There is no doubt that international arbitration has become one of the most favoured dispute resolution mechanisms in national and international transactions. International arbitration has evolved into a credible alternative replacement for traditional litigation. International arbitration as a private neutral forum is gaining overwhelming recognition in the world. The extent of this popularity varies in different commercial fields and this dispute settlement mechanism is treated differently in various sectors around the globe. For instance, in international construction contracts, arbitration clauses are an integral part of the contract whereas in an international syndicated loan agreement, incorporating an arbitration clause may seem rather unusual. This trend is now changing and banking industry’s traditional loyalty towards litigation and court jurisdictions is changing. According to statistics and market practice, in the past recent years, popularity of arbitration has been growing in banking and finance sector for various reasons. Among the reasons are the unique characteristics that international arbitration has to offer, characteristics such as global enforceability and worldwide recognition of arbitral awards, which have contributed to this paradigm shift. Moreover, the possibility of using knowledgeable finance and banking experts as arbitrators to resolve disputes and conflicts in the banking and financial sector is another appealing feature of arbitration. All the perceived advantages of international arbitration, which are claimed to be the drive force of this change of trend, are scrutinised in this research. This research analyses the historical hesitation and reluctance to use arbitration in the banking and financial sector, and elaborate the change of trend in this area and reasons for this change of attitude. The focus is on arbitrability of banking and financial disputes in the international sphere. The practical benefits of incorporating an arbitration clause in banking and financial transactions are considered in this research. At the end it is recommended that the banking and finance sector will benefit from a wider use of international arbitration in cross-border transactions and the wider use of this neutral independent mechanism 3 can led to a harmonised use of international arbitration in the aforementioned sectors. This research underpins the use of international arbitration as a sensible dispute resolution mechanism in international banking and financial transactions.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--2002. / Title from initial PDF page image (viewed Dec. 13, 2006). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2007. / Thesis directed by Philip Mirowski for the Department of Economics. "July 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-297).

Many cities and towns in the Global South continue to experience the growth of the informal sector. There are a number of reasons which explain the growth of the informal sector. These include formal sector retrenchments, shortage of jobs in the formal sector and lack of skills. Street vendors are the most visible traders in the informal sector as compared to other kind of traders. In many cities, the spaces in which vendors conduct their trading is not allocated to them legally as they are seen as a nuisance or obstruction to commerce and the free flow of traffic. Against this background, this study examines the contestation for vending in the East London Central Business District (CBD) Eastern Cape, South Africa. It specifically explores social processes and vendor decision making when it comes to choosing (or claiming) a particular vending space, the legal instruments (by-laws) that either promote or constrain informal trading activities. Furthermore, it investigates the extent to which street vending contributes to the traders‟ income generation and sustainable livelihoods. This study uses a qualitative research design. Purposive sampling was used to select thirty informal traders. In-depth semi structured interviews were conducted with all thirty respondents In addition to the thirty respondents, five key informants were interviewed. The study found that street vending plays a major role in providing BCMM people with livelihood opportunities. Trading space in the CBD is strictly competitive and the spaces they acquire are too small for their businesses to expand to another level. Vendors face a lot of challenges but at the epitome of their challenges is the vending by- laws which the vendors view as a major constraint when it comes to operating smoothly in the streets. The study suggested that vending polices and by- laws be reviewed in order to derive a better socio- economic and functional environment for vendors.

The objective of this thesis is to outline steps that the Obama Administration could take to help pass legislation for an innovative funding mechanism known as a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB). The recommended steps are based on a historical analysis of the leadership provided by Presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower when passing the original bills that authorized the Interstate system. Key policy recommendations include: framing the need for an NIB as a means of economic growth and natural disaster resilience, building strategic stakeholder support through education, and engaging and compromising with Congress while developing the NIB proposal. If successfully applied, these lessons can contribute to enabling the creation of an NIB that would increase infrastructure investment by billions of dollars while rehabilitating the struggling economy and transportation network.

