Birth, Development and Progressive Institutionalization of the Ombudsman in the Russian Legal and Political System

One of the current trends in governance and legal development in Russia is aimed at establishing a modern, efficient and internationally harmonised system of safeguards of human rights and civil liberties. A fairly recent addition to this system has been the institution of ombudsman as a public authority specialised in promoting and protecting human rights and civil liberties. The introduction of this institution as well as its formalisation at the constitutional and legislative levels has been increasingly relevant and important, as it raises the dealings between the state and the individual to a new level. As an independent public institution resolving conflicts between citizens and government authorities, the ombudsman makes steps, within the scope of his jurisdiction, to restitute individual rights, and helps to enhance the reputation of government. The present work describes and assesses the birth, development and institutionalization process of the Ombudsman Office in the Russian Federation, at federal and regional levels, with a particular emphasis on the role of international references and cooperation for institution building. Ombudsmen have done a magnificent job in demonstrating value with the resolution of individual and systemic complaints; subsequent improvements to government; and economic savings by mitigating litigation costs.

Legal Ontologies for Public Procurement Management

The thesis explores ways to formalize the legal knowledge concerning the public procurement domain by means of ontological patterns suitable, on one hand, to support awarding authorities in conducting procurement procedures and, on the other hand, to help citizens and economic operators in accessing procurement's notices and data. Such an investigation on the making up of conceptual models for the public procurement domain, in turn, inspires and motivates a reflection on the role of legal ontologies nowadays, as in the past, retracing the steps of the ``ontological legal thinking'' from Roman Law up to now. I try, at the same time, to forecast the impact, in terms of benefits, challenges and critical issues, of the application of computational models of Law in future e-Governance scenarios.

Legal presumptions in national tax systems (Italy and Belgium) and in EU law

The thesis deals with the concept of presumptions, and in particular of legal presumptions, in the context of national tax systems (Italy and Belgium) and EU law. The purpose was to investigate the concept of legal presumption under a twofold comparative perspective. After having provided a general overview of the common core concept of presumption in the European context, an insight in the national approach to legal presumptions was given by examining two different national experiences, namely the Italian and Belgian tax systems. At this stage, the Constitutional framework and some of the most interesting and relevant at EU level presumptive measures were explored, with a view to underlining possible divergences and common grounds. The concept of (national) legal presumption was then investigated in the context of EU law, with the attempt to systematize under a uniform perspective a matter which has been traditionally dealt with either from the merely national point of view or, at EU level, through a fragmented form. In this instance, the EU law relevant framework and the most significant EUCJ case-law, in particular in the field of customs duties, VAT, on the issue of the repayment of taxes levied in breach of EU law and in the area of direct taxation, were examined so as to construe the overall EU approach to national legal presumptions. This was done with the finality of determining if and to what extent a common analytical framework may be identified, from which were extracted certain criteria governing the compatibility of national legal presumptions with EU law.

Credit-Default-Swaps and the 2008 Financial Crisis: An Inquiry into the Underlying Legal Origins and the European Union’s Regulatory Reforms

After the 2008 financial crisis, the financial innovation product Credit-Default-Swap (CDS) was widely blamed as the main cause of this crisis. CDS is one type of over-the-counter (OTC) traded derivatives. Before the crisis, the trading of CDS was very popular among the financial institutions. But meanwhile, excessive speculative CDSs transactions in a legal environment of scant regulation accumulated huge risks in the financial system. This dissertation is divided into three parts. In Part I, we discussed the primers of the CDSs and its market development, then we analyzed in detail the roles CDSs had played in this crisis based on economic studies. It is advanced that CDSs not just promoted the eruption of the crisis in 2007 but also exacerbated it in 2008. In part II, we asked ourselves what are the legal origins of this crisis in relation with CDSs, as we believe that financial instruments could only function, positive or negative, under certain legal institutional environment. After an in-depth inquiry, we observed that at least three traditional legal doctrines were eroded or circumvented by OTC derivatives. It is argued that the malfunction of these doctrines, on the one hand, facilitated the proliferation of speculative CDSs transactions; on the other hand, eroded the original risk-control legal mechanism. Therefore, the 2008 crisis could escalate rapidly into a global financial tsunami, which was out of control of the regulators. In Part III, we focused on the European Union’s regulatory reform towards the OTC derivatives market. In specific, EU introduced mandatory central counterparty clearing obligation for qualified OTC derivatives, and requires that all OTC derivatives shall be reported to a trade repository. It is observable that EU’s approach in re-regulating the derivatives market is different with the traditional administrative regulation, but aiming at constructing a new market infrastructure for OTC derivatives.