As required by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) of the European Union, this thesis thoroughly examines the transition in corporate sustainability reporting from limited to reasonable assurance. The directive is being implemented at a crucial time as companies are progressively incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into their core operating and reporting practices. The CSRD is intended to improve sustainability disclosures’ comparability, credibility and reliability. It is a legislative response to a larger movement for more corporate accountability and transparency. The study uses a qualitative technique using semi-structured interviews with professionals from leading audit firms. The purpose of these interviews is to provide many aspects of the transition with a particular emphasis on how businesses and audit firms are modifying their operations to comply with the stricter requirements of the CSRD. The study identifies the main factors behind this shift such as increased stakeholder demands for transparency and a changing regulatory environment that makes it necessary to reevaluate current assurance practices.  The study’s important conclusion is that putting reasonable assurance requirements into practice is difficult. Companies must create advanced data management systems that can handle the CSRD’s requirements for an increasing volume of information. In addition to ensuring data accuracy, these systems need to make it easier to analyse and report on the data in a way that complies with the new assurance standards.  Additionally, the shift needs a major improvement in auditor competencies. It is necessary for auditors to have a better understanding of both traditional financial auditing and the specific challenges presented by sustainability reporting. This includes having a thorough understanding of ESG factors and how they affect risk profiles and corporate performance. Hence, the CSRD acts as a catalyst for a significant shift in auditors’ professional development and training, emphasising the necessity to combine sustainability with financial auditing skills.  Strong internal controls are also important, as the research shows. Establishing and maintaining strict internal mechanisms is necessary for businesses to ensure the reliability of their sustainability reports. This involves a thorough review and a redesign of internal processes in order to meet the higher standards of reasonable assurance. These controls are essential for reducing the risks associated with sustainability reporting such errors or misrepresentations which can have a big influence on stakeholder trust and regulatory compliance.  This change has significant implications for society at large. Companies may give stakeholders more reliable and detailed disclosures about their sustainable practices by shifting toward reasonable assurance. This can have a big impact on investment choices and build stakeholder confidence. This shift promotes a more transparent and sustainable corporate environment by supporting the incorporation of ESG factors into core business strategies and by strengthening the credibility of sustainability reports.

In Sonap Petroleum (formerly known as Sonarep) (SA) (Pty) Ltd v Pappadog1an1s 1992 (3) SA 234 (A) the Appellate Division apparently approved the direct application of the reliance theory, without reference to prejudice or fault, to determine contractual liability in the absence of consensus. The various approaches to contractual liability in South African law are examined, and a comparative study of English law and the law of the Netherlands is conducted. It is submitted that the element of fault is not crucial to the enquiry, but rather, the elements of conduct , inducement and a reasonable reliance upon consensus. It is concluded that the test for contractual liability in the absence of actual consensus, as formula ted by the court in Sonap's case, without reference to prejudice or fault, has established sound precedent in South African law. / Criminal and Procedural Law / LL.M.

It is traditionally accepted that the basis of contractual liability is either consensus, that is the actual meeting of the minds of the contractants, or the reasonable belief by one contractants that there is consensus. In this paper the various approaches to contractual liability are examined. The conclusion that is reached is that the direct application of reliance protecti~n can -effectively serve as the basis of contractual liability in our law today. It is submitted that the elements to found contractual liability are representation or conduct, unducement; a reasonable reliance upon consensus, and detriment or prejudice. It is forcefully argued that although blameworthiness (fault) may play a substantial role in determining whether reliance upon consensus should be protected, it is not the decisive element to the enquiry: rather regard should be had to all the surrounding circumstances relating to the contractual relationship. / Private Law / LL.M.

In Sonap Petroleum (formerly known as Sonarep) (SA) (Pty) Ltd v Pappadog1an1s 1992 (3) SA 234 (A) the Appellate Division apparently approved the direct application of the reliance theory, without reference to prejudice or fault, to determine contractual liability in the absence of consensus. The various approaches to contractual liability in South African law are examined, and a comparative study of English law and the law of the Netherlands is conducted. It is submitted that the element of fault is not crucial to the enquiry, but rather, the elements of conduct , inducement and a reasonable reliance upon consensus. It is concluded that the test for contractual liability in the absence of actual consensus, as formula ted by the court in Sonap's case, without reference to prejudice or fault, has established sound precedent in South African law. / Criminal and Procedural Law / LL.M.

It is traditionally accepted that the basis of contractual liability is either consensus, that is the actual meeting of the minds of the contractants, or the reasonable belief by one contractants that there is consensus. In this paper the various approaches to contractual liability are examined. The conclusion that is reached is that the direct application of reliance protecti~n can -effectively serve as the basis of contractual liability in our law today. It is submitted that the elements to found contractual liability are representation or conduct, unducement; a reasonable reliance upon consensus, and detriment or prejudice. It is forcefully argued that although blameworthiness (fault) may play a substantial role in determining whether reliance upon consensus should be protected, it is not the decisive element to the enquiry: rather regard should be had to all the surrounding circumstances relating to the contractual relationship. / Private Law / LL.M.

