Exercise Of Rights Research Articles

Generalization on optimal multiple stopping with application to swing options with random exercise rights number

This paper develops the theory of optimal multiple stopping times expected value problems by stating, proving, and applying a dynamic programming principle for the case in which both the reward process and the number of stopping times are stochastic. This case comes up in practice when valuing swing options, which are somewhat common in commodity trading. We believe our results significantly advance the study of option pricing.

Religious Associations: Hosanna-Tabor and the Instrumental Value of Religious Groups

In its 2012 decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Church & Sch. V. EEOC, the Supreme Court held that the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment require recognition of a “ministerial exception” to general antidiscrimination statutes (in that case, the ADA), because religious institutions must have autonomy in selecting their ministers. In the course of its analysis, however, the Court made a very interesting move. In response to the government’s argument that the case could be resolved under the general First Amendment right of association, the Court responded that this position was “untenable,” and indeed “remarkable,” because the very existence of the Religion Clauses indicated that religious groups must be treated differently from secular groups. It also rejected the view that its groundbreaking decision in Employment Division v. Smith, which interpreted the Free Exercise Clause extremely narrowly, precluded reliance on the Religion Clauses here, curtly distinguishing Smith on the grounds that it did not involve “government interference with an internal church decision that affects the faith and mission of the church itself.” Hosanna-Tabor thus appears to stand for the propositions that religious groups are different from secular groups for constitutional purposes and entitled to extra constitutional protections, and further, that religious institutions such as churches possess broader Free Exercise rights than do individuals. In this article, I argue both these propositions are indefensible in light of the text, history, and purposes of the Religion Clauses. I further argue that granting religious institutions special constitutional rights raises some very difficult, ultimately irresolvable boundary problems regarding the scope of the ministerial exception.Ultimately, I conclude that a much better analytic course for the Court to have followed in Hosanna-Tabor would have been to rely on the freedoms of association and Assembly protected by the First Amendment, which the Court so casually rejected. The effect of relying on Assembly and association would be to grant all groups whose activities are relevant to democratic politics a right of autonomy, including a right to select its members and leaders. Religious groups would certainly qualify for such a right (thus affirming the result in Hosanna-Tabor), but so would many secular groups on the same terms. I discuss the ways in which this vision of associational rights fits well with the overall structure of the First Amendment, and with the instrumental role that religious groups (as opposed to individuals) play in our society. Relying on Assembly and association also avoids the boundary problems raised by the ministerial exception, and defuses the tension with free-speech doctrine created by the Court’s preferential treatment of religious groups in Hosanna-Tabor. I conclude by exploring the ways in which the existence of the Religion Clauses may be relevant to religious groups’ Assembly/associational rights, even if they are not the source of those rights.

A Primer on Hobby Lobby: For-Profit Corporate Entitiess Challenge to the HHS Mandate, Free Exercise Rights, RFRAAs Scope, and the Nondelegation Doctrine

