Jurisdictional Overlap Research Articles

Northern Reclamation in Canada: Contemporary Policy and Practice for New and Legacy Mines

Abstract: This article discusses the factors shaping contemporary reclamation regimes in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, northern Labrador, and Nunavik in northern Quebec. It distils policy documents, laws, research reports, and newspaper articles for a clear overview of current policy and practice in the North and shows that no overarching vision informs reclamation planning. Instead of direction from Ottawa, responsibility for policy-making now largely sits with provincial, territorial, and regional governments along with local land and water boards. Efforts to mitigate the impacts of new and legacy mines are complicated by the highly site- and case- specific nature of reclamation; the lack of a clear, ambitious technical and regulatory definition of reclamation; and the jurisdictional overlap and governance issues associated with cleanup. Addressing these wider policy challenges in the North is crucial to meet the expansive, expensive demands of mine reclamation. As well, remediation efforts that draw on traditional knowledge and encourage local involvement can mitigate and manage some of the worst impacts of northern resource development. Policy reform such as strengthened regulations and more rigorous government enforcement will help facilitate this. However, reclamation can also exacerbate inequality and environmental problems. Effective reclamation demands more than a particular technological fix or planning strategy; it involves a candid discussion of the goals and limitations of reclamation projects, both past and present. This article has been summarized in an accessible up-to-date poster and will be of interest to concerned parties grappling with a plethora of reclamation regulatory bodies and programs.

Parallel enforcement of rate rigging: lessons to be learned from LIBOR

The manipulation of interest rate benchmarks such as the London Interbank Offered Rate and the Euro Interbank Offered Rate triggered enforcement actions by a multitude of competition authorities, anti-fraud agencies, and financial market regulators. While the authorities involved have closely cooperated in investigating the matter, little inter-agency coordination can be witnessed with respect to the prosecution and punishment of the committed offences. Instead of avoiding jurisdictional overlap, each authority sanctioned the worldwide collusion between the banks without applying any clear delimitation and generally without taking into account fines imposed for the same conduct elsewhere. In these kinds of cross-border and multi-agency cases, maintaining such isolated views creates concerns of double prosecution and excessive punishment. In view of the increasingly crowded international enforcement environment, guiding principles must be developed to coordinate the exercise of prosecutorial discretion from a global perspective and to ensure overall proportionality of sanctions.

La cooperación de las Entidades Locales con la Administración Educativa a través de los Centros Asociados de la UNED = The cooperation of Local Entities with the Educational Administration through the Associate Centers UNED

Law 27/2013, of 27th of December, on Rationalisation and Sustainability of Local Administration (BOE 30th of December) amended the powers of the Municipalities, wich have been very active in supporting and funding Associate Centres of UNED since the creation of the National University of Education Open (UNED) in 1972. This paper analyzes the repercussion of this reform in the organization and funding of UNED, distinguishing between the contributions of Local Entities consisting of facilities and infrastructure, and the strictly monetary contributions, postulating a final interpretation based on the two guiding principles of Law 27/2013, which seeks to avoid jurisdictional overlap between Public Administrations and to ensure financial sustainability. For these purposes, it should be noted, therefore, the sustainability of UNED, expressly mentioned in the Law 27/2013 for the first time in the history of our legislation of local regime, this leading to reject any restrictive interpretation that render its operation unfeasible. Furthermore, we analyse the reforms introduced by Law 27/2013 on the legal consultation regime of the Consortia, the legal figure through which the majority of Associate Centres of UNED are constituted.

