Pari Passu Research Articles

Native Law and Customs in a Democratic Setting: (The Nigeria Experience)

The Nigerian Corpus Juris Civilis ‘body of civil law’ vis-a-vis the legal system is consisted of the Received English Law, (which influenced the Constitution of the Federal Republic and other Statutes) and the Native Law (that is the Customary Law and the Islamic Law). However, the domination of the English Common law on the Native law is so enormous that it has put the latter at the verge of extinction. This paper argues that, although, the western oriented legal minds in Nigeria project the English Common Law in the light of civility and modernity, yet, the Native Law which successful governed the country from time immemorial should not be extinguished. The fact remains that, intrinsically, the Law still remains civil in the minds and relationships of the local people. Activities such as marriages, land tenure, commercial transactions are still largely regulated by the Native Law among the people. However, although, the paper agrees that there is need for the review of the law, nevertheless, it maintains that there is reason for its reintroduction de novo as part of the private law in the country. One of such reasons is its flexibility and simplicity. The law is instinctually understandable to the people. Therefore, it should be harmonized in pari passu with prevalent English law to regulate de die in diem ‘the day-to-day’ activities of Nigerians.

The international commitment of late‐internationalizing Brazilian entrepreneurial firms

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of international commitment of entrepreneurial firms from an emerging economy to their foreign operations. Specifically, it intends to help bridge an existing gap in the literature by focusing on the international commitment of established small entrepreneurial firms, a topic that has been largely overlooked; investigating small‐firm commitment to foreign investments whereas most studies focus on exporting; combining the different research streams that studied international commitment; and using the resource‐based view (RBV) to explore the interplay between resource allocation and commitment in the foreign investments of small entrepreneurial firms.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts an abductive approach to theory development and uses the case method of investigation. Three case studies were developed from primary and secondary sources. A total of 153 pieces of documentation were used to reconstruct past events, in addition to the interviews and information from company sites, permitting triangulation. Pattern‐matching logic was employed as case development progressed, continuously comparing with the theoretical background used in the study.FindingsThe interplay between resource availability, goal congruence, entrepreneur's desire to internationalize and family attitude seem to have a combined impact on the arousal and initial development of international commitment. The relative importance of managerial over financial resources in the early stages and the impact of preparatory activities on the speed and scope of internationalization seem to be specific manifestations of commitment among emerging market firms. As to the outcomes of commitment, performance appears both as an outcome and an antecedent, and, knowledge acquisition and opportunity development seem to increase pari passu with international commitment of emerging market firms.Practical implicationsThe findings can be useful to emerging market firms by pointing out the potential negative impact of low international commitment on a firm's internationalization process. Since most firms from emerging markets cannot count on previous internationalization knowledge accumulated by other firms in their (domestic) institutional environment to be used as guides to international expansion, this type of research can provide some guidelines to help their internationalization efforts.Originality/valueWhile certain results agreed with the extant literature, new findings generated a set of theoretical propositions regarding international commitment of late‐internationalizing entrepreneurial firms from an emerging Latin American market.

A Non-Inferentialist, Anti-Realistic Conception of Logical Truth and Falsity

Anti-realistic conceptions of truth and falsity are usually epistemic or inferentialist. Truth is regarded as knowability, or provability, or warranted assertability, and the falsity of a statement or formula is identified with the truth of its negation. In this paper, a non-inferentialist but nevertheless anti-realistic conception of logical truth and falsity is developed. According to this conception, a formula (or a declarative sentence) A is logically true if and only if no matter what is told about what is told about the truth or falsity of atomic sentences, A always receives the top-element of a certain partial order on non-ontic semantic values as its value. The ordering in question is a told-true order. Analogously, a formula A is logically false just in case no matter what is told about what is told about the truth or falsity of atomic sentences, A always receives the top-element of a certain told-false order as its value. Here, truth and falsity are pari passu, and it is the treatment of truth and falsity as independent of each other that leads to an informational interpretation of these notions in terms of a certain kind of higher-level information.