Earlier this term, the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument in the consolidated case of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius, the first of a litany of cases in which for-profit business entities are invoking the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA") in support of their claim that the Affordable Care Act’s HHS Mandate violates their freedom of religion. In particular, these plaintiffs argue that the Mandate’s requirement that employer-provided health insurance covers the costs of contraceptives, the "morning after" pill, and other fertility-related drugs conflicts with their deeply-held religious belief that life begins at conception and is, therefore, unconstitutional. While the Mandate does exempt "religious employers" from this requirement, it does not excuse all secular, for-profit corporations from complying simply because their officers, founders, or directors may have religious beliefs that conflict with the Mandate’s provisions.Authors Day and Diaz were sitting just feet away from the advocates during the riveting Hobby Lobby oral argument. One question by Justice Kennedy piqued their interest in the nondelegation doctrine and the principle of separation of powers as they apply to the HHS Mandate. In the first academic article authored during the crucial time between oral arguments and the Court’s decision, this paper breaks down the complex legal issues and provides a solid dose of "common sense" in analyzing what will ultimately be a decision with momentous and far-reaching consequences.First, this Article sets the stage for the Court’s forthcoming decisionby providing some background and insight into the parties’ arguments, the history of free exercise jurisprudence, and RFRA, the centerpiece of Hobby Lobby’s claim. The Article poses critical and timely questions, such as whether this decision will reinstate or expand the pre-Smith standard for assessing religious exercise claims and whether Hobby Lobby, as a for-profit commercial business, has standing under RFRA to bring a free exercise claim.Second, this Article deconstructs the complexities of RFRA, providing a step-by-step analysis of its legal framework. It first provides a comprehensive overview of the dense "substantial burden" inquiry, which asks whether the government has imposed a substantial burden on the plaintiffs’ religious beliefs. Then, it outlines and analyzes the strict scrutiny standard, which RFRA applies.Next, the Article simplifies the complex and less widely-discussed nondelegation doctrine and addresses the dangerous trend spreading countrywide, in which states are enacting their own RFRA laws to exempt religious employers from complying with public accommodation laws. These exemptions essentially condone a new wave of discrimination, which give license to wedding vendors and other businesses to refuse service to same-sex couples or homosexual patrons.Lastly, the Article cautions that, in the wake of Hobby Lobby and the other RFRA cases, where the clash between religion, politics, and the law have met head-on, this Court must be cautious not to set a dangerous precedent and shield for-profit, secular businesses from liability when they fail to comply with public accommodation laws based on their asserted religious beliefs. Not only do we face a crucial crossroad in this Country’s free exercise jurisprudence, we also risk overlooking an impermissible delegation of legislative authority, which, when coupled with deference to administrative decision-making, threatens the constitutional structure and separation of powers. An accretion of administrative agency power -- the headless fourth branch of government -- threatens all of our rights, not just religious freedom.

Picking Up Where Katcoff Left Off: Developing a Framework for a Constitutional Military Chaplaincy

Under existing precedent, portions of the military chaplaincy program are unconstitutional. Although presenting at least the appearance of the establishment of religion, the military chaplaincy program has never been successfully challenged on constitutional grounds — despite its history of more than two centuries. The only court that has directly confronted the issue upheld the military chaplaincy based on what appears to be a counter-intuitive application of the Free Exercise Clause. Namely, the military chaplaincy program ensures the free exercise rights of service members who, because of their military service, would otherwise be deprived of access to religious services. And indeed, when a military assignment takes a service member to rural or international locations, that military assignment may reduce or eliminate the service member’s access to religious services. Consequently, the Free Exercise Clause at least allows the government to take action to alleviate those hindrances, which the government does by providing the military chaplaincy program. But those obstacles simply do not exist for many service members, for instance those assigned to non-deployable units in the urban United States who benefit from ready access to local religious resources. And with respect to these service members, the military’s chaplaincy program amounts to an impermissible advancement of religion and, as such, cannot survive constitutional muster. Thus because government-sponsored (or supported) religious accommodation is permissible only when government action encumbers religious free exercise, service members’ access to government religious resources must be more carefully circumscribed to those circumstances in which it is genuinely a government-imposed burden that the government’s military chaplains relieves. Therefore, to meet its constitutional obligations, the Department of Defense (DoD) must make some effort to distinguish between units that are and units that are not subject to a government-imposed burden on its members religious free exercise.

