Number Of Rights Research Articles

Rights and Obligations of Arbitrators in the Deliberations

The ASA Swiss Arbitration Association's Annual Conference of 1 February 2013 in Zurich was devoted to the topic: "Inside the Black Box - How Arbitral Tribunals Operate and Reach their Decisions". This article derives from an introductory presentation that the author held at the said Conference. It analyses the legal framework of the deliberations. The author identifies and discusses a number of rights and duties of arbitrators that specifically arise at the stage of the deliberations, such as determining the process and timing of the deliberations, the right (and obligation) to participate in the deliberations, the (limited) right of the tribunal to seek assistance from other persons, and the (restricted) right to disclose a dissenting opinion. Moreover, the article analyses some of the general duties of arbitrators in the particular context of the deliberations, such as the duty of confidentiality, the duties of care, diligence and expedition, the obligation to apply the law, and the duties to be and remain impartial and independent.

The Global Economy, Trade Unions and The Protection of Workers' Rights in Nigeria

Since the inception of paid/wage employment, through a combination of sustained struggles and appeals to the conscience of the rest of society, workers, using the platform provided by their organizations (trade unions), have been able to secure for themselves a number of rights. These rights are predicated on, and complemented by, some constitutional provisions which confer certain rights on workers as citizens of their countries. However, in the new world economic order elegantly referred to as globalization workers' rights have been dealt a devastating blow. Under globalization driven by neoliberalism and anchored on less state involvement in the economic sphere, governments, particularly in their obsession to attract foreign direct investments as well as satisfying private corporate interests, have been arm‐twisted to relax labor laws that seek to protect workers from extreme abuse within the employment relationship. This unfolds within the context of the increasing autocracy of the capitalist state, not only in Nigeria but worldwide by which basic labor rights, such as the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, are brazenly violated even in the advanced democracies.Based on a combination of empirical data and secondary materials, this essay establishes that the level of compliance with existing legislation on workers' rights is low in Nigeria. The research also finds that official enforcement is equally low; a situation that is encouraged by weak institutional capacity of the labor administration system. Closely related to weak institutional capacity is the lack of the political will on the part of the subservient Nigerian state to protect its worker‐citizens. It is against this backdrop that the paper submits that given the failure of the state to ensure compliance with laws which seek to protect workers, workers, their organisations, and allies within the broader labour movement need to look beyond the state and its agencies to secure rights at work. The reality equally calls for a deeper understanding of the issues involved and a holistic response of the working class, both national and transnational.

Authorised Shared Access (ASA): An Innovative Model of Pro-Competitive Spectrum Management

ASA is a regulatory framework that allows for licensed sharing of underutilised spectrum by a limited number of rights holders through an individual authorisation scheme. There is significant momentum for ASA can be implemented rapidly in Europe under the existing EU regulatory framework for electronic communications, taking advantage of actual technological options and meeting the rise of mobile broadband that is posing new challenges to Administrations worldwide. Through ASA, Europe has the opportunity to take the lead and to explore new paths of optimal spectrum exploitation, reaping the benefits of the mobile internet revolution for industry and consumers in Europe and globally.

Right to Information Act in India: an Overview

The need for transparency and accountability in governance system of the country becomes more important especially to achieve the goals of the good governance. In this context, the Government of India in last one decade provided a number of rights to its citizens, like the right to employment through MGNREGA, right to education, etc., but above all, the mother of all the rights is the right to information (RTI), which makes rulers of the country responsible towards its citizens in a true sense. The present article attempts to study and analyse the RTI Act and its implementation in India and suggests few measures to make it more effective. Already, the RTI Act has completed the 6 years of its existence and it is the right time to do it.

