Rule Of Law Research Articles

The role of governance in mitigating an epidemic disease: evidence from HIV prevalence in 45 Sub-Saharan African countries, 1996–2019

PurposeThis study proposed a theoretical framework to illustrate how governance can be instrumental in preventing the proliferation of HIV. It decomposed governance into six multidimensional facets and empirically examined their effects on HIV prevalence.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilized panel data from 45 sub-Saharan African countries from 1996 to 2019. HIV prevalence, the dependent variable, was estimated based on the number of adults aged 15–49 years infected with HIV, irrespective of the progression to AIDS symptoms. The independent variables included governance and its six dimensions: voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. The analysis incorporated the random and fixed effects models while controlling for economic development, economic inequality, foreign aid, sanitation, and population.FindingsThe findings revealed a significant association between good governance and lower HIV prevalence. Improved governance quality in sub-Saharan African countries has led to a reduction in HIV prevalence among adults. Specifically, governance dimensions, such as voice and accountability, political stability, rule of law, and control of corruption, contributed to reducing HIV prevalence. Conversely, government effectiveness and regulatory quality did not show significant impacts on HIV prevalence.Originality/valueThis study underscores the significant role of good governance in effectively curbing the spread of epidemic diseases, highlighting its importance in controlling HIV in sub-Saharan African countries.

The Life of the Rule of Law

The Life of the Rule of Law

The rule of law, judicial independence and the right to good administration – myth or reality?

AbstractIn this paper the author focuses on some core notions linking together judicial independence and good administration through the thread of the rule of law. The rule of law is the golden thread running through all public administration (which includes also the judicial administration) of a state, with the ultimate aim being the common good. This is an ideal to which all modern, so-called democratic, states should aspire. The author looks at the practical meaning of the rule of law and suggests an approach based on a core of eight principles, the so-called Bingham’s “sub-principles”, and adds two more to them. Finally, it is argued that one cannot speak of the rule of law, of fundamental human rights and of good administration as if these were concepts isolated from each other

International Sanctions and the Rule of Law

International Sanctions and the Rule of Law

Benefits of North Korea's Membership in the New York and ICSID Conventions

This article contends that North Korea should accede to the New York Convention and the ICSID Convention to provide more robust legal protections and dispute settlement mechanisms for foreign investors. While North Korea has enacted various domestic laws and established special economic zones to attract foreign investment, these measures have proved insufficient to fully assuage investor concerns, particularly regarding the enforcement of arbitral awards and protections against expropriation. Joining the New York Convention would mitigate uncertainties surrounding the enforcement of foreign arbitral awards by obligating North Korean courts to recognize and enforce such awards, subject only to limited, internationally accepted grounds for refusal. Accession to the ICSID Convention would enable aggrieved foreign investors to bring claims against North Korea before a neutral, depoliticized arbitral tribunal, providing an additional layer of protection against discriminatory or expropriatory state conduct. Membership in these conventions would significantly enhance North Korea's credibility in the eyes of foreign investors, demonstrating a commitment to upholding the rule of law and aligning its investment framework with global norms. While accession alone is not a panacea, it represents a crucial step toward building investor confidence, facilitating greater FDI inflows, and fostering North Korea's economic development and international engagement.

Juridical Analysis of the Comparison of Different Religious Marriage Laws Based on the Adminduk Law Article 35 with SEMA No 2 Years 2023 Concerning Marriage Registration

Interfaith marriage is an issue that has not been resolved to date. In current practice in Indonesian society, interfaith marriage processions are generally carried out by carrying out the marriage with a religious procession each of which is followed by the prospective husband and wife or in the sense that there are two religious processes being carried out or only carrying out one religious procession or what generally happens is not carrying out religious processions at all so that it does not comply with Article 2 paragraph (1) of the Marriage Law regarding valid marriages. The legal research method used in this research is normative juridical research which is research carried out or aimed only at written regulations with the nature of descriptive analysis research which is a method that functions to describe or provide an overview of the object being studied. The data source used is secondary data with quantitative data analysis. The results of this research are the Hierarchy of Legislation in Indonesia. If it is related to the Civil Admin Law Article 35 with SEMA Number 2 of 2023, the legal force of SEMA has a lower hierarchy than the law. Therefore, it can be concluded that the provisions contained in the Administer Law cannot be changed by SEMA Number 2 of 2023. However, this SEMA still influences the direction for judges not to grant requests for inter-religious marriages.