Our Fractured Attitude Towards Corporate Conscience

This paper surveys our political and legal system’s inconsistent attitudes towards corporate conscience by comparing CVS Caremark and Hobby Lobby. As announced in early 2014, CVS, the nation’s largest pharmacy, will stop selling cigarettes during 2014, a corporate action met with almost universal praise from the highest levels of the U.S. government, including HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. In contrast, Hobby Lobby, a privately held chain of arts and crafts stores, currently finds itself before the U.S. Supreme Court trying to defend its rights of conscience, with the self-same Secretary Sebelius arguing that corporations have no Free Exercise rights or even Free Exercise interests (rights and interests that are of a paradigmatic conscientious character). This seems rather odd – one company is praised for acting in accord with its conscience, and the other is criticized for having the temerity to claim that it has a conscience. What explains this difference?The government’s position in the Hobby Lobby case is sweeping – it is that a corporation is not a person with conscientious interests; that it should be concerned with making money rather than matters of conscience; and that the interests of owners are divorced from those of the corporation because of the separate legal status of the corporation. But if this is true, then it should be no less true for other companies – like CVS or Apple (and its “green energy initiatives”) – that pursue other conscience-based policies.The reason the government takes such an absolute stand against the idea that Hobby Lobby has any free exercise interests, I argue, is because the arguments that there is a compelling state interest behind imposing the contraceptive mandate on companies like Hobby Lobby, and that the mandate represents the least restrictive means of accomplishing that state interest, are exceptionally weak. The government’s best option is to try to head the religious freedom claim off at the pass, denying that corporations have any rights or interests relating to religion at all. The problem is this is directly contradicted by the government’s own behavior, encouraging companies to act conscientiously and praising them for doing so when the values reflect the government’s own priorities.After analyzing such inconsistent attitudes toward corporate conscience, I survey four underlying causes, as well as make three modest suggestions of how to correct or bring greater balance to our thinking about corporate conscience.

Resolvent-Techniques for Multiple Exercise Problems

We study optimal multiple stopping of strong Markov processes with random refraction periods. The refraction periods are assumed to be exponentially distributed with a common rate and independent of the underlying dynamics. Our main tool is using the resolvent operator. In the first part, we reduce infinite stopping problems to ordinary ones in a general strong Markov setting. This leads to explicit solutions for wide classes of such problems. Starting from this result, we analyze problems with finitely many exercise rights and explain solution methods for some classes of problems with underlying Lévy and diffusion processes, where the optimal characteristics of the problems can be identified more explicitly. We illustrate the main results with explicit examples.

Brennan and Religion

Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. cared deeply about religion in America. He was not a secularist who cavalierly dismissed religion or who viewed it with barely-concealed contempt. Brennan's respect for the intensity of American religious life convinced him that religion raised enormous constitutional complexities that had to be addressed with caution and delicacy. Questions of religion were easiest for Brennan when formulated in terms of the rights of individuals freely to exercise their religious convictions. Rights to religious freedom were in this dimension like all fundamental individual rights; they were to be accorded the utmost respect. Even today, Brennan's opinion in Sherbert v. VernerI remains a canonical decision for those who believe that Free Exercise rights should receive the highest degree of constitutional protection. Brennan maintained his commitment to the rights established by the Free Exercise Clause throughout his career, as is well evidenced by his late dissent in Goldman v. Weinberger.2 Brennan interpreted the Establishment Clause primarily in light of his focus on the Free Exercise Clause. He was determined that government involvement in religion not undermine religion itself,3 and he was for this reason committed to enforcing the entanglement prong of the Lemon test.4 He explained that When the state becomes enmeshed within a given denomination in matters of religious significance, the freedom of religious belief of those who are not adherents of that denomination suffers .... In addition, the freedom of even the adherents of the denomination is limited by the government intrusion into sacred matters.5 As he said early on in 1963, in his magnificent

Overview of the Australian Commonwealth Administrative Law System: Preliminary Issues for Consideration

Administrative law is the body of law which provides the mechanisms for challenging and regulating government decision making. There are two fundamental elements in Australian administrative law—judicial review and merits review. Judicial review is concerned with the legality of administrative decisions, and is the sole province of the courts. Merits review is concerned with the substance of a decision and is carried out by various review bodies. Reasons for decisions lie at the heart of administrative decision-making. A statement of reasons should provide fairness by enabling decisions to be properly explained and defended and will assist the person affected by a decision to decide whether to exercise rights of review or appeal. Australian law does not yet recognize a general duty to give reasons for administrative decisions. However, there are legislative provisions which encapsulate an obligation to provide reasons. It is all part and parcel of procedural fairness—Findings on Material Questions of Fact; Reference to Evidence on which Findings of Fact are Based; Dealing with Inadequate Statements of Reasons; Requests for Further and Better Particulars.

