Administrative Regime Research Articles

Feeling the Dragon’s Pains: Rethinking of China’s Cultural Products in the Context of the ‘China- Publications’

China-Publications has been perceived as a milestone for both the WTO regulatory framework and China’s domestic governance. On the other hand, it also reveals the Dragon’s pains as either a WTO Member or a domestic governor. The acute pain of unequal WTO Membership recurred in terms of China specific rules. Moreover, by exploring cultural regulatory framework in China, one may notice that the majority of China’s administrative regimes and legal framework are elaborately designed for political considerations. The WTO adjudicator’s ruling on the “necessary” test of the measures imposed on cultural products, however, did not give due consideration to China’s political concerns. This may have spill over impact on socialist-political system in China, blocking the progressively trade liberalization of cultural products in China. The China-Publications unveils the limits of China’s national regulatory framework as well, covering both culture and trade aspects, as well as restrictions on WTO legal capacity in China. Though this unpleasant failure experience in defending China-Publications, China needs to contemplate complementing its domestic culture and trade regulatory framework, and enhancing its WTO legal capacity. Presented SIEL Singapore 2012.

Groundwater: The Invisible Resource

Groundwater in Spain remained a free resource until 1985, when it became regulated by a complex administrative regime. This regime, together with inefficient water use, has led to overexploitation, salination and other forms of contamination of underground water supplies in some southern, south-eastern and central areas of the Iberian Peninsula. Ecologically important wetlands in these regions have also been affected. This article analyzes the causes of groundwater mismanagement and proposes a new management model based on the formation of communities of users of the same body of groundwater. These communities would share management responsibilities with the water administration authority according to a new set of norms and measures aimed at ensuring sustainable use.

Suing the Leviathan—An Empirical Analysis of the Changing Rate of Administrative Litigation in China

This article analyzes the changing rate of administrative litigation in China. Using a set of provincial‐level data over seven years (2003–2009), the article evaluates a number of hypotheses derived from extant theories of social litigiousness, state‐society relations in authoritarian regimes, Chinese elite politics, and Chinese administrative law. It finds evidence that the rate of administrative litigation varies according to different levels of lawyer density and urbanization. It also finds preliminary evidence that casts doubt on the effects of top‐down legal and policy changes in China. The article is the first longitudinal study of the Chinese administrative litigation system, and it answers questions that have long been underexplored. In addition, the research contributes to our understanding of state‐society relations in authoritarian regimes. This article also evaluates the role of elite politics in the development of the administrative law regime and adds new evidence to the debate about lawyers' role in China's legal reforms. Finally, the article contributes to empirical and comparative studies of litigation rates, especially the less researched area of administrative litigation.

Les archives notariales des Etats du Pape : contrôle centrale et évolutions locales de l’enregistrement en italie au début du l’époque moderne

This paper contributes to a history of notarial archives in early modern Europe by looking at notarial record-keeping in the Papal States outside of Rome and Bologna. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V created a special administrative regime to control and organize the notarial archives. A new office, the Prefettura degli Archivi, was founded for this purpose. This essay first presents an overview over the history, development, and internal functioning of this largely unknown administrative body. It thus interprets the papacy’s archival politics as part of the larger process of earlymodern state-building. The final sections use the sources created by this office to illustrate, how an alternative and less ’institutionalist’ approach to the history of archives could look like. The plentiful sources produced by the Prefettura allow for a pragmatic or praxeological history that highlights in new ways the place and role of archives in the daily lives of individuals and small communities.

Rethinking Canadian Crown Copyright

Crown copyright in Canada covers most works produced by public servants, including software, research reports, and regulations. The overall legal regime for Crown copyright functions similarly to copyright in the private context; however, a critical look at the theoretical justifications reveals fundamental differences and substantially weaker foundations. As particularly noticeable in the context of government involvement in open source software, the practical application of Crown copyright also differs considerably from the private context.Already resting on fragile theoretical grounds, the present federal administrative regime further creates a problematic fragmentation of rights that hinders the effective public use and re-use of Crown works. While many other state governments and private-sector actors are currently striving to realize further benefits from collaborative initiatives that aim to share open data and open source software, the statutory and administrative copyright regimes in Canada remain incompatible with these growing movements.

Transmitters and receivers' investment to avoid interference: Is there an optimal regime?

