O presente estudo analisa os contornos da estruturação elusiva de atos e negócios jurídicos no Direito Tributário brasileiro. Inicialmente, busca-se definir o conceito de planejamento tributário, abordando as diferentes noções de elisão fiscal, elusão fiscal e evasão fiscal, bem como os critérios contemplados pela doutrina brasileira de Direito Tributário para distinguir as condutas oponíveis e inoponíveis ao Fisco. Para melhor compreensão dos limites da conduta elusiva, examinam-se os princípios constitucionais pertinentes à interpretação da lei tributária e à qualificação da materialidade tributável, as quais são estudadas com vistas à percepção da relação entre Direito Tributário e Direito Privado. Nessa seara, destacam-se os esforços para compreensão da importância dos artigos 109, 116, incisos I e I, e 118 do Código Tributário Nacional em matéria de aplicação da lei tributária, principalmente para entender as consequências da caracterização de determinados vícios ou defeitos, do ponto de vista formal e material, nos atos e negócios jurídicos realizados pelos contribuintes com objetivo de economia fiscal. Nesse particular, examinam-se as figuras da simulação, abuso do direito, fraude à lei e abuso de formas à luz da doutrina brasileira, a fim de verificar sua aplicabilidade em matéria de qualificação da materialidade tributável, bem como com a intenção de identificar pontos em comum entre elas. Analisa-se a pertinência da utilização do postulado da proporcionalidade como parâmetro de interpretação das regras e princípios aplicáveis à estruturação elusiva de atos e negócios realizados pelos contribuintes. Uma vez compreendido o cenário da doutrina brasileira, parte-se para o estudo das figuras do propósito negocial, abuso de formas, fraude à lei e abuso do direito, de acordo com as experiências do Direito estrangeiro, respectivamente, nos Estados Unidos, Alemanha, Espanha e França, igualmente, com o objetivo de encontrar pontos em comum entre tais figuras. Assim, testa-se o postulado da proporcionalidade como ferramenta de compreensão das referidas figuras de acordo com os ordenamentos jurídicos dos respectivos países maternos. Feito esse estudo, busca-se refletir sobre a importação dos conceitos estrangeiros para fins de tratamento da elusão no Brasil, bem como sobre a necessidade da edição de uma norma geral antielusiva no Brasil. Por fim, são examinados os critérios e conceitos adotados pelo Conselho Administrativo de Recursos Fiscais do Ministério da Fazenda para avaliar as condutas elusivas praticadas pelos contribuintes, à luz dos parâmetros selecionados ao longo do trabalho. / This study examines the contours of the elusive structuring of acts and transactions according to the Brazilian Tax Law. Initially, it seeks to define the concept of tax planning, covering the different notions of tax avoidance, tax elusion and tax evasion, besides the criteria used by the Brazilian Tax Law doctrine to distinguish between conducts that may be or may be not enforceable against the Brazilian tax authorities. For a better understanding of the limits of an elusive conduct, this study examines the constitutional principles that are relevant to the interpretation of Tax Law and to the identification of taxable material facts, which are also analyzed in view of the relationship between Tax Law and Private Law. Regarding this subject, we highlight the efforts made to understand the importance of articles 109, 116, sections I and I, and 118 of the National Tax Code in regard to the enforcement of the Tax Law and, mainly, efforts made to understand the consequences of the characterization of certain formal or material defects or flaws in acts and transactions undertaken by taxpayers for the purpose of tax saving. In particular, we examine the discussions held by the Brazilian legal doctrine concerning simulation, abuse of law, fraus legis and abuse of forms in order to verify the applicability of those concepts to qualify taxable material facts and in order to identify similarities among them. This study also analyzes the appropriateness of using the postulate of proportionality as a parameter of interpretation of rules and principles applicable to the elusive structuring of acts and transactions conducted by taxpayers. Once the Brazilian doctrine is understood, we proceed to the study of the business purpose test, abuse of forms, fraus legis and abuse of law, respectively, according to the experiences in the United States, Germany, Spain and France. This analysis aims to find common ground between the referred figures. Thus, we test the postulate of proportionality as a tool to understand these figures pursuant to the legal systems of their respective countries of origin. Once this analysis is concluded, we try to reflect on the adoption of foreign concepts for treating tax elusion in Brazil, as well as on the need of editing a national general rule to avoid tax elusion. Finally, we examine the criteria and concepts adopted by the Administrative Board of Tax Appeals of the Ministry of Finance for assessing the elusive behaviors practiced by taxpayers in the light of the parameters selected throughout this study.