A Joyful Heart Is Good Medicine: Sexuality Conversion Bans in the Courts

Led by California and New Jersey, states have begun to ban Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) for minors. States have targeted SOCE, also called ‘gay conversion therapy,’ by regulating state licensure requirements for mental health professionals. Conservative legal groups have challenged these bans in federal court, alleging a variety of constitutional violations sounding in the First and Fourteenth Amendments. More specifically, these legal groups propose theories claiming that the bans infringe upon individuals’ freedom of speech, free exercise, and parental rights. In this Note, I survey the history of these bans, as well as court decisions that have rejected constitutional challenges to the laws. This Note then proposes and rejects another potential theory challenging the bans under the Due Process Clause’s right to privacy. Finally, this Note proposes that this new wave of state legislation reflects a wider shift in the LGBT community’s priorities, tactics, and messages.

Blurring Lines between Churches and Secular Corporations: The Compelling Case of the Benefit Corporationns Right to the Free Exercise of Religion

The United States Supreme Court will soon hear oral arguments on two cases, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius. Both cases present similar questions with regard to the applicability of the First Amendment’s “Free Exercise Clause” to corporations. In Hobby Lobby, the Tenth Circuit found that Free Exercise rights existed for a corporation, without regard to its status as a non-church, profit-seeking entity. In Conestoga, however, the Third Circuit agreed that a corporation could have Free Exercise rights, but such rights did not apply if the corporation happened to be “secular” and “for-profit”, defining characteristics which appear nowhere in the Constitution and which are contrary to recent First Amendment jurisprudence and other precedent, including the seminal case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Why would there be such a distinction relating to a right as fundamental as the exercise of religion? According to the Conestoga court, it all comes down to profit. A legal entity that exists to produce profits for those who organized it can’t exercise religion, but one that exists without an interest in profits miraculously is vested with the right to exercise religion. In Hobby Lobby, the court summarized (and subsequently rejected) the government’s position as being a black and white distinction between non-profit religious organizations, which have Free Exercise rights, and for-profit secular organizations, which have no such rights. The government made the same argument in Conestoga, and in that case the majority adopted the government’s position.Not only is the government’s distinction arbitrary and without logical or legal basis, it is utterly at odds with recent developments in corporate law.The advent of the “Benefit Corporation” (or “B-Corp”) has formally established a gray area between the black of the non-profit religious organization and the white of the for-profit secular organization with respect to First Amendment rights generally and Free Exercise rights specifically. Indeed, a corporation organized as a B-Corp can be religious and formed for purposes other than the sole pursuit of profit. Such a creature was apparently beyond the knowledge of the Conestoga court.Well, not the entire Conestoga court. Judge Kent Jordan, in his meticulously argued dissent, touched upon the radical upheaval in the law occasioned by the recent establishment of the B-Corp in many states, pointing out that a B-Corp, like a religious non-profit corporation, is a legal entity that exists for purposes other than the solitary pursuit of profit; in fact, B-Corps can be formed in furtherance of religious purposes, much like a religious non-profit.The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on Judge Jordan’s discussion of B-Corps in his Conestoga dissent and further, to argue that not only should Free Exercise rights apply to corporations that have a religious purpose, such as B-Corps, but also such rights should exist for what I refer to as “de-facto B-Corps.”This paper concludes with an epilogue that summarizes the decision in the Hobby Lobby/Conestoga case and discusses the implications of any Congressional attempt to undermine the Supreme Court's decision through changes to RFRA or any other statute that would purport to strip free exercise rights from for-profit corporations. In such a case, the Supreme Court would have an opportunity to decide the case on First Amendment grounds. This paper argues that the Hobby Lobby/Conestoga opinion set out the groundwork for future courts to use strict scrutiny (the same standard under which RFRA cases are decided) under the Smith “individualized” exemption doctrine to strike down any Congressional attempts to deprive for-profit corporations of their First Amendment Free Exercise rights.