The management of interference has been, and still is, the main concern in spectrum policy. Historically, interference has been dealt with by heavy regulation under an administrative control regime. Over the last decades, a new approach has been put forward based on users' property rights, better able to cope with a rapidly changing technological environment. The issue of dealing with interference across bands, however, remains crucial: What obligations should be put on users so as to keep interference at a socially acceptable level? Also, given that some unwanted emissions are bound to occur, how can private parties be provided with the right incentives to invest in high-quality reception technology? This paper assesses how well different regulatory regimes can lead to efficient outcomes. It develops an economic model of spectrum interference and identifies the efficient solution. A regime where spectrum users have the power to enjoin intruding emissions beyond a predefined level (property rights protection) is compared with a regime where users are forced to bear with intruding emissions, but are entitled to economic compensation for the harm suffered (liability rules protection). The analysis suggests that different regimes may perform differently under different circumstances depending on the cause of interference and, critically, on whether the services are organised as an open- or a close-architecture system. This suggests that regulators should pay more attention to the specific features of the different bands, and that the appropriate spectrum management regime should be designed to recognise these differences.

Transmitters and Receivers’ Investment to Avoid Interference: Is There an Optimal Regime?

The management of interference has been, and still is, the main concern in spectrum policy. Historically, interference has been dealt with by heavy regulation under an administrative control regime. Over the last decades, a new approach has been put forward based on users’ “property rights,” better able to cope with rapidly changing technological environment. The issue of how to deal with interference across bands, however, remains crucial: What obligations should be put on users so as to keep interference at a socially acceptable level? Also, given that some unwanted emissions are bound to occur, how can private parties be provided with the right incentives to invest in high-quality reception technology? This article assesses how well different regulatory regimes can lead to efficient outcomes. It develops an economic model of spectrum interference and identifies the efficient solution. A regime where spectrum users have the power to enjoin intruding emissions beyond a predefined level (“property rights protection”) is compared to a regime where users are forced to bear with intruding emissions, but are entitled to economic compensation for the harm suffered (“liability rules protection”). The analysis suggests that different regimes may perform differently under different circumstances depending on the cause of interference and, critically, on whether the services are organised as an open- or a close-architecture system. This suggests that regulators should pay more attention to the specific features of the different bands, and that the appropriate spectrum management regime should be designed to recognise these differences.

Harmonizing Through Judicial Review: Statutory Interpretation and Participation in Sub-Arctic Resource Management

This article describes how statutory interpretation by the courts can impact the effectiveness of co-management initiatives in Canada. Canada has recently undertaken a massive restructuring of the administrative regimes that license and permit resource development across the country to better incorporate Indigenous participation. These co-management boards now take part in governing resource use across Canada and most recognizably in parts of British Columbia, the Yukon Territories, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Nevertheless, the degree to which Indigenous participation may impact the regulatory output of co-management boards remains uncertain in law. This article uses one co-management statute in Canada, the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, to explore the complexities of accounting for participation in resource management in the sub-Arctic. The article argues that construction by the courts of the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act as similar to its predecessor, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, has the effect of construing the former statute as a procedural tool, which effectively divorces participation from the regulatory output of co-management boards. While by no means settled, this trend towards participation as a procedure of co-management is construed from a reading of the legislation as a legal transplant and its concomitant harmonization by the court with other statutory schemes. This article thus analyzes how the effectiveness of co-management is impacted by assumptions that the meaning of law can remain unaltered despite stakeholder participation.

The Little Sisters Case, Administrative Censorship and Obscenity Law

This case comment is focused on the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling in Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Canada (Minister of Justice), [2000] 2 S.C.R. 112''''8 a challenge brought by a gay and lesbian bookstore to the statutory powers conferred on Customs officials to detain imported publications at the border. The authors argues that the Court’s ruling in Little Sisters glosses over serious problems with the definition of obscenity and with prior restraint of expression through administrative censorship. The majority of the Court failed to take seriously the strong tendencies to over-censorship resulting from administrative regimes tasked with imposing prior restraints on the dissemination of publications. Nevertheless, the scrutiny brought to bear on Customs since 1994 by the Little Sisters litigation, and the Court’s insistence that Customs’ practices and procedures need to be overhauled to better respect freedom of expression, may mean that high levels of Customs’ censorship will become less prevalent than they were in the past. However, as Justice Iacobucci noted in dissent, Customs has not yet earned our trust. A weakness of the majority judgment is that any improvement depends on voluntary compliance, or, failing that, continued pressure being brought to bear on Customs through litigation. It is unwise and unfair to cast the burden of achieving constitutional compliance and accountability on individuals and cultural institutions, many of whom will have limited time and resources to devote to the task. The majority unfortunately chose to absolve Parliament of any responsibility for designing a better law. The Court was confronted with a poorly designed and crafted law that cast the net too broadly in its zealous approach to censorship, and that had resulted in extreme incursions on civil libertarian values. It was easy to imagine more moderate, balanced means of pursuing Parliament’s legislative objective. However, the Court appeared to strain to let Parliament off the hook, in part by rewriting the law to correct some of its most egregious flaws. The Court’s ruling encourages Parliament to be cavalier about its constitutional duties, and discourages future democratic deliberation about the appropriate scope of freedom of expression in the context of border censorship, even though very little occurred in Parliament in the first place. The interpretive partnership between courts and legislatures that ought to animate the Charter has been stalled by the Court’s ruling at the outset.

Left Out at Sea: Highly Migratory Fish and the Endangered Species Act

Of the nearly 2,000 threatened and endangered species protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA), not one is a highly migratory fish. Despite well-documented population declines in many species of highly migratory fish over the past fifty years, including tuna, marlin, and shark, no highly migratory fish has ever been listed for protection. In light of current controversy over the proposed protection of Atlantic bluefin tuna under international and domestic law, this Comment seeks to explore reasons for the curious absence of any protection for highly migratory fish under the ESA. Specifically, this Comment will examine how societal perceptions and values of fish as commercial commodities perpetuate a statutory and administrative regime that militates against the protection of highly migratory fish under the ESA.

Saving the Soul of the Nation: Essentialist Nationalism and Interwar Rural Wales

AbstractThis article explores how the land and the agricultural community were made out to be central to the assertion of Welsh national identity between the world wars. Political Nationalism came out of a disillusion with Liberal national sentiment. Liberal nationalists had recognised the significance of the land in Wales and made secure a devolved administrative regime for agriculture, the Welsh Council of Agriculture, originally established before 1914. For the political Nationalists, however, this was far too little. They perceived a cultural and economic crisis which might be overcome only through complete self-government. That crisis originated historically in the annexation of Wales to England which had intruded an alien land system and destroyed a natural, patriarchal rural order; which had foisted an alien commercial, industrial system and had led to the Anglicisation of Welsh society. In its depressed state, inter-war Wales was subjected to a new and reactive form of politics, often influenced by European right wing ideas, which was anti-urban, anti-capitalist, anti-English and anti-modern, all of which had wider repercussions for the future of Welsh identity.

Opposite effects of high and low doses of interleukin-2 on T cell-mediated hepatitis in mice (interleukin-2 on hepatitis)

Concanavalin A (Con A)-induced hepatitis is an extensively used animal model of T cell-mediated acute hepatitis. A variety of cytokines, including interleukin 4 (IL-4), interferon gamma (IFN-γ), and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), have been shown to play important roles in Con A-induced liver injury. However, the role of IL-2, a critical cytokine in the development and function of T cells and a clinical therapeutics for virus infection and tumor, has not been carefully examined in this model. In this study, we investigated the function of IL-2 in Con A-induced hepatitis by using various strategies of rhIL-2 pretreatment. We treated mice with two rhIL-2 administration strategies: a single injection of high dose of rhIL-2 (IL-2(hi), 50×10(3)U/mouse) and four injections of low dose of rhIL-2 (IL-2(4lo), 5×10(3)U/mouse). IL-2(hi) pretreatment ameliorated Con A-induced liver injury, while IL-2(4lo) aggravated Con A-induced liver injury. IL-2(hi) pretreatment reduced Con A-induced elevation of serum TNF-α while IL-2(4lo) pretreatment did not. Serum IL-4 and TNF-α were high 6h after Con A injection in IL-2(4lo) mice, while it was undetectable in IL-2(hi) and non-pretreated mice. IL-2(hi) pretreatment reduced Con A-induced accumulation of T cells in liver while IL-2(4lo) pretreatment increased accumulation of NK cells. Various strategies of rhIL-2 administration play different roles in Con A-induced hepatitis, suggesting the importance of IL-2 administrative regime in clinical liver diseases.

The Dual State in Russia

Russia today is characterized by two competing political orders. The first is the constitutional state, regulated by law and enshrining the normative values of the democratic movement of the late Soviet period and contemporary liberal democracies, populated by political parties, parliament, and representative movements and regulated by electoral and associated laws. The second is the administrative regime, which has emerged as a tutelary order standing outside the normative state although not repudiating its principles. Drawing on the political science literature to develop a dual-state model, this article examines the regime system—its constituent elements and dynamics—to provide a better theorized framework for understanding the dynamics of regime politics.

New administrative penalty regime in the Traffic and Road Safety Law

En el presente estudio se abordan los aspectos mas importantes de la reciente reforma de la Ley de Trafico y Seguridad Vial llevada a cabo por la Ley 18/2009, de 23 de noviembre. Dicha reforma se presenta como una suerte de continuacion y complemento de la Ley 17/2005, de 19 de julio, que introdujo en nuestro pais el permiso de conduccion por puntos, para lo cual se cambia por completo el procedimiento de imposicion de las sanciones de trafico, estableciendose un procedimiento especifico, alejado de las rigideces de las reglas comunes, que contemple las especiales caracteristicas del trafico, tal y como ya ocurre respecto de las infracciones en el orden social o en los procedimientos administrativos en materia tributaria. La reforma se aprovecha tambien para incluir algunos cambios puntuales en la tipificacion de las infracciones (describiendo mas detalladamente algunas conductas), para modificar el regimen de las sanciones (estableciendo una determinacion exacta de la cuantia de las multas, suprimiendo las sanciones de suspension del permiso de conduccion y de circulacion, etc.), para determinar con mayor precision los sujetos responsables de las infracciones, para alterar los plazos de prescripcion y para incluir algunas novedades en el sistema de recursos en la materia. En las paginas que siguen se da cuenta, en ocasiones criticamente, de todos esos aspectos.

Economic Reconstruction or Corporate Raiding?: The Borisoglebskii Monastery in Torzhok and the Ascription of Monasteries in the 17th Century

In spite of a recent revival of interest in medieval Russian monastic life, the administrative regime of Muscovite monasteries and hermitages and their political and economic aspirations are still incompletely understood. In seeking to counter the negative bias of Soviet-era studies of Russian monasteries, which focus primarily on monastic houses as landholding institutions that exploited their peasants, the Western and newer Russian scholarship has concentrated on the intellectual and cultural life of medieval Russian monasticism and rightfully stressed its spiritual aspects. (1) Due to the paucity of 17th-century sources, however, we still have only a vague understanding of how medieval Russian monasteries interpreted their various economic, political, and spiritual functions and resolved possible tensions among them. While scholars have investigated the rote and function of some of Russia's largest monasteries, such as the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, the Volokolamsk Monastery, and the Solovetskii Monastery, we lack studies for smaller regional monastic institutions. (2) Our understanding of medieval Russian monastic life is particularly murky for the 17th century, since the Time of Troubles left many of Russia's monastic institutions with their physical infrastructure destroyed or damaged, their servant population killed or dispersed, and even the number of monks severely reduced. Soviet statistical studies testify to the gradual recuperation of Muscovite monasteries in the century following the Troubles in spite of efforts by the tsarist government to curtail the acquisition of new properties by these institutions. (3) Scholars, however, have as yet gained little insight into the day-to-day struggle of individual monastic leaders to rebuild their institutions and the methods they employed to promote the economic expansion of their monasteries. In this context, one of the glaring gaps in our knowledge relates to the economic interactions of medium-sized monastic houses and their even less wealthy counterparts. The following study of the economic activities of the Borisoglebskii Monastery in the provincial town of Torzhok, as evident in property deeds, donation charters, petitions, and royal and ecclesiastical decrees, suggests that after the Time of Troubles the head of this medium-sized Russian monastery employed all traditional means available to place his institution once again on a sound economic footing. In the later 17th century, the Borisoglebskii leaders often functioned as shrewd entrepreneurs who manipulated property deeds to receive sanction for their takeover of smaller monasteries and hermitages. Confronted with resistance from the inhabitants and sponsors of these institutions, at least one Borisoglebskii archimandrite, in his campaign to build a successful spiritual house, was not above twisting the truth and using his influence at the Muscovite court to silence complaints about his ruthless exploitation of newly acquired territories. The Borisoglebskii Monastery and the Time of Troubles The first documentary evidence of the Torzhok Borisoglebskii Monastery, which seemingly dates back to the 12th century, appears in a charter by Ivan III from 6 April 1476, which assigns some of the Borisoglebskii lands to the archbishop of Novgorod. The monastery rose to prominence in the early 16th century when the Muscovite ruler granted it jurisdiction, except in matters of high crime, over the monastery's villages in the Torzhok region (uezd) and over a district in the Torzhok suburb (posad). (4) According to a royal charter dating from 30 January 1535, the grand prince's agents and soldiers were not allowed to enter the monastery's lands or take dues from it, and the monks were exempted from all obligations to provide hospitality or transport for them. (5) The monastery's proximity to the town of Torzhok drew it into the town's politics and made the monks unintended targets during the raids the town experienced during the Time of Troubles. …

A Pragmatic Approach to Judicial Review of Informal Guidance Documents

The Supreme Court has increasingly allowed agencies to act by informal means. This change has caused intense confusion (1) respecting how these guidance documents fit within the administrative regime and (2) respecting the proper level of deference these informal documents should receive. This article details the Supreme Court’s current Chevron-deference jurisprudence and examines the Court’s treatment of informal guidance documents in several recent decisions. This Article argues that the Court should abandon its current approach to guidance documents and analyze and defer to administrative action pragmatically. Under this pragmatic approach, the reviewing court should analyze the character of the agency action; that is to say, the court should determine whether the agency is initiating, modifying, or reversing policy. The character of the agency action should then dictate the types of procedures the agency can employ. The reviewing court can then ensure that the agency used the proper procedures depending on the character of the agency action. The level of deference will then formulaically flow from the type of procedure used.

CO2 MTIC Fraud -- Technologically Exploiting the EU VAT (Again)

On February 1, 2010 Algirdas Semeta is expected to be confirmed as the next European commissioner for taxation, customs union, audit and anti-fraud. If his nomination passes a confirmation hearing at the European Parliament he will succeed Laszlo Kovacs. At the top of Mr. Semeta’s list of things requiring attention should be MTIC fraud in tradable CO2 permits. Political and fiscal realities make CO2 MTIC fraud a top priority. CO2 MTIC is a technology-driven fraud that takes advantage of the same weaknesses in the EU VAT that have become well known in the cell phone and computer chip trade. The Europol press release from the third day of the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen indicated that the fraud has reached, “…approximately 5 billion euros [and that] … in some countries, up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.” This paper assess the unfolding reports of CO2 MTIC fraud, examines the errors in tax policy that allowed MTIC to morph from cell phones and computer chips into CO2 permits, and then diagrams one CO2 MTIC pathway, explaining why CO2 MTIC fraud is far more dangerous than what has come before. Particular attention is placed on the tax policy errors in the VAT Committee’s TAXUD/1625/04 REV 1 recommendation. It concludes with a discussion of the technology-based administrative solution, and indicates several avenues for moving forward. The remedies considered all require at least one fully harmonized unanimous act at the community level. This most likely means a VAT regulation, not a VAT directive. There are choices. The regulation could impose tax rules, or it could impose an administrative regime. Tax regulation: This approach essentially would require the community to go back and reconsider the TAXUD/1625/04 REV 1 decision. Administrative regulation. This approach essentially would require the community to adopt a regulation for the certification of tax compliance software. The regulation could be modeled on the American Streamlined Sales Tax, and should include third-party service providers who would guarantee compliance. Two models are possible, voluntary and mandatory. What does not work: It is also clear that there are some options that will not work at all to prevent CO2 MTIC fraud: TAXUD/1625/04 REV 1 and COM(2009)511.

