scholarly journals The Zeroing Issue: a critical analysis of Softwood V

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHAD P. BOWN ◽  
ALAN O. SYKES

AbstractThis paper addresses the issues that came before the Appellate Body in the Softwood V dispute, concerning an affirmative antidumping determination by the US Department of Commerce. The paper addresses both the original Appellate Body opinion in the dispute, and the later opinion reviewing the compliance panel findings. We focus primarily on the ‘zeroing’ issue in ‘transaction-to-transaction (T–T)’ calculations of dumping, and briefly on two other cost-allocation issues. In general, we are ambivalent about the Appellate Body's approach to the zeroing issue. On the one hand, zeroing inflates dumping margins without any sound economic rationale for doing so. On the other hand, zeroing has been a standard administrative practice for many years and the ADA does not clearly prohibit it. The Appellate Body's legal analysis of the matter in T–T cases, in particular, rests on shaky premises. We also consider the wisdom of addressing the zeroing issue in piecemeal fashion through what has proven to be a lengthy sequence of narrow decisions.

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-502
Author(s):  
Prakhar Bhardwaj

Abstract Article 19.1 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding provides that if a measure is found to be inconsistent with a WTO Agreement, the Panel or Appellate Body ‘shall recommend that the Member concerned bring the measure into conformity with the agreement’. However, Panels find themselves in a difficult position when the contested measure has expired during the course of proceedings. Since, on the one hand, the measure which would have ordinarily been recommended to be withdrawn is no longer in existence, but on the other hand, they are under an obligation to issue a recommendation as per Article 19.1. Various rationales of the Panels and the Appellate Body for providing recommendations for expired measures (‘EMRs’) have been inconsistent, ad-hoc and even contradictory. Given the different array of approaches adopted, there is no coherent and integrated theory which can be formulated which tells us when and why EMRs should be provided under Article 19.1. This article seeks to bridge this gap. The article also provides a critical analysis of the questionable recommendations issued by the Panel in India – Import of Iron and Steel Products and provides a more coherent framework to guide Panels’ recommendations in relation to expired measures.


Author(s):  
Shen Wei

Abstract Inconsistency has been said to be one of the most severe shortcomings the existing investor–State dispute settlement (the ISDS) system possesses. Inconsistency, if not cured, is likely to affect the legitimacy of the ISDS. Partly in response to the claims of inconsistency and illegitimacy of the ISDS, the EU has proposed to have a permanent investment court to replace the ISDS while the US proposed to have an appellate body for the current ISDS along with a large camp of undecided states having no firm position on the ISDS reform. China, on the other hand, has not issued an official response to the concept of a permanent investment court, partially because of its less active role in the use of the existing ISDS. More recent years have witnessed China’s increasing involvement in ISDS cases. The purpose of this article is to review these China BIT-related ISDS cases, in particular, the awards on jurisdiction, and the tribunals’ varying techniques in interpreting the ISDS clauses in China’s BITs with a focus on the jurisprudential analyses of these cases and the tribunals’ treaty interpretive techniques. Not surprisingly, the interpretative tendency has been quite uniform. In brief, the tribunals have tended to be more expansive when they were called upon to determine the jurisdictional issues. Although this article is largely jurisprudential, a sense of the tribunals’ arbitral techniques may help shape some foundational underpinnings for China’s policy response to the proposals to reform the ISDS system made by the EU, the US, and others.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 103-119
Author(s):  
Alireza Khormaee ◽  
Rayeheh Sattarinezhad

Different representations of social actions create distinct types of discourses. Applying van Leeuwen’s 'Social Actions' framework (2008), the present study critically analyzes the power relations between the main characters of Radi’s dramas From behind the Windows and Hamlet with Season Salad. The objective of our study is to account for the differences between the discourse of the dominant and the discourse of the dominated. In order to elucidate such differences we count and analyze the characters’ social (re)actions and, in turn, identify four types of contrasts: cognitive vs. affective and perceptive reactions; material vs. semiotic actions; transactive vs. non-transactive actions; interactive vs. instrumental actions. Two opposing discourses emerge from these contrasts. On the one hand, the dominant characters mostly react cognitively and their actions are often semiotic, transactive, and interactive. On the other hand, the dominated characters’ reactions are often affective and perceptive, while most of their actions are material, non-transactive, and instrumental. As the results show, the author’s linguistic choices underscore the power relations between the dominant and the dominated characters. Building upon the fact that our analysis sheds light on the underlying ideologies and intentions of the author, we tentatively conclude that despite its being predominantly employed in the analysis of political discourses, van Leeuwen’s framework also proves effective in the critical analysis of literary works.