Puerto Ricans: citizens and migrants – a cautionary tale

This article addresses the transformations in migrant political behaviour as people move between countries and how citizenship is exercised in the process. It highlights the limits of formal citizenship in the exercise of membership rights in given political communities. Using survey data from a probability sample drawn from a municipality in Puerto Rico, evidence shows how political activity decreases when circular migrants sojourn in the United States, a country in which they are citizens, but it is indistinguishable from non-migrants when in Puerto Rico. While these US citizens remain at the margin of the political system in the US, they are fully engaged in Puerto Rico’s. Citizenship may be a necessary condition to exercise rights of political membership, but it is not enough. A laissez-faire disposition from state and political institutions and an emphasis on individual-based efforts sidelines newcomers to migrant-receiving polities.

The Corporate Conscience: A Historical Review of Religious Freedom

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mandates that certain employers provide insurance coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures. The religious convictions of several for-profit corporations forbade them from providing contraceptives in their health insurance plans. Under the Act, noncompliance can lead to substantial financial penalties. A flood of lawsuits resulted from this moral conflict as corporations with religious underpinnings sought injunctions against the Department of Health and Human Services from enforcing the mandate. In reviewing these claims, federal circuit courts have split on whether for-profit corporations may assert free exercise rights under the First Amendment. In the past, courts have focused on the “historic function” of a constitutional liberty to determine whether it was “purely personal” or could be exercised by a corporation. But this analysis has largely been absent in a recent challenge to the health care law, where the emphasis has instead been placed on the technicalities of the corporate form, rather than an examination of religious liberty. Because the development of the First Amendment informs our understanding of its modern expression, greater attention should be given to the historic function of the Free Exercise Clause.

Mental health recovery and voting: why being treated as a citizen matters and how we can do it

It helps people with mental illnesses to recover if they are not deprived of their rights of citizenship. The right to vote is an important marker of citizenship. Ensuring citizenship through the right to vote is especially important when someone is committed under mental health legislation, yet it is unclear how and whether this occurs in practice. This paper discusses what occurs for this population in Australia and overseas and reviews the role of capacity and supported decision making in the context of the right to vote. Solutions are offered for how mental health practice can protect the interest that Australians with mental illnesses have in voting. A central feature of recovery-based practice for people with mental illness is that they are able to exercise rights and experience membership of a community. This notion of citizenship is especially important when someone has had rights removed after being committed under mental health legislation. The right to vote is a central marker of citizenship. Supporting a person's right to vote is important for recovery-based practice. In this paper, we review the issue of voting for people who have been committed under mental health legislation, why it matters for recovery, and what occurs from the Australian and international perspective. We briefly review the concepts of capacity and supported decision making in the context of the right to vote. We also consider the usefulness of the American 'Doe Standard', which has been used with the Competency Assessment Tool (CAT-V), to determine capacity to vote. Some solutions are offered that would protect the interest that Australians with mental illnesses have in voting.

