Rechtsmittel gegen Entscheide des juge d'appui bei der internationalen Schiedsgerichtsbarkeit der Schweiz

The author examines whether and by which means the decisions handed down by the State judge giving his support to the arbitral proceeding (juge d'appui) may be appealed. Every relevant Article in the PILA (Private International Law Act) is addressed and analyzed in this regard (Art. 179(2) and (3), Art. 180(3), Art. 183(2), Art. 184(3) and Art. 185) by reference to the present legal doctrine and case law. Concerning the stages of appeal, the view is held that by direct or analogous application of Art. 356(2) CPC (Civil Procedure Code) the juge d'appui has jurisdiction as the sole instance of the Canton to render decisions in support of the arbitral tribunal. On the federal level however, the parties shall have the right to appeal against these decisions by filing a civil law appeal before the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, with the exception of most decisions given by juge d'appui within the meaning of Art. 180(3) PILA. As to this federal appeal, it is established that the case law of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court under the FTA (Act on the Federal Tribunal) indicates the Court's inclination to qualify both negative and positive decisions issued by the juge d'appui as final decisions in terms of Art. 90 FTA. In reference to the upcoming revision of the PILA's 12th Chapter the author concludes that the legislator might implement some clarifications in the current legal framework. It seems particularly advisable to ensure that all relevant Articles in the PILA regarding decisions of the juge d'appui explicitly reference to Art. 356(2) CPC. Moreover, the author is of the opinion that it would also be expedient to specify the

Tel Aviv - Mumbai - Tel Aviv: Same-Sex couples seeking parenthood in India

In Israel religious belonging remains a central category of citizenship. Laws concerning reproductive technologies such as the surrogacy law from 1996 are strongly informed by Orthodox rabbis’ kinship concepts (Kahn 2000, Shalev 1998, Weisberg 2005). A set of regulations secures that heterosexual Jewish couples bring into being children who are unequivocally Jewish themselves. The Israeli surrogacy law can therefore be understood as part of a policy seeking to reproduce the boundaries of the Jewish-Israeli collective. Same-sex couples do not fit this narrow definition of family and have no access to surrogacy in Israel. Yet gay couples maintain that parenthood is a universal civil right and bypass their exclusion through surrogacy arrangements abroad. The proposed paper follows these couples to Mumbai, which has become a popular destination for surrogacy in recent years. After their children’s birth the couples spend three to five weeks in India. In this time they not only take on their new tasks as fathers. They are also occupied with the bureaucracy of disconnecting the children from India and turning them into Israeli citizens. The paper elaborates on the bureaucratic processes and the hurdles same-sex couples encounter when seeking recognition of their parenthood and citizenship for their children. It unveils the intricacies and ramifications of Israel’s contradicting surrogacy policy of enforcing narrow definitions of family inside the country and simultaneously outsourcing problematic cases.

Advancing the Goals of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in the Fields of Education, Participation of Civil Society and Sustainable Development

This is a contribution to an expert opinion to be submitted to Intergovernmental Committee of the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity. It seeks to identify recommendations for action in the fields of education, participation of the civil society and sustainable development (under respectively Articles 10, 11 and 13 of the Convention), which are to be specifically targeted taking into account the changed and changing conditions of the digital networked environment.

A pilot test of the new Swiss regulatory procedure for categorizing clinical trials by risk: A randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND/AIMS Several countries are working to adapt clinical trial regulations to align the approval process to the level of risk for trial participants. The optimal framework to categorize clinical trials according to risk remains unclear, however. Switzerland is the first European country to adopt a risk-based categorization procedure in January 2014. We assessed how accurately and consistently clinical trials are categorized using two different approaches: an approach using criteria set forth in the new law (concept) or an intuitive approach (ad hoc). METHODS This was a randomized controlled trial with a method-comparison study nested in each arm. We used clinical trial protocols from eight Swiss ethics committees approved between 2010 and 2011. Protocols were randomly assigned to be categorized in one of three risk categories using the concept or the ad hoc approach. Each protocol was independently categorized by the trial's sponsor, a group of experts and the approving ethics committee. The primary outcome was the difference in categorization agreement between the expert group and sponsors across arms. Linear weighted kappa was used to quantify agreements, with the difference between kappas being the primary effect measure. RESULTS We included 142 of 231 protocols in the final analysis (concept = 78; ad hoc = 64). Raw agreement between the expert group and sponsors was 0.74 in the concept and 0.78 in the ad hoc arm. Chance-corrected agreement was higher in the ad hoc (kappa: 0.34 (95% confidence interval = 0.10-0.58)) than in the concept arm (0.27 (0.06-0.50)), but the difference was not significant (p = 0.67). LIMITATIONS The main limitation was the large number of protocols excluded from the analysis mostly because they did not fit with the clinical trial definition of the new law. CONCLUSION A structured risk categorization approach was not better than an ad hoc approach. Laws introducing risk-based approaches should provide guidelines, examples and templates to ensure correct application.