Legislative policy, law and competitiveness: a mysterious and difficult relationship in the EU

The Lisbon Agenda places Europe in a uniquely difficult position globally, most particularly as an example of a social and regulatory experiment which many consider to be doomed to failure. The drive towards economic competitiveness has led to a focus on regulation and its effect on entrepreneurship, productivity and business growth but assessing this relationship is complex for a number of reasons. First, not all regulatory effects can be predicted precisely in relation to behavioural outcomes. Path-dependency scholars have also demonstrated that the regulation will have varying effects depending on context. Second, theoretically it is clear that many non-regulatory factors may contribute to economic and competitive success. Third, there is evidence of internal conflict within the Commission as to the relative importance of the Lisbon goals. Finally, the experience of distinct Member States presents challenges both for assessment and prescriptive remedies. The Commission has estimated that the cost of regulatory compliance obligations on businesses in the EU is between 4% and 6% of gross domestic product and that 15% of this figure is avoidable 'red tape' (the term used specifically to signify unnecessary compliance burdens). This article proposes to assess the likely outcomes of de-regulation as we rapidly approach 2010, the year for attainment of the Lisbon goals.

The corporate social responsibility movement and law's empire: Is there a conflict?

At the heart of corporate governance and social responsibility discourse is recognition of the fact that the modern corporation is primarily governed by the profit maximisation imperative coupled with moral and ethical concerns that such a limited imperative drives the actions of large and wealthy corporations which have the ability to act in influential and significant ways, shaping how our social world is experienced. The actions of the corporation and its management will have a wide sphere of impact over all of its stakeholders whether these are employees, shareholders, consumers or the community in which the corporation is located. As globalisation has become central to the way we think it is also clear that ‘community’ has an ever expanding meaning which may include workers and communities living very far away from Corporate HQ. In recent years academic commentators have become increasingly concerned about the emphasis on what can be called short-term profit maximisation and the perception that this extremist interpretation of the profit imperative results in morally and ethically unacceptable outcomes.1 Hence demands for more corporate social responsibility. Following Cadbury’s2 classification of corporate social responsibility into three distinct areas, this paper will argue that once the legally regulated tier is left aside corporate responsibility can become so nebulous as to be relatively meaningless. The argument is not that corporations should not be required to act in socially responsible ways but that unless supported by regulation, which either demands high standards, or at the very least incentivises the attainment of such standards such initiatives are doomed to failure. The paper will illustrate by reference to various chosen cases that law’s discourse has already signposted ways to consider and resolve corporate governance problems in the broader social responsibility context.3 It will also illustrate how corporate responsibility can and must be supported by legal measures. Secondly, this paper will consider the potential conflict between an emphasis on corporate social responsibility and the regulatory approach.4 Finally, this paper will place the current interest in corporate social responsibility within the broader debate on the relationship between law and non-legally enforceable norms and will present some reflections on the norm debate arising from this consideration of the CSR movement.

Reasoning about trust, entrepreneurial services, and the virtual team

This Portfolio of Exploration (PoE) tracks a transformative learning developmental journey that is directed at changing meaning making structures and mental models within an innovation practice. The explicit purpose of the Portfolio is to develop new and different perspectives that enable the handling of new and more complex phenomena through self transformation and increased emotional intelligence development. The Portfolio provides a response to the question: ‘What are the key determinants that enable a Virtual Team (VT) to flourish where flourishing means developing and delivering on the firm’s innovative imperatives?’ Furthermore, the PoE is structured as an investigation into how higher order meaning making promotes ‘entrepreneurial services’ within an intra-firm virtual team, with a secondary aim to identify how reasoning about trust influence KGPs to exchange knowledge. I have developed a framework which specifically focuses on the effectiveness of any firms’ Virtual Team (VT) through transforming the meaning making of the VT participants. I hypothesized it is the way KGPs make meaning (reasoning about trust) which differentiates the firm as a growing firm in the sense of Penrosean resources: ‘inducement to expand and a limit of expansion’ (1959). Reasoning about trust is used as a higher order meaning-making concept in line with Kegan’s (1994) conception of complex meaning making, which is the combining of ideas and data in ways that transform meaning and implicates participants to find new ways of knowledge generation. Simply, it is the VT participants who develop higher order meaning making that hold the capabilities to transform the firm from within, providing a unique competitive advantage that enables the firm to grow.

Non-product related environmental process and production methods (NPR-PPMs): a view from international trade law and international environmental governance

The primary aim of this thesis is to analyse legal and governance issues in the use of Environmental NPR-PPMs, particularly those aiming to promote sustainable practices or to protect natural resources. NPR-PPMs have traditionally been thought of as being incompatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, the issue remains untouched by WTO adjudicatory bodies. One can suggest that WTO adjudicatory bodies may want to leave this issue to the Members, but the analysis of the case law also seems to indicate that the question of legality of NPR-PPMs has not been brought ‘as such’ in dispute settlement. This thesis advances the argument that despite the fact that the legal status of NPR-PPMs remains unsettled, during the last decades adjudicatory bodies have been scrutinising environmental measures based on NPR-PPMs just as another expression of the regulatory autonomy of the Members. Though NPR-PPMs are regulatory choices associated with a wide range of environmental concerns, trade disputes giving rise to questions related to the legality of process-based measures have been mainly associated with the protection of marine wildlife (i.e., fishing techniques threatening or affecting animal species). This thesis argues that environmental objectives articulated as NPR-PPMs can indeed qualify as legitimate objectives both under the GATT and the TBT Agreement. However, an important challenge for the their compatibility with WTO law relate to aspects associated with arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination. In the assessment of discrimination procedural issues play an important role. This thesis also elucidates other important dimensions to the issue from the perspective of global governance. One of the arguments advanced in this thesis is that a comprehensive analysis of environmental NPR-PPMs should consider not only their role in what is regarded as trade barriers (governmental and market-driven), but also their significance in global objectives such as the transition towards a green economy and sustainable patterns of consumption and production.