Ethical and Legal Model of the Cybermedia: Case Study in North Sumatra, Indonesia

In the new media era, most violations cases of press ethics and law are made by cybermedia in Indonesia. At the same time, cybermedia is one of the factors driving national stability, as well as a factor encouraging democratization. This study aimed to determine the ethical and legal model indicators of cybermedia from the Indonesia Cybermedia Union (SMSI) of North Sumatra case study. The research is a mixed-method approach that combines qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Data were collected from interviews with 39 journalists through questionnaires and focus group discussions (FGD) with two press experts, two North Sumatra SMSI administrators and an honorary board member of the press organization. The results of this study indicated that five problems were indicators of models for implementing press ethics and law in cybermedia. First, increasing the competence of journalists in several ways, such as encouraging journalists to take the journalist competency tests and conducting training; second, encouraging cybermedia verification by the Press Council; third, providing legal assistance for journalists who were caught in the law; fourth, following the existing rules of press ethics and law. This was done because cybermedia did not have its own rules of ethics and press law; fifth, conducting an interaction model with stakeholders through journalist competency test activities.

The Real-Time Impact of Political Risk on Market Valuations: Evidence from Peru

This study examines the impact of political risk on financial markets by leveraging high-frequency (minute-by-minute) price data and precise event timestamps from media outlets’ Twitter feeds during Pedro Castillo’s failed coup attempt in Peru. Unlike previous research that relies on low-frequency data and protracted political changes, our analysis demonstrates that daily closing prices may misleadingly suggest negligible impact. In contrast, high-frequency data reveal that markets promptly and accurately incorporated news of the coup attempt and, in turn, its failure into asset prices. Our analysis shows that breakdowns in democratic governance negatively affect asset prices, while the restoration of the rule of law, in the form Congressional checks on the Executive branch, boosts them. Moreover, our analyses suggest that domestic companies and sectors with less mobile assets are more vulnerable to these political risks. Our findings underscore the crucial role of high-frequency data in accurately capturing how institutions and political risk affects equity markets.

Building the rule of law for maritime security in China: a domestic law perspective

Maritime security is an essential component of national security, and the effective maintenance of China’s maritime security urgently needs a complete guarantee of the rule of law. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the construction of domestic law on maritime security has undergone three phases: slow development, formation and refinement. Although the rule of law in the seas has been constantly improved, it has provided essential safeguards for maintaining China’s maritime sovereignty, security, and rights and interests. It has facilitated the development of maritime undertakings. However, it still faces problems such as the lack of an explicit constitutional basis, the law of the sea is not an independent departmental law, the absence of the fundamental law of the sea, the lack of operability of marine legislation, and the existence of some gaps in marine laws. Given the problems with the current domestic law on maritime security, it is necessary to make improvements in the following areas: adding marine provisions to the Constitution, formulating the fundamental law of the sea and other marine laws, improving local marine laws, and introducing implementing regulations.

An Equilibrium of Education Policy by Dr. Ambedkar - A Visionary Aim with Landmark Change Over in India

His words become true, as proved by Dr. Ambedkar with his unstoppable efforts to eradicate the weeds in our country by drafting the Constitution of India and subsidizing various policies and measures. He was the one who paved the way for revolutionary moments on education in India and also believed that “Education is a key to attaining uniformity and regularity to fulfil human needs”. The major obstacles to obtaining the fruit of wisdom were rejected on the grounds of unequal practices and untouchability’s, racialism, upper and lower class people were diverged by the name of case, religion, etc., he is the one who broke up the chain of inequality by framing the “Rule of law” concept under Article 14 - Every person should be treated equally before the law, also by guaranteeing their freedom of expression under Article 19 and protect their right to live with dignity under Article 21 of Indian constitution. He worked tirelessly to provide equal access to education for all Indian people during the constitution's drafting process, free from discrimination or repression. The educational ideas of Dr. Ambedkar, and the laws that were created in accordance with his vision of an ideal society are then the subject of this research paper. Education not only educates the citizens about their rights and how to exercise them, but also about human dignity & justice. Keywords: policy, education, human rights, dignity, and justice.

The OECD Dispute Resolution System in Tax Controversies

The article analyses the latest international tax law developments in dispute resolution settlement protocols and the need for effective multilateral solutions to prevent international double taxation. While several treaties currently minimise the risks of international double taxation, more must be achieved to provide judicial remedies in cases where two states want to tax the same income simultaneously. The OECD has developed a dispute resolution system based on arbitration clauses to be introduced in conventions signed by the state and a brand-new MLI (multilateral instrument) that should be applicable on a broader scale. These remedies have proven unsatisfactory as the taxpayer is not entitled to play any role in these (arbitration) procedures and cannot stand personally in front of any panel. The authors argue that such a scenario is inconsistent with the rule of law and the due process clauses and should be amended. Creating a supranational court with the entitlement to adjudicate the power to tax would be the optimal solution, but this would collide with the position of several states and their distrust of the international judiciary in tax matters.