Towards a program for financial stability

Fifty years ago Milton Friedman published a book entitled A Program for Monetary Stability. In it he outlined a number of suggestions for the conduct of monetary and fiscal policies that he thought would contribute to monetary stability and pari passu to price stability and a greater degree of output/employment stability. In this paper I review some of his policy prescriptions in light of the financial and economic crisis of 2007–2009. From the perspective of financial development the world today is much different from the world that Friedman knew in the late 1950s. In what way would his policy recommendations have to be modified to account for these changes in financial development? To stabilize the banking system we argue that his proposal for 100 percent reserve banking merits serious consideration in current policy discussions. To stabilize asset markets we propose two policies that Friedman would not likely endorse. The first is to reinstate selective credit controls in the areas of the securities markets, the real estate market, and various commodity markets. The second policy designed to dampen excessive variability in the stock market is for the Central Bank to carry out some open market operations in an index fund of equities.

The Three and a Half Minute Transaction: Boilerplate and the Limits of Contract Design

Theory tells us that the lawyers who draft standard-form contracts will respond to an erroneous court interpretation of a boilerplate contract term by revising the standard formulation of the clause or otherwise clarifying the ambiguity. This is so because lawyers, it is assumed, have the incentive to protect clients from the risk that other courts may adopt the disfavored interpretation or that the apparent ambiguity will, in any event, produce future costly litigation. As many scholars have observed, the reality is often different. Boilerplate terms in standard contracts are sticky. Many of the theories explaining why standard contract terms are resistant to innovation focus on the efficiency benefits of market-wide standardization. Others look to economic or psychological factors that deter the production of innovative terms. In this book, we use both qualitative and quantitative data to explore the reasons for the phenomenon of stickiness in sovereign bond contracts. We focus on a novel judicial interpretation of an obscure clause in cross-border financial contracts – the pari passu clause – that rattled the chandeliers of international finance. One might have expected the practicing bar to quickly clarify their forms before the heresy could spread and gain traction. But that didn’t happen. In over 90% of the contracts subsequently issued, no attempt was made to clarify the imprecise language of the clause. None of the extant theories of stickiness explain what we find. Rather, the story that emerges is about the modern big law firm: the financial pressure on big firms to maintain a high volume of transactions contributes to an array of conflicts that that deter innovation and are largely hidden from the individual lawyers charged with drafting responsibility – conflicts that are hidden in part by the myths that the members of this legal community collectively tell themselves about the origins of boilerplate terms whose meaning has been lost in time.

Overview of post-infective hydrocephalus

Post-infective hydrocephalus refers to accumulation of fluid within the cranial cavity (hydrocephalus) secondary to either pyogenic or tuberculous meningitis. Whereas in the former condition, fibrous adhesions develop in the ventricles and arachnoid villi, in the latter, the fibrosis is mainly basal. This is a review of the author's personal series as well as published literature on post-infective hydrocephalus. The aim of treatment in hydrocephalus following pyogenic meningitis is to sterilize the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and then to drain the ventricles after conversion of a multiloculated cavity into a single cavity. In hydrocephalus associated with tuberculous meningitis, CSF diversion is not always necessary and should be reserved for cases where clinical deterioration occurs pari passu with increase in ventricular size and intraventricular pressure.

The Location of the Risk of Broker and Policy Holder Insolvency in Contracts for Marine Insurance: Section 53 of the Marine Insurance Act and the Case for its Reform

Under normal rules of agency, a broker procuring cover from an underwriter acts as agent of the assured. In the event of the assured’s insolvency the insurer will not be entitled to look to the broker for outstanding premiums, instead he must prove in the assured’s insolvency. If the broker becomes insolvent, then it is his principal, the policyholder, who will be left to recover pari passu. Section 53(1) of the Marine Insurance act 1903 alters this distribution of liabilities for contracts of marine insurance by making the broker liable to the insurer for the premium and the underwriter liable to the assured for losses.This article sets out the case for reform of s 53(1). In doing so, it advances three arguments. First, it contends that there is no justification for the altered distribution of risk in modern insurance law. Second, it criticises the need to draw a distinction between contracts of marine and contracts of non marine insurance. Third, it observes that s 53(1) codifies a legal fiction which, if it is held to subsist within the provision, serves to invalidate clauses which purport to terminate the contract in the event of non-payment. Whilst the more recent cases do not apply the legal fiction their reasoning is criticised and a conclusion that they are open to challenge is offered. These three observations serve to demonstrate that the law in its current statement is both unprincipled and unpredictable. It is for these reasons that it is argued that reform is to be welcomed.

