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One of the prevalent challenges in investor state a dispute settlement in the last decade has been the demand for greater transparency. The call for greater transparency is so apparent to many contemporary observers that many questioned why it took long for ICSID and many Tribunals like it address this issue. It is therefore rather ironic that what was widely held as the main advantages of commercial arbitration is now seen as a liability in the investor state arbitration context. The reforms that ICSID undertook were relatively moderate, well balanced and should be commended transparency is essential in making certain the acceptance and democratic legitimacy of investment arbitration and the governments concerned. Amicus curiae briefs can present a unique view point, offer Tribunals with additional expertise and mirror civil society’s views on issues bearing on the public interest. Therefore there should be moves towards judicialization of arbitration proceedings like by allowing third parties to attend hearings, a greater role for amicus should be sought beyond merely submitting briefs.It is in the public interest that there is greater transparency in investor state arbitration as the legitimacy of the institution depends on it. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Centre for Human Rights / unrestricted

Intellectual Property (IP) is used to speed up the design process and save money. The use of IP and complex CAD tools reduce visibility into the design and what is actually happening during synthesis and implementation. All of the complexity makes it easier for an attacker to insert malicious logic or tamper with the design in ways that are difficult to detect. Not very much work has been done towards the creation of tools to facilitate the safe use of 3rd-party IP. This work presents Physical and Functional Assurance, two approaches that aim to accomplish this task through physically and logically identical IP instantiation respectively. The approaches and their results and performance impact are presented across a suite of 53 experiments. The Physical Assurance approach is successful at instantiating the 3rd-party IP in the user design without modification and it is also successful at catching even minute tampers along the way. The Functional Assurance approach is shown to be feasible, but still requires work to become a fully-fledged tool.

While varies of supply chains are working on moving products towardsthe end consumers, there is also an increasing amount of productsbeing sent back. This has meant an increasing importance of the returnmanagement process. As many businesses have realized that the returnprocess has little connection with their core value, the idea ofoutsourcing return management crossed the mind of many companies.Third-party logistics (3PL) provider have also sensed the opportunityand begun to explore the possibility of providing such services forcompanies in need.