Legal Mechanisms for Protection of the Rights of Participants in Contractual and Non-Contractual Legal Relations

The aim of this study is a comprehensive analysis of legal mechanisms to protect the rights of participants in contractual and non-contractual relations based on the experience of foreign countries, namely: Australia, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Germany, Portugal, Turkey, France, and Switzerland. This research involved the following methods: sociological analysis, system-structural and comparative methods, logical-semantic and formal-logical methods, as well as the dialectical method. Our study resulted in identification of the main characteristics and features of legal mechanisms to protect the rights of participants in contractual and non-contractual relations of each of the studied countries. As a result, we drew conclusions about the need to update the regulatory framework of most of the said countries. The further use of mechanisms for legal protection of the rights of participants in contractual and non-contractual relations will help ensure their real and effective protection.

COLLISION REGULATION OF INTERNATIONAL MIXED TRANSPORTATION

The article is devoted to the study of certain aspects and features of collision regulation of contractual relations in the field of international mixed cargo transportation. The lack of a clear and unified approach in defining the conflict rules to be applied to contractual relations of mixed transport in international traffic creates uncertainty, instability of these relations, and, at the same time, in no way contribute to the development of multimodalism. The main collision principles applied to the contracts of cargo transportation from one state to the territory of another, and the source of their consolidation, as well as the possibility of their application to the agreements of international mixed transportation. Collision factors have been identified, as well as grounds for limiting the application of such bindings as established by international treaties and conventions. It is concluded that it is necessary to adopt a unified and binding international document that would determine the unified regime of collision settlement of international agreements of mixed carriage. It focuses on the peculiarities and rules of determination of the body authorized to resolve the dispute in this category, as well as the rights that this body should use in resolving the dispute, separately for the member states of the European Union and Ukraine, in particular. The author concludes that for the studied legal relations the following 3 groups of conflict bindings can be distinguished: a) general conflict principles; b) the set of collision bindings is defined by unimodal transport conventions; c) binding formulas used depending on the transport used.

Increasing standardization for smart(er) contracts

Legal standardization traditionally played an important role in contractual relations. With technological and commercial development and expansion of trade from the individual and collective levels to internationalization, it became necessary to create a set of standards to keep pace with this development and facilitate the contractual process. Although smart contracts are considered a leap in the contractual relationship, it cannot be overlooked that these contracts share many characteristics with traditional contracts. To gain a greater position in the global market, smart contracts also need to be well functioning and efficient. In this context, the article tackles the phenomenon of legal standardization and identifies the main weaknesses of smart contracts—to answer two crucial questions: how can these contracts be smarter, and how should we employ standardization to ensure their efficiency?

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS REGARDING THE QUALITY AND SUPERVISION OF AUDIT DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

This article addresses the issues faced by auditors, audit firms, and the business environment in the country and abroad, during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, such as remote work and the issue of communication. At the same time, the author describes the solutions offered by the institutions of different states to overcome this crisis. The problems of the audit and control activity of the banking institutions were addressed, as well as the implementation of some software that would allow performing audit remotely. Solutions for facilitating the lending of entities during this period have also been described. Separately, the issue of contractual relations during the pandemic period was addressed. Using different research methods and analyzing the opinions of different auditors and economists, the author was able to present his own conclusions and recommendations in order to overcome this crisis by both audit firms and state institutions.

Uncertain Credit: Melville's Affective Economies

<p>Despite taking place in putatively “lawless” settings, Melville’s maritime fiction maps complex economies of obligation: characters draw up contracts, extend credit, and broker promissory exchanges for goods among themselves, in spite of the absence of any state or legal authority which would enforce their agreements and thereby guarantee the speculative values they call into being. Instead of being underwritten by the law, these contractual relations are characterised by their affective conditions of possibility. In these works, transacting business with strangers in mobile and itinerant spaces requires characters to develop ways of reading the character and creditworthiness of others in order to suppress suspicion and install confidence in its place. Taking “Benito Cereno” (1855) and The Confidence-Man (1857) as its key texts, this thesis tracks these economies of obligation as they emerge in and around Melville’s maritime fictions, which solicit the credit and trust of their readers while continually revising and renegotiating the terms on which that credit is to be extended. By interpolating spurious or broken contracts between characters into the structure of their narratives, these texts foreground the unstable or even illegible terms of the contract which literary texts make with their readers.</p>

Uncertain Credit: Melville's Affective Economies

<p>Despite taking place in putatively “lawless” settings, Melville’s maritime fiction maps complex economies of obligation: characters draw up contracts, extend credit, and broker promissory exchanges for goods among themselves, in spite of the absence of any state or legal authority which would enforce their agreements and thereby guarantee the speculative values they call into being. Instead of being underwritten by the law, these contractual relations are characterised by their affective conditions of possibility. In these works, transacting business with strangers in mobile and itinerant spaces requires characters to develop ways of reading the character and creditworthiness of others in order to suppress suspicion and install confidence in its place. Taking “Benito Cereno” (1855) and The Confidence-Man (1857) as its key texts, this thesis tracks these economies of obligation as they emerge in and around Melville’s maritime fictions, which solicit the credit and trust of their readers while continually revising and renegotiating the terms on which that credit is to be extended. By interpolating spurious or broken contracts between characters into the structure of their narratives, these texts foreground the unstable or even illegible terms of the contract which literary texts make with their readers.</p>

THE TENSION BETWEEN THE REAL AND THE PAPER DEAL CONCERNING “NO ORAL MODIFICATION” CLAUSES

This article proposes a new model for the regulation of no oral modification (NOM) clauses. First, the article seeks to offer a deeper understanding of the wishes of the parties in contracts from the perspective of parties' autonomy, distinguishing between intentions focused on the legal relationships and those focused on extra-contractual relations. Second, we explain how enforcement of NOM clauses may influence the parties' relations. Third, the article includes an economic analysis clarifying the roles of efficiency and institutional considerations in the NOM phenomenon. Applying the results of our analysis, we propose a comprehensive model for regulating NOM clauses. The key innovation of the model is context-dependent regulation differentiating among sophisticated and equally powerful parties, unsophisticated parties of equal power, and relationships with power disparities. Our model also offers an auxiliary test to help distinguish between parties' legal relationships and their extra-contractual relations.

Adaptation, adjudication, and private ordering: Contractual Relations through the Williamson Lens

Williamson's legacy will be permanently, and deservedly, linked with the theory of the firm. As important, however, is his contribution to our understanding of contracting. My aim here is to describe Williamson's conception of contracting, how it differs from other approaches to contracting, and some implications of that approach for contract design and enforcement. I argue that Williamson's ‘process orientation’ – in which the main dimension along which contracts vary is the extent to which contract adjustments are effected through court ordering versus private ordering – provides alternative interpretations of some conventional contract terms but also sheds light on some otherwise puzzling contractual phenomena.