El tratamiento dogmático procesal penal y la doctrina jurisprudencial acerca de los motivos fundados en Colombia explican de manera deficiente aspectos tan esenciales como la finalidad, necesidad de concreción, precisión y determinación de los mismos. Las falencias en el tratamiento sistemático procesal y jurisprudencial de la exigencia de motivación a las injerencias en derechos fundamentales durante la fase de investigación penal encauzan importantes restricciones a la capacidad de verificación judicial de las razones que fundamentan las diligencias de investigación. Por un lado, conllevan a un reducido potencial de control de los motivos fundados, asunto que también le es inherente a dicho concepto como noción jurídica indeterminada. Por otro lado, favorecen la subrogación de las competencias del Juez con función de control de garantías, asunto propiciado, además, por la relativización del principio de reserva judicial y por deficiencias estructurales vinculadas a los presupues-tos y metodología del control de actos de investigación.

Ce mémoire porte sur la polémique qui a eu lieu au Québec entre mars 2006 et décembre 2007 autour des pratiques d’« accommodements raisonnables » pour motif religieux. À partir d’une approche compréhensive et d’un cadre théorique propre à la sociologie des relations ethniques, il propose une analyse qualitative de lettres d’opinion publiées dans des quotidiens québécois. Une première analyse, thématique, a permis de constituer des registres argumentaires dans lesquels ont puisé les participants au débat public sur les « accommodements raisonnables » par le biais de lettres d’opinion. Une seconde analyse, comparative, a permis de construire des figures d’intervenants du débat public qui témoignent non seulement des forces idéologiques qui se sont affrontées dans le débat public, mais également de leur positionnement au croisement des axes saillants de la différenciation sociale dans cette polémique Les résultats de ces analyses suggèrent d’abord que la polémique résulte d’un conflit entre marqueurs identitaires devant servir au positionnement des frontières ethniques, et ensuite que la polémique des « accommodements raisonnables » a donné lieu à une reconfiguration des rapports ethniques au Québec, attribuable à la dissociation entre le conflit entre deux nations et celui sur les critères d’inclusion à la nation. / This master’s thesis addresses the polemic that took place in Québec between March 2006 and December 2007 on the “reasonable accommodation” of religious minorities. Starting from a comprehensive perspective and a theoretical framework peculiar to the sociology of ethnic relations, it offers a two-pronged qualitative analysis of the open letters published in Québec newspapers. First, the various arguments made by participants in the debate are identified and categorized by means of thematic analysis. Second, a comparative approach is used to identify the various types of participants in this debate, taking into account both the nature of the ideological forces at work and their position on the most salient social-differentiation axes that structured the debate. The results suggest that the polemic arose from a conflict between the various “identity markers” used to place ethnic boundaries. Moreover, it suggests that the polemic also gave rise to a reconfiguration of ethnic relations in Québec, due to the distinction between the debate on the nation-to-nation conflict and that on the criteria for inclusion in the nation.

This thesis is about the politics and the possibilities of aetiology. Firstly, the possibilities. Does an infectious disease have one, single pathogenic cause or many, interacting causes? In the medical microbiological sciences, there is no definitive answer, one way or another, to this question: there, the conditions of aetiological possibility exist in a curious tension. Ever since the birth of the 'germ theory of disease' and the concomitant birth of the singular aetiological object, these conditions have allowed for the co-existence of a very different, and far less well understood kind of object: the multifactorial object. That SARS was caused by one, singular viral agent, a coronavirus (CoV), is now entrenched as microbiological fact. And yet, the curious thing about SARS is that the history of the 2003 outbreak is littered with moments at which the possibility of the multifactorial object presented itself to, and was actively considered by, medical microbiologists. So how did we get here - to SARS-CoV, an infectious disease that could be understood and storied in this, the most singular of ways? And what happened along the way to deny the multifactorial aetiological object any kind of existence at all? In an attempt to grapple with these questions, the thesis seeks to recover the possibility of the multifactorial object through a deep, ethnomethodological reading of the moments at which it flared up precise/y as a possibility for medical microbiologists investigating the outbreak. What emerges from that recovery operation is a sense that the multifactorial object was never actually ruled out or disproved in any way, but rather, was vanished. Put another way, the suggestion is that various medical microbiological practices and interventions, whilst establishing singularity, were serving, at the same time, to create an illusion of multifactorality's non-existence; an illusion behind which the issue of multifactorality, its possibility, could be discarded without ever having to be resolved, one way or the other. In the closing sections of this thesis a move is made towards suggesting that SARS-Co V, the singular disease, was the product of a choice-, a choice that was made to explore one aetiological possibility at the expense of another. And that is where the politics comes in. For if politics, the realm of the political, can be taken to arise in situations where various possibilities exist but not all possibilities can be chosen, then it follows that what this thesis provides is an opportunity to foreground the politics bound up with the practical doing of aetiology. As a result, and based on the experience of attempting to recover the vanished multifactorial object from the 2003 SARS outbreak, the thesis concludes with an attempt to inhabit the present in such a way as to make it possible to think, in a little more detail, about where aetiology, as understood by medical microbiologists, might be heading in the future: might recent shifts in practical, everyday, seemingly innocuous microbiological technique, have begun to make it easier to coax the multifactorial object out into a space of visibility? Might those shifts actually herald the crossing of an epistemological threshold in the medical sciences? And might the conditions of aetiological possibility be changing, and changing in ways that would drastically alter what it meant to speak of a 'disease', an 'infection' and a 'pathogen'?

