Legislation-Generated Fuzziness

2021 ◽  
pp. 198-222
Author(s):  
Margit Cohn
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Sole Source ◽  
System State ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Executive Orders ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Executive Authority ◽  
The Us ◽  
Executive Agencies ◽  
The Uk

Under classic accounts, a single, overarching and all-inclusive legislative mandate or organic statute grants executive agencies the authority to act in a specified field of action, and delineates the contours of their action by setting limits and conditions. However, as any practitioner can attest, the legislative mandate, when it exists, is never the sole source of executive authority, and is always supported by other legal rules. There will usually be other legal rules that have no direct link to the legislative mandate, when it exists: other statutes, executive orders, and other unilateral measures, and, in a Federal system, state law, when and as far as it pertains to any aspect of a Federal arrangement. The chapter analyses two patterns of patchwork legislation, piling-up and dispersion. Using examples from the UK and the US in the fields of emergency and air pollution law, the chapter claims that the existence of multiple rules fuzzies-up the law. Varying in intensity and form, patchwork law commonly features in these four examples of domestic authorizations to act under, and beyond, formal law.

THE EVOLUTION OF SHAREHOLDER AND CREDITOR PROTECTION IN AUSTRALIA: AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

2012 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Anderson ◽  
Michelle Welsh ◽  
Ian Ramsay ◽  
Peter Gahan
Keyword(s):  
Creditor Protection ◽  
Similar Data ◽  
Upward Trend ◽  
International Debate ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Shareholder Protection ◽  
Business Regulation ◽  
Legal Origins ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Uk

AbstractThis article is part of a larger international investigation of the effects of a country's legal origins on the style of business regulation. We employ an innovative ‘leximetric’ methodology to numerically code the protective strength of Australian corporate law for both shareholder and creditor protection for the period 1970 to 2010. This leximetric methodology has been used in a prominent international debate concerning the development of legal rules and the effects of different styles of regulation on a range of economic outcomes—the legal origins debate. Drawing on similar data compiled by Armour, Deakin, Lele and Siems in five other countries (France, Germany, India, the UK and the US) for the period 1970 to 2005, we compare changes in the level of protection afforded to Australian shareholders and creditors with developments in other countries. Our analysis finds that in Australia there was a sustained upward trend in shareholder protection, but not in the case of creditor protection. Compared to the five other countries, the level of protection afforded to shareholders under Australian law was relatively high, and this was the case for the level of protection afforded to creditors as well. We also examine the extent of convergence and divergence in shareholder and creditor protection among the countries in the study. We find persistent divergence in shareholder protection, with the extent of divergence in 2005 similar to that in 1970. For creditor protection, we find increasing divergence among the countries over the period of study. Our findings are not supportive of legal origins theory.

scholarly journals The Use of Executive Orders and Proclamations to Create Immigration Policy: Trump in Historical Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Waslin
Keyword(s):  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Executive Summary ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Executive Orders ◽  
Executive Authority ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Immigration

Executive Summary This article examines presidential immigration policy making through executive orders (EOs) and proclamations. Donald Trump’s overall volume of EOs has been remarkably similar to that of other presidents, while his number of proclamations has been relatively high. His immigration-related EOs and proclamations, however, diverge from those of his predecessors in several ways. Of the 56 immigration-related EOs and 64 proclamations issued since 1945, Trump has issued 10 and nine, respectively. Overall, about 1 percent of all EOs and proclamations during this period have been immigration related, compared to 8 percent of Trump’s EOs and 2.4 percent of Trump’s proclamations. In a sharp departure from previous presidents, a greater share of his EOs and proclamations have been substantive policy-making documents intended to restrict admissions of legal immigrants and increase enforcement along the border and in the interior of the United States. This article explores Trump’s unorthodox use of executive tools to make immigration policy, circumventing Congress and even members of his own administration. It recommends that: Congress should hold oversight hearings and should consider revoking or modifying EOs and proclamations that have been issued pursuant to the authority provided to the president by Congress, as opposed to those based on the executive’s constitutional authority. Advocacy organizations should continue to challenge the president’s executive actions, the insufficient process and consultation leading to them, their statutory or constitutional justification, and their impact. Congress should take an inventory of the immigration authorities it has delegated, both explicitly and implicitly, to the executive branch and determine when this authority can and should be limited. Congress should pass legislation to update and reform the US immigration system, and thus clarify its intentions regarding US immigration law, policy, and executive authority in this area.

Legal Regulation of Harassment on the Ground of Age: Lessons from America?

2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
Sam Middlemiss
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Insight Into

While numerous articles have now been written on the age regulations 1 they tend to concentrate on the broad detail of the Regulations and their likely impact in the United Kingdom, whereas this article, while also involving analysis of the legal rules, concentrates on one aspect of the Regulations namely, age harassment. It will also involve consideration of the equivalent law in the United States because they have a much more mature set of legal rules dealing with this type of activity. The difficulty of making such a comparison is that the legal rules in the two jurisdictions are very different and the UK version is much more favourable than its US counterpart. Nevertheless, it is this writer’s view that identifying the various problems that have arisen in the US with implementing their age legislation in respect of age harassment over almost forty years 2 will prove instructive and valuable to those persons required to comply with the new law in the UK and offer valuable insight into the legal treatment of this issue.

scholarly journals Piercing the corporate veil in various jurisdictions – Principled or unprincipled?

