Law In June Research Articles

Legislative Advocacy in Illinois for Firearm Injury Prevention.

The leading cause of death in children in the United States is injury caused by firearm violence. States that enact stricter laws related to firearm injury prevention have lower rates of mortality in children. In Illinois, we formed a coalition with medical professionals, medical organizations, community partners, and legislators to craft legislation to reduce the burden of firearm violence on children. These laws can be politically charged. Therefore, we decided to focus on a safe storage education law. We met regularly as a group to draft the bill and an information sheet to support it. Pediatricians and pediatric providers worked with the government relations teams in children’s hospitals throughout the state to garner supporting organizations. We also worked to garner cosponsors, provided written and oral testimony to the legislative body, and wrote op-eds to support the bill. Shortly after the bill was passed and signed into law in June of 2022, there was a mass shooting at Highland Park in Illinois. After the shooting, there was a mandate from the Illinois governor to work on passing an assault weapons ban. Pediatricians again provided input into the bill about how the weapons affect children, testified before the House Judiciary Committee, and wrote op-eds. Governor Pritzker signed the Protect Illinois Communities Act into law in January of 2023. Pediatricians actively worked in the passage of both bills, which highlights the importance of medical professionals as experts who can combine powerful stories and evidence based medicine to influence policy.

New paramedic scope of practice in Poland based on the 2022 reform

Emergency medical systems in the world are mainly based on two main models: the Franco-German System (FGS) and the Anglo-American System (AAS). The characteristic feature of the FGS is the "Stay and Play" principle, while the AAS system is based on the "Scoop and Run” principle. The Polish model is a mix of those two systems mainly based on the work of paramedics. Their scope of operations and powers have changed over time. As a result of the advocacy undertaken by paramedics in Poland, legislation was drafted and became law in June 2023. The central changes include: the introduction of a paramedic register, the establishment of a professional self-government of paramedics, the expansion of professional competencies such as the ability to declare death, and new opportunities for professional development including speciality training or paid training leave. This article discusses the new law in the context of previous legislative solutions in the field of emergency medicine in Poland and in other European countries.

CYBERCRIME LEGISLATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF LEGAL FRAMEWORKS, POLICY RESPONSES AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The World Economic Forum's Global Risk Report 2021 highlights cybercrime as a top global risk, necessitating robust legislation to address its evolving nature. The United States signed two cybersecurity bills into law in June 2022, aiming to enhance the federal cyber workforce and promote coordination on security issues. This paper exams a comparative cybercrime legislation across various jurisdictions, including the United States, reveals divergent approaches, with the United States adopting a decentralized model, while Germany and Singapore opt for centralized regimes. This paper highlights the need for comprehensive legal frameworks to combat cyber threats effectively, key trends and challenges in cybercrime legislation include the need for harsher sanctions, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and balancing legal principles in sentencing. Best practices and recommendations emphasize international collaboration, capacity building, public-private partnerships, technological solutions, and continuous legislative review. Future solutions emphasize the importance of rigorous monitoring and adaptable legal frameworks to address the evolving landscape of cyber threats. By understanding international laws and collaborations, policymakers can develop innovative policies to safeguard digital environments against cybercrime.

Ordinary citizens and political crises: The Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Movement (2019-2020)

This study focuses on the actions and perceptions of individuals who participated in the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) movement in Hong Kong initiated in April 2019 and interrupted by the covid 19 pandemic and the adoption of the National Security Law in June 2020. Based on semi-struc­tured interviews, the article explains how ordinary citizens and first-time activists helped shape a political crisis and how it changed their political perceptions. The study adopts a theoretical perspective inspired by studies of collective action in contexts of political crises, placing the individual at the centre of the analysis and adopting a situational and proces­sual approach. The findings show that the actors perceived themselves as protagonists of historical events produced by the authoritarian turn of the Hong Kong political system thanks to the appropriation of new identities, the radicalisation of their liberal values and the mobilisation of their previous skills and resources.

Regspraak: Huweliksgoedereregtelike bedeling lukraak terugwerkend gewysig én die betrokkenes se handelingsbevoegdheid só verminder?

