reallocation across firms is an important mechanism through which creditor rights affect real outcomes. I exploit the staggered adoption of an international convention that provides globally consistent strong creditor protection for aircraft finance. After this reform, country-level productivity in the aviation sector increases by 12%, driven mostly by across-firm reallocation. Productive airlines borrow more, expand, and adopt new technology at the expense of unproductive ones. Such reallocation is facilitated by (i) easier and quicker asset redeployment; and (ii) the influx of foreign financiers offering innovative financial products to improve credit allocative efficiency. I further document an increase in competition and an improvement in the breadth and the quality of products available to consumers.
We identify strong cross-border institutions as a driver for the globalization of in-novation. Using 67 million patents from over 100 patent offices, we introduce novel measures of innovation diffusion and collaboration. Exploiting staggered bilateral in-vestment treaties as shocks to cross-border property rights and contract enforcement, we show that signatory countries increase technology adoption and sourcing from each other. They also increase R&D collaborations. These interactions result in techno-logical convergence. The effects are particularly strong for process innovation, and for countries that are technological laggards or have weak domestic institutions. Increased inter-firm rather than intra-firm foreign investment is the key channel.
We present novel evidence on the value of cross-border political access. We analyze data on meetings of US multinational enterprises (MNEs) with European Commission (EC) policymakers. Meetings with Commissioners are associated with positive abnormal equity returns. We study channels of value creation through political access in the areas of regulation and taxation. US enterprises with EC meetings are more likely to receive favorable outcomes in their European merger decisions and have lower effective tax rates on foreign income than their peers without meetings. Our results suggest that access to foreign policymakers is of substantial value for MNEs.
The dissertation explores to what extent the post-financial crisis EU resolution regime, based on equity/debt write-down and conversion powers and bail-in tools will be effective in maintaining the stability of bank groups. To arrive at its unique angle, it first asks why bank groups are considered complex, thereby explaining the reasons for their proliferation and instability, and how this may inform the view regarding a desired regulatory framework. The main observation the dissertation makes is that, notwithstanding of other factors already pointed out in the literature, bank groups adopt complex structures with multiple entities, as it allows them, inter alia, to use double-leverage financing structures and internal capital markets.
Double-leverage financing structures allow bank groups to optimise the combination of their debt/equity funding from external parent entity investors with a combination of debt/equity funding downstreamed internally to subsidiaries and other entities in the bank group. An important component within this structure is also that the allocation of the bank group’s resources takes place through the internal capital market (ICM). The allocation of resources via the ICM allows bank groups to manage their liquidity constraint either to undertake activities that are more profitable, or to stabilise the financial position of the group as a whole.
While both double leverage and ICMs can optimise the funding and allocation of resources of the bank group, respectively, they can also generate perils to the stability of the bank group. In particular, this is because double-leverage can result in excessive risk taking and regulatory arbitrage. Moreover, the allocation of the intra-group resources in the ICM may not maintain the financial health of all subsidiaries in the bank group, which can prove to be incompatible with the financial stability goals of the regulators in the countries where those subsidiaries conduct their business.
Within this context, the dissertation argues that the current EU resolution regime does not clearly address issues of double leverage when setting out capital and other liability requirements, i.e. the ‘Total Loss Absorbing Capacity’ (TLAC) and ‘Minimum Requirement for Eligible Liabilities’ (MREL) requirements. Moreover, the dissertation emphasis that it is equally relevant to clarify the way in which the bank group resources are available ahead of, and in financial distress. It is argued that to this end, bank groups need to be allowed to make use of the ICM as it is often uncertain what may be the cause of the financial distress and how the resources of the bank group could be used to stabilise it. To this end, the dissertation highlights that there is lack of clarity in both the ex-ante provisions on intra-group support framework and in the ex-post provisions governing the allocation of any surplus TLAC/MREL resources.
Besides the ‘intra-group’ issues within the bank group, the third point the dissertation makes relation to the bank group’s presence in multiple jurisdictions. This transnational element adds to the complexity of the intra-group issues resulting from sub-optimal cooperation between home and host authorities. In this regard, the dissertation underlines that the current framework could adopt a more balanced way in which the regulatory fora will take into account the interest of the authorities of all parts of the bank group.