2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Bréchon ◽  
Roland J. Campiche

The principal explanations of contemporary religious change face two main difficulties. On the one hand, they often fail to express the complexity of the ongoing evolution, because they are too focused on institutional religion, e.g. secularization. On the other hand, some of them favour fashionable themes (the growth of individualism, the privatization of religion) and skirt the societal impact of religion. The idea of dualism allows a combined approach to the process of religious de-institutionalization and the new patterns of its regulation. The authors discuss this theory on the basis of data relating to Switzerland, France and other Western European countries (EVS, ISSP). In spite of the difficulty of finding relevant indicators that allow proper comparison, the results are promising. They invite further critical analysis of current definitions. The theory of dualism allows us to reopen the debate on religious change.


1984 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen J. Sirianni

Durkheim's Division of Labour in Society is re-evaluated in terms of its profound theoretical tensions. On the one hand, his analysis of an emergent organic solidarity assigns a central place to the values of individuality and justice, and articulates a critical methodology for determining their progressive realization. Justice becomes the overriding requirement of social evolution, and the condition for structural integration and normative legitimation. On the other hand, various empirical claims, as well as naturalistic and functionalist assumptions, allow for an overly easy, and quite un-Durkheimian, resolution of the problems posed by justice and individuality in a highly stratified division of labour. An attempt is made to understand how these profound tensions are sustained theoretically, and how Durkheim's own conception of the division of labour as socially interactive and morally constitutive can be rescued for a critical analysis committed to democratic and egalitarian reform.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-62
Author(s):  
E. S. Kryukova ◽  
V. D. Ruzanova

In the article on the basis of a critical analysis of the existing positions in the doctrine the concept of a biobank as an object of rights was formulated. At the same time, it is proposed to distinguish between the organizations in charge of biobanks and the collections themselves. It was concluded that biobank is a complex object, which is differentiated unity, since its elements, on the one hand, are autonomous, but on the other hand, are interconnected and interdependent. It is emphasized that the formation of a single legal regime of biobanks is complicated by the substantive heterogeneity of this object and the diversity of its elements. Taking into account the experience of European States in this field of legal regulation and scientific views, the idea of publishing as a basic special law on biobanks, which should establish their legal regime as an object of rights and rules for organizations under the jurisdiction of biobanks, was supported. The need for organizations working with biobanks to provide unprecedented protection is proven. The structure of the legal regime of biobank has been determined and as its most important component a group of rules on obtaining the consent of the holder for the further use of biobanks and data derived from them has been identified. The feasibility of introducing more diverse forms of consent to the circulation of the contents of biobanks is justified.


2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 1221-1225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Nespolo

Weber indices were introduced to provide a unique expression of a lattice direction with respect to the four-axis setting used for hexagonal and rhombohedral crystals. They are in general fractional indices, even in the case of a primitive hexagonal unit cell, but they are often carelessly reduced to integer values. This corresponds, on the one hand, to taking as direction indices the nodes of a lattice further from the origin and, on the other hand, to adopting a hybrid indexing between direct and reciprocal space. A critical analysis of the drawbacks of Weber indices is presented, which justifies the reluctance of crystallographers to adopt them, despite a more widespread use in fields like electron microscopy and metal science.


Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Shamil Shovkhalov ◽  
Hussein Idrisov

The article is devoted to the analysis of cryptocurrency as a new phenomenon in the modern global economic processes and legal institutions. The relevance of the study is predetermined by the very specifics of such a phenomenon as cryptocurrency consisting of a distributed ledger technology, which determines the peculiarities of issuing, storing and performing operations with cryptocurrency. Moreover, the cryptocurrency turnover directly correlates with the national legislation of individual countries, which are the subject of domestic regulation with currency, tax legislation and legislation on the securities market. Sometimes, in this regard, there is a clash of public interests and the interests of entities involved in the circulation of cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency, as an unconventional, trendy phenomenon of the recent times, has become the object of research and discussions on all the world platforms, starting with academia, continuing with the business community and ending with state institutions. There are many reasons for explaining such interest and they can all be reduced to two main blocks: the advantages and the disadvantages of cryptocurrency circulation. The problem of cryptocurrency turnover, on the one hand, is that until now none of the national economies have regulated the cost-effective mechanism for the cryptocurrency turnover and, on the other hand, the leading countries have not yet set up an effective system of legal regulation of cryptocurrency. Many countries are in the active process of working to adequately address the above problem. Separately, it is worth highlighting the interest of Muslim countries in this issue, where discussions are still underway about the permissibility of cryptocurrency in Islamic law. As for the Russian realities in the context of the issue under study, the Federal Law “On Digital Financial Assets, Digital Currency and on Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation“, which came into effect on 1 January 2021, was supposed to streamline relations of subjects including cryptocurrencies, but, according to the experts in this field, this law is far from impeccable and this sphere of relations cannot be quickly and effectively regulated. This article describes the characteristics of cryptocurrency, its essence, disadvantages and advantages as an object of economic and civil law relations. The purpose of the research is to analyze the economic and legal phenomenon of cryptocurrency, as well as its characteristics in the Muslim legal system. The complexity of the work should be emphasized as a novelty. Based on the designated goal and the logic of construction, the study consists of three interrelated parts. The first part outlines the characteristics of cryptocurrency as an economic category, the second part is devoted to its legal analysis and the last part of the study demonstrates the Islamic perception (Sharia analysis) of this phenomenon. As a conclusion on the scientific research, we will highlight the following provisions. First, economically, nowadays, cryptocurrency is a rather controversial financial instrument: on the one hand, it has great investment attractiveness, but on the other hand, it is subject to great volatility and seems to be a rather risky financial asset. Secondly, from a legal standpoint, cryptocurrencies have not yet found their consistent consolidation and further legal regulation in the Russian legislation. It seems that the legal regulation of this institution will systematically develop depending on what application and results of its turnover the cryptocurrency will have in the future. Finally, the Islamic interpretation of the cryptocurrency phenomenon boils down to the absence of a single, consistent explanation of it from the perspective of Islam and Sharia as an object of permissibility (or prohibition) of transactions with it. It is necessary to further analyze the practice of using cryptocurrency and its impact on the economy and legal institutions in order to make a final decision on its permissibility or prohibition in correlation with the types of activity and the upcoming consequences associated with it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 1561-1569
Author(s):  
Muhammad Ijaz Latif ◽  
Muhammad Tayyab Zia

Indian Ocean, along with its chokepoints and Sea Lanes of Communications, is considered to be the significant strategic maritime arena. The area has remained under the influence of the US. India, being a largest littoral state of the said ocean, has a strong say here. Sino- Pakistan strategic collaboration and convergence over the construction of Gwadar and CPEC would not only serve the commercial interests of both of the states, rather it would also strengthen their strategic and defense position in the region. On the Beijing’s part, China would, to a considerable extent, neutralize its “Malacca Dilemma”. And on Islamabad’s part, it would serve to be a deterrent to any aggressive design of her arch rival India. It is because on the one hand it would enhance the strategic depth of Pakistan, and on the other hand integrity of Pakistan would be indispensible for China. And any attempt to destabilize Pakistan could provoke China, so Pakistan’s integrity would be sine qua non for China.


2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 912-929 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristian Pérez-Muñoz

Is mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients morally justifiable? This article argues that none of the three justifications typically offered in support of drug testing—that is, paternalist, contractualist, and harm-based justifications—are normatively persuasive. On the one hand, I claim that these normative justifications do not warrant the violation of welfare recipients’ privacy. That is, I argue that they fail to make the case that the benefits of drug testing outweigh its costs in terms of welfare recipients’ privacy. On the other hand, I argue that even if we accept any of these normative justifications for drug testing, current background conditions in the US make the implementation of this policy unfair in practice. First, the enforcement of drug testing can strengthen existing injustices. Second, under current circumstances, drug testing policies are likely to engender moral obligations which cannot be fulfilled.


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