Jurisdictional Overlap in WTO Dispute Settlement and Investment Arbitration

The ‘problem’ of overlapping international disputes has long vexed scholars and adjudicators. This article addresses an increasingly important form of overlap that has begun to emerge: parallel or successive disputes before the World Trade Organization (WTO) and investor-state arbitral tribunals. This overlap does not give rise to judicial competition, and these proceedings are largely complementary. But they raise the possibility of conflicting factual and legal determinations, inconsistent remedies, and inefficiencies. This article considers various techniques for addressing this form of overlap, in light of existing jurisprudence, scholarly commentary, and treaty practice. We conclude that investment tribunals generally have greater flexibility in confronting situations of overlap than WTO panels and the Appellate Body. Nonetheless, many of the traditional adjudicative approaches to overlap, such as res judicata, have little bearing on the phenomenon of overlapping WTO and investment disputes. This article explores alternative approaches, grounded in considerations of comity and case management. We also consider treaty-based approaches, such as subject matter carve-outs and fork-in-the-road clauses. We conclude that ‘softer’ treaty provisions, which provide decision-makers with more authority and guidance in confronting situations of overlap, hold greater promise.

Constructing the European Legal State: The Co-Evolution of the EU and the ECHR from the Perspective of American Political Development

This paper seeks to leverage the theoretical approach of American Political Development (APD) scholarship to provide an initial explication of the emergence of the European legal state - defined as the area of jurisdictional overlap between the European Union (EU) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). I argue that the European legal state co-evolved through three distinct yet mutually constitutive streams of political construction: a) a process of ideological construction, b) a process of institutional construction, and c) a process of doctrinal construction. Although all three processes occurred separately within the EU and ECHR, it is their co-evolution and interaction that is of particular interest here. The process of ideological construction, detailed in Section III, was authored by the Eurofederalists, human rights activists, judges, lawyers, politicians, and academics who sought to promote economic interdependence and fundamental rights protections in Europe by transcending what they perceived to be an increasingly anachronistic Westphalian system of nation states. Section IV then turns to the process of institutional construction. Beyond the founding of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) (and the contemporary accession process of the EU to the ECHR), this section highlights the importance of institutional practices - like judicial review and the interactions between domestic and European courts - for the institutional entrenchment of the European legal state. Finally, Section V provides an overview of the third process - that of doctrinal construction. It show how substantive differences between EU and ECHR law sparked tensions evident in the case law of both the ECJ and ECtHR, necessitating doctrinal reconstructions as both institutions became central fora for the continuous renegotiation of a functional modus vivendi. Note that the distinct nature of each process requires reliance on different forms of empirical evidence: Section III places particular emphasis on speeches and declarations; Section IV is focused more heavily on Treaty and Convention provisions; and Section V privileges case law. Ultimately, by treating the co-evolution of the European legal state as a process of political construction with three distinct yet mutually constitutive dimensions, the argument forwarded here represents an initial and cursory attempt to theoretically do justice to the fascinating empirical depth of European political development.

The Anti-Injunction Act and the Problem of Federal-State Jurisdictional Overlap

Ever since Congress decided in 1789 to confer jurisdiction on lower federal courts over matters that the state courts could also hear, the nation has faced the problem of how to allocate decision-making authority between the two court systems. Central to this body of concurrency law, the federal Anti-Injunction Act of 1793 (AIA) was enacted to limit the power of the federal courts to enjoin state court proceedings. Justice Felix Frankfurter decisively shaped our understanding of those limits, concluding in Toucey v. New York Life Insurance Company that the statute absolutely barred any such injunction. Much of the law of federal–state concurrency has been predicated on Toucey’s account. In this Article, we offer a new account of the AIA that challenges prior interpretations. Rather than a flat ban on injunctive relief, we show that the AIA was drafted against the backdrop of eighteenth century practice to restrict “original” federal equitable interference in ongoing state court proceedings but to leave the federal courts free to grant “ancillary” relief in the nature of an injunction, to protect federal jurisdiction and to effectuate federal decrees. It was this ancillary power that gave rise to the exceptions that Toucey decried and Congress restored in its 1948 codification. We draw on our new account of the 1793 and 1948 versions of the Act to address current problems of jurisdictional overlap. Among other things, we raise new questions about the much-maligned Rooker-Feldman doctrine; offer a new statutory substitute for the judge-made doctrine of equitable restraint; and suggest new ways to harmonize such abstention doctrines as Burford and Colorado River. Curiously, answers to these (and other) puzzles were hiding in the careful decision of the 1793 drafters to restrict only the issuance of “writs of injunction” and otherwise to leave federal equitable power intact.