Magister Legum - LLM / The detention of juvenile offenders is not encouraged by both the Constitution and a number of international instruments. This right is entrenched in the South African Constitution (section 28(1)(g) ) which provides that every child has the right not to be detained except as a measure of last resort in which case, in addition to the rights a child enjoys under section s12 and 35, the child may be detained only for the shortest appropriate period of time. This Constitutional provision, in clear terms, views the incarceration of juvenile offenders in a serious light as it provides that the detention of juvenile offenders should be a measure of last resort. One of the important international instruments, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, (Article 37(b) provides that children may be arrested, detained or imprisoned "only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible period of time". This thesis examines the impact of the Constitution and some international instruments on the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 105 of 1997 with regard to juvenile offenders. It also sets out the current legal position in South Africa with regard to sentencing of juvenile offenders. / South Africa

Passed in 1985, the Texas Education Code (TEC) §38.003, Screening and Treatment of Dyslexia and Related Disorders, required public school districts and charters to identify and provide remediation services for students with dyslexia. While Texas was the first state to pass such a requirement, the question remains: What is the prevalence and proportionality of dyslexia in Texas public school districts and charters? In Phase 1 of this study, a secondary analysis using point prevalence and disproportionality calculations was conducted to analyze the impact of this more than 30-year-old law. In order to better help understand these findings, semi-structured interviews with district leaders were conducted in Phase 2 to gain insight on how students were identified with dyslexia across the state. The results of Phase 1 showed the estimated prevalence of dyslexia in Texas public school districts and charters to be low in comparison to the literature. Additionally, the findings suggested a discrepancy in identifications between gender and district type (public school versus charter) and across racial and ethnic groups. Meanwhile, the results of Phase 2 revealed that leadership, support, funding, and accountability impact dyslexia identifications. This study emphasizes the need to further explore and analyze how to best identify and service all students with dyslexia, regardless of gender, race and ethnicity, district type, and geographical location.

