um iclr article cited in the financial times September 14, 2016
Posted by Bradley in : um , add a commentAn article in the FT by Hudson Lockett, China extends tariff on EU potato starch imports refers to an article published in our International and Comparative Law Review (which is about the celebrate its 25th anniversary) by Adam Soliman.
juncker on the state of the eu September 14, 2016
Posted by Bradley in : eu , add a commentThe EU’s landing page for the State of the Union 2016 seems pretty upbeat:
President Juncker today addressed the European Parliament in his annual State of the European Union speech. He highlighted: Europe must invest strongly in its youth, jobseekers, and start-ups. An ambitious Investment Plan for Africa — a lifeline for those who might risk dangerous journeys for a better life. We propose free wireless for every European village and city by 2020. Journalists, publishers and authors should be paid fairly for their work, wherever it’s made and shared. We will defend our borders with the new European Border and Coast Guard.
The speech itself begins with some entirely appropriate gloom:
I stood here a year ago and I told you that the State of our Union was not good. I told you that there is not enough Europe in this Union. And that there is not enough Union in this Union. I am not going to stand here today and tell you that everything is now fine. It is not. Let us all be very honest in our diagnosis. Our European Union is, at least in part, in an existential crisis…we should admit that we have many unresolved problems in Europe. There can be no doubt about this. From high unemployment and social inequality, to mountains of public debt, to the huge challenge of integrating refugees, to the very real threats to our security at home and abroad — every one of Europe’s Member States has been affected by the continuing crises of our times. We are even faced with the unhappy prospect of a member leaving our ranks
There’s a lot of uplifting material in the speech too, however, about European values (like fairness and solidarity). The “highlights” referred to above are in there but appear in a very different way from the list on the landing page, because they are bound up and embedded in this discussion of EU values. It’s a shame UK citizens weren’t given something like this speech to read as they prepared to vote in the referendum in June.
jacques delors on the future of the eu September 12, 2016
Posted by Bradley in : eu , add a commentHere is the full article, in which Delors endorses a Common statement by 177 European and national Civil Society Organisations and Trade Unions, and here is a Delors highlight:
In this time of crisis for European identity, it is essential for the EU to show that it is not paralysed but ready to act as a leading force in the many challenges we face: the fight against climate change, increasing inequality, the need to ensure sustainable and inclusive development, promoting human rights and ensuring that nobody is left behind.
Here’s the challenge set out in the Common Statement (which argues for working for better, rather than less, Europe):
We must all –leaders,media and individuals — actively and at every opportunity speak out and act against division, marginalisation of different groups in society and those that play on fears for their own political ends.
cambridge international symposium on economic crime (2016) – 2 September 12, 2016
Posted by Bradley in : financial regulation , add a commentLots of discussions of misconduct last week, with perspectives from around the world. News stories include: proposals to make employers responsible for preventing money-laundering, false accounting and fraud in the UK (Jeremy Wright speech here), the SFO’s emphasis on genuine co-operation when considering deferred prosecution agreements, the need for global co-operation on economic crime, and arguments for new approaches to economic crime due to the failure of existing approaches.
cambridge international symposium on economic crime (2016) September 1, 2016
Posted by Bradley in : events , add a commentI went to the symposium last year, and I am going back next week. This year’s symposium title is “Economic Crime – where does the buck stop? Who is responsible – facilitators, controllers and or their advisers?” and I am on a panel on the question “What are the proper responsibilities of management for the wrongs of those they supervise?”. The full programme is here.
why the uk parliament should exercise scrutiny over the brexit process August 30, 2016
Posted by Bradley in : brexit , add a commentFrom the House of Lords European Union Committee:
The success or failure of the Government’s negotiation of the withdrawal from, and new relationship with, the EU will have profound and lasting implications for the United Kingdom. At stake are not only the economic prosperity of the nation, but our international standing and influence, our internal security, and the rights of the millions of EU citizens resident in the UK, and the more than one million UK citizens who live in EU Member States. The implications for the other 27 EU Member States, which have a shared interest in all these areas, are almost equally profound.
The Government’s renegotiation of the terms of the UK’s EU membership in late 2015 and early 2016, which led to the agreement of a ‘New Settlement’ by the European Council on 19 February 2016, was primarily an exercise of executive discretion, undertaken on the basis that the results would be put to the electorate. While we expressed a measure of disappointment at the level of engagement with Parliament in the course of the renegotiation, we understood the Government’s reluctance to offer a running commentary.