Evitar que o tempo atue como agente de corrosão de diretos durante o longo período de pendência do processo deve ser uma verdadeira obsessão do processualista moderno, consciencioso da finalidade e da existência da ciência processual que constitui o seu objeto de estudo. A visão teleológica do processo como instrumento de realização do direito material deve estar presente na interpretação de todas as regras processuais, sempre tendo em mente o sábio conselho de Chesterton, para quem o homem pode enxergar mais longe se subir aos ombros dos que vieram antes. Romper com velhos dogmas para proporcionar resposta aos novos problemas é fazer com que o direito processual seja dinâmico, conferindo-lhe a capacidade de superar crises de efetividade. A alteração dos fatos durante a longa travessia que é o processo constitui o objeto deste estudo, sobretudo no que se refere aos impactos sobre importantes figuras e institutos processuais como a causa de pedir, a estabilização da demanda, a rigidez do sistema preclusivo, a inércia da jurisdição e a interpretação destes, plasmada nos princípios constitucionais do contraditório e da duração razoável do processo, que integram o conceito amplo do devido processo legal. Para alcançar tais propósitos, esta dissertação está estruturada em cinco partes. O acesso à ordem jurídica justa é o tema inicial e o primeiro capítulo é destinado ao seu estudo. Acesso à justiça não se confunde com estar em juízo. O seu real significado está relacionado com a realização da promessa constitucional de entrega da tutela jurisdicional a quem efetivamente tem direito a ela, sempre lembrando que ela deve ser justa, igualitária e tempestiva. O capitulo dois, núcleo da abordagem teórica do objeto deste estudo, centra-se na identificação da demanda e de seus elementos objetivos, em que se busca demonstrar a existência de uma pluralidade de possibilidades para a investigação do mesmo problema. A concepção alemã do objeto do processo (ou objeto litigioso) enfoca o problema de modo absolutamente distinto daquele concebido pelo direito italiano (teoria dos três eadem). O tempero dado pelas teorias da substanciação e individualização para identificação do núcleo resistente da causa de pedir demonstram a necessidade da análise dos elementos que compõem a demanda, em atenção ao direito material que se busca fazer valer em juízo. Os direitos autodeterminados e heterodeterminados reclamam a utilização de métodos distintos para identificação da causa petendi, demonstrando que esta figura jurídica goza de certa elasticidade. O capítulo três desenvolve a conceituação do fato superveniente e do fato de conhecimento superveniente, bem como o impacto distinto destes na esfera jurídica do autor e do réu, analisando o último momento do procedimento em que é praticamente possível introduzir o fato novo e, sobretudo, o real alcance do art. 462 do Código de Processo Civil. A interpretação deste dispositivo processual revela um poderoso alcance de notável utilidade para aperfeiçoamento do processo como método estatal de solução de controvérsias. O quarto capítulo problematiza os limites da modificação da causa de pedir no curso do processo, com a superação do dogma da estabilização da demanda. A não-incidência ou não-aplicação de regras processuais meramente formais para dar efetividade aos princípios constitucionais informadores do devido processo legal é a pedra de toque para a conclusão a que se chega ao fim do trabalho. O capítulo cinco, conclusivo do percurso analítico empreendido, apresenta o estágio de compreensão do objeto alcançado neste estudo. Garantido o contraditório e a ampla defesa, deve ser prestigiado o princípio constitucional da duração razoável do processo, cuja correta interpretação é dele extrair uma garantia de resolução integral da crise de direito material com o menor grau de perturbação social possível, ou seja, com o menor dispêndio de energia e tempo, o que implica reconhecer a possibilidade de modificação da causa petendi. / Avoiding time to act as a corrosion agent of rights during the long period of a pending case must be a true obsession for the modern expert in civil procedure, conscious of the purpose and existence of procedural science that constitutes its object of study. The teleological vision of the judicial process as an instrument of realization of substantive law shall be present in the interpretation of all procedural rules, always keeping Chestertons wise advice in mind, to whom a man can see further if he climbs on the shoulders of those who came before. Breaking with old dogmas to provide solutions to new problems is to make procedural law dynamic, giving it the capability to overcome crises of effectiveness. The change of events during the long journey of the case is the object of this study, particularly with regard to the impacts on important procedural figures and institutions such as cause of action, stabilization of claim, rigidity of the preclusive system, inertia of jurisdiction and its interpretation, present in the constitutional principles of adversary system and reasonable time of proceedings, which form the broad concept of due process of law. To achieve such aims, this dissertation is structured in five parts. The access to the fair legal system is the opening theme and the first chapter focuses on its study. Access to justice should not be confused with being at court. Its real meaning is related to the implementation of the constitutional promise of delivery of legal protection to those who are actually entitled to it, always remembering that it must be fair, equitable and timely. The second chapter, the core of the theoretical object of this study, focuses on the identification of the litigation and its objective elements and seeks to demonstrate the existence of a plurality of possibilities for the investigation of the same problem. The German conception of the subject matter (or litigious matter) analyzes the 194 problem in a completely different manner from that designed by the Italian Law (theory of the three eadem). The effect given by the theories of substantiation and individualization for the identification of the resistant core of the cause of action demonstrate the necessity of analyzing the elements of claim, in response to the substantive law that seeks to be enforced in court. The self-determined and heterodetermined rights claim the use of different methods to identify the causa petendi demostrating that this legal concept hás certain elasticity. The third chapter develops the concept of supervening fact and supervening knowledge of the fact as well as their different impact on the legal sphere of the plaintiff and the defendant; the last moment of the proceedings that permits the introduction of the new fact is analyzed and, especially, the actual scope of article 462 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The interpretation of this procedural provision reveals a remarkable range of powerful utility for improving the legal process as a state method of settlement. The fourth chapter discusses the limits to change the cause of action during the course of action overcoming the dogma of the stabilization of claim. The nonlevy or non-application of purely formal procedural rules to give effect to the constitutional principles which inform the due process of law is the cornerstone of the conclusion reached at the end of the work. The fifth chapter concludes the undertaken analytical path and presents the understanding stage of the object of this study. Being the adversary system and full defense guaranteed, the constitutional principle of reasonable time of proceedings must be considered. Its correct interpretation is to acquire a guarantee of full resolution of the crisis of substantive law with the lowest degree of social disruption as possible, i.e., the lowest expenditure of energy and time, which means recognizing the possibility of changing the causa petendi.