POLITIK HUKUM KESETARAAN KAUM PEREMPUAN DALAM ORGANISASI MASYARAKAT ISLAM DI INDONESIA

In the normative level, generally all agreed to place women are equal to men, that is the position as humans, as well as the servant of Allah. Women are recognized to have a number of rights and freedoms, including the right to engage in politics, especially in the organization of the Islamic society. To strengthen the protection of women's rights, the government of Indonesia to make a policy or legislation (political law), both to improve policies of national legislation and policies ratified international law. However, when the policy (political law) or a pattern of gender relations between men and women drawn into operational a practical level, it appears that a long debate and a serious problem occurs. The rights of women experiencing prolonged discrimination, discrimination and marginalization occurs at the level of political rights and policies in the organization of Islamic society. In Indonesia, the rights of women in Islamic society organization, still have enough depth concerns. The pro and contra related to gender equality in Indonesia, particularly in the field of Islamic society organizations would affect the wheels of government in Indonesia, particularly in relation to the State of trademark law is the protection and freedom of human rights. Therefore, policies need to be related to equality between men and women both fair and legal.

Victims’ rights are human rights: The importance of recognizing victims as persons

In this paper the author argues that victims? rights are human rights. Criminal law typically views victims as witnesses to a crime against the state, thus shutting them out of the criminal justice process and only allowing them in when they are needed to testify. This is a major source of dissatisfaction for victims who seek validation in the criminal justice system. Victims are persons with rights and privileges. Crimes constitute violations of their rights as well as acts against society or the state. While human rights instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, do not mention crime victims specifically, a number of rights are identified, which can be viewed from the victim?s perspective. As individuals with dignity, victims have the right to recognition as persons before the law. However, such rights are only meaningful if they can be enforced.

Limited Public Authorisations and Grants - What Bard, Betfair and BNR Have in Common

Governments are increasingly occupied with the allocation, in several policy areas, of so‐called ‘limited public rights’. These rights, such as authorisations and grants, for which there are more applicants than available rights, are to be granted by the public administration. Typical of these rights is that a limit is determined beforehand to the number of the rights to be allocated. Limiting the number of available public rights may give rise to a range of legal questions and issues. This article explores several of these questions by considering three examples in different policy areas that have recently occurred in the Netherlands.

The institutional expansion of human rights, 1863–2003: A comprehensive dataset of international instruments

This article summarizes the results of a recently completed, comprehensive coding of 779 human rights instruments from 1863 to 2003. As such, it offers an extensive portrayal of how, and to what degree, this powerful doctrine has been formally institutionalized over time. Following a brief overview of the data collection process, selected results from this study are presented that highlight how many human rights instruments have been drafted, what kind of violations have been most prominent, the number of rights that have been specified over time, and the ultimate aspirations that are linked to the realization of human rights. Next, potential applications of this dataset are discussed regarding both human rights and peace research scholarship. Specifically, the results shed new light on the historical development of human rights by highlighting key periods of instrument growth in the late 19th century, the interwar years, and the post-World War II period. In addition, the data can effectively augment recent quantitative studies that measure the effect of treaty ratification on internal state violence by helping to generate more extensive ratification information, develop better measures of state compliance, and construct new measures that assess how human rights principles get translated into national practice and potentially mitigate state violence over time.

Bias Gender Dalam Masyarakat Muslim: Antara Ajaran Islam Dengan Tradisi Tempatan

The issue of gender bias into polemics among Muslim scholars. This scenario triggered by the view that blames the feminist epistemology of religious and traditional male dominated society patriarchy in Islam as a factor in the occurrence of gender bias against women. Therefore, this article will discuss how Islam came with the release of her policy, the supply of a number of rights and responsibilities appropriate to the existence of a caliph or a slave. In addition, there are several factors that cause gender injustice against women, whether internal in nature such as the interpretation of religious tradition or external, such as the community. Finally, a number of issues of gender bias that occurs in the Muslim community made to assess whether the practice is based on the resolution of the Qur’an and the Prophet SAW pattern by al-Sunnah, or traditions they are based on the community (Tribal Tradition).

Dual pricing of multi-exercise options under volume constraints

In this paper, we study the pricing problem of multi-exercise options under volume constraints. The volume constraint is modelled by an adapted process with values in the positive integers, which describes the maximal number of rights to be exercised at a given time. We derive a representation of the marginal value of an additional nth right as a standard single stopping problem with a modified cash-flow process. This representation then leads to a dual pricing formula, which generalizes a result by Meinshausen and Hambly (Math. Finance 14:557–583, 2004) from the standard multi-exercise option (with at most one right per time step) to general constraints. We also state an explicit Monte Carlo algorithm for computing confidence intervals for the price of multi-exercise options under volume constraints and present numerical results for the pricing of a swing contract in an electricity market.