The parallel trends of greater energy-efficiency and more aggressive power management are yielding computers that inch closer to energy-proportional computing with every generation. Energy-proportional computing, in which power consumption scales closely with workload, has unintended side effects for security and privacy. Saving energy is an unqualified boon for computer operators, but it is becoming easier to identify computing activities by observing power consumption because an energy-proportional computer reveals more about its workload. This thesis demonstrates the potential for system-level power analysis---the inference of a computers internal states based on power observation at the "plug." It also examines which hardware components and software workloads have the greatest impact on information leakage. This thesis identifies the potential for privacy violations by demonstrating that a malicious party could identify which webpage from a given corpus a user is viewing with greater than 99% accuracy. It also identifies constructive applications for power analysis, evaluating its use as an anomaly detection mechanism for embedded devices with greater than 94% accuracy for each device tested. Finally, this thesis includes modeling work that correlates AC and DC power consumption to pinpoint which components contribute most to information leakage and analyzes software workloads to identify which classes of work lead to the most information leakage. Understanding the security and privacy risks and opportunities that come with energy-proportional computing will allow future systems to either apply system-level power analysis fruitfully or thwart its malicious application.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:29:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Virginia de Oliveira Rosa Dobrianskyj.pdf: 699494 bytes, checksum: 9f8b0892d93f69f7619f589e5d208b56 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-06-09 / The Brazilian Penal Law has suffered lots of alterations in its structure, mainly concerning the criterion of prediction and the model of application of the penalties for the committed crimes. The great difficulty, which is the object of this study, is exactly materializing a penal system which comprises the application of the penal law and the protection of the individual guarantees. This would meet the objectives of a Democratic State of Right that regards the proportionality principle as the criterion to predict and apply the penalty by the legislators and judges, as laws are being published to meet the needs of the society more often at present. The penal law is aimed to solve the conflicts between individuals and society, in search of juridical safety and tranquility through the minimal intervention of the public authorities in the citzens freedom. In this way, it should be used only as ultima ratio, when all the other juridical areas are not enough to solve the conflicts arisen in society.So, only the categories of properties that have constitutional importance will be subject to the penal law. Due to the successive alterations of the penal laws in the past years, it is clear that the Brazilian legislator lacks minimal parameters to arrange his legislative activity at the time of the elaboration of the incriminating penal rule, which most of times is disproportionate to the system of laws. The judge will not be able to alter the legislative structure, and will be limitted to apply the penalty according to the parameters indicated by the law. So, the problem of the penal law does not concern its intervention, but how it has to be done. Nevertheless, the principle of proportionality, although it is not expressed in the constitutional text, will serve as parameter to the legislator and judge at the time of elaborating and applying the incriminating penal rule, in search of the realization of justice, giving to each one what they deserve / O Direito Penal brasileiro tem sofrido uma série de alterações em sua estrutura, principalmente no que diz respeito ao critério de previsão e modelo de aplicação das penas pelos crimes cometidos. A grande dificuldade, objeto do presente estudo, é justamente a materialização de um sistema penal que compreenda a aplicação da lei penal e a proteção às garantias individuais, através dos objetivos de um Estado Democrático de Direito que vislumbre no princípio da proporcionalidade o critério de previsão e aplicação da pena pelos legisladores e juízes, pois o que se vê a cada dia são leis publicadas atendendo aos clamores da sociedade. O direito penal tem a finalidade de resolver os conflitos surgidos, entre os indivíduos e a sociedade, na busca da tranqüilidade e segurança jurídica, através da mínima intervenção dos poderes públicos sobre a liberdade dos cidadãos. Sendo assim, deverá ser utilizado apenas como ultima ratio, quando outros ramos do ordenamento jurídico não forem suficientes para a solução dos conflitos surgidos na sociedade. Para tanto, deverão ser considerados bens jurídicos merecedores de tutela penal apenas e tão somente aquela categoria de bens de relevo constitucional dotados de dignidade penal. Diante da inflação legislativa penal dos últimos anos, fica claro que falta ao legislador brasileiro parâmetros mínimos para ordenar a sua atividade legislativa no momento de elaboração da norma penal incriminadora, que muitas vezes demonstra-se desproporcional ao próprio ordenamento jurídico. E o juiz nada poderá fazer para alterar a estrutura legislativa ficando apenas limitado em aplicar a pena diante dos parâmetros indicados no texto da lei. Assim, o problema do direito penal não está ligado a sua intervenção propriamente dita, mas à maneira como deve ser feita, ou seja, na forma como será realizada essa intervenção na esfera de liberdade dos indivíduos, não discricionariamente, mas proporcional à violação do bem jurídico protegido. O princípio da proporcionalidade, portanto, apesar de não previsto expressamente no texto constitucional, deverá servir de parâmetro para o legislador e o juiz no momento de elaboração e aplicação da norma penal incriminadora, na busca da concretização da justiça, dando a cada um o que lhe é devido

This paper tries to answer the question related to the implementation of one of Europe's most influential EU-directives, the Water Framework Directive. The Directive requires Member States to achieve good ecological potential and good surface water chemical status for bodies of water until year 2015. If the states cannot achieve those objectives within this period, then there may be grounds for exemptions from the requirement to prevent further deterioration of to achieve good status under specific conditions. One of those conditions could be that, the completing the improvements within the timescale would be disproportionately expensive. Question which is examined in this paper is, what criteria would be most appropriate for determining the disproportionate costs. Based on the review of most WFD-related studies and EU legislation are selected criteria, which should be used for the assessment of the disproportionate costs.