This thesis inquires into the meaning of the right to security of person. This right is found in many international, regional and domestic human rights instruments. However, academic discourse reveals disagreement about the meaning of the right. The thesis first considers case law from the European Convention on Human Rights, the South African Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter. The analysis shows that courts too disagree about the meaning of the right to security of person. The thesis then takes a theoretical approach to understanding the meaning of the right. It is argued that the concept of ‘security’ establishes that the right imposes both positive and negative duties but that ‘security’ does not determine which interests are protected by the right. For this, we need consider the meaning of the ‘person’. The notion of personhood as understood in the ‘capabilities approach’ of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum is then introduced. It is suggested that this theory could be used to identify the interests protected by the right. Next, the theoretical developments are applied to the legal context in order to illustrate the variety of interests the right to security of person would protect and the type of duties it would impose. As a result, it is argued that the idea of ‘security of person’ is too broad to form the subject matter of an individual legal right. This raises a question over the relationship between security of person and human rights law. It is proposed that instead of recognising an individual legal right to security of person, human rights law as a whole could be seen as a mechanism to secure the person, the capabilities approach determining what it takes to fulfil a right and thereby secure the person.

This thesis explores the notion of the employer in English employment law. It seeks to develop a functional reconceptualisation of that notion in the hope of overcoming the theoretical and practical problems resulting from the tensions inherent in the current approach. The first part of the thesis analyses the notion of the employer as counterparty to the contract of employment. Two conflicting strands emerge: the employer is simultaneously identified as a single party to a bilateral contract (the unitary strand) and defined through the exercise of a range of employer functions (the multi-functional strand). As a result of this tension, full employment law coverage is restricted to a narrow paradigm scenario where a single legal entity exercises all employer functions. Modern economic developments, from the rise of employment agencies and service companies to corporate groups and Private Equity investors, have however increasingly led to the joint exercise of such functions across multiple entities. The second part illustrates the practical implications of these developments: regulatory obligations are placed on inappropriate entities, and workers may even find themselves without recourse to any employment law protection. An additional chapter compares this situation with the notion of the employer in German law, where a sophisticated apparatus has been developed in order to address the particular challenges of employment in multi-entity scenarios, in particular in corporate groups. On the basis of these observations the final part of the thesis then proposes a reconceptualised notion. The employer is defined as the entity, or combination of entities, exercising functions regulated in a particular domain of employment law. Each of the two strands of the current notion is addressed in turn to demonstrate how this more openly multi-functional approach addresses the rigidities of the current notion without abandoning an underlying unitary conceptualisation. It is hoped that the resulting notion of the employer will be able to place employment law obligations on the entity, or combination of entities, exercising the relevant employer functions, regardless of the formal legal organisation of the enterprise in question.

What makes real life contractual arrangements? How does the law influence real life contractual arrangements? These are everyday questions for businesspeople and commercial lawyers. The traditional ‘imperative’ view of law assumes that business people contract ‘in the shadow of the law’ and contractual arrangements conform to what the law says. But empirical studies on contract practice suggest that contract law may, in fact, play a very insignificant role in real life contractual arrangements. This thesis provides a sociological view of the role of contract law in real life contractual arrangements in the context of the Vietnamese market. Specifically, this thesis applies an institutional law & economics approach to investigate how social structures of the market influence contractual arrangements to marginalize contract law in the Vietnamese market. Drawing on two surveys of contract behaviour in the Vietnamese market, this thesis finds that real life contractual arrangements respond to the institutional structure of the market as a whole, rather than only ‘the shadow of the law’. Institutional changes in the Vietnamese market suggest that there exists a merchant law system, constituted of traditional moral norms and social structures in the market. This merchant law system continues to order contractual arrangements in the market, despite the introduction of a transplanted contract law system. Disagreeing with the imperative approach, this thesis claims that contract law reform should conform to the institutional structure of the market to reduce transaction costs of contracting and to provide an effective framework for real life contractual arrangements.