Origin Myths, Contracts, and the Hunt for Pari Passu

Sovereign loans involve complex but largely standardized contracts, and these include some terms that no one understands. Lawyers often account for the existence of these terms through origin myths. Focusing on one contract term, the pari passu clause, this article explores two puzzling aspects of these myths. First, it demonstrates that the myths are inaccurate as to both the clause’s origin and the role of lawyers in contract drafting. Second, the myths often are unflattering, inaccurately portraying lawyers as engaged in little more than rote copying. The article probes this disjunction between the myths and lawyers’ actual practices and explores why contracts origin myths might hold such appeal for this elite segment of the bar.

Transferência cultural em tradução: contextualização, desdobramentos, desafios

<p>Este artigo discute alguns elementos pertinentes à compreensão da noção de “transferência cultural” em sua relação com a tradução. Para a definição de um contexto, as considerações remetem à década compreendida entre 1970 e 1980, aproximadamente, período que a historiografia dos Estudos da Tradução costuma reservar a uma mudança de paradigma operada em tradução: a primazia do texto a ser traduzido cede lugar paulatinamente às condições de recepção do texto traduzido. Tal mudança, levada a cabo <em>pari passu</em> com evoluções correlatas em áreas afins, atingiu a reflexão sobre tradução como um todo. Embora mais facilmente perceptível (e aceitável) no domínio da tradução literária, a noção de transferência cultural passa a ser elemento fundamental também da tradução de textos técnicos e científicos. Sensibilizar estudantes de tradução para algumas características dessa questão e oferecer um breve panorama das premissas teóricas para o seu tratamento em trabalhos de grau são os objetivos deste estudo.</p>

Nem ortodoxia nem populismo: o Segundo Governo Vargas e a economia brasileira

O artigo tem por objeto a economia e as controvérsias sobre a política econômica do Segundo Governo Vargas (1951-1954), bem como de seu significado histórico. Como opção metodológica, parte das diferentes ênfases dadas à implementação da política econômica ao longo do período, as quais são analisadas pari passu às principais correntes que dividem seus analistas e intérpretes.

McGrath v Riddell: A flexible approach to the insolvency distribution rules?

AbstractThe rules relating to the division of the insolvent estate assume considerable importance in the field of international insolvencies, where different legal systems interact. International instruments including the European insolvency regulation and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross‐Border Insolvency have provided a framework which governs the relationship between local and foreign distribution schemes. For English lawyers, questions remain however regarding the future role of the courts' statutory power to cooperate with the courts of ‘relevant’ countries or territories, and of the common law principle of universalism. An important issue connected to the determination of such questions is the established judicial approach to the pari passu rule, in the application of domestic law. This paper examines the manifestation of this tension in the litigation arising from the collapse of the HIH Casualty & General Insurance group of companies. It notes the scope which remains for continued resort to the statutory power of cooperation, and the potential for the Cross‐Border Insolvency Regulations 2006 to encourage a more flexible approach to resolving differences between distribution schemes. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Market Reaction to Legal Shocks and Their Antidotes: Lessons from the Sovereign Debt Market

Abstract In September 2000, a Brussels court ruled in favor of a hedge fund that held an unpaid debt claim against the Republic of Peru. The decision was based on a novel interpretation of the common pari passu clause. Policy makers and practitioners suggested that this decision signaled a paradigm shift that caused a significant increase in the risk of holdout litigation faced by sovereign debtors. Over the ensuing years, multiple reform solutions were implemented including the revision of certain contractual terms, the filing of amicus briefs in a key New York case, and the passage of legislation in Belgium. This article investigates whether the markets perceived an increase in risk in sovereign debt in the wake of the Brussels court decision. And, to the extent the markets reacted to the increase in legal risk, did any of the antidotes that were implemented to reduce the supposed increased holdout risk work?

Forgiveness as the Working Through of Splitting

This article presents a psychoanalytic formulation of forgiveness seen as the resolution of splitting underlying manifest and vehement retributive states of mind such as resentment, vengefulness, grudge, envy, bitterness, blame, and spite. Clinical examination suggests that these states of mind that are indicative of the presence of splitting are not always in ascendancy. They wax and wane in consciousness, depending on whether or not a shame-filled state of mind is present. Their appearance in consciousness is due to the instigatory role of shame before onlookers and the powerful role of hidden shame dynamics that do not always appear as overt shame. Examples illustrate a clinical impasse posed by the workings of intense splitting, the transformation of a shame experience into a dynamic of guilt in the firing of a very successful football coach after a disappointing defeat, and the working through of splitting in a patient pari passu with his increased bearability of shame. Working through of the splitting underlying the retributive emotions involves the increased bearability of shame, often with the help of an identification with the analyst. Vistas for future investigation include the role of the working through of resentment of the analyst in the analytic process and the relation of that resentment to instigating shame dynamics.