There is a consensus among historians that the School of Salamanca brought something new to the development of early modern European legal thinking and methodology. Francisco de Vitoria is considered, not only by modern researchers but also by his contemporaries (from Melchor Cano onward), the origin of the school and its founding figure. He is famously claimed to have introduced Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae as the fundamental text for theological lectures at the University of Salamanca and so prepared the ground for the upsurge of academic activity and intellectual brilliance of late or modern scholasticism at Spanish, Portuguese, and American universities. Regardless of the differences in the assessments of the late scholastics’ political stance (whether viewed as trailblazers on the way to human rights and a modern law of nations or as conservative imperialists, whose sole intent was the perpetuation and legitimation of the Spanish rule in the Americas), Vitoria and his followers are seen as intellectual innovators, opening the restrictive traditions of medieval scholarship to the modern exigencies of a globalized world. This almost universal image has recently been called into question, with Jacob Schmutz showing that Vitoria was not quite the first to introduce Aquinas’s Summa into the teaching of Salamanca’s theological faculty, and Thomas Duve recently asking outright: Did everything actually start with Francisco de Vitoria? ...
The conquista of the Americas confronted Spanish jurists educated in the legal concepts of the European medieval tradition with a different reality, pushing them to develop modern legal concepts on the basis of the European ius commune tradition. Traditionally, the School of Salamanca, theologians and jurists centred around the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria are credited with this intellectual renovation of moral and legal thought. However, the role earlier authors played in the process is still insufficiently researched. The Castilian crown jurist Juan López de Palacios Rubios is one of the most interesting authors of the early phase in the conquest of the Americas. His treatise about the Spanish dominion in the Americas is a central text that shows how at the beginning of the 16th century the knowledge and the experiences of the European past were applied to the American present and, in the process, were shaped into modern ideas.
The loan impairment rules recently introduced by IFRS 9 require banks to estimate their future credit losses by using forward-looking information. We use supervisory loan-level data from Germany to investigate how banks apply their reporting discretion and adjust their lending upon the announcement of the new rules. Our identification strategy exploits a cut-off for the level of provisions at the investment grade threshold based on banks’ internal rating of a borrower. We find that banks required to adopt the new rules assign better internal ratings to exactly the same borrowers compared to banks that do not apply IFRS 9 around this cut-off. This pattern is consistent with a strategic use of the increased reporting discretion that is inherent to rules requiring forward-looking loss estimation. At the same time, banks also reduce their lending exposure to exactly those borrowers at the highest risk of experiencing a rating downgrade below the cutoff. These loans would be associated with additional provisions in future periods, both in the intensive and extensive margin. The lending change thus mitigates some of the negative effects of increased reporting opportunism on banks’ crisis resilience. However, when these firms with internal ratings around the investment grade cut-off obtain less external funding through banks, the introduction of IFRS 9 will likely also be associated with real economic effects
This work intends to analysis the philosophy of history and to discuss the consequences of this death to the Critical Theory. The concept of reason and the devices of democracy and human rights are discussed in a revision of the historical debate about the end of history operates the life in the interior of the modern society, especially about the intellectual condition at the information society.
The requalification of Habermas’ discussions on political philosophy and legal theory after the publication of Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion (2005), and his most recent texts and debates on religion and the public sphere, suggest a revision of the Habermasian theory of rationalization as it was firstly presented in Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns (1982), especially on what concerns the processes of dessacralization and the linguistification of religious authority. In search of contributing to this revision, this paper intends to focus on the problem of a supposedly “lost” aesthetic-expressive understanding of religious authority in Habermas’s theory of rationalization, which may have contributed to a theory of law in Faktizität und Geltung (1992) that does not give satisfactory account to the aesthetical-expressive character of the modern understanding of legal authority. A better understanding of this special character, however, may contribute not only to the avoidance of fundamentalisms and new attempts of “aesthetization of politics”, but also to a rational strengthening of the solidarity of the citizens of democratic constitutional states.
This paper aims to discuss in which sense public hearings in supreme courts of democratic rules of law can be seen as proceduralization of popular sovereignty policies. These policies constitute expressions of a normative claim for a wider “publicization of law” by democratic states’ institutional powers and organs; a claim that becomes evident when one undertakes an intersubjective interpretation of law. This theoretical argument will be presented in the first section of the paper through a new articulation of Jürgen Habermas’ discursive theory of law and his most recent studies on the concept of political public sphere. The theoretical section gives normative and procedural criteria for the second section of the paper, which consists on a critical analysis of the procedures and practical cases of public hearings held at the Brazilian Supreme Court, constituting the first scientific study to date on the Court’s use of this legal instrument.
Although their applications have not yet extended widely due to their incipient state, nano-technologies and nano-medicines may be presumed to be at the origin of the next great technological revolution, foreseeably contributing to a new stage with respect to evolutions in mankind’s progress. Their possibilities are truly immense in enormously varied spheres, but the risks and uncertainties they engender are enormous too. Because access and use of the unceasingly increasing mega-quantity of information they generate will place further strain on the protection of personal life, privacy, the exercise of freedom, as well as the safeguarding of other fundamental principles and rights.