Primal–dual linear Monte Carlo algorithm for multiple stopping—an application to flexible caps

In this paper we consider the valuation of Bermudan callable derivatives with multiple exercise rights. We present in this context a new primal–dual linear Monte Carlo algorithm that allows for efficient simulation of the lower and upper price bounds without using nested simulations (hence the terminology). The algorithm is essentially an extension of the primal–dual Monte Carlo algorithm for standard Bermudan options proposed by Schoenmakers et al. [SIAM J. Finance Math., 2013, 4, 86–116] to the case of multiple exercise rights. In particular, the algorithm constructs upwardly a system of dual martingales to be plugged into the dual representation of Schoenmakers. At each level, the respective martingale is constructed via a backward regression procedure starting at the last exercise date. The thus constructed martingales are finally used to compute an upper price bound. The algorithm also provides approximate continuation functions that may be used to construct a price lower bound. The algorithm is applied to the pricing of flexible caps in a Hull and White model setup. The simple model choice allows for comparison of the computed price bounds with the exact price obtained by means of a trinomial tree implementation. As a result, we obtain tight price bounds for the considered application. Moreover, the algorithm is generically designed for multi-dimensional problems and is tractable to implement.

Religious Freedom Claims and Defenses Under State Constitutions

Do state constitutions accord greater protection to religious than does Free Exercise Clause of First Amendment? The answer to that question has taken on greater significance since United States Supreme Court decided Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), more than twenty years ago. In Smith, Supreme Court held that the right of exercise does not relieve an individual of obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general application on ground that law prescribes (or proscribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).To many, both at time and since, Employment Division v. Smith represented a marked retreat from Court’s former exercise jurisprudence. That, in turn, has given interpretation and application of religious guarantees under state constitutions a new importance. To what extent do state courts follow federal exercise analysis, including Employment Division v. Smith, in interpreting their own guarantees of religious freedom? That question acquires a particular urgency given current debate over a variety of controversial state laws, including laws mandating contraceptive coverage in employee group medical plans, laws prohibiting discrimination on account of marital status and sexual orientation and laws regulating parochial schools and home schools. This article attempts to answer that question by reviewing principal cases decided under each State’s religious guarantee, whether expressed as free exercise of religion, freedom of worship, liberty of conscience, rights of conscience or some other formulation.

'With Untired Spirits and Formal Constancy': Berne-Compatibility of Formal Declaratory Measures to Enhance Title-Searching

Formalities are back in fashion. Their acolytes fall into two camps, reflecting their different objectives. For formalities, which we shall define as conditions on the existence or enforcement of copyright, can divest authors of their rights, or instead enhance authors’ exploitation of their works by alerting their audiences to the authors’ claims. For one camp, formalities’ confiscatory consequences, once perceived as barbaric, are to be celebrated. A second camp enlists formalities to populate not the public domain, but the public record. Notice, registration and recordation, as declaratory measures, inform the public of the author’s claims and, by facilitating rights-clearance, help the author disseminate and derive compensation from her work. I prefer to call title-searching information “declaratory measures” rather than “formalities” because only “formalities,” in their Berne Convention sense, entail the loss of copyright or the limitation of remedies. The aspirations of the second camp tend toward information rather than confiscation, but many may be concerned that only the threat of the latter will impel provision of the former. The perceived need to give title-searching measures teeth by penalizing authors who fail to declare or to register their claims allows the rhetoric of reformalization to conflate formalities’ two distinct goals. Recognizing that the “good cop” face of formalities tied to title-searching may attract more followers than the “bad cop” function of expropriating authors, some reformalizers may offer the kinder, gentler rationale of reducing search costs in support of declaratory obligations whose non fulfillment will confiscate the copyright. Not all the laments about high transactions costs, however, withstand analysis. For even were authors easily found and negotiations simplified, the real problem for many enthusiasts of formalities is having to transact at all, when in their view the object of the proposed translation should not, or should no longer, be protected in the first place. This paper addresses the Berne Convention’s prohibition on the imposition of “formalities” on the “enjoyment or exercise” of copyright, and the compatibility with that cornerstone norm of declaratory measures to enhance title-searching. In the Berne context, “enjoyment” means the existence and scope of rights; “exercise” means their enforcement. Voluntary provision of title-searching information on a public register of works and transfers of rights is fully consistent with Berne, and should be encouraged. But may a member State impose sanctions or disabilities for failure to supply that information? The first Part of this paper will address conditions on the existence or enforcement of rights. I conclude that “formalities” prerequisite to the initial attachment or persistence of protection, or that limit the scope of minimum rights or the availability of remedies, violate the norms of Berne and subsequent multilateral instruments. By contrast, it may be permissible to condition “Berne ” subject matter, rights, or remedies on compliance with declaratory measures. The “Berne” path, however, risks descending into controversies of characterization, as one contender’s “plus” proves another’s “minimum” norm. The second Part of this paper will consider declaratory measures regarding ownership of rights under copyright. The Berne Convention generally does not cover copyright ownership, and one may urge that conditions on who may enjoy or exercise rights are a matter distinct from disabilities imposed on existence or enforcement in general. Accordingly, sanctions against the failure to provide information pertaining to the transfer of rights should be Berne-compatible. Specifically, I propose making the validity of a transfer of copyright depend on the transferee’s recordation in the Copyright Office of “a note or memorandum of the transfer” containing sufficient information to permit third parties to ascertain who owns what rights in the work. The second Part then endeavors to resolve some of the practical problems a mandatory recordation of transfer obligation might engender. These include time limits for recording the transfer, gaps in the title-searching record, and effect on transfers of rights in non-U.S. works when the United States is one of the territories covered by the grant.