Towards a Program for Financial Stability

Fifty years ago Milton Friedman published a book entitled A Program for Monetary Stability. In it he outlined a number of suggestions for the conduct of monetary and fiscal policies that he thought would contribute to monetary stability and pari passu to price stability and a greater degree of output/employment stability. In this paper I review some of his policy prescriptions in light of the financial and economic crisis of 2007-2009. From the perspective of financial development the world today is very different from the world that Friedman knew in the late 1950's. In what way would his policy recommendations have to be modified to account for these changes in financial development? We argue that his proposal for 100 percent reserves or narrow banking merits serious consideration in current policy discussions designed to stabilize the banking system. To stabilize asset markets we propose two very un-Friedman-like policies. The first is to reinstate selective credit controls in the areas of the stock market and the real estate market. The second policy designed to dampen excessive variability in the stock market is for the Central Bank to carry out some open market operations in one or more equity index funds.

Creditor Participation in Insolvency Proceedings - Towards the Adoption of International Standards

Effective creditor participation in insolvency proceedings has been widely seen as an essential feature of any well-developed insolvency administration system. This notion has been expressed in different ways in national systems of insolvency law, ranging from principles such as the pari passu rule and the conduct of creditor meetings to decide matters of importance in the insolvency proceedings, to the role of insolvency representatives in such proceedings. The last decade has seen the emergence of a number of multilateral efforts to more clearly articulate insolvency norms or 'best practice' guidelines; these have included such outcomes as the Asian Development Bank’s 2000 Good Practice Standards, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s 2005 draft Principles for Effective Insolvency and Creditor Rights Systems and the monumental 2004 UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Insolvency Law. The emergence of these multilateral statements has recognised the regional and global significance of insolvency laws and the role that they play in providing a foundation for a market economy. This article examines the creditor participation standards evident in this body of international best practice norms. Ultimately, it is argued that creditor participation in insolvency is an essential element in a rule of law based market economy.

May You Live to Be 150!

Daniel Callahan urges us to deliberate with a view to halting trends that might result in extending human lives to, say, 150 years. The socio-economic disruptions, he argues would be insupportable; changes affecting us all should not be left to personal choice or ceded to the juggernaut of untrammeled scientific inquiry and biomedical innovation. Goodman agrees that the ramifications of social change are often unpredictable, especially given the magnitude and accelerating pace of technological advance. But such changes are also polyvalent and will bring opportunities as well as challenges. Ageing, Callahan argues, is not a disease. So the desire to push back its boundaries is a medical aspiration, not a medical need. But that claim involves a category error. For although ageing is not a disease but a process, it is a process that makes us vulnerable to quite a variety of diseases and debilities. Morally, Goodman argues, it is wrong for “us” to seek to set limits to one another’s lives. Clearly most human beings would prefer any advances in life’s duration to proceed pari passu with preservation of the quality of life. But quality should not be made a fig leaf for sordid economic concerns. Human life is an intrinsic, not instrumental value. Humans can be creative long into old age, but persons should not be counted worthless just because they are no longer active, say, in the marketplace. Population is not pollution. But that equation raises its head ominously when Callahan grounds the mandate for collective deliberations about life extension on the analogy of laws restricting a supposed right to pollute. Citing prophetic visions of an age of reconciliation between the generations, Goodman sees community and communication—a mandate and an ethos of service—as critical to the effort to rise to the moral challenges that will present themselves as the trend toward life extension takes hold.

Literatura traduzida e formação do leitor: a recepção de <em>As Aventuras de Huckleberry Finn</em>, Mark Twain, traduzida por Monteiro Lobato

This study aims at analyzing the reading of As aventuras de Huckleberry Finn, by students of Letras (language teacher education) at the State University of Maringá. This book was originally written by Mark Twain (The adventures of Huckleberry Finn), and afterwards, it was translated by Monteiro Lobato. These students, except some of them, were not introduced into translation techniques and searched for translations without any academic instruction, in order to solve their linguistic problems. This situation happens because the reading of translated texts is not considered a pedagogic practice by most part of the professors. Through this study, we intend to investigate the relevance of working with translation in English Language Literature Classes, so that this practice can happen pari passu with the literary analysis, developing translation reading strategies in teacher education.