I analyze the most powerful shareholders in Germany to illustrate the concentration of control over listed corporations. Compared to other developed economies, the German stock market is dominated by large shareholders. I show that 77% of the median firm’s voting rights arecontrolled by large blockholders. This corresponds to 47% of the market value of all firms listed in Germany’s official markets. About two thirds of this amount is controlled by banks, industrial firms, holdings, and insurance companies. I show that due to current legislation it is clear for neither group who ultimate exerts control over the shareholding firm itself. For the remaining blockholders, only blocks controlled by voting pools and individuals can be traced back to the highest level of ownership. In the aggregate, both groups control only 5.6% of all reported blocks. The German government controls 8%, and it is not clear who ultimately is responsible for the consequences of decisions.
In 2007, the Treaty makers ennobled the former fundamental principles of the Treaty on European Union as European values. Respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law and the protection of human rights have henceforth transcended the sphere of ‘merely’ legal matters. They have been posited as widely shared and deeply rooted normative orientations and thus the true foundations of the common European house. This step was probably meant to tap a new source of legitimacy and stability.
Does the Polish development concern us — the European citizens and the European institutions we have set up? There is a functional and a normative argument to state that it does. The normative argument is that the European Union organizes a community of states that profess allegiance to a set of fundamental values—among others, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. The functional reason is that the European legal space presupposes mutual trust. European law operates on the presumption that all institutions are law-abiding. Otherwise, the legal edifice crumbles.
Fundamental rights protection, once a side show, has become important for the EU, as proved by the newfound treaty recognition of the EU fundamental rights charter (CFREU), and the upcoming accession to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). At the same time the fundamental rights situation in a considerable number of Member States is an increasing cause for concern. This has mostly been illustrated with reference to minorities and asylum seekers. However, recent reports of organizations like the Council of Europe, the OSCE and various NGOs have also highlighted serious problems with regard to media freedom, such as overt political influence, media concentration, disproportionate sanctions on journalists, misuse of counter-terrorism legislation against the press, deficient protection of journalistic sources and failure to investigate violence against reporters. ...
The application of the EU Commission’s Rule of Law Framework in the current Polish case is a step in the right direction. It seems a good instance to develop the Framework as an EU mechanism to protect European constitutional values in a European legal space which is rife with constitutional crises, but short of instruments to address them. Its pertinence appears even more clearly in comparison to the Council’s (in)activity under its own rule-of-law mechanism, hastily put forward after the Commission’s Framework. The activation of the Framework has shown its potential to mobilize European public opinion and orient public discourses to the current condition of EU values
The illiberal turn in Europe has many facets. Of particular concern are Member States in which ruling majorities uproot the independence of the judiciary. For reasons well described in the Verfassungsblog, the current focus is on Poland. Since the Polish development is emblematic for a broader trend, more is at stake than the rule of law in that Member State alone (as if that were not enough). If the Polish emblematic development is not resisted, illiberal democracies might start co-defining the European constitutional order, in particular, its rule of law-value in Article 2 TEU. Accordingly, the conventional liberal self-understanding of Europe could easily erode, with tremendous implications.
The pointed commentary published on Verfassungsblog over the last week—coming from different perspectives and informed from different experiences—shows the potential of such debates. In the case of Greece, they are an important addition to a discourse focusing too much on austerity or debt sustainability.
The Polish government is stepping up its repression. The freedom of political speech is a main target. A national judge has not just the right but an outright duty to refer a case to the CJEU whenever the common value basis is in danger. Thus, a Polish judge faced with a case concerning the silencing of critics, must refer the matter to the CJEU and request an interpretation of Article 2 TEU in light of the rights at stake.
A new virus, SARS-CoV-2, emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019. Infected persons developed an atypical form of pneumonia, later known as COVID-19. The pathogen created a pandemic, with fatalities throughout the world, and also led to the adoption of restrictive measures which were, until recently, unthinkable, as well as fostering new political conflicts. Even the path of the multilateral order in its current form is at stake. For a take on these issues under international law, the legal regime of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its response to the pandemic provides an insightful access. ...
The market reaction to legal shocks and their antidotes : lessons from the sovereign debt market
(2008)
This Article examines the market reaction to a series of legal events concerning the judicial interpretation of the pari passu clause in sovereign debt instruments. More generally, the Article provides insights into the reactions of investors (predominantly financial institutions), issuers (sovereigns), and those who draft bond covenants (lawyers), to unanticipated changes in the judicial interpretation of certain covenant terms.
