The Key Directions of the Legal Development of the National Priorities of International Strategic Partnership

The main topic of the current issue of the journal “Legal Concept = Pravovaya Paradigma” – “The global transformations of the legal infrastructure of the modern state: trends in the inter-country interaction and the national development” was declared by the editorial board to conduct a comprehensive intersectoral collective mini-study on the issues of the legal support for the development of strategic partnership and traditional interstate cooperation. A comprehensive analysis of the potential areas of international cooperation in need of a developed technological legal infrastructure is presented in the prepared draft in an expanded format. These are the traditional areas of the activity of international organizations in the context of scientific, technological, and industrial integration, and interstate cooperation in the field of economic activity on foreign trade, public procurement, fiscal policy, as well as new areas in criminal and civil proceedings, arbitration, electoral justice, involving the study of foreign experience to plan strategic partnership and full-fledged mutually beneficial international technological cooperation. It is proved that different strategies of inter-country cooperation and strategic partnership within countries will lead to the creation of different legal systems. A new form of partnership is being investigated - strategic partnership arising as a result of integration processes in the world and the changes in the goals, objectives, and principles of interrelationships of subjects of international law, which is characterized by long-term, mutually beneficial relations of equal status with an emphasis on the economic component. It is argued that the growing economic intra-national inequality is a problem of systemic importance for jurisprudence. It should be studied and taken into account when developing the strategic partnership policy documents and the acts of international cooperation, which will contribute to the creation of more peaceful and prosperous coexistence, backed by an effective law of nations, which meets all types of major challenges to which it is impossible to offer competent adaptive legal responses outside of close inter-country interaction.

International Conference of Urban Commons

The report seeks to outline the issues the lecturers of the International Conference Held at the University of Turin on the 21st and 22nd June 2021 touched upon. The backbone of the Conference was the rise of Urban Commons describing all the different aspects it involves: the urban voids suitable to host urban commons, the participatory models shaping the governance of commoning, the consequences such phenomenon may imply, and the technological and legal infrastructure may flank and support the development of urban commoning. All this explored by referring to concrete case studies and day-to-day experiences.

HARMONIZATION IS THE ONLY “GAME” IN TOWN; ACTUALIZING THE FUNCTIONALITY OF VITAL ISLAMIC FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS: A CASE OF WAQFS IN NIGERIA

While it is true that more often than not, constitutional democracies might enshrine freedom of religion and thus provide for equal treatment of all religions within a given state, the Islamic characterization of the waqf institution transcends the subsisting limits allowed for in the not-for profit legal infrastructure including their taxation exemption provisions in the Nigerian state. According to modest statistics, Nigeria is home to about 100 million Muslims but her governing laws are at best described as secular. The objective of this research is therefore to harmonize the Islamic law of waqf institution and the extant not-for-profit laws in Nigeria such that the institution can function within the Nigerian state without infringing on the Islamic Shariah whilst at the same time complying with the constitutional dictates of the country. The merits of such an exercise are numerous. It could readily be replicated in other non-Muslim jurisdiction across the world. Nigeria being the largest economy in Africa, the dividends of such an exercise would cascade across the continent consisting mainly so called developing countries.

Russian analogue of the legal structure of a convertible loan

The research purpose is to give a civil-legal description and assess the prospects for the practical application of an element of the venture financing legal infrastructure that is new for Russian realities. The research methods are presented by special technical and legal tools, and by logical means of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, comparison and generalization, analogy and legal modeling, characteristic of civilist doctrinal research. The research results include the established civil nature of the Russian structure of a convertible loan, the identified principal conditions and the key stages of the conversion mechanism, the research also confirmed its convenience and efficiency. The research significance is manifested in its ability to strengthen the doctrinal basis of the legally permitted multivariate economic activity, promote accelerating the integration of convertible loans into the Russian legal field, help intensify domestic venture capital investment and increase the attractiveness of Russian jurisdiction for foreign investors.

Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions and Impact Scores of Small-Size Certified Benefit Corporations (CBCs). A Configurational Analysis of 17 Countries

The urgent need that the private sector generate positive social and environmental impacts in order to cope with the grand challenges faced by humanity and contribute to sustainable development, has ignited the need to understand the country conditions that could promote such an endeavor, especially for small firms who may have more difficulties and, among them, those that try to generate positive impacts for multiple stakeholders, such as Certified B Corporations (CBCs). To contribute to such understanding, we use fsQCA to identify the combinations of presence/absence of four entrepreneurial framework conditions (EFCs)—financing for entrepreneurs, taxes and bureaucracy, R&D transfer, and commercial and legal infrastructure—that are sufficient for the presence/absence of a high average impact score of small-size CBCs in the country. The analysis reveals that two combinations of the presence/absence of the considered EFCs are sufficient for the presence and another two are sufficient for the absence of that outcome. General patterns, specific combinations and the implications for policymakers, CBCs managers and future research are discussed.

Zombie infrastructure: A legal geography of railroad monstrosity in the California desert

This paper proposes the concept of zombie infrastructure to understand the entangled histories of railroad colonialism, Indigenous dispossession, and corporate power in the California desert. I examine debates over the Cadiz project, a contemporary water project that proposes to take water from a California desert aquifer and transport it to the California coast. I argue that the life of the Cadiz project depends on Cadiz Inc.’s ability to revive the legal rights and body of a little-used railroad shortline, thus bringing back a legal infrastructure and corporate power from the late nineteenth century in the service of a new corporation. In so doing, the Cadiz project enlivens the racialized dispossession of land and labor that the railroad initially required. Routing the politics of a contemporary infrastructure project through the railroad and its octopus past, I argue, places the politics of infrastructure at the intersection of laws, monstrosity, and dispossession. Drawing on economic and legal geography, this paper proposes the concept of zombie infrastructure, a concept that builds on what activists call zombie projects in order to show the life and death of infrastructure, and reveals how contemporary capitalists enliven old infrastructures for new purposes.

3D Property Research from a Legal Perspective Revisited

The concept of 3D cadastre is widespread internationally and part of many nations’ legal infrastructure. Since the publication of a literature survey on 3D cadastre research by Paulsson and Paasch in 2013, there has been a considerable amount of research output and activities in regard to 3D cadastre, which led us to believe that a new investigation of 3D cadastre publications could be of interest. The aim of this study is to analyze the development in 3D cadastre research during the years 2012–2020, focusing on the legal perspective of 3D property. A classification was made into main groups, legal, technical, registration and organizational, also investigating the occurrence of sub-themes such as visualization, BIM and standardization. The results of other literature studies on 3D cadastre research were compared with the outcome of this study. The number of identified publications during the analyzed years was 530. The study showed that the number of publications on legal topics has increased, but in relation to the other groups is still rather low. The 3D cadastre research community could benefit from the inclusion of the legal perspective in publications from other main groups, along with an increased focus on international comparative studies.