La Casa de Esclavos Modernos

F or California state employees concerned with agricultural production, the solution to one crisis at the outset of World War II meant having to confront another one.1 The first crisis was a fear, as the war heated up, of a serious labor shortage and thus a collapse of California’s highly intensive, specialized industrialized system of agriculture that many understood to be essential to the war effort.2 While there was ample evidence that such a labor shortage did not exist, there was no doubt that a certain hysteria did—a hysteria that California agriculturalists were determined to exploit as a means of gaining access to the large pool of labor that lived just across the border in Mexico.3 And they did. Fairly significant opposition to labor importation voiced in 1941 by members of the New Deal Farm Security Administration and the California State Division of Immigration and Housing, which was the primary state agency devoted to questions of agricultural labor, and which in Culbert Olson’s so-called Little New Deal government was headed by the redoubtable Carey McWilliams, quickly melted away after Pearl Harbor. By August 1942 an agreement had been signed with Mexico providing for the recruitment and importation of tens of thousands of men for temporary agricultural work in the United States (Figure 1).4 While workers were sent to the cotton fields of Texas and the south, the beet fields of Colorado and Nebraska, the mixed farms of the upper Midwest, and the orchards of the Pacific Northwest, California quickly became the largest importer of Mexican workers. First deployed to the beet fields of the Sacramento and Salinas Valleys in September 1942, imported workers— braceros , as they were called—soon came to dominate harvests up and down the state: from the early lettuce and carrot harvests …

Forum Choice for Terrorism Suspects

What forum should be used to adjudicate the status of persons suspected of involvement in terrorism? Recent clashes between Congress and the president as to whether the status of terrorism suspects should be determined via Article III courts or military commissions have revived debate about this venue question. The problem is typically framed as a matter of legal doctrine, with statutory and doctrinal rules invoked as dispositive guides for sorting suspects into either civilian or military venues. This Article takes issue with the utility of that framing of the problem. It argues that the forum question can more profitably be analyzed through an institutional-design lens. A key institutional-design decision is whether or when to create jurisdictional redundancy. When, that is, should the existence of overlapping jurisdictions vest the government with a threshold choice of forums or an option to retry a suspect who has been acquitted in an initial process? Jurisdiction redundancy is pervasive. But conventional wisdom suggests it is unwise. This Article demonstrates, however, that overlap between forums has complex direct and indirect effects on the accuracy and cost of terrorism-related adjudication. It presents a comprehensive framework for analyzing redundancy by exploring how it influences error rates, system maintenance costs, externalities, information production, and incentives. Applying that framework, I contend that the conventional wisdom is flawed. Pervasive redundancy has surprising merit in contrast to two leading reform proposals that would eliminate most jurisdictional overlap.

The Role of The Court of Justice of the European Union in Fragmentation of International Public Law