This thesis analyses the aims and objectives of the EU Acquired Rights Directive (ARD) in the context of the larger evolution of EU labour law itself. The thesis presents the overall goal of the ARD as that of striking an appropriate balance between the employer’s prerogative to transfer the business and the employee’s interest in not having the security of the job unduly threatened by such transfers. Given the current complexity and incoherence of the law regulating economic dismissals in the context of transfers, the central argument of the thesis is that there is a need for a clearer conceptual framework for defining and understanding the rights and obligations in the Acquired Rights Directive (ARD). It is suggested that the principles of legitimate expectations and proportionality are ideally adapted to play this role. In analyzing the teleology of the ARD based on these principles, this study not only assists in understanding and explaining the ARD itself, but also has wider implications for understanding the challenges facing European social policy in the field of employment protection. In its attempts to reconcile fundamental economic freedoms of employers on the one hand, and fundamental rights of employees on the other, the Court of Justice has frequently relied upon the proportionality principle to achieve a ‘fair balance’ between both parties. Following the interpretations of ‘proportionality’ in Viking and Laval, there is admittedly a fear that the proportionality balancing is likely to accord an almost absolute priority to the employers’ economic freedoms. The thesis is cognizant of this danger, and therefore advocates a ‘symmetrical’ approach to balancing. In this way the thesis offers some insight into the potential for the ARD to remain continuously effective in times of economic crisis. The study therefore finds reason to be optimistic about the prospects for the ARD and other standard-setting directives in the future of social Europe.

Il lavoro concerne il tema del contrasto patrimoniale alla criminalità organizzata e la confisca di prevenzione ante delictum (art. 24, d.lgs. n. 159/2011). Lo spregiudicato ricorso a questo strumento ha creato una confusione tra i piani della prevenzione (ante delictum) e della repressione (post delictum) della criminalità. Si nota, inoltre, la tendenza della confisca a sconfinare verso settori d’intervento della giustizia penale differenti da quelli per i quali è espressamente prevista. La Parte prima della tesi è dedicata alla ricostruzione delle origini storiche delle misure di prevenzione patrimoniali, nonché ai presupposti e alle finalità di sequestro e confisca. La Parte seconda affronta il problema della natura giuridica della confisca. Alla dottrina che si è espressa per la sostanziale natura sanzionatoria della misura (formalmente) di “prevenzione”, si oppone la giurisprudenza che la estromette dalla materia penale e dalle garanzie (costituzionali e convenzionali). La Parte terza è dedicata alla ‘sfida’ del principio di proporzione: la verifica della ragionevolezza della confisca secondo il modello del giudizio trilaterale. Nelle conclusioni si espongono delle considerazioni sui rapporti tra prevenzione ante delictum e principio di sussidiarietà, nell’ottica di una valorizzazione dell’idea di gradualità e di promozione dell’uguaglianza tra cittadini. / The work concerns the contrast against organized crime and the preventive confiscation (art. 24, d.lgs. n. 159/2011). The use of confiscation has created a confusion between the plans of crime prevention (ante delictum) and crime repression (post delictum). The first part of the thesis concerns: reconstruction of the historical origins of the preventive system; conditions and purposes of seizure and confiscation. The second part deals with the problem of the legal nature of confiscation. The doctrine has been expressed for substantial punitive measure; jurisprudence excludes confiscation from criminal law and its guarantees. The third part concerns the 'challenge' of the principle of proportionality: the verification of the reasonableness of confiscatione. The conclusions expose the considerations on the relationship between prevention ante delictum and the principle of subsidiarity, to valorize the idea of gradually and of equality between citizens.

Deference in international human rights law has provoked animated discussion, particularly the margin of appreciation doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights. Many commentators describe the practice of deference but do not explain how it affects judicial reasoning. Some approve characteristics of deference but do not provide a justification to defend the practice against criticism. Others regard deference as a danger to human rights because it betrays the universality of human rights or involves tribunals either failing to consider a case properly or missing an opportunity to set human rights standards. This thesis employs a different approach by focussing on deference as the practice of assigning weight to reasons for a decision on the basis of external factors. This approach draws on theories of second-order reasoning from the philosophy of practical reasoning. The thesis offers a conceptual account of deference that accords with the practice not only of the European Court of Human Rights, but also the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee. Additionally the thesis presents a normative account of deference, that the role of these tribunals entails permitting a measure of diversity as states implement international human rights standards. Deference in international human rights law then is the judicial practice of assigning weight to the respondent states’ reasoning in a case on the basis of three factors: democratic legitimacy, the common practice of states and expertise. This affects judicial reasoning by impacting the balance of reasons in the proportionality assessment. The account defended in this thesis dispels concerns that deference is a danger to human rights, whilst providing a theory that justifies the practice of the tribunals. The thesis thus provides the contours of a doctrine of deference in each of the three international human rights systems.