A study of the extent to which Irish law, policy and practice allow for Ireland's application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 to pre-natal children

The central research question of this thesis asks the extent to which Irish law, policy and practice allow for the application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) to pre-natal children. First, it is demonstrated that pre-natal children can fall within the definition of ‘child’ under the Convention and so the possibility of applying the Convention to children before birth is opened. Many State Parties to the CRC have interpreted it as applicable to pre-natal children, while others have expressed that it only applies from birth. Ireland has not clarified whether or not it interprets it as being applicable from conception, birth, or some other point. The remainder of the thesis examines the extent to which Ireland interprets the CRC as applicable to the pre-natal child. First, the question of whether Ireland affords to the pre-natal child the right to life under Article 6(1) of the Convention is analysed. Given the importance of the indivisibility of rights under the Convention, the extent to which Ireland applies other CRC rights to pre-natal children is examined. The rights analysed are the right to protection from harm, the right to the provision of health care and the procedural right to representation. It is concluded that Ireland’s laws, policies and practices require urgent clarification on the issue of the extent to which rights such as protection, health care and representation apply to children before birth. In general, there are mixed and ad hoc approaches to these issues in Ireland and there exists a great deal of confusion amongst those working on the frontline with such children, such as health care professionals and social workers. The thesis calls for significant reform in this area in terms of law and policy, which will inform practice.

Narratives in early Irish law tracts

This thesis presents a study of the 112 narratives collected from the Corpus Iuris Hibernici. The selection of narratives is based on criteria informed by modern narratological theories. The significant presence of narratives in early Irish law tracts appears at odds with the normal conception of law texts as consisting solely of provisions, and therefore needs to be accounted for. Since no systematic study has been conducted of these legal narratives, this thesis serves as an introduction by giving firstly an index of narratives and secondly a categorisation of them in terms of distribution, dates and functions. It then carries out a general analysis of the relationship between legal narratives and early Irish literature, and a selected case study of the relationship between legal narratives and the legal institutions in the context of which the narratives are located. It has become clearer, with the progress of argument, that the use of narratives was an integral part of legal writing in medieval Ireland; and the narratives, though having many idiosyncratic features of themselves, are profoundly connected with the learned tradition at large. The legal narratives reveal the intellectual background and compositional concerns of medieval Irish jurists, and they formed a crucial part of the effort to accommodate law tracts into the dynamic tradition of senchas. Two appendices are included at the end: one consists of translations of 34 narratives from the index, and the other is a critical edition of one of the narratives discussed in detail, together with translations of some relevant passages.

Subterfuge-safe trust management for delegation of permissions in open environments

Open environments involve distributed entities interacting with each other in an open manner. Many distributed entities are unknown to each other but need to collaborate and share resources in a secure fashion. Usually resource owners alone decide who is trusted to access their resources. Since resource owners in open environments do not have a complete picture of all trusted entities, trust management frameworks are used to ensure that only authorized entities will access requested resources. Every trust management system has limitations, and the limitations can be exploited by malicious entities. One vulnerability is due to the lack of globally unique interpretation for permission specifications. This limitation means that a malicious entity which receives a permission in one domain may misuse the permission in another domain via some deceptive but apparently authorized route; this malicious behaviour is called subterfuge. This thesis develops a secure approach, Subterfuge Safe Trust Management (SSTM), that prevents subterfuge by malicious entities. SSTM employs the Subterfuge Safe Authorization Language (SSAL) which uses the idea of a local permission with a globally unique interpretation (localPermission) to resolve the misinterpretation of permissions. We model and implement SSAL with an ontology-based approach, SSALO, which provides a generic representation for knowledge related to the SSAL-based security policy. SSALO enables integration of heterogeneous security policies which is useful for secure cooperation among principals in open environments where each principal may have a different security policy with different implementation. The other advantage of an ontology-based approach is the Open World Assumption, whereby reasoning over an existing security policy is easily extended to include further security policies that might be discovered in an open distributed environment. We add two extra SSAL rules to support dynamic coalition formation and secure cooperation among coalitions. Secure federation of cloud computing platforms and secure federation of XMPP servers are presented as case studies of SSTM. The results show that SSTM provides robust accountability for the use of permissions in federation. It is also shown that SSAL is a suitable policy language to express the subterfuge-safe policy statements due to its well-defined semantics, ease of use, and integrability.

The accountability of transnational armed groups under international law

Terrorist attacks by transnational armed groups cause on average 15,000 deaths every year worldwide, with the law enforcement agencies of some states facing many challenges in bringing those responsible to justice. Despite various attempts to codify the law on transnational terrorism since the 1930s, a crime of transnational terrorism under International Law remains contested, reflecting concerns regarding the relative importance of prosecuting members of transnational armed groups before the International Criminal Court. However, a study of the emerging jurisprudence of the International Criminal Court suggests that terrorist attacks cannot be classified as a war crime or a crime against humanity. Therefore, using organisational network theory, this thesis will probe the limits of international criminal law in bringing members of transnational armed groups to justice in the context of changing methods of warfare. Determining the organisational structure of transnational armed groups, provides a powerful analytical framework for examining the challenges in holding members of transnational armed groups accountable before the International Criminal Court, in the context of the relationship between the commanders and the subordinate members of the group.