The significance of judicial and arbitral bodies lies in the binding nature of their decisions, that directly influence the behavior of states. Therefore, the most obvious problem immediately associated with proliferation of international judicial bodies was a risk of inconsistent judgments that would impose conflicting obligations on states. Inconsistent judgments, in their turn, result from overlapping jurisdictions, when a few forums have jurisdiction to decide over the same or similar type of disputes. Naturally, the risk of jurisdictional overlaps grows together with the number of courts dealing with similar types of disputes. For instance, the ICJ and a relatively recently established International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia have been deciding on the same point of law (which amounts to jurisdictional overlap) at arrived at divergent interpretations.Because of the increase in the risk of inconsistent judgments with the emergence of new courts, the question of proliferation of international judicial and arbitral bodies was included in the study on fragmentation of international law, conducted by a special Study Group within International Law Commission. Fragmentation was defined as a multidimensional phenomenon, with the difficulties ensuing from multiplication of international courts constituting its institutional aspects.Compulsory jurisdiction over particular type of disputes envisaged in constitutive instruments of certain courts makes jurisdictional overlaps even more complicated and harder to deal with. Among those, the position of the Court of Justice of the European Union is the most interesting, because the scope of its exclusive jurisdiction over interstate disputes was rather recently addressed by the Court in its case-law. Although the possibility of infringement actions for failure to fulfill obligation under EU law between EU Member States (MSs) [currently] envisaged in Art.259 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) has been used for just few times during the last couple of decades, should such a dispute arise, compulsory jurisdiction of the ECJ applies.The scope of the ECJ’s compulsory jurisdiction ratione materiae in inter-MSs disputes was clarified in infringement proceeding against Ireland, whereby the Court extended its jurisdiction to public law disputes that involve a point of EU law. The judgment may re-shape jurisdictional relations between the ECJ and other international courts and tribunals and imposes certain constraints on EU MSs with regard to the choice of forums for their public law disputes. Eventually, these “institutional problems” of fragmentation connected with proliferation of international courts were left outside the scope of the Study Group’s findings, although it acknowledged their existence. As an illustration, the MOX plant dispute between Ireland and the UK is mentioned. The same set of facts gave rise to proceedings launched before different international fora, and ended up with the above mentioned infringement proceedings at the ECJ. Importantly, the dispute did not result in divergent judgments, but raised different issues, inter alia, about jurisdictional relations between different courts. It may be deduced that the Study Group opined that the jurisdictional position of the ECJ is important from the viewpoint of fragmentation of international public law. The Report does not explain, however, why and from what perspective that particular dispute and the role of the ECJ in it are relevant for the fragmentation debate.These questions will be considered in order to reach the purpose of the present thesis – to answer how does the ECJ compulsory jurisdiction over inter-MSs disputes contribute into fragmentation of international public law and how should the conflicts of jurisdictions involving the ECJ be dealt with in order to not obstruct the settlement of public law disputes between EU MSs.

The Umbrella Clause: A Search for Greater Legal Certainty

The aim of this research is to search for a greater legal certainty in the interpretation of the Observance of Undertakings or umbrella clause in a Bilateral Investment Treaty. In doing so, it will look into the history and origin of the clause, the theories given by academicians, the language of the clause in the different BITs, and the interpretations of the clause as given by the different Tribunals of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. The conclusion of the research involves answering two basic questions related to the umbrella clause, which are as follows: 1. What is the exact scope of an umbrella clause? 2. Does the umbrella clause elevate contractual claims to a treaty level? This paper argues that historically, the clause was introduced as a measure of safeguard to prevent the foreign investor from suffering due to unilateral acts of atrocity by the host State, by taking investment and investment related contracts to an international forum. To arrive at the exact ambit of the clause, I have analysed the language of the clause, through its various nuances, in order to know which specific contracts can be brought within the purview of the clause. Next I have looked at the different Tribunal decisions that have interpreted the clause from different perspectives. Some of them have taken a restrictive approach, which says that the clause gives jurisdiction to an international forum only when coupled with some other substantive treaty claim. Some other Tribunals have, on the other hand, decided that the clause internationalises contract claims by elevating them to a treaty level. There are even others who have advocated keeping the contract and treaty claims as parallel remedies. My conclusion is that there are problems in both the restrictive as well as the parallel claims approach. The restrictive approach nullifies the entire objective of the clause. Giving parallel remedies to the foreign investor will create problems of jurisdictional overlap and the possibility of double recovery. The correct interpretation of the clause is that it gives the foreign investor a choice – either to pursue his claim in the contractual forum, whereby the proper law of the contract will become applicable; or to treat it as a breach of Treaty and go to the international forum provided by it, whereby the claim shall be determined according to the rules of international law. Taking either course will disbar him from pursuing the other course of action, and thereby will help create certainty in this legal area of conflict.

