International Law and Land Rights in Africa: The shift from states’ territorial possessions to indigenous peoples’ ownership rights

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of a chapter published in Home, Robert, (ed.) Essays in African Land Law. Pretoria University Press, pp. 47-68. ISBN 9781920538002 Availiable at : http://www.pulp.up.ac.za/cat_2011_15.html

Report on a special investigation of the Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation at Iowa State University, for the period April 1, 2009 through December 15, 2015

Report on a special investigation of the Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation at Iowa State University, for the period April 1, 2009 through December 15, 2015

Portfolios, departments and agencies : tinkering with the machinery-of-government map

Collection of waste batteries in Portugal and Brazil

Selected papers from the 3rd Edition of the International Conference on Wastes: Solutions, Treatments and Opportunities

Financial stocks and political bonds: stock market participation and political behavior in the United States and Britain

This dissertation investigates the effect of stock market participation on political behavior. Some observers claim that financial assets—stocks and mutual funds—have a causal effect on political behavior. The “investor class theory” asserts that as people invest in the stock market their partisan attachments shift rightward. The “asset effect theory” claims that financial investments increase political interest and participation. I examine these claims with longitudinal data from the United States and Great Britain covering a twenty-year period from the early 1980s through the mid-2000’s. I also examine the effect of financial asset ownership on political attitudes in the United States during the 2008 stock market crash. I find no evidence to support the argument that stock market participation has any causal effect on partisanship, participation, or political attitudes.

Law and Literature – a Meaningful Connection

The connection between law and (imaginative) literature can still affect surprisingly. The theme of the present article is to summarize some of the basic features of the movement, which is called „Law and Literature” and to suggest some starting-points with which it is associated. These starting points include, for instance linguistic conception of law, narratology in law or the relations between law and culture. The article offers an overview of the classical approaches connecting law and literature and mentions the reasons for this connection: e.g. cultivation of law and lawyers, improvement of judicial decisions or improvement of legal interpretation. Some of the findings resulting from the joint of law and literature can be used in practice and goes beyond „mere” theory. The article is to be seen as an introduction to the movement of „Law and Literature”, presentation of ideas on which this movement is based and offering the possibility of its further development.

LIST STATUS REPORT FOR ENERGY RELATED LEGISLATION

This gives the status of bills in the General Assembly dealing with energy. It gives the title, the bill itself and where it stands in the process in the Senate and House.

Some features of the law and order model in Spain

This research is based on the hypothesis that law and order model is displacing the procedura justice system in Spain. After a thorough review of the international literature, one can observe that the traditional structure of the penal system does not seem to be capable of containing the new forms of crime. The new penal model assumes that public opinion is alarmed and unwilling to understand rational approaches to crime, so it will be likely to accept measures aimed at calming the fear of crime, through extensive control policies and penal tools to manage uncivil behavior. Objectives and methodology A measuring instrument has been developed to confirm this hypothesis, consisting of ten features that characterize the law and order model. This instrument has been used to identify examples of its ten features in the rules and practices developed at each phase of the Spanish criminal justice system. The analysis has focused specifically on public discourse about delinquency, criminal policy decisions, legislative processes, police routines, judicial dynamics, and prison system practices. Main results The investigation has shown that there are many processes and practices indicating that the law and order model is consolidating itself in the Spanish penal system. Nevertheless this process has a different intensity at each phase, being stronger at the legislative stage and softer in the penitentiary enforcement phase. One of the main conclusions is, therefore, that the designed instrument is ideal for measuring the degree of penetration of the model throughout the system. Some of the most striking results of the reasearch will be presented at the conference. Finally, proposals arise that could prevent the new model is fully seated in our criminal justice system, finding that the trend toward more severe penalties shown already unsustainable.

Chebanov law and Vakar formula in mathematical models of complex systems

Ecological models written in a mathematical language L(M) or model language, with a given style or methodology can be considered as a text. It is possible to apply statistical linguistic laws and the experimental results demonstrate that the behaviour of a mathematical model is the same of any literary text of any natural language. A text has the following characteristics: (a) the variables, its transformed functions and parameters are the lexic units or LUN of ecological models; (b) the syllables are constituted by a LUN, or a chain of them, separated by operating or ordering LUNs; (c) the flow equations are words; and (d) the distribution of words (LUM and CLUN) according to their lengths is based on a Poisson distribution, the Chebanov's law. It is founded on Vakar's formula, that is calculated likewise the linguistic entropy for L(M). We will apply these ideas over practical examples using MARIOLA model. In this paper it will be studied the problem of the lengths of the simple lexic units composed lexic units and words of text models, expressing these lengths in number of the primitive symbols, and syllables. The use of these linguistic laws renders it possible to indicate the degree of information given by an ecological model.

The conversation on political issues on Twitter: an analysis of the participation and frames in the debate on the 'Wert law' and evictions in Spain

The aim of this study is to determine which social agents are involved in the political debate on Twitter and whether the interpretive hegemony of actors that have traditionally been the most prominent is tempered by the challenge of framing shared with audiences. The relationship between the interpretations expressed and the profiles of participants is analyzed in comparison with the frames used by mainstream media. The chosen methodology combines content analysis and discourse analysis techniques on a sample of 1,504 relevant tweets posted on two political issues –the approval of the education law LOMCE and the evictions caused by the crisis, which have also been studied in the front pages of four leading newspapers in Spain. The results show a correlation between political issue singularities, frames and the type of discussion depending on the participants.

Surveillance, criminal law and sovereighty

Seeking better understanding of the relationship between criminal law and surveillance demands investigating the evolving nature of sovereignty in an era of transnational digital information flows. While territorial boundaries determine the limits of police investigative and surveillance powers under the criminal law, several recent United States (US) examples demonstrate how new forms of extraterritorial surveillance that enable police to access online communications by foreign citizens and digital information stored in offshore locations are authorized by US courts. This discussion outlines how the processes of mutual legal assistance that ordinarily govern the search, seizure and transfer of digital evidence from one jurisdiction to another are increasingly considered to undermine police efficiency, even though they protect the due process rights afforded to crime suspects under established principles of sovereignty (Palmer and Warren 2013).

Stock return predictability and determinants of predictability and profits

We examine stock return predictability for India and find strong evidence of sectoral return predictability over market return predictability. We show that mean-variance investors make statistically significant and economically meaningful profits by tracking financial ratios. For the first time in this literature, we examine the determinants of time-varying predictability and mean-variance profits. We show that both expected and unexpected shocks emanating from most financial ratios explain sectoral return predictability and profits. These are fresh contributions to the understanding of asset pricing.