The forthcoming negotiations are both immeasurably more important and complex, and fundamentally different in nature. It is inconceivable that they should be conducted without effective parliamentary oversight. Indeed, in a parliamentary democracy we believe it is the right and duty of Parliament to ensure that the negotiations are scrutinised effectively at every stage.
sec announces over $100 million in whistleblower awards August 30, 2016
Posted by Bradley in : financial regulation, Uncategorized , add a comment
And today the SEC announced its second largest award of $22 million.
financial stability, regulation and politics August 25, 2016
Posted by Bradley in : financial regulation , add a commentI will be talking about my current draft of my financial stability paper at the University of Miami Law School next Wednesday lunchtime (August 31, 12.30-2pm).
licci v lebanese canadian bank: 2nd circuit follows its decision in kiobel that there is no corporate liability for alien tort statute claims August 24, 2016
Posted by Bradley in : mgl , add a commentFrom the judgment in Licci et al. v. Lebanese Canadian Bank, SAL:
We conclude that Plaintiffs’ complaint alleges conduct by LCB that touched and concerned the United States, and that the same conduct, upon preliminary examination, states a claim for aiding and abetting Hezbollah’ violation of the law of nations, with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritoriality. ccordingly, Plaintiffs have surpassed the jurisdictional hurdle set forth in Kiobel II, 133 S. Ct. at 1669… Nevertheless, Kiobel I forecloses Plaintiffs’ claims against LCB. In Kiobel I, we established that the law of nations, while imposing civil liability on individuals for torts that qualify under the ATS, immunizes corporations from liability. Kiobel I, 621 F.3d at 120. Specifically, Kiobel I held that “insofar as plaintiffs bring claims under the ATS against corporations, plaintiffs fail to allege violations of the law of nations, and plaintiffs’ claims fall outside the limited jurisdiction provided by the ATS….. Neither party disputes that LCB is a corporation. Accordingly, we cannot exercise subject matter jurisdiction over Plaintiffs’ ATS claims pursuant to that statute.”
Memo to file: incorporate before aiding and abetting such a tort. A footnote in the judgment discussing the Court’s earlier decision not to reconsider Kiobel I (on the basis that cases excluded by the Supreme Court’s Kiobel II decision would be “largely co-extensive” with the cases excluded under this no corporate liability approach) notes:
This case, in which defendants are accused of domestic acts that aided and abetted torts committed abroad, may illustrate a category of cases that surpass Kiobel II’s extraterritoriality inquiry but do not survive Kiobel I’s bar on corporate liability. At present, how large a class of cases that may be is difficult to know.
why did the link to “your voice in europe” disappear from the eu commission’s front page? August 24, 2016
Posted by Bradley in : consultation , add a commentThe EU Commission’s front page changes from time to time, and recently there was one change I dislike: there used to be a link right on the front page to a page with the title Your Voice in Europe with links to open consultations being carried out by the Commission. I don’t think all of the Commission’s consultations in fact appeared on this page. I mostly pay attention to what is going on in financial regulation, but every now and then I would come across a consultation that didn’t seem to be shown on the Your Voice in Europe page or at least showed up there after it was initiated. Anyway, the page is still there, but it isn’t linked to directly from the front page. There is a link for Commission at Work which shows a list of “popular links” which include a link to the Your Voice in Europe page, as well as to a separate Contribute to EU Law-Making page (which has links to other pages including the Your Voice in Europe page), a page on Citizens Initiatives.
Obviously business stakeholders and others who are highly motivated will find out what consultations are relevant to their interests – for them it doesn’t really matter if you have to search around a bit to find out what is going on. But for others it does matter. The Commission should be doing more to figure out how to encourage citizens to participate in the policy process. A recent article (Epstein, Dmitry and Leshed, Gilly (2016) “The Magic Sauce: Practices of Facilitation in Online Policy Deliberation,” Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 1, Article 4. Available at: http://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol12/iss1/art4) states:
Online policy deliberation spaces have higher barriers to entry for the public than the popular discourse would like us to believe… Interfacing with bureaucratic policymaking institutions, policy deliberation is constrained by structures, regulations, procedures, practices, and processes that require a very particular kind of participatory literacy. Effective participation in policy deliberations requires a certain level of subject matter expertise as well as reason-giving and, where possible, evidence-based substantiation of one’s opinions on specific issues… Novice participants, however, often default to voting-like behaviors of registering their preferences or unsubstantiated sentiment expression. Lacking depth and reasoning, mass online civic participation (e.g., online petitions) is often viewed as disappointing in its usefulness to decision-makers.”
For the authors facilitation by moderators is key. But figuring out how to get citizens engaged in general in the policy development process is also important.