Institutional Quality, Monetary Policy and Banking System Stability in Nigeria

The study used a Generalized Method of Moments to examine the effect of six IQ indices (voice and accountability, rule of law, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, corruption control and political stability and absence of violence) and MP tools (monetary policy rate, loan-deposit ratio, lending rate, logarithm of broad money supply and banking system liquidity ratio) on the Z-Score, a proxy for banking system stability. The study found that, among the six MP indices, only corruption control index has a positive and significant effect on bank stability (coefficient = 0.245124, p = 0.0042). Also, out of five MP variables, only the loan-deposit ratio has a significantly positive effect on bank stability (coefficient = 0.0070482, p = 0.0072). The effect of the other IQ and MP indicators are not significant enough for inference purposes. We conclude that IQ affects banking system stability positively and significantly. We also found that MP affects the stability of the banking system positively and significantly. We recommend, among others, that authorities should continue to pursue zero corruption in institutions and that banks should be mandated to improve on the existing anti-corruption measures. Also the Central Bank of Nigeria should continue to maintain the range of loan-deposit ratio that has existed for many years. There is the need to re-appraise other IQ and MP variables with no significant positive effect on banking system stability in Nigeria.

China’s New Pattern of Rule of Law on UAS

China as the world’s prominent market for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) has just passed a new regulation on UAS. The new regulation is expected to form a new pattern of rule of law on UAS in China. With the need for harmonisation of laws internationally, this article highlights the three aspects out of China’s new UAS legislation against an international setting.

China’s New Pattern of Rule of Law on UAS

China as the world’s prominent market for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) has just passed a new regulation on UAS. The new regulation is expected to form a new pattern of rule of law on UAS in China. With the need for harmonisation of laws internationally, this article highlights the three aspects out of China’s new UAS legislation against an international setting.

The Legal Professional Privilege in Competition Law Cases – A Key Element in Protecting the Proper Administration of Justice

The legal professional privilege is an important principle underpinning the EU judicial system as it ensures the proper administration of justice, procedural efficiency and protects fundamental rights such as a client’s defence rights and the right to privacy enshrined in Articles 47 and 7 of the Charter. In competition cases, the European Commission has relied on an old ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (the ECJ), and only acknowledged one of these aims – the protection of the client’s defence rights. While the ECJ has recently received the chance to align the EU standard to that of the ECHR by broadening the scope of protection, the Commission appears unwilling to abandon its previous stance. It is important that the Commission shoulders the responsibility to ensure a procedure that is fair, and which acknowledges the basic principles underpinning a society governed by the rule of law. The current approach breathes life into questions on the legitimacy of its actions and the appropriateness of letting it take on the roles of enforcer, prosecutor and judge in competition cases, where companies not only risk having to pay fines of up to ten percent of their annual turnover, but now also appear to have to face the threat of divestitures should the Commission find that they are infringing the EU competition rules.

EXAMINING THE EFFECTS OF GOVERNANCE INDICATORS ON ECONOMIC GROWTH IN NIGERIA: AN ARDL APPROACH

The effects of certain governance indicators on economic growth in an African country (Nigeria) have been researched in this study. Governance indicators such as institutional quality, and rule of law are analysed to understand their effect and direction on economic growth. The data are from the World Development and Governance Indicators (WDI & WGI) and cover the years 1996 to 2016. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to estimate the relationship, we discovered that the coefficient of governance indicators produces mixed results, even though the index of governance has a negative influence on economic growth. Furthermore, uni-directional causality was evident between certain governance indicators and trade openness. Significant policy implications suggested by the findings include the government of this African country should put in more effort into improving the general governance structure toward stability. Hence, this will lead to increased investor confidence in the countries’ economies.

The Interplay Between the Rule of Law and the Financial Instruments of the European Union Developed During the Pandemic

Od 1. siječnja 2021. u Europskoj uniji na snazi je Uredba o općem režimu uvjetovanosti za zaštitu proračuna Unije. Njezino stupanje na snagu označilo je početak nove ere za raspolaganje proračunskim sredstvima Europske unije. Naime, navedena uredba ovlašćuje Uniju da uvjetuje isplate iz svoga proračuna te iz programa uspostavljenih za oporavak od pandemije poštivanjem vladavine prava u državama članicama. U suprotnom, ako su vrijednosti okupljene pod širim pojmom načela vladavine prava ugrožene, Unija može uskratiti isplatu sredstava iz proračuna, zatražiti prijevremenu isplatu na temelju ugovora o zajmu ili pak zabraniti sklapanje novih ugovora o financiranju pojedinoj državi članici. U skladu s navedenim, jasno je da upravo ta uredba čini srž međuodnosa vladavine prava i financijskih instrumenata Europske unije, a poglavito onih koji su nastali za potrebe gospodarskog oporavka tijekom pandemije. Imajući u vidu navedeno, cilj je ovoga rada pravna analiza međuodnosa javnog financijskog prava Unije i načela vladavine prava, s posebnim osvrtom na recentni postupak pokrenut na temelju Uredbe o uvjetovanosti. Prvi dio rada prikazat će tijek donošenja Uredbe u širem kontekstu društveno-političkih zbivanja u Europskoj uniji koja su potaknula njezino usvajanje. Sljedeći će dio rada prikazati tijek usvajanja Uredbe koji je znatno utjecao na njezin sadržaj i opseg primjene. Središnji dio rada analizirat će sam tekst Uredbe, posebno imajući u vidu uvjete za njezinu primjenu te mehanizme koji Uniji stoje na raspolaganju u odnosu na države članice. Konačno, rad će izložiti povezanost zaštite vladavine prava i novih instrumenata Unije razvijenih tijekom pandemijskog razdoblja, imajući u vidu mjere koje je Unija poduzela upravo koristeći se mehanizmom uvjetovanosti, nakon čega će uslijediti zaključna razmatranja.