We investigate the impact of uneven transparency regulation across countries and industries on the location of economic activity. Using two distinct sources of regulatory variation—the varying extent of financial-reporting requirements and the staggered introduction of electronic business registers in Europe—, we consistently document that direct exposure to transparency regulation is negatively associated with the focal industry’s economic activity in terms of inputs (e.g., employment) and outputs (e.g., production). By contrast, we find that indirect exposure to supplier and customer industries’ transparency regulation is positively associated with the focal industry’s economic activity. Our evidence suggests uneven transparency regulation can reallocate economic activity from regulated toward unregulated countries and industries, distorting the location of economic activity.
We investigate the impact of reporting regulation on corporate innovation. Exploiting thresholds in Europe’s regulation and a major enforcement reform in Germany, we find that forcing firms to publicly disclose their financial statements discourages innovative activities. Our evidence suggests that reporting regulation has significant real effects by imposing proprietary costs on innovative firms, which in turn diminish their incentives to innovate. At the industry level, positive information spillovers (e.g., to competitors, suppliers, and customers) appear insufficient to compensate the negative direct effect on the prevalence of innovative activity. The spillovers instead appear to concentrate innovation among a few large firms in a given industry. Thus, financial reporting regulation has important aggregate and distributional effects on corporate innovation.
Criminal law exceptionalism, or so I suggest, has turned into an ideology in German and Continental criminal law theory. It rests on interrelated claims about the (ideal or real) extraordinary qualities and properties of the criminal law and has led to exceptional doctrines in constitutional criminal law and criminal law theory. It prima facie paradoxically perpetuates and conserves the criminal law, and all too often leads to ideological thoughtlessness, which may blind us to the dark sides of criminal laws in action.
Climate crimes – a critique
(2023)
This paper aims on taking a critical approach to the emerging debate on climate criminal justice, that is mostly about something labeled „climate criminal law“ („Klimastrafrecht“). The critique is directed at climate crimes intended to protect our habitable climate („Klimaschutzstrafrecht“) or to prevent climate change („Klimawandelpräventionsstrafrecht“) staged as transformational criminal law. “Fighting" climate change with climate crimes can lull us into deceptive certainties and by extension into perilous idleness; and it will do so if we think of climate protection essentially in terms of traditional criminal law. Climate crimes are based on the idea that we can counter climate change with the "sharpest sword" available to a polity (cf. the German and Continental European ultima-ratio principle) and that we can thereby also get hold of "the powerful". But these certainties rest on but normative (and at heart: liberal) doctrines, which are deceptive in having lost touch with the realities of the administration of criminal justice. They obscure that more effective measures are available to mitigate the climate crisis and that "the powerful" will likely be shielded with and by climate crimes. Therefore, the climate crimes approach to the climate crisis may just turn out to be (self-)appeasement. It obfuscates that more effective measures are likely necessary to avert impending crises. Our critique is therefore not "only" directed at the symbolic, but the dysfunctional and "dark side" of climate crimes.
When parties present divergent econometric evidence, the court may view such evidence as contradictory and thus ignore it completely, without conducting closer analysis. We develop a simple method for distinguishing between actual and merely apparent contradiction based on the statistical concept of the “severity” of the furnished evidence. Again using “severity”, we also propose a method for reconciling divergent findings in instances of mere seeming contradiction. Our chosen application is that of damage estimation in follow-on cases.
In his new book, R. Dworkin advocates the unity of values thesis. He wants to circumscribe morality as a proper epistemological domain which is methodologically different from scientific inquiry. The epistemological independence of morality is supposed to be a consequence of the irreducible fact/value dichotomy. This paper sustains that unity of values thesis is methodologically correct; all moral reasoning must be a constructive interpretation of its meaning. However, that author fails to recognize that not every axiological interpretation implies moral consequences. From H. Putnam’s pragmatic realism, this paper intends to demonstrate that much of scientific inquiry relies on values interpretation, and that this kind of reasoning is morally neutral. Finally, it should be clear that epistemological choices in legal positivism – e.g. the decision on which aspects of social interaction are theoretically relevant – should not disturb the soundness of its argument nor should it be read as if it had moral implications. This paper concludes that positivist theories cannot be ruled out. Since the choice between descriptive and interpretative models requires a circular justification, legal theory is itself an activity governed by epistemic values interpretation. Likewise natural sciences, it can only be understood from an internal perspective. Accordingly, inclusive positivism holds the advantage of being more consilient than interpretivism, which is arguably parochial.