The Evolution and Ideology of Global Constitutionalism

It has become almost universal practice for countries to adopt formal constitutions. Little is known empirically, however, about the evolution of this practice on a global scale. Are constitutions unique and defining statements of national aspiration and identity? Or are they standardized documents that vary only at the margins, in predictable and patterned ways? Are constitutions becoming increasingly similar or dissimilar to one another over time, or is there no discernible overall pattern to their development? Until very recently, scholars have lacked even basic empirical data on the content of the world’s constitutions, much less an understanding of whether there are global patterns to that content.This Article offers the first empirical account of the global evolution of rights constitutionalism. Our analysis of an original data set that spans the rights-related content of all national constitutions over the last six decades confirms the existence of several global constitutional trends. These include the phenomenon of rights creep, wherein constitutions tend to contain an increasing number of rights over time, and the growth of generic rights constitutionalism, wherein an increasing proportion of the world’s constitutions shares an increasing number of rights in common. Perhaps our most striking discovery is that 90% of all variation in the rights-related content of the world’s constitutions can be explained as a function of just two variables. Both of these variables are underlying traits of a constitution that can be measured quantitatively. The first variable is the comprehensiveness of a constitution, which refers simply to the tendency of a constitution to contain a greater or lesser number of rights provisions. The second variable is the ideological character of the constitution. We find empirically that the world’s constitutions can be arrayed along a single ideological dimension. At one end of the spectrum, some constitutions can be characterized as relatively libertarian, in the sense that they epitomize a common law constitutional tradition of negative liberty and, more specifically, judicial protection from detention or bodily harm at the hands of the state. At the other end of the spectrum, by contrast, some constitutions are more statist in character: they both presuppose and enshrine a far-reaching role for the state in a variety of domains by imbuing the state with a broad range of both powers and responsibilities. For every constitution in the world, we calculate a numerical score that measures its position on this ideological spectrum. These scores yield an ideological ranking of the world’s constitutions – the first of its kind.Using these scores, we are able to map the ideological evolution of global constitutionalism. We show that the world’s constitutions are increasingly dividing themselves into two distinct families – one libertarian in character, the other statist. Within each family, constitutions are becoming increasingly similar to one another, but the families themselves are becoming increasingly distinct from one another. The dynamics of constitutional evolution, in other words, involve a combination of ideological convergence and ideological polarization.

THE GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH SETTLEMENT: A NEW ORPHAN-WORKS MONOPOLY?

This paper considers the proposed settlement agreement between Google and the Authors Guild relating to Google Book Search (GBS). I focus on three issues that raise antitrust and competition policy concerns. First, the agreement calls for Google to act as agent for rightsholders in setting the price of online access to consumers. Google is tasked with developing a pricing algorithm that will maximize revenues for each of those works. Direct competition among rightsholders would push prices towards some measure of costs and would not be designed to maximize revenues. The consumer access pricing provision might very well fail a challenge under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Second, and much more centrally to the settlement agreement, the opt-out class action will make it possible for Google to include orphan works in its book search service. Orphan works are works as to which the rightsholder cannot be identified or found. The opt-out class action is the vehicle for large-scale collective action by active rightsholders. Active rightsholders have little incentive to compete with themselves by granting multiple licenses of their works or of the orphan works. Plus under the terms of the settlement agreement, active rightsholders benefit directly from the revenues attributable to orphan works used in GBS. We can mitigate the market power that will otherwise arise through the settlement by expanding the number of rights licenses available under the settlement agreement. To do that, we should take the step of unbundling the orphan works deal from the overall settlement agreement and create a separate license to use those works. All of that will undoubtedly add more complexity to what is already a large piece of work, and it may make sense to push out the new licenses to the future. That would mean ensuring now that the court retains jurisdiction to do that and/or giving the new registry created in the settlement the power to do this sort of licensing. Third, there is a risk that approval by the court of the settlement could cause antitrust immunities to attach to the arrangements created by the settlement agreement. As it is highly unlikely that the fairness hearing will undertake a meaningful antitrust analysis of those arrangements, if the district court approves the settlement, the court should include a clause—call this a no Noerr clause—in the order approving the settlement providing that no antitrust immunities attach from the court's approval.