Legal certainty will be severely jeopardised should it be possible at whim to proclaim the applicable matrimonial property regime governing spouses’ assets and liabilities to have been changed retroactively. The legislature prescribed clearly defined prerequisites to be met before any change regarding a couple’s matrimonial property regime can be sanctioned by the high court and then only for the future, but never with retrospective force. Under the dualistic systems that apply in South Africa since 1652 it has always been recognised that individuals living according to customary or indigenous law may by default govern their matrimonial property regimes and the law of husband and wife according to the applicable norms of indigenous law. By default these marriages were out of community of property although a couple could agree to change the default position and have their consensus in this regard registered. The couple M was married according to customary law in the erstwhile Eastern Cape in 1980 and the marriage was never registered. The default position should accordingly govern the matrimonial property regime of the couple resulting in no community of property and no accrual system. The husband’s legal capacity and competencies were consequently not restricted by the qualifications contained in section 15 of the Matrimonial Property Act 88 of 1984 because that chapter of the act was not applicable to a customary marriage concluded in 1980 and which is by default out of community of property. When the husband as registered sole owner in 2010 entered into a valid sale agreement to transfer his immovable property on the Cape Flats to the first respondent nothing hampered or restricted the parties’ capacity to enter into the applicable obligatory or real agreements. The property was subsequently validly transferred in the Deeds Register to the purchaser. The plaintiff’s claim as widow of the seller who since passed away, to have the property “retransferred” into her name because the sale and transfer was allegedly in contravention of section 15 of Act 88 of 1984, is unconvincing although the court held otherwise. The crux of the matter is not whether the first respondent should be safeguarded against the consequences of an alleged invalid agreement by the husband who acted without the involvement of his wife in 2010 by a reliance on section 15(9)(a) of that act. The emphasis should have been on how the alleged amendment of section 7(2) of Act 120 of 1998 in June 2021 could be deemed to apply retrospectively after the sale and transfer had validly been concluded for eleven years before the poorly formulated amendment of the act became law in June 2021. A contract of sale that was validly concluded cannot retrospectively become invalid because the legislature changed the requirements for the type of contract more than a decade later. The court’s point of departure for its judgment is, however, that the deceased was married in community of property: “The Recognition of Customary Marriages Amendment Act 1 of 2021, which came into operation on 1 June 2021, among others, amended section 7 of the RCMA that all marriages, which were entered into before or after the enactment of the RCMA, are regarded as in community of property unless such consequences are specifically excluded by the spouses in an antenuptial contract” (par 20). This, notwithstanding the clear legal position regarding the default matrimonial property regime for all indigenous marriages concluded before the commencement of Act 120 of 1998: out of community of property. The legislature was supposed to adhere to the decision of the constitutional court in 2017 in Ramuhovhi v President of the Republic of South Africa (2018 2 SA 1 (CC)) to amend section 7(1) of Act 120 of 1998 with regard to polygamous marriages and not to alter the legal position regarding monogamous marriages that were governed without any found negative consequences by section 7(2) of that act. Although the legislature neglected to explicitly declare that this amendment of section 7(2) should have no impact retrospectively, the implications of this poorly conceived judgment will necessitate a re-opening of all the millions of estates of people who have been married according to a customary marriage since 1652 because all those marriages will now be deemed to have been in community of property with the consequential implications for the distribution of all assets of the spouses involved with the dissolution of the marriages after the demise of the dying spouse. The legislature would have caused less harm if it read with comprehension the clear order of the constitutional court: “In terms of s 172(1)(b) of the Constitution, this order does not invalidate a winding up of a deceased estate that has been finalised or the transfer of marital property that has been effected.”

Legalization of press control under democratic backsliding: The case of post-national security law Hong Kong

During democratic backsliding, the state can curtail press freedom through the legalization of press control, that is, the establishment and utilization of legal instruments for the purpose of controlling the media and journalistic work. Drawing upon the literature on authoritarian rule of law, this article emphasizes that legalization of press control has to be examined by paying attention to both the conspicuous and subtle measures that constitute the legal minefield for journalism, the evolution of official discourses that aim at legitimizing the laws and their implementation, and the changing politics of self-censorship as journalists and the society react to emerging legal risks. The empirical analysis focuses on Hong Kong after the establishment of the National Security Law in June 2020. The article offers an updated analytical account of press freedom in Hong Kong and the conceptualization of a process possibly observable in other authoritarian states or hybrid regimes.