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-53
Author(s):  
Badar Mohammed Almeajel Alanazi
Keyword(s):  
Limited Liability ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Piercing The Corporate Veil ◽  
The Uk ◽  
A Company ◽  
Fair Balance

The principle of limited liability of a company has been uniformly adopted by developed countries. In order to ensure a fair balance, the courts agree on occasion to ‘pierce’ or ‘lift’ the corporate veil, which involves imposing liability on the mother company for actions of its subsidiary or individual shareholders, directors, and other involved persons for actions of the company. In this regard, there have been several studies arguing the legal issues associated with the limited liability of a company and piercing the corporate veil such as Schall (2016) and Michoud (2019). This paper compares current veil-piercing practices in three jurisdictions: the UK, the US, and Australia in order to outline the advantages and limitations of the approaches taken by the courts in each country as well as to identify best practices in terms of veil piercing. For that purpose, an analytical approach to the examination of the relevant legal rules, principles, and court cases has been adopted in undertaking the present paper. The paper comes up with a number of specific suggestions and recommendations for improving the regulatory role in regard to the subject of piercing of the corporate veil.

Case Studies

2021 ◽  
pp. 167-197
Author(s):  
Margit Cohn
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
Executive Orders ◽  
Government Action ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
National Emergency ◽  
Domestic Law

The chapter offers general introductions to the legal ordering of two fields—national emergency and air pollution. In addition to providing general backgrounds for those analyses, the introductions present initial accounts on the complexity of both bodies of law in two legal systems, thereby offering four glimpses of the ways fuzziness can, and does, develop and flourish in law. These overviews may also be useful to those who study these fields. Commentaries on specified areas of law often tend to direct their attention to a small number of measures—those that could be considered the ‘legislative mandates’ under the ideal-type vision of regulation—but, true to one of the themes of this book, attention should also be cast elsewhere. The overviews presented here span the legal rules directly targeting the regulation of these two fields of government action, originating from customary international law; international law treaties and documents; EU law, as long as applicable; domestic law; and unilateral measures such as orders in council and executive orders.

Executive-Generated Fuzziness

2021 ◽  
pp. 223-252
Author(s):  
Margit Cohn
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Government Failure ◽  
Application Of Law ◽  
The Us ◽  
Executive Action ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Uk

This chapter is dedicated to analyses of examples of executive-generated fuzziness in the context of implementation. It offers examples of the ways executives can create further nodes of fuzziness, by crafting the implementation of the law, be it fuzzy or relatively clear, in ways that further fuzzy-up the law. Under the classical vision of executive action, implementation and enforcement are straightforward, easily apprehended processes that follow the legislative mandate and are applied by authorized regulators. The well-developed body of research on the gap between law-on-the-books and law-in-action overviewed in this chapter more than challenges this vision. Either as proof of government failure, or, opposingly, as an indication of well-thought-out responsive action aimed to achieve optimal results, all action located in this gap is fuzzy. Using examples from the UK and the US in the fields of emergency and air pollution law, I discuss three practices that challenge the classical understanding of the nature of implementation: selective enforcement; creative compliance; and the non-application of law ('pastiche law'). The focus here is, then, on the behaviour of the executive and the ways it applies a power granted to it in ways that frustrate the law without moving into the sphere of illegality.

‘To see oursels as ithers see us’: Reflections on Scottish Independence from the United States

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Hague ◽  
Alan Mackie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Scottish Diaspora

The United States media have given rather little attention to the question of the Scottish referendum despite important economic, political and military links between the US and the UK/Scotland. For some in the US a ‘no’ vote would be greeted with relief given these ties: for others, a ‘yes’ vote would be acclaimed as an underdog escaping England's imperium, a narrative clearly echoing America's own founding story. This article explores commentary in the US press and media as well as reporting evidence from on-going interviews with the Scottish diaspora in the US. It concludes that there is as complex a picture of the 2014 referendum in the United States as there is in Scotland.

Identity Politics and Migration

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Vytis Čiubrinskas
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Host Country ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
The Us ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Uk ◽  
A Current ◽  
Respective Host

The Centre of Social Anthropology (CSA) at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Kaunas has coordinated projects on this, including a current project on 'Retention of Lithuanian Identity under Conditions of Europeanisation and Globalisation: Patterns of Lithuanian-ness in Response to Identity Politics in Ireland, Norway, Spain, the UK and the US'. This has been designed as a multidisciplinary project. The actual expressions of identity politics of migrant, 'diasporic' or displaced identity of Lithuanian immigrants in their respective host country are being examined alongside with the national identity politics of those countries.

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