Reflexive transnational law : the privatisation of civil law and the civilisation of private law
(2002)
The author examines the emergence of a transnational private law in alternative dispute resolution bodies and private norm formulating agencies from a reflexive law perspective. After introducing the concept of reflexive law he applies the idea of law as a communicative system to the ongoing debate on the existence of a New Law Merchant or lex mercatoria. He then discusses some features of international commercial arbitration (e.g. the lack of transparency) which hinder self-reference (autopoiesis) and thus the production of legal certainty in lex mercatoria as an autonomous legal system. He then contrasts these findings with the Domain Name Dispute Resolution System, which as opposed to Lex Mercatoria was rationally planned and highly formally organised by WIPO and ICANN, and which is allowing for self-reference and thus is designed as an autopoietic legal system, albeit with a very limited scope, i.e. the interference of abusive domain name registrations with trademarks (cybersquatting). From the comparison of both examples the author derives some preliminary ideas regarding a theory of reflexive transnational law, suggesting that the established general trend of privatisation of civil law need to be accompanied by a civilisation of private law, i.e. the constitutionalization of transnational private regimes by embedding them into a procedural constitution of freedom.
In April 2003 I commented on the European Commission’s Action Plan on a More Coherent European Contract Law [COM(2003) 68 final] and the Green Paper on the Modernisation of the 1980 Rome Convention [COM(2002) 654 final].1 While the main argument of that paper, i.e. the common neglect of the inherent interrelation between both the further harmonisation of substantive contract law by directives or through an optional European Civil Code on the one hand and the modernisation of conflict rules for consumer contracts in Art. 5 Rome Convention on the other hand, remain pressing issues, and as the German Law Journal continues its efforts in offering timely and critical analysis on consumer law issues,2 there is a variety of recent developments worth noting.
By order of 29 November 1999 the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling under Article 234 EC two questions regarding the interpretation of the "doorstep-selling directive", and the "consumer credit directive", which arose in the course of proceedings involving Mr and Mrs Heininger, who took out from the Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank AG bank a loan to purchase a flat, secured by a charge on the property (Grundschuld). Five years later they sought to cancel the credit agreement, maintaining that an estate agent had called uninvited at their home and induced them to purchase the flat in question and - at the same time acting on a self-employed basis as agent for the bank - to enter into the loan agreement, without informing them of their right of cancellation. Article 1 para. 1 of the doorstep-selling directive provides that it applies to contracts under which a trader supplies goods or services to a consumer and which are concluded during a visit by a trader to the consumer's home where the visit does not take place at the express request of the consumer'. Article 3 para. 2 a) of that directive provides that the directive shall not apply to contracts for the construction, sale and rental of immovable property or contracts concerning other rights relating to immovable property. Article 4 of the directive provides that traders shall be required to give consumers written notice of their right of cancellation. Article 5 provides that the consumer shall have the right to cancel the contract within seven days from receipt by the consumer of the notice. Article 2 of the consumer credit directive provides that it shall not apply to credit agreements intended primarily for the purpose of acquiring or retaining property rights in land or in an existing or projected building, and that Article 1 a) and Articles 4 to 12 of the directive shall not apply to credit agreements, secured by mortgage on immovable property. The German legislation transposing the doorstep-selling directive (the "HWiG") provides for a right of cancellation by the consumer within a period of one week, if a transaction is entered into away from the trader's business premises. The cooling-off period does not start to run until the customer receives a notice in writing containing information on this right and if that notice is not given, the right of cancellation will not lapse until one month after both parties have performed their obligations under the agreement in full. Section 5 para. 2 of the HwiG provides that where the transaction also falls within the scope of the legislation transposing the consumer credit directive (the "VerbrKrG"), only the provisions of the latter are to apply. Section 3 para. 2 of the VerbrKrG, in setting out the exceptions to the scope of that law, provides that inter alia Section 7 (right of cancellation) shall not apply to credit agreements in which credit is subject to the giving of security by way of a charge on immovable property, and is granted on usual terms for credits secured by a charge on immovable property and the intermediate financing of the same. Given this legal framework it is obvious that the Heiningers could not cancel the credit agreement according to the VerbrKrG. Although the agreement constitutes a consumer credit under section 1 VerbrKrG, the right of revocation is excluded by section 3 para. 2 VerbrKrG, the exclusion of which is backed by the consumer credit directive. Although the credit agreement was entered into away from the banks business premises, they as well could not cancel it under the HWiG since this law is not applicable to consumer credit agreements. Thus, the claim of the Heiningers was denied by German courts until the Federal Court of Justice raised the question, if the subsidiarity clause in section 5 para. 2 of the HWiG constitutes a contradiction to the provisions of the door step selling directive.