The Legal Professional Privilege in Competition Law Cases – A Key Element in Protecting the Proper Administration of Justice

The legal professional privilege is an important principle underpinning the EU judicial system as it ensures the proper administration of justice, procedural efficiency and protects fundamental rights such as a client’s defence rights and the right to privacy enshrined in Articles 47 and 7 of the Charter. In competition cases, the European Commission has relied on an old ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (the ECJ), and only acknowledged one of these aims – the protection of the client’s defence rights. While the ECJ has recently received the chance to align the EU standard to that of the ECHR by broadening the scope of protection, the Commission appears unwilling to abandon its previous stance. It is important that the Commission shoulders the responsibility to ensure a procedure that is fair, and which acknowledges the basic principles underpinning a society governed by the rule of law. The current approach breathes life into questions on the legitimacy of its actions and the appropriateness of letting it take on the roles of enforcer, prosecutor and judge in competition cases, where companies not only risk having to pay fines of up to ten percent of their annual turnover, but now also appear to have to face the threat of divestitures should the Commission find that they are infringing the EU competition rules.

Administrative Contract in Administrative Matters

Administrative contracts are also known in Slovenian law, where they are mainly used as an instrument to regulate in more detail the (previously issued) administrative act, and generally cannot replace the issuance of an administrative act. Namely, the General Administrative Procedure Act only provides for settlement between parties with opposing (private law) interests. However, the elements of administrative contracts as an ADR mechanism can be found in other (sectoral) legislation, but are often very deficiently regulated, leading to the application of private law rules that govern contractual relations and which are not adapted to administrative law relations. Given all the advantages of alternative dispute resolution and shortcomings of the current legal framework, Slovenian law should also – while respecting all the specific features of administrative decision-making and following the example of selected comparative-law regimes – systematically regulate subordinate administrative contracts (replacing administrative acts), at least for some administrative matters. They should be limited only to those areas of administrative functioning where the administration has a certain margin of discretion in determining the content of the decision on the administrative matter. This means, on the other hand, that the possibility of a subordinate administrative contract should normally be excluded in the case of legally binding decision-making since the content of such a decision is predetermined and the administrative authority is bound by it (principle of legality). However, the administrative authority must have a specific power to conclude such a contract in a (sectoral) law – a general power to conclude subordinate administrative contracts is not sufficient due to the risk of infringing the principle of equality and legality.

Cultural Property Protection in Private International Law

The armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine has brought the issue of protecting cultural property to the forefront. Numerous documented cases of illegal exports of cultural property from Ukrainian museums located in territories occupied by the aggressor country have emerged. In addition, little is known about the number of stolen objects from private collections, which are considered cultural artifacts. There are no statistics available on this matter. This paper aims to explore the problem of applicable law during the consideration of disputes regarding the protection of cultural property. The author examines the concept of cultural property restitution in private international law and different approaches and concepts for defining "restitution" and "return" of cultural values. It has been argued that the term “return of cultural property” should encompass a wider scope, including both the restitution of illegally exported cultural property and the return of cultural property that was legally in the possession of another state but was later repatriated to the original state as a gesture of goodwill. The author offers his definitions of these terms based on theoretical research, as well as an analysis of the domestic legislation of Ukraine and the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Property of June 24, 1995. The paper also delves into the issues of conflict regulation of disputes involving cultural values. Both the issues of determining the right of ownership to and the problems associated with the protection of the right of ownership of cultural property in private international law are considered. The point of view that the conflict of laws rule lex originis (the law of the country from whose territory the cultural property was exported) should be applied in disputes regarding the return of cultural property from someone else's illegal possession is supported. The author concludes, based on a comparative analysis of laws on private international law, about the most appropriate mechanism for protecting the property rights of a bona fide purchaser in disputes over cultural property.