Passing the hot potato…or popcorn

You'd better think twice before cranking up the microwave and sniffing the aroma from a freshly opened bag of popcorn. Environmental agencies are currently embroiled in an interesting jurisdictional overlap, at the federal and state level, over my favorite sports-viewing snack. The conflict is between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) of the Occupational Health and Safety Admistration (OSHA). The problem involves dozens of workers around the US who have developed a debilitating lung disease called bronchiolitis obliterans, otherwise known as “popcorn worker's lung”, and other respiratory diseases, from exposure to fumes from the artificial butter flavoring, diacetyl, in microwave popcorn. The EPA regulates hazardous ambient air pollutants through the Clean Air Act (CAA) and the manufacture and distribution of imminently hazardous chemical substances under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), while OSHA is responsible for the regulation of airborne contaminants in the workplace. To add salt to the popcorn wound, the FDA governs food additives, of which diacetyl is one, and while it considers the chemical safe as an edible product, the problem lies with the form of exposure. Consumer inhalation does not fall under the jurisdiction of any of these agencies. In the 1990s, NIOSH conducted several studies that confirmed the link between occupational exposure to artificial butter flavoring and lung disease. In 2000, NIOSH issued recommendations to a Missouri microwave popcorn plant about protecting workers from this hazard, and in 2003 they sent an alert, recommending safeguards, to 4000 companies that might use or make butter flavoring. In the much larger food processing industry, however, tens of thousands of workers are estimated to work with such flavorings. In March of this year, California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber introduced a bill that would ban diacetyl in the state's workplace by 2010, and Cal-OSHA drafted a standard on occupational exposure to food flavorings. But the FDA remains stubborn – FDA Commissioner Von Eschenbach responded to a Congressional inquiry in May 2007 that “the agency does not have evidence that would cause it to take immediate action with respect to diacetyl” and that it will continue to monitor the issue. Citing OSHA's unwillingness to act, Representatives Lynn Woolsey and George Miller introduced in June of this year legislation that would require OSHA to set an interim and final standard for occupational exposure to diacetyl. The EPA has made a study of the harmful effects of breathing diacetyl fumes, but it is not yet public. One may, however, draw conclusions from the fact that at least one manufacturer of microwave popcorn announced it was reformulating its flavorings to eliminate diacetyl. Three months ago, Cecile Rose, an expert in occupational and environmental medicine at Denver's National Jewish Medical and Research Center, wrote to the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the EPA, and OSHA, informing the agencies about a patient “with significant lung disease, whose clinical findings are similar to those described in affected workers, but whose only inhalational exposure is as a heavy, daily consumer of butter-flavored microwave popcorn”. While it is impossible to make sweeping judgments based on one case, the response to Rose is worrisome. The FDA simply isn't buying this as a reason for taking diacetyl off the GRAS list, while the EPA has undertaken a study of the inhalation effects and has apparently shared it with popcorn companies, but hasn't released the information publicly. The CDC reportedly didn't respond to Rose's inquiry at all. Perhaps OSHA will respond to Congressional action, but they are not charged with responsibility to consumers. Maybe the microwave popcorn and flavorings industries have indeed gotten the message. The flavoring manufacturers' trade association, known by the unfortunate acronym “FEMA”, stated: “out of an abundance of caution, FEMA recommends that its members who manufacture butter flavors containing diacetyl for use in microwave popcorn consider reducing the diacetyl content of these flavors to the extent possible”. Hopefully, some agency will solve this problem soon, because I've got a tense pro football season to deal with.

Regulatory and Nonregulatory Strategies for Improving Children's Environmental Health in Canada

Epidemiological and toxicological studies established positive associations between environmental hazards and adverse child health outcomes, including cancer, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, developmental effects, low birth weight, and birth defects. The economic and societal costs associated with children's environmental health disorders were estimated to be substantial. The existence of knowledge gaps, lack of capacity, and the jurisdictional overlap of children's environmental health issues are some of the barriers that impede effective policy decision making. To improve children's environmental health and reduce economic and societal costs, current legislative frameworks could implement a series of amendments. The main federal, provincial, and municipal legislation used to protect children in Canada, either explicitly or implicitly, is reviewed. Recommendations for improving the existing framework for protecting and strengthening children's environmental health are proposed.