In the early Nineties the Hague Conference on International Private Law on initiative of the United States started negotiations on a Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (the "Hague Convention"). In October 1999 the Special Commission on duty presented a preliminary text, which was drafted quite closely to the European Convention on Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (the "Brussels Convention"). The latter was concluded between the then 6 Member States of the EEC in Brussels in 1968 and amended several times on occasion of the entry of new Member States. In 2000, after the Treaty of Amsterdam altered the legal basis for judicial co-operation in civil matters in Europe, it was transformed into an EC Regulation (the "Brussels I Regulation"). The 1999 draft of the Hague Convention was heavily criticized by the USA and other states for its European approach of a double convention, regulating not only the recognition and enforcement of judgments, but at the same time the extent of and the limits to jurisdiction to adjudicate in international cases. During a diplomatic conference in June 2001 a second draft was presented which contained alternative versions of several articles and thus resembled more the existing dissent than a draft convention would. Difficulties to reach a consensus remained, especially with regard to activity based jurisdiction, intellectual property, consumer rights and employee rights. In addition, the appropriateness of the whole draft was questioned in light of the problems posed by the de-territorialization of relevant conduct through the advent of the Internet. In April 2002 it was decided to continue negotiations on an informal level on the basis of a nucleus approach. The core consensus as identified by a working group, however, was not very broad. The experts involved came to the conclusion that the project should be limited to choice of court agreements. In March 2004 a draft was presented which sets out its aims as follows: "The objective of the Convention is to make exclusive choice of court agreements as effective as possible in the context of international business. The hope is that the Convention will do for choice of court agreements what the New York Convention of 1958 has done for arbitration agreements." In April 2004 the Special Commission of the Hague Conference adopted a Draft "Convention on Exclusive Choice of Court Agreements", which according to its Art. 2 No. 1 a) is not applicable to choice of court agreements, to which a natural person acting primarily for personal, family or household purposes (a consumer) is a party". The broader project of a global judgments convention thus seems to be abandoned, or at least to be postponed for an unlimited time period. There are - of course - several reasons why the Hague Judgments project failed. Samuel Baumgartner has described an important one as the "Justizkonflikt" between the United States and Europe or, more specifically Germany. Within the context of the general topic of this conference, that is (international) jurisdiction for human rights, in the remainder of this presentation I shall elaborate on the socio-cultural aspects of the impartiality of judgments and their enforcement on a global scale.
Race has been a term avoided in the Swedish debates, while at the same time, protections with respect to unlawful discrimination on the basis of race or ethnic origins have not been vigilantly upheld by the courts. This paper looks at the treatment of race by the Swedish legislature, as well as the treatment by the courts, specifically the Labour Court, with respect to claims of unlawful discrimination in employment on the basis of ethnic origins, against the background of Critical Race Theory. The disparities between the intent of the legislature and the outcome of the cases brought to the Swedish courts can be in least in part explained through the lens of Critical Race Theory, particularly with respect to the liberal approach taken by the courts when applying the law.
This research attempts to provide for an overview of the state of co-operation between the United Nations and regional organizations like the CoE, OSCE, EU and NATO during the last Yugoslav wars, considering the 1991-2008 period. In this case, the "reconstruction" of what the organisations did in each of the countries involved in the conflicts, the country-by-country approach used in writing the research and the consideration of both headquarters and field level should facilitate the understanding of the state of things at that time. The research further includes an analysis of the co-operative trends developed by the considered international organisations since the beginning of the 1990s and is concluded by a reflection on the normative relevance of the issue of "international cooperation". In this case, the intention of the author was to go beyond the general policy level approach used for the description of UN-regional organizations interaction and propose a re-consideration of the concept of "international co-operation" as a possible normative tool in guiding the so far nebulous division of tasks of international actors in conflict-related scenarios. In this case, the concise description of the general framework for co-operation under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, already matter of wide debate by academics and practitioners, sets the frame for a more elaborate, and hopefully innovative, consideration of the notion of "international cooperation". This, of course, is to be contextualized to the lessons learned extrapolated from the case study.