Particulate organic carbon (POC) in relation to other pore water carbon fractions in drained and rewetted fens in Southern Germany

Abstract. Numerous studies have dealt with carbon (C) contents in Histosols, but there are no studies quantifying the relative importance of the individual C components in pore waters. For this study, measurements were taken of all the carbon components (particulate organic carbon, POC; dissolved organic carbon, DOC; dissolved inorganic carbon, DIC; dissolved methane, CH4) in the soil pore water of calcareous fens under three different water management regimes (re-wetted, deeply and moderately drained). Pore water was collected weekly or biweekly (April 2004 to April 2006) at depths between 10 and 150 cm. The main results obtained were: (1) DIC (94–280 mg C l−1) was the main C-component. (2) POC and DOC concentrations in the pore water (14–125 mg C l−1 vs. 41–95 mg C l−1) were pari passu. (3) Dissolved CH4 was the smallest C component (0.005–0.9 mg C l−1). Interestingly, about 30% of the POM particles were colonized by microbes indicating that they are active in the internal C turnover. Certainly, both POC and DOC fractions are essential components of the C budget of peatlands. Furthermore, dissolved CO2 in all forms of DIC appears to be an important part of peatland C-balance.

To Rank Pari Passu or Not to Rank Pari Passu: That is the Question in Sovereign Bonds

It can be said that the pari passu clause mistakenly migrated from secured private lending to unsecured sovereign lending. Once rooted in unsecured sovereign lending instruments it faced certain provisions like the ones in Spain or the Philippines that can allow a creditor to create a preference positioning itself in a better position vis-a-vis other creditors, and become a 'must have' provision in this type of debt instruments. Then, pari passu clauses stayed in unsecured debt instruments due to the fear of the earmarking revenues or the risk of the sovereign preferring a group of creditors over another. These two fears were tackled by an expanded negative pledge clause and the Libra and Allied Bank cases. Therefore, if a proper due diligence was conducted there was no need to have a pari passu clause unless in exceptional circumstances alike the ones of Spain or the Philippines. Unfortunately, a misguided interpretation of the pari passu clause in the Elliot case opened the door to litigation on incorrect grounds (payment interpretation or broad interpretation of the pari passu clause). It was an 'aberration', but one that caused furore. The problem was that in Elliot there was no breach of the pari passu clause, just a wrong understanding of its meaning. In the case of Argentina the whole story could be different since it can be correctly interpreted as a breach of the pari passu clause in its ranking or narrow form. The importance of this article lies precisely in explaining the different interpretations of the pari passu clause in sovereign debt instruments in context to provide a clear understanding of the issue for the sake of the international capital markets.

Questions to ponder

There is a long and fine history of proven scientific methods as they apply to the design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials. Indeed, they are so well established as to have had a major impact in the formulation of therapeutic guidelines and their application by healthcare organizations, regulatory healthcare bodies, and health policy. As defined by Pocok et al. [1984], the term clinical trials may be applied to any form of planned experiments which involves patients and is designed to elucidate the most appropriate treatment of future patients with a given medical condition. In an era of evidence-based medicine the issue of finding the optimal outcome for the individual patient remains cloudy since we do not know all of the questions that need to be answered. In this issue, several authors have delineated this need admirably. Anita Saran and Thomas DuBose of Wake Forest University document a need to assess the value and nature of cardiovascular interventions in individuals with chronic kidney disease (CKD), while at the other end of the spectrum Brent Egan from the Medical University of South Carolina provided compelling evidence in the previous issue for a more aggressive approach to the management of prehypertension [Egan et al. 2008]. Both disease processes may affect larger than predicted populations, and this has an obvious impact in terms of healthcare policies and cost to the healthcare system. Dramatic increases in the cost and complexity of medical treatments has foreshadowed a need to increase efforts focusing on the prevention of the causes of illness and death [Furberg, 1994]. This is a costly proposition for either industry-sponsored trials or funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health. Yet, as pointed out by the authors of the papers mentioned above, there is a dire need to identify which treatments and which patients will benefit most for interventions that reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in both CKD and prehypertension. CKD, recognized as an independent cardiovascular risk factor, particularly in the elderly, is defined by an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) < 60 ml/min 1.7 m or a urinary albumin/creatinine ratio of 30 mg/g [McCullough, 2008]. The prevalence of CKD is increasing worldwide pari passu with the increased rise in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus and obesity. Because the disease is now recognized to affect individuals younger than 60 years of age, a link to the prevention and treatment of prehypertension should be considered. Questions to ponder are: