Allocation Of Regulatory Authority Research Articles

Governance structure affects transboundary disease management under alternative objectives

BackgroundThe development of public health policy is inextricably linked with governance structure. In our increasingly globalized world, human migration and infectious diseases often span multiple administrative jurisdictions that might have different systems of government and divergent management objectives. However, few studies have considered how the allocation of regulatory authority among jurisdictions can affect disease management outcomes.MethodsHere we evaluate the relative merits of decentralized and centralized management by developing and numerically analyzing a two-jurisdiction SIRS model that explicitly incorporates migration. In our model, managers choose between vaccination, isolation, medication, border closure, and a travel ban on infected individuals while aiming to minimize either the number of cases or the number of deaths.ResultsWe consider a variety of scenarios and show how optimal strategies differ for decentralized and centralized management levels. We demonstrate that policies formed in the best interest of individual jurisdictions may not achieve global objectives, and identify situations where locally applied interventions can lead to an overall increase in the numbers of cases and deaths.ConclusionsOur approach underscores the importance of tailoring disease management plans to existing regulatory structures as part of an evidence-based decision framework. Most importantly, we demonstrate that there needs to be a greater consideration of the degree to which governance structure impacts disease outcomes.

How Comity Makes Transnationalism Work

Comity is a venerable principle in the name of which national courts fine-tune the reach of national substantive law and jurisdictional rules, refrain from questioning the lawfulness of another sovereign state’s acts, and restrict themselves from issuing such judgments and orders that would amount to an unjustifiable interference. The doctrine was developed in 17th Century Netherlands with the goal of making sense of the changed normative landscape, after the consecration of the principles of territorial sovereignty and freedom from interference introduced a substantial hurdle to flourishing cross-border business transactions. In spite of a lack of scholarly attention, the doctrine of comity never disappeared from the language of the courts: in fact, it was rediscovered as a tool to help govern those situations in which cross-border elements were in need of careful treatment — to play with Philip Jessup’s words, those “actions or events that transcend national frontiers”. In this paper, we consider the meaning of the notion of comity and its value as an inherently transnational principle that touches on a number of important areas. Following Jessup’s own partition of his seminal work Transnational Law, we will consider “the universality of human problems”, the power to deal with them, and the choice of law to govern them, and illustrate how “the demands of comity” contribute to providing answers to issues such as the harmonisation of transnational normative frameworks, the allocation of regulatory authority, and the law — and administration — of jurisdiction. In doing so, we will address both domestic and international regulation and decision making. We will then reverse our perspective to show that comity is a foundational principle for transnational law by explaining that the latter cannot be detached from an understanding of the former: four centuries on, “the lesson of comity” does not cease to be decisive.

Civil Justice as Governance in the European Union: Reflections on Civil Procedure, Private International Law (Conflict of Laws) and the Administration of Justice since the Roman Empire

The paper examines the ongoing Europeanisation of civil justice in the European Union through a broad historical lens that looks back to the Roman Empire. The topic of civil justice in the European Union ('EUstitia') is briefly introduced (section 1). Next, a brief overview of key features of the EU legal order serves to frame the historical narrative (section 2). The panorama of European legal history (section 3) is organized around the themes of legal pluralism and its relationship to private international law, the administration of justice, and civil procedure. The historical analysis shows that the civil justice component of the EU's Area of Freedom, Security and Justice ('AFSJ') makes use of governance tools that have been deployed in Europe for millennia. The administration of justice was a key technique for maintaining power and order throughout a large territory, both during and after the Roman Empire; procedural law and legal culture played major roles in that construction. The historical analysis provides context that illuminates the significance of changes taking place today in the EU's s civil justice field (section 4).Developments in the EU's civil justice field are relevant to contemporary debates about European private law and the ius commune, insofar as the fate of European private law is inextricable from the institutional settings and procedural contexts in which substantive legal questions arise (section 3.1.5). Moreover, the EU's recently acquired power to legislate on matters of civil procedure is a significant step in the direction of state-building (section 3.2.2). Similarly, with regard to private international law (conflict of laws), the EU's new 'vertical' authority over the 'horizontal' allocation of regulatory authority among the Member States is a crucial governance power that empowers the EU to define the reach of national jurisdiction (section 3.2.2). New institutional theory facilitates our understanding of the dynamic interrelationships among courts, procedures, legal cultures, and substantive law (section 3.2.2).

Back to the future? Lessons on the pro-competitive regulation of health services.

The enactment of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 can be seen as a 'paradigm-oriented' policy transfer of the model of utilities regulation in the UK. This article draws on the literature on infrastructure regulation in order to analyse this transfer. Taking a long view on attempts to introduce competition into health services in England, it points to a number of challenges of liberalisation, corresponding to those arising in infrastructure sectors. Using a framework drawn from utilities, it analyses these under the headings of: (a) market structure; (b) allocation of regulatory authority; and (c) decision-making style. It suggests that the lens of utilities regulation is a useful one for analysing the NHS reforms, and clearly shows the difficulty in establishing workable competition in the sector.

Gonzales v. Oregon and the Politics of Medicine

Throughout 2005, the morbid joke on Capitol Hill was that the twin inevitabilities of “death and taxes” had been replaced by “death politics and taxes.” There seemed to be some truth in this observation given the highly publicized intervention by some members of Congress in the Schiavo case and the continuing controversy over government regulation of end-of-life care. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Gonzales v. Oregon (74 U.S.L.W. 4068 (17 January 2006)) has resolved one of the critical issues relating to this controversy by holding that a physician may prescribe controlled substances to provide assistance in dying if such a practice is authorized by state law and not expressly prohibited by federal law. However, other issues remain. In fact, the Court’s decision has underscored some of the reasons why there is not only continuing controversy over end-of-life care, but also over other aspects of the practice of medicine. First, it is apparent there is no consensus among health care professionals about the precise boundaries of the legitimate practice of medicine. Second, the regulation of the practice of medicine traverses ill-defined legal territory. In particular, there is significant uncertainty concerning the implications of some regulations as well as the allocation of regulatory authority between and within state and federal governments. This uncertainty leaves substantial room for political maneuvers. Before discussing the politics of medicine, it is worth looking at the regulation of controlled substances in some detail both because this review will provide the necessary background for understanding the ruling in Gonzales v. Oregon and because it will illustrate the uncertainty resulting from multiple sources of regulatory authority.

Who Should Act as Lender of Last Resort? an Incomplete Contracts Model: A Comment

Researchers have pointed out that conflicts between the objectives of different bank regulators necessitate careful design of the institutional allocation of regulatory authority. In doing this, however, they often assume that regulators have incentives to share their private information regarding regulated banks. Our paper shows that the very same considerations that lead bank regulators to make different policy choices render the informationsharing assumption invalid. We further show that this result has important implications for the institutional allocation of lending of last resort, deposit insurance, and bank supervision.