Regulating Cyberspace in Vietnam: Entry, Struggle, and Gain

This study explores the evolution of cyber regulation in Vietnam since its inception, that is from the events of January 1997, when cyberspace first arrived in Vietnam, to the momentous protests instigated by the Cybersecurity Draft Law in June 2018. A Vietnamese cyber regulatory regime is imagined as an analytically constructed regulatory space where different actors enter, struggle, and gain in their pursuit of regulatory interests. The study argues that cyberspace in contemporary Vietnam has aided non-state actors to participate in the law-making and regulatory processes by inducing state actors to respond with cyber laws, regulatory approaches, and measures. Moving beyond the dichotomy of cyberspace as an inevitable tool for liberation or oppression, Vietnamese cyberspace has been both an instrument for non-state actors to participate in lawmaking, and a regulatory measure for state actors to regain control. A sociological landscape in contemporary Vietnam is depicted through the evolution of a Vietnamese cyber regulatory regime, shaped by dynamic interactions between domestic actors. In sharp contrast to the previous image of an authoritarian Vietnam, cyberspace has aided contemporary Vietnam to metamorphose into a more pluralistic society where organically formed social actors co-regulate cyberspace.

Does repression undermine opposition demands? The case of the Hong Kong National Security Law

AbstractDoes political repression extinguish public support for opposition demands? Protest emerges as a consequence of grievances and political preferences expressed as demands. Although the literature on the repression–dissent nexus has primarily focused on whether repression effectively deters dissenting behavior, a limitation is that researchers do not often distinguish between behavior and preferences. One possible implication is that although the observable protest behavior can be reduced by repression, underlying opposition demands may remain intact or even be strengthened. Hence, the question of why repression should alter public preferences remains theoretically under-investigated, because there is limited micro-level evidence that captures changes in opposition preferences induced by a repressive episode. We fielded comparable conjoint experiments before and after the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law in June 2020. Support for the demands was largely stable despite the sweeping powers of the law to curb protests, although some moderation of demands was observed. We outline avenues for future research on mechanisms and implications entailed by the effects of repression on preferences.

Exporting autocracy: how China's extra-jurisdictional autocratic influence caused democratic backsliding in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT In the global trend of democratic backsliding, Hong Kong provides an illustrative case of how democratic institutions could be degenerated by “exporting autocracy”. After 1997, Hong Kong's semi-democracy has come under continuous pressure by China's extra-jurisdictional autocratic influence. When about two decades of exporting autocracy has almost made Hong Kong a semi-democratic façade, China imposed the National Security Law in June 2020 placing the last straw that breaks its semi-democracy. The case study of Hong Kong offers comparative observations about China's exporting autocracy across its surrounding jurisdictions in the Asia-Pacific region.

Re-claiming the responsivity gap: The co-creation of cycling policies in Berlin’s mobility law

Calls for more bicycle use have been heard from across the political spectrum in Germany for years. Nonetheless, policies that lead to a transition away from car use and toward the bicycle in urban mobility remain absent. Against this background, we explore a mode of citizen engagement in the policy process in which citizens take the initiative and claim a political space to include their user expertise in the policy process. The case is a recent development in the field of urban mobility in Berlin, Germany in which citizen activists directly integrated citizen knowledge into policy outcomes. This was enabled by claiming the political space and thereby determining the spectrum of possibility, ultimately leading to an unprecedented process of co-creative legislation that marked a unique shift in German mobility policy, with the result that Berlin became the first German state to pass a bicycle law in June of 2018. We argue that the political space these citizens claimed was a key factor for enabling policy change, as previous attempts in invited political spaces had not led to a departure from the status quo. In a first empirical step, we establish evidence of citizen knowledge in policy output by comparing the citizen-authored bill with the 2018 Mobility Law. In the second empirical step based on 13 semi-structured interviews with the citizens responsible for the law, we offer a closer look at the type of knowledge relevant for enabling direct integration of user knowledge into policy output. We end with a discussion on the broader importance of the interplay of citizen knowledge for their impact on transformative policymaking.