H. L. A. Hart thought that a theory of law can be purely descriptive and called his theory a “descriptive sociology”. One of his great contributions to modern legal theory is his emphasis on the internal aspect of social rules. According to him, a theory of law can be built on the basis of the description of the participants’ view without sharing with it. This descriptivism is totally rejected by Dworkin, who propagates a theory that denies a sharp separation between a legal theory and its implications for adjudication. For Dworkin, a legal theory is only possible as a theory with “the internal, participants’ point of view”. Dworkin’s position implies a radicalization of legal theory that will transform the statement of an external point of view to that of an internal one. For Dworkin, the descriptivism bases on the sociological concept of law, which is an “imprecise criterial concept” and is “not sufficiently precise to yield philosophically interesting essential features.”Hart’s position is vulnerable because it takes an impure form of descriptivism that still draws a categorical distinction between fact and norm. This theoretical impurity results from the ambiguity of interpreting the internal aspect of rules. A strategy to rescue the Hart’s project is to radicalize his descriptivism with Luhmann's systems theory. Adapting the systems theoretical distinction between internal and external observation of law with all its implications for the explanation of the legal system and legal communications, Hart’s descriptivism finally attains its pure form, which is not only a distinctive paradigm of legal theory, but also possesses the potentialities to clarify its relationship to the legal theory based on the internal aspect of law.
The concept of biopolitics has its origin on the Michel Foucault works developped since 1975 to 1979. In this period, the author introduced the foundations for a new approach about the modern government, based in both crescent enpowerment on individuals and the control of populations. The theme has attracted the attentions of some critical political studies, with many practical uses. However, I believe there is not enough consolidation about biopolitics as a concept and a comprehensive theory of the new political mechanisms. This uncertainness is more evident when the very role of Law is questioned in a biopolitical model, due to the archaic nature that Foucault gives to it. So the aim of the paper is to identify the theorical comprehension of biopolitics in a contemporary author as Giorgio Agamben to demonstrate his oppositions and proximities from the original idea of Michel Foucault. I propose that Agamben has the same difficulties of Foucault to deal with legal theory and Law inside biopolitics. Nevertheless, after a critical review on the works of this two authors, my conclusion is that a settlement of the concepts of Law and biopolitics depends of the surpassing of the Foucaldian version of Law as sovereignity, a clear delimitation of a common core between the authors and their differences and the research and affirmation of the concept of Law in Agamben, more well-refined than Foucault's one.
There is an increasing interest in incorporating significant citizen participation into the law-making process by developing the use of the internet in the public sphere. However, no well-accepted e-participation model has prevailed. This article points out that, to be successful, we need critical reflection of legal theory and we also need further institutional construction based on the theoretical reflection.
Contemporary dominant legal theories demonstrate too strong an internal legal point of view to empower the informal, social normative development on the internet. Regardless of whether we see the law as a body of rules or principles, the social aspect is always part of people’s background and attracts little attention. In this article, it is advocated that the procedural legal paradigm advanced by Jürgen Habermas represents an important breakthrough in this regard.
Further, Habermas’s co-originality thesis reveals a neglected internal relationship between public autonomy and private autonomy. I believe the co-originality theory provides the essential basis on which a connecting infrastructure between the legal and the social could be developed. In terms of the development of the internet to include the public sphere, co-originality can also help us direct the emphasis on the formation of public opinion away from the national legislative level towards the local level; that is, the network of governance.1
This article is divided into two sections. The focus of Part One is to reconstruct the co-originality thesis (section 2, 3). This paper uses the application of discourse in the adjudication theory of Habermas as an example. It argues that Habermas would be more coherent, in terms of his insistence on real communication in his discourse theory, if he allowed his judges to initiate improved interaction with the society. This change is essential if the internal connection between public autonomy and private autonomy in the sense of court adjudication is to be truly enabled.
In order to demonstrate such improved co-original relationships, the empowering character of the state-made law is instrumental in initiating the mobilization of legal intermediaries, both individual and institutional. A mutually enhanced relationship is thus formed; between the formal, official organization and its governance counterpart aided by its associated ‘local’ public sphere. Referring to Susan Sturm, the Harris v Forklift Systems Inc. (1930) decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the field of sexual harassment is used as an example.
Using only one institutional example to illustrate how the co-originality thesis can be improved is not sufficient to rebuild the thesis but this is as much as can be achieved in this article.
In Part Two, the paper examines, still at the institutional level, how Sturm develops an overlooked sense of impartiality, especially in the derivation of social norms; i.e. multi-partiality instead of neutral detachment (section 4). These two ideas should be combined as the criterion for impartiality to evaluate the legitimacy of the joint decision-making processes of both the formal official organization and ‘local’ public sphere.