Jurisdictional competition between national and international courts: could international jurisdiction-regulating rules apply?

A number of recent decisions issued by the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which address jurisdictional interactions between national and international proceedings, have sparked renewed interest in the possibility of identifying jurisdictional overlaps between the two groups of judicial bodies. Arguably, these ICSID cases are indicative of a broader tendency to reassess the relationship between national and international courts, which also takes place in other areas of international law, such as human rights law, criminal law and law of the sea. The article explores whether the jurisdictional relations between national and international courts can conceivably qualify as ‘competing’ or ‘overlapping jurisdictions’ – i.e., jurisdictions that have the potential of addressing, in parallel, the same disputes (involving the same parties and the same issues), under the existing definitions of jurisdictional competition or overlap and posits that such jurisdictional relations could theoretically be conceptualized in situations where the two sets of judicial institutions operate in a non-hierarchical context. Furthermore, the article seeks to examine what jurisdiction-regulating rules and principles, if any, could be applied to such a putative set of jurisdictional relations. It suggests that given the considerable theoretical difficulties which the introduction of traditional jurisdiction-regulating rules, such as res judicata or lis alibi pendens entails, resort to more flexible legal doctrines such as judicial comity and the prohibition against abuse of right could be more useful.

Australia's Fragmented Family Law System: Jurisdictional Overlap in the Area of Child Protection

This article presents the findings of an empirical study of cases of jurisdictional overlap in the area of child protection.1 The study comprised a qualitative analysis of two samples of cases: one drawn predominantly from the Melbourne Children's Court in Victoria (n = 113); the other, from the Canberra Children's Court in the Australian Capital Territory (‘ACT’) (n = 10). Cases from each sample were then tracked in the federal Family Court of Australia. The dominant finding from the study was that in over two thirds of the cases the relevant child protection authority withdrew from the Children's Court proceedings and moved the matter from the Children's Court to the Family Court. This was done on the basis that a ‘viable carer’ had been identified and that carer had obtained, applied for, or was willing to apply for Family Court orders.

STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AS A MEANS OF PURSUING SUSTAINABILITY: TEN ADVANTAGES AND TEN CHALLENGES

While strategic environmental assessment can be a powerful tool for fostering progress towards sustainability, effective implementation involves confronting a set of substantial challenges. This paper, based on Canadian and international literature and experience, outlines the ten most compelling advantages of strategic environmental assessment for sustainability and the ten main challenges faced in implementation. The ten advantages of the strategic environmental assessment for sustainability are that it • provides a process for integrated pursuit of sustainability objectives in policy making and planning; • operationalises sustainability principles; • improves the information base for policy making, planning and programme development; • is proactive and broad in ways that strengthen consideration of fundamental issues; • improves analysis of broad public purposes and alternatives; • facilitates proper attention to cumulative effects; • facilitates greater transparency and more effective public participation at the strategic level; • provides a framework for more effective and efficient project-level assessments; • provides a base for design and implementation of better projects where project-level assessment is not required; and • facilitates establishment of a more comprehensive overall system of sustainability application at all levels from the setting of decision objectives to the monitoring of implementations effects. The ten main challenges for effective implementation are • limited information and unavoidable uncertainties; • boundary-setting complexities; • primitive methodologies; • difficulties in defining the proper role of public participants and ensuring effective involvement; • co-ordination and integration of strategic assessment with assessment processes at other levels; • institutional resistance; • conflict between integrated assessment and bureaucratic fragmentation; • jurisdictional overlap; • limitations of the standard rational planning and policy making model; and • resistance to integration of strategic assessment in core decision making. The paper concludes with a discussion of the major implications.