Inward investment: does IP really matter?

A popular debating point among both supporters and opponents of IP concerns the strength and reliability of domestic IP rights in developing countries: which is the best way to attract inward investment into a developing economy? (i) establish a regime of strong IP rights that are easy to enforce, in order to protect investment in innovation and its commercial exploitation; (ii) keep IP to the bare minimum that is necessary for TRIPS compliance in the hope that, freed from the restraints of IP monopolies that are generally exercised by absentee landlords, the local economy will become more competitive and generate its own export-driven momentum. It is assumed for the purpose of this debate that the attraction of inward investment is the desired objective, so this discussion will exclude for this purpose the third, fairly popular option; or (iii) take protectionist steps to control the exploitation of indigenous and collectively held rights in, for example, geographical indications, traditional knowledge, folklore, and bio-materials, while allowing a more laisser-faire approach towards the West’s ‘traditional’ creator-based rights in inventions, designs, and copyrights. While opinions are passionately expressed on this debating point, it is frustratingly difficult to create a methodology for attributing inward investment to any particular set of IP policies. This is because the strength or otherwise of IP rights is not an isolated criterion for determining where foreign investors place their confidence: it is part of a web of interrelated criteria so complex that it is almost impossible to tease out any strand from it and attribute to it any causative function. Some investment criteria are quite unrelated to the excellence or deficiency of domestic IP rights. These include the domestic tax regime, the ability (or otherwise) to remit foreign earnings, the political stability of the target market, and the availability and quality of its skilled labour. Thus, it makes more sense to invest in software development in India, where there is already a vibrant software culture within the workforce, than in countries where familiarity with programming techniques is absent. And countries suffering from substantial civil unrest or economic turmoil, of which Zimbabwe is a sad epitome, are unlikely to attract any sort of foreign investment even where local skills are present. The size and potential of a market may make it attractive for investors too. Thus, China enjoyed a large volume of joint ventures with foreign IP-rich businesses even when the local laws were relatively rudimentary, and their interpretation and enforcement untested, since overall business benefits outweighed any IPrelated risks. Another criterion appears at first blush to be more IP-related. Is the country which seeks foreign investment a member of the major IP conventions and treaties that provide for international filing of registered rights? But does membership of the right club guarantee, or even offer, a promise of inward funding? The Patent Cooperation Treaty and the Madrid and Hague schemes have brought transnational filing within the grasp of many businesses in the developed world, but WIPO statistics suggest that developing countries that crave inward investment do not receive it on the basis of the availability of protection through these systems since the number of rights that are protected in those countries is a small fraction of the scale of protection sought in developed markets. The good news for developing economies may be that, if the possession of a good IP system does not attract inward investment, its absence may not act as a positive deterrent. If this is so, what lessons does this teach us? First, the experience of the past 40 years or so teaches us that you can no longer justify IP rights in developing economies by suggesting that there is any direct causative link between having a good IP rights system and attracting foreign investment. Given the efficiencies of manufacturing in the age of cybernetics, with regard to many products the output of a single plant will be sufficient to satisfy global demand, no matter how many countries provide it with patent protection. Secondly, the internet provides a medium for the delivery of copyright works that is effectively unrelated to local legal, manufacturing, and market conditions. Particularly, where digital rights management is employed, copyright can be effectively and conveniently exploited without the need to establish a presence in each target market. Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, 2009, Vol. 4, No. 4 225

The Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations of States

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights require states parties to respect and ensure the rights of persons subject to or within their ‘jurisdiction’. The meaning of ‘jurisdiction’, however, is disputed and the extent to which states parties owe their human rights obligations abroad is uncertain. This article, therefore, seeks to elucidate the extraterritorial reach of these treaties by proposing a theory of ‘jurisdiction’. It argues that there are three distinct types of extraterritorial ‘jurisdiction’ for the purposes of human rights law, each of which imposes a different level of obligations on the state party, in terms of the number of people to whom obligations are owed, the number of rights that are applicable and the extent of negative and positive duties owed in respect of those rights.