Essa dissertação teve por objetivo analisar a dinâmica de cumprimento de mandados na Comarca de Palmas do Estado do Tocantins, a fim de verificar se tem sido realizada com efetividade. Partindo-se da premissa que o tempo expendido no cumprimento de mandados impacta no processo como um todo, analisou-se a movimentação processual de forma mais abrangente, não se restringindo somente às diligências realizadas pelos Oficiais de Justiça. Ocorre que, dentro de cada fórum, para que o gestor consiga identificar as particularidades de sua organização, é necessário efetivar a gestão de processos e pessoas em suas unidades de trabalho, com o mesmo foco e essência da gestão estratégica incentivada pelo Conselho Nacional de Justiça (CNJ), inclusive, através do acompanhamento do trabalho de juízes e servidores com uma lupa mais científica. Ter consciência de que maneira os atores processuais tem desempenhado suas funções é fundamental para conhecer as dificuldades que o Poder Judiciário tem enfrentado para entregar a prestação jurisdicional com prazo razoável e de qualidade. Seguindo essa linha de raciocínio, tem-se que o levantamento de dados sistematizados e apresentados em relatórios poderá propiciar a prestação do serviço de forma mais precisa. Durante a pesquisa, o método utilizado foi o indutivo, mediante estudo de dados extraídos do sistema e-Proc no que se refere aos mandados encaminhados à central de mandados da comarca no mês de setembro de 2016. Outrossim, foi realizado um estudo bibliográfico e normativo dos procedimentos do Tribunal de Justiça do Tocantins, sendo que a interpretação dos resultados obtidos na pesquisa local foi feita em consonância com os referenciais teóricos e com a metodologia adotada. Concluiu-se que a coleta de dados frente às unidades judiciais que estão direta ou indiretamente ligadas ao cumprimento de mandados deve ser melhor estruturada como ferramenta para identificar necessidades pontuais e, com isso, auferir melhores resultados. / This dissertation aimed to analyze the dynamics of compliance with mandates in the Palmas County of the State of Tocantins, in order to verify if it has been carried out with effectiveness. Based on the premise that the time spent in the fulfillment of mandates impacts on the process as a whole, the