Policies of Extinction: The Life and Death of Canada's Endangered Species Legislation

This article examines the attempt by the Canadian Federal Government to pass endangered species legislation (1995). It focuses on the constraints which confront the creation of environmental policy in Canada and identifies jurisdictional overlap and stakeholder conflict as the prime source of difficulties which confronted the Federal Government as it moved through the policy process for creating endangered species legislation. The wide‐ranging consultation process leading up to the creation of the legislation provided ample opportunity for powerful interests to undermine the protection of endangered species. The article concludes with a discussion of endangered species legislation as an example of the failure of the “crisis management” approach to conservation and sustainability.

Committee characteristics and re-election margins: An empirical investigation of the US House *

Models of legislative organization frequently begin with the premise that the committee system serves the re-election interests of incumbent legislators. Attempts to substantiate this notion empirically have been unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the notion lives on, nourished by a stylized characterization of the committee system. In the standard model committees have jurisdictional monopolies over specialized policy areas and legislators gravitate toward those committees that deal most closely with the policy concerns of their constituents. Contrary to this simplifying characterization, the degree of monopoly control and policy specialization varies across standing committees in the us congress. Some committees have wide jurisdictions and attract members with diverse policy preferences. Jurisdictional overlap and resulting turf battles are common aspects of congressional sessions. We suggest here that these realities warrant a re-opening of the empirical investigation into the link between electoral success and committee characteristics. Our findings indicate that assignment to a committee with a relatively high degree of monopoly control increases a member's vote share, and that assignment to a narrowly focused (specialized) committee does not.

Workers' compensation for nonmalignant asbestos‐related lung disease

Workers' compensation claims filed for occupational illness are generally more complicated to resolve than are injury claims, and they may therefore face higher likelihood of rejection. This study analyzed outcomes and predictive factors for claims filed from one clinic in Washington State between 1982 and 1986 by 157 male patients for nonmalignant asbestos-related lung disease. Among 50 federal Longshore claims, 46 (92%) were unresolved or could not be located by claims administrators. In contrast, 118 (89%) of State Fund claims had been resolved, with 48% accepted without consistent relationship to disease severity. Claims filed under both jurisdictions showed a twofold greater risk of rejection by the State Fund (relative risk, RR = 2.0; 95% confidence interval, 95% CI = 1.3-3.2). State Fund claims filed for nonwhite patients were rejected more often than those of white patients, although the association was explained at least partially by jurisdictional overlap (adjusted RR = 1.5; 95% CI = 1.05-2.1). This study indicates a need to scrutinize the handling of occupational disease claims by the federal Longshore system and to consider the adverse influences of jurisdictional conflicts and possible race-associated factors on compensation of occupational illness.

The Legal Framework for Doing Business in Russia: A Summary

The Canadian oil and gas industry has been particularly successful in establishing operations in Russia. The author argues that the Canadian penetration of Russia's byzantine legislation, regulation and bureaucracy is due to Canada's long history of governmental and commercial dealings with the former Soviet Union; to Canada's relatively low profile on the international political scene; and to the fact that those involved in the petroleum industries in Canada and Russia share similar experiences in terms of the problems posed by climate, geology and jurisdictional overlap in both countries, experiences which have led to mutual understanding and enhanced co-operation. The author provides an overview of the issues and options which confront a Canadian company in the process of establishing a viable operation in Russia. He suggests that patience, flexibility and long-term planning are the management tools required to succeed in Russia's fluid and complex legal and legislative environment.

A Federal-Provincial Affairs Perspective

The origin of the Economic Council Regulatory Reform reference came, of course, from the February 1978 meeting of First Ministers. Premier Lyon of Manitoba had suggested the establishment of a bi-level committee to examine regulatory matters, particularly the areas of jurisdictional overlap. The concept of a task force was rejected in favor of an extensive study of the issues involved by the Economic Council of Canada. From the words of the communique issued from the conference by the first ministers one would think that what at least some of the Premiers had in mind was a working committee of Ministers and/or officials to be aided by the resources of the Economic Council. The communiqu6 said:1