An improved watermarking technique for multi-user, multi-right environments

In digital rights management, there are many instances where there is more than one user involved, with each user having different level of rights. In this paper, we develop a novel approach to the multi-user, multi-right problem, where users are tied to various rights in an arbitrary access structure. Our approach is applicable to all kinds of media and can be used with any watermarking algorithm, provided that keys are used to generate the watermarks. This flexibility also enables it to benefit from future progress in the development of watermarking algorithms, in particular that of multiple watermarking. The proposed technique uses the generalized secret sharing scheme of Benaloh and Leichter, and builds on the earlier work of Guo on the joint ownership problem. By noting that the number of rights is likely much smaller than the number of users in most practical situations, and by generating the watermarks independently, the proposed approach achieves greater fidelity and detection capability than Guo's schemes while remaining secure against colluding users.

Using Rights to Counter “Gender-Specific” Wrongs

One popular strategy of opposition to practices of female genital cutting (FCG) is rooted in the global feminist movement. Arguing that women’s rights are human rights, global feminists contend that practices of FGC are a culturally specific manifestation of gender-based oppression that violates a number of rights. Many African feminists resist a women’s rights approach. They argue that by focusing on gender as the primary axis of oppression affecting the African communities where FGC occurs, a women’s rights approach has misrepresented African women as passive victims who need to be rescued from African men and has obscured the role of certain international institutions that have perpetuated the oppression of African women. In this paper, I defend these critiques by arguing that the use of a women’s rights framework to combat practices of female genital cutting among African communities has often been practically ineffective and morally inappropriate.

Fish stocks and their management: The changing face of fisheries in South Africa

Abstract Transformation of South African marine fisheries over the past 10 years has had to balance economic stability, equity and sustainability. This is being done in three ways. First, access rights have been redistributed, increasing the number of rights holders 20-fold and the participation of historically disadvantaged individuals from 0.75% to 62%. Second, established companies have undergone internal transformation. Third, subsistence fishers have formally been recognised. New focuses include co-management, ecosystem-based management and marine protected areas. Further necessary steps include parity in salaries, attention to artisanal fishers, embracement of co-management, expansion of subsistence management and effective enforcement. Most stocks are healthy or recovering but exceptions, such as abalone, warn how quickly stocks can be decimated if co-operation is not achieved.

Same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption: Socio-political context of the rights of gay and lesbian people in Belgium

Belgium is considered as being in the forefront of a number of rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT). In the 1990s, the law on legal cohabitation made it possible for same-sex couples to draw up cohabitation contracts. Belgium then became the second country in Europe to authorise marriage between same-sex partners in 2003, as well as opening up access to parenthood in 2006. The aim of this paper is to describe the changes that have taken place in Belgian legislation from traditional family law through to the opening up of marriage and parenthood to same-sex couples, analysing the arguments which have been put forward in support and against it, as well as the potential rationale behind shared agendas. It will also describe the emergence of the LGBT movement in Belgium, the various non-governmental organisations that are active in the country and the role they play. An overview of current events will be presented (changes in the number of marriages, divorces and adoptions in Belgium). Finally, the paper will discuss the issues concerning social acceptance of same-sex couples and families, and the challenges that LGBT people living in Belgium still have to face.

Shout options: a framework for pricing contracts which can be modified by the investor

A shout option may be broadly defined as a financial contract which can be modified by the holder according to specified rules. In a simple example, the holder could have the right to set the strike of an option equal to the current value of the underlying asset. In such a case, the holder effectively has the right to select when to take ownership of an at-the-money option. More generally, the holder could have multiple rights along these lines, in some cases with a limit placed on the number of rights which may be exercised within a given time period (e.g., four times per year). The value of these types of contracts can be estimated by solving a system of interdependent linear complementarity problems. This paper describes a general framework for the valuation of complex types of shout options. Numerical issues related to interpolation and choice of timestepping method are considered in detail. Some illustrative examples are provided.

The applicability of the Human Rights Act 1998

After the Second World War and in response to concerns as to the expansion of the Eastern Bloc, the European Convention on Human Rights (‘the Convention’) was developed by the Council of Europe. The United Kingdom ratified the Convention in 1951 and by doing so, a number of rights were established for everyone, whether an individual or a company, including the right to liberty, the right to a fair trial and the right to respect for private and family life, home and confidentiality of correspondence.