Data privacy against innovation or against discrimination?: The case of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

Conducting a case study on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), this paper analyzes divergent frames of privacy argued by different stakeholders. While the United States has allowed corporate self-regulation of consumer privacy, California became the first state to introduce its own privacy law in June 2018. In early 2019, California held public forums on CCPA, which then became a battleground for various stakeholders to discuss data privacy regulations. Examining 105 public comments made by 99 speakers in 7 CCPA public forums, this study identified that corporate representatives and consumer advocates differed in seven major areas: (1) the purpose of CCPA, (2) definitions of personal information and consumer, (3) operationalization of opt-out, (4) non-discrimination rules, (5) economic ramifications, (6) consumer literacy, and (7) comparison with other privacy frameworks. The findings suggest that corporate speakers follow the frame of privacy as a commodity, while consumer speakers seek the frame of privacy as a right.

China’s long game in techno-nationalism

The passage of China’s national cybersecurity law in June 2017 has been interpreted as an unprecedented impediment to the operation of foreign firms in the country, with its new requirements for data localization, network operators’ cooperation with law enforcement officials, and online content restrictions, among others. Although the law’s scope is indeed broader than that of any previous regulation, the process through which it was drafted and eventually approved bears similarities to three previous cases from the past two decades of Chinese information technology policy-making. In comparing these four cases, we argue that economic concerns have consistently overshadowed claims of national security considerations throughout laws directed at foreign enterprises.

An emerging market for groundwater remediation in China: Policies, statistics, and future outlook

There is a rapidly emerging and potentially huge market for the remediation of contaminated groundwater in China. The Chinese government published a Water Action Plan in April 2015, a Soil Action Plan in May 2016, and a draft Soil Pollution Prevention and Control Law in June 2017. All of these new policies and regulations put pressures on local governments and contaminated site owners, obliging them to conduct site investigation and to cleanup contaminated groundwater. The Chinese population in northern regions heavily depend on groundwater, with nearly 70% of water supply coming from aquifer sources in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. However, poor groundwater quality due to natural geochemical background and anthropogeic pollution is a serious concern, with poor or very poor quality water observed in nearly 80% of groundwater monitoring wells in 17 northern provinces. Shallow groundwater in many areas has been contaminated by toxic pollutants such as heavy metals and chlorinated organic compounds. There is an urgent need to better understand the situation and to conduct groundwater remediation at contaminated sites. The Chinese government is investing heavily in the research and development for groundwater remediation, which is expected to greatly add to the quality and quantity of groundwater remediation projects in the near future.

The implications of Brexit for UK anti-money laundering regulations

The implications of Brexit for UK anti-money laundering regulations

Assessment of the Jordanian Certified Public Accountant JCPA Examination in Comparison to the International Accounting Education Standards and the Best International Practices

This study aims to highlight the experiences of Jordanian Certified Public Accountant (JCPA) exam that started with the establishment of the Legal Accounting Profession organisation law in June 2006. This study is considered the first study in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan that looks at the evaluation of the Jordanian Chartered Public Accountant exam, in comparison to the requirements of international accounting education standards. Furthermore, this study focuses on the sixth standard IES6 that relates to the assessment of professional accountants and that is based on the best practices in professional accounting examinations in the world. This current study has adopted the method of distribution of questionnaires to gather information from those who participated in taking the exam, with the group of those who were successful, and others that were not so lucky. The accounting practice analysis was based on the standards, the best accounting practices, and the results of the interviews, which when were completed produced a number of recommendations. The recommendations or results found, push for the further development of the JCPA exam and improves the quality of the exam, to advance to the universal level of professional examinations. Of the most important recommendations is to work on increasing the number of times the exam is held annually, which can be done easily if the exam becomes computer based. It’s also important to develop specific firm dates for the JCPA exam or to announce the dates at the beginning of each year, and not to announce the exam time two months prior to the exam as it is currently. Finally, the announcement and clarification of specific percentages given to specific material included in the exam such as dedicating 25% of the examination to International Auditing Standards and so on.