Continuous Disclosure: Testing the Correspondence between State Enforcement and Compliance

The literature on regulation theory asserts that regulators are best able to encourage compliance when they are armed with a wide range of sanctions otherwise to compel compliance. It has been argued that the enactment of a wide range of sanctions and the use of those sanctions by a regulator should deter future contraventions of the law and lead to greater compliance. This paper discusses the early findings of a research project that tests some of the assumptions of regulatory theory in the corporate law context. The questions to be examined in the research project are whether or not there is a correspondence between the introduction of an enforcement regime and an increase in the level of compliance with the law which is being enforced, and whether or not there is a correspondence between enforcement activity by a regulator and an increase in the level of compliance with the law which is being enforced. This project aims to test these assumptions in the context of ASIC’s enforcement of the continuous disclosure provisions contained in Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) s 674(2). That provision requires listed disclosing entities to comply with the continuous disclosure obligation contained in ASX Listing Rule 3.1. Subject to certain exceptions, ASX Listing Rule 3.1 states that ‘[o]nce an entity is or becomes aware of any information concerning it that a reasonable person would expect to have a material effect on the price or value of the entity’s securities, the entity must immediately tell ASX that information.’ If an alleged contravention of Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) s 674(2) occurs, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) can instigate enforcement action under the criminal, civil penalty or administrative penalty regimes. These regimes were introduced in 1994, 2003 and 2004 respectively. This project will examine data on the disclosure of information to the ASX to determine whether or not the enactment of the different enforcement regimes, and the use of those regimes by ASIC, corresponded with an increase in the level of compliance with the continuous disclosure requirements by disclosing entities. This research project is in its initial stages. Funding for the data collection was obtained in 2008. At the date of writing this paper the data collection had not been completed. The paper sets out the research questions which will be examined, the theory underpinning the project, the reasons for the choice of the continuous disclosure regime, the methodology to be employed, some limitations of the study and some preliminary analysis of the data collected to date.

Science and Power in Global Food Regulation: The Rise of the Codex Alimentarius

The emergence of the global administrative sector and its new forms of knowledge production, expert rationality, and standardization, remains an understudied topic in science studies. Using a coproductionist theoretical framework, we argue tha the mutual construction of epistemic and legal authority across international organizations has been critical for constituting and stabilizing a global regime for the regulation of food safety. The authors demonstrate how this process has also given rise to an authoritative framework for risk analysis touted as ‘‘scientifically rigorous’’ but embodying particular value choices regarding health, environment, and the dispensation of regulatory power. Finally, the authors trace how enrollment of the Codex Alimentarius in World Trade Law has heightened institutional dilemmas around legitimacy and credibility in science advice at the global level. Taken together, the case illustrates the importance of attending to the iterative construction of law and science in the constitution of new global administrative regimes.

The Emperor's New Safe Country Concepts: A UK Perspective on Sacrificing Fairness on the Altar of Efficiency

The adoption and implementation of Council Directive 2005/85/EC (the ‘Procedures Directive’), marks the end of the legislative stage of a nascent Common European Asylum System (CEAS) by establishing minimum standards on ‘fair and efficient asylum procedures in the Member States’. These minimum standards broadly relate to matters such as access to procedures, the right to remain pending decisions, examination requirements, the right to legal assistance, the right to an effective remedy and the application of the ‘safe country’ concepts. The Procedures Directive sets out harmonized criteria for the application of the safe third country and the safe country of origin concepts. Nevertheless, various provisions of UK law and the Procedures Directive itself indicate gaps in harmonization. This state of affairs creates the potential for diverse safe country designations, undermines the rights due to refugees in similar circumstances and could, therefore, result in the failure to uphold properly the principle of non-refoulement. In particular, by rendering a range of minimum standards ‘subject to certain exceptions’, the application of the safe country concepts within the Procedures Directive can be seen as an integral part of the drive towards more efficient asylum procedures within EU Member States. For example, the administrative regime created by the UK's ‘New Asylum Model’ (NAM) allows procedural safeguards to be lowered at the front end of the process before a substantive examination of safe country applications has taken place; applicants from countries the UK considers to be safe third countries or safe countries of origin are allocated to ‘fast track’ procedures reducing the amount of time available to prepare and present a case; in some cases, applications can be declared inadmissible without any substantive examination. This article focuses on the harmonized criteria relating to these two concepts and their inclusion within the UK asylum system, before exploring whether, and if so, to what extent, the application of such criteria reduces the level of procedural and concomitant substantive protection available to asylum seekers.