Sturm’s emphasis on the deployment of intermediaries, both institutional and individual, can also enlighten the discourse theory. Intermediaries are essential for connecting the disassociated social networks, especially when a breakdown of communication occurs due to a lack of data, information, knowledge, or disparity of value orientation, all of which can affect social networks. If intermediaries are used, further communication will not be blocked as a result of the lack of critical data, information, knowledge or misunderstandings due to disparity of value orientation or other causes.
The institutional impact of the newly constructed co-originality thesis is also discussed in Part Two. Landwehr’s work on institutional design and assessment for deliberative interaction is first discussed. This article concludes with an indication of how the ‘local’ public sphere, through e-rulemaking or online dispute resolution, for example, can be constructed in light of the discussion of this article.
If a report on state and perspectives of the history of social law is to be written, two problems involving demarcation have to be dealt with in advance. 1. What is social law? 2. What kind of literature has to be considered as a part of the history of social law? In both cases the boundaries can definitely be drawn in a subjective manner and can be oriented towards the interests and competences of the author insofar as the criteria are plausible. ...
Social law is an important cornerstone of the normative constitution of the modern state, if not one the most important. The stability of market-based societies in the current era primarily resulted from both the existence of legally guaranteed provisions against the risks of life and the legal mechanisms that make the social inequalities bearable – or, at the very least, that ensure a minimum standard of living and prevent those affected from being completely excluded from social participation. Social law is, however, not just a stabilizing element for democratically constituted market societies in a normal situation. Over the course of the 20th century, it was also used to great effect by dictatorial and authoritarian regimes as a means of securing power, and it was employed more often in times of war and crisis in order to keep peace within the state, to attenuate or pacify fragile social situations, not to mention to generate social consensus. Throughout all the ups and downs of recent history, social law has remained a key element involved in the shaping of society. ...
About 200 years ago, legal concepts based on the idea of formal equality prevailed. Over the last 150 years, however, the law has tried on a large scale to establish substantive equality, or at least to alleviate social and economic imbalances. To this day, the law which has undertaken this task has grown in scope and become increasingly differentiated. It has become one of the most important components of modern legal systems and has a history with its own distinctive contours. The terms used to summarise the corresponding legal materials are manifold: law of the welfare state, law of the provident state (état providence) (François Ewald), social law, social welfare law, etc. ...
Occasionally, in pursuing their adjudicative duties over the course of a legal hearing, judges are called upon to acquire new concepts – that is, concepts which they did not possess at the commencement of the hearing. In performing their judicial role they are required to learn new things and, as a result, conceptualise the world in a way which differs from the way they conceived of things before the hearing commenced. Some theorists have argued that either as a general matter or as a matter specific to judicial practice and the legal context, judges are, with some degree of necessity, incapacitated from acquiring certain kinds of concepts. Such concepts include those possessed by the members of culturally different minority groups. Drawing on contemporary trends in analytic and naturalistic philosophy of mind, this paper explores the extent to which a judge might be incapacitated from acquiring new concepts over the course of a legal hearing and identifies those factors which condition the success or failure of that process.
Between the 12th and 16th centuries the Hanseatic merchants obtained extremely important privileges from the rulers of the countries with whom they traded. These secured their commercial and legal status and the autonomy of their staples in Flanders, England, Norway, Denmark and Russia. Within these privileges no other subject receives so extensive a treatment as court procedure. Here, the single most important concern of the Hanseatic merchants was their position in front of alien courts. The article analyses the great attention given to court procedure in the twenty main Hanseatic privileges: What did the merchants require? Which procedural rules were necessary to encourage them to submit their disputes to alien public court instead of taking the matter into their own hands and turning to extra-judicial methods to resolve matters, e.g. cancellation of business relations, boycotts or even trade wars? This analysis suggests that the two most important concerns reflected in the procedural rules were to avoid delay to the next trading trip and to ensure a rational law of proof. The former was addressed by pressing for short-term scheduling and swift judgment and by the dispensation from appearing before the court in person. The latter included avoidance of duels and other ordeals and the attempt to obtain parity by appointing half of the jurors from Hanseatic cities.
From the late middle ages to early modern times (ca. 1200-1600) the Lübeck City Council was the most important courthouse in the Baltic. About 100 cities and towns on its shores lived according to the law of Lübeck. The paper deals with the old theory that Imperial law, i.e. mainly the learned Ius commune, was generally rejected by the council on the grounds of its foreign nature. The paper rejects this view with the help of 8 case studies. There exist rather spectacular statements against Imperial Law, but a closer look reveals that they have to be seen in the light of a specific practical context. They must not be confounded with general statements in which the council had no interest. Its attitude towards Learned Law was flexible and purely pragmatic.