“A Start of Something Big”?

China’s move to deregulate its alternative asset management industry is paying off—both for fund managers courting the country’s wealthy potential clients and for investors seeking to diversify their holdings. In the year since the opening of the industry, the Asset Management Association of China (AMAC) has registered about 3,563 private fund managers. Collectively, these managers run 5,232 funds with assets totaling RMB1.98 trillion (US$322.3 billion). Thousands more licensing applications are in the works, according to AMAC, which is the self-regulatory body established to oversee the alternative asset industry on the mainland. China’s liberalization of its asset management market enables it to breed one of the world’s most vibrant private fund management businesses, which could eventually account for a large chunk of the US$70 trillion global fund management industry. Since the passage of the Securities Investment Fund Law in June 2013, more managers are opening their own securities trading accounts and running their own hedge fund platforms, abandoning the traditional structure of managing assets through government-backed trust funds. “The regulation is geared for Chinese local managers that want to do business locally or go overseas. The registration lends more credibility for these fund managers, especially when they do business with international investors,” says Joseph Zeng, CFA, partner at Greenwoods Asset Management, which manages more than US$4 billion in assets. Given the pace of wealth creation in China, the development was good news for the country’s high-net-worth investors and family offices. The lack of investment options has long been a challenge in the development of China’s capital markets, with choices for Chinese investors limited to bank savings, stocks, bonds, and property. Regulated hedge funds will give these investors easier access to new products and instruments and a chance to further diversify their portfolios. In 2013, hedge funds in China achieved some of the best returns in the world, with the average hedge fund gaining more than 19%, according to research firm Eurekahedge. This performance came in a year when the Shanghai stock market contracted nearly 7% in value and was among the worst-performing markets in the world. Even with such recent success among hedge funds, the reforms have a long way to go in transforming China into a major asset management hub. “There are still many uncertainties in the onshore management sector in China. We need much more clarification from the CSRC [China Securities Regulatory Commission] and the tax authority about what hedge funds are allowed to do,” says David Walter, the Singapore-based director of US-based fund-of-funds manager Pacific Alternative Asset Management Company (PAAMCO). “The currency capital account [situation in China] isn’t helping,” adds Walter, who predicts the asset management business in China will evolve in tandem with the opening up of China’s broader capital markets. Global institutions and international fund managers, however, are keeping tabs on the developments in the industry. They see these funds as a potential way to gain access to more than 2,500 companies listed on the mainland. Traditional hedge funds that run Chinese strategies outside China are sometimes limited to trading only 160 or so Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong, the United States, or the European Union.

The “Bogus” Refugee: Roma Asylum Claimants and Discourses of Fraud in Canada’s Bill C-31


 
 
 The passage of Bill C-31 into Canadian law in June 2012 is part of a discourse created around refugees by the current Government of Canada. Refugees are divided into “good and proper” refugees who live in camps abroad, and the “ fraudulent and bogus” refugees who claim asylum at the Canadian border. The new act, Bill C-31 or Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act, is analyzed with respect to changes that will result in the systematic exclusion of certain groups of asylum seekers from Canada, based on these discourses of “bogus” and “fraud,” even though these groups may include genuine refugees. Drawing on the case of Czech Roma refugee claimants who come to Canada from Europe, this article shows how the Roma come to stand for the perfect “bogus” refugee — a person who wants to cheat the benevolent Canadian system without having grounds for a successful refugee status application. A critical look at the legislation provides new insights into the relations between governmentality and the regimes of citizenship, with the state performing its power in increasingly spectacular ways. Refugees act as the abject Other that legitimizes, legalizes, and reaffirms such state interventions. 
 