Efficient pricing of swing options in Lévy-driven models

We consider the problem of pricing swing options with multiple exercise rights in Lévy-driven models. We propose an efficient Wiener–Hopf factorization method that solves multiple parabolic partial integro-differential equations associated with the pricing problem. We compare the proposed method with a finite difference algorithm. Both proposed deterministic methods are related to the dynamic programming principle and lead to the solution of a multiple optimal stopping problem. Numerical examples illustrate the efficiency and the precision of the proposed methods.

Engaging women and the poor: adaptive collaborative governance of community forests in Nepal

Forests are a significant component of integrated agriculture-based livelihood systems, such as those found in many parts of Asia. Women and the poor are often relatively dependent on, and vulnerable to changes in, forests and forest access. And yet, these same actors are frequently marginalized within local forest governance. This article draws on multi-year, multi-case research in Nepal that sought to investigate and address this marginalization. Specifically, the article analyzes the influence of adaptive collaborative governance on the engagement of women and the poor in community forestry decision making. A description of adjustments to governance processes and arrangements is followed by the consequent changes in engagement observed, in terms of: efforts made by female and poor members to be involved, express views and exercise rights; leadership roles played by female and poor members; and the extent to which the user groups’ priorities and actions reflect the marginalized members’ interests and needs. The main finding is that the engagement of women and the poor increased across sites with the shift from the status quo to adaptive collaborative governance, although not without challenges. The article explores interconnected factors underlying the changes, then considers these through the lens of the “three-gap analysis of effective participation.” This leads to specific insights concerning the conceptualization and strengthening of engagement in community forestry including the central roles of power and learning.

Beyond the Control Paradigm? International Responsibility and the European Union

AbstractFrom the perspective of public international law, the legal personality of the European Union (EU) carries with it the possibility for it to exercise rights and to bear obligations on the international plane. Its quasi-federal structure, however, requires consideration as to how these rights and obligations may be exercised. In this chapter, two regimes are compared: the EU’s rights and obligations as an international organisation and the possibility that its internal structures might be recognised on the international plane, thus leading to more complex notions of subsidiary responsibility, shared between the various levels of European governance.

Beyond the Control Paradigm? International Responsibility and the European Union

Abstract From the perspective of public international law, the legal personality of the European Union (EU) carries with it the possibility for it to exercise rights and to bear obligations on the international plane. Its quasi-federal structure, however, requires consideration as to how these rights and obligations may be exercised. In this chapter, two regimes are compared: the EU’s rights and obligations as an international organisation and the possibility that its internal structures might be recognised on the international plane, thus leading to more complex notions of subsidiary responsibility, shared between the various levels of European governance.