 

Introduction: Company Tax Integration in the European Union – A Necessary Step to Neutralise ‘Excessive’ Behaviour within the EU?

markdownabstract__Abstract__ This special issue of the Erasmus Law Review is the result of an interdisciplinary workshop on ‘Company Tax Integration in the European Union – a Necessary Step to Neutralise “Excessive” Behaviour within the EU?’, held at the Erasmus School of Law in June 2013 and organized by the Foundation European Fiscal Studies in co-operation with Erasmus Law Review. A topic currently attracting considerable public attention, not least because of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project of the OECD instigated by the G20. During the past decades there has been intensive tax competition between EU Member States for attracting capital triggered inter alia by the four freedoms as laid down in the European treaties. Even though competition is widely seen as beneficial to society, in case of inter-jurisdictional tax competition this may not always be the case. The possible negative effects of inter-jurisdictional tax competition and aggressive tax planning by multinational companies on state’s tax revenue may lead to a shift of the tax burden onto less mobile activities and onto consumption in order to keep a state’s public finances stable. In the end a jurisdiction’s tax system may become distorted (inefficient) and distribution unfair. In order to neutralize the negative effects of harmful tax competition and aggressive tax planning, one might be of the opinion that integrating company taxes within the EU would be the only way forward.

The Freedom to Offend? How the "Mohammad Cartoon Controversy" Has Influenced Public Debate on Canada's Hate Speech Regulation

The Mohammad cartoon controversy began in Denmark in 2006 when a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, published twelve cartoons, the majority of which depicted the Islamic Prophet Mohammad. Denmark had already been engaged with questions about Islam's compatibility with Danish culture, and the murder of Theo Van Gogh made international headlines in 2004. Writer Kare Bluitgen's failed attempt to find an illustrator for his children's book about Mohammad prompted public debate.1 This debate revolved around self-censorship, and the publication of twelve cartoons of Mohammad was the response of the editorial department of Jyllands-Posten. The initial reaction was local, limited to discussion and a few protests, the largest of which included 5,000 peaceful protesters.2 It wasn't until a delegation of Danish imams went on a tour of the Middle East with a dossier including the cartoons that it sparked many protests, some peaceful, some violent, and subsequently became a global story. An interesting element of the controversy is how it started as a consideration of reactions to the images of Mohammad, yet it spawned a variety of other controversies, such as the acceptability of republishing the images at the center of the main story to accurately address the major controversy. In Canada, controversy surrounding the republishing of the Mohammad cartoons led to a national discussion on the purpose, legitimacy, and usefulness of Section 13, the hate speech regulation, of Canada's Human Rights Act and its implementation by the Canadian Human Rights Commissions. This discussion subsequently resulted in the Parliament of Canada's vote to repeal the controversial hate speech law in June 2012.

Human Rights and International Economic Law: Common Constitutional Challenges and Changing Structures

This contribution is based on my lecture at the SIDI XVI annual meeting of the Italian Society of International Law in June 2011 at Catania. Section I of this contribution recalls that – due to the ‘dual’ and ‘incomplete nature’ of human rights as positive law and moral rights - the legal protection of ‘inalienable’ human rights risks always remaining contested, especially in international economic law (IEL). In both UN human rights law (HRL) as well as in IEL, the worldwide recognition of ‘duties to protect’ calls for stronger protection of human rights in international economic regulation (II). Human rights, ‘constitutional justice’ and IEL increasingly limit the ‘rules of recognition’ in HRL as well as in IEL (III). The need for ‘institutionalizing public reason’ and the necessary legal ‘balancing’ of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights call for ‘constitutional’ and ‘cosmopolitan reforms’ of IEL (IV). As in ‘human rights revolutions’, citizens also have to ‘struggle for justice’ in IEL, notably for judicial protection of transnational rule of law with due respect for HRL (V). HRL protects ‘margins of appreciation’ in the domestic implementation of international obligations and requires respect for ‘reasonable disagreement’ on the diverse conceptions of IEL (VI). The increasing recognition of the ‘indivisible’ and ‘inalienable’ nature of human rights, and the worldwide recognition of collective ‘third generation human rights’, reflect the increasing importance of cosmopolitan rights for supplying international public goods more effectively (VII). The ‘collective action problems’ require additional institutional innovation and multilevel constitutional restraints of economic regulation (VIII). Multilevel governance of human rights and of IEL must be coordinated through multilevel ‘constitutional bottom-up pluralism’ and through multilevel judicial protection of transnational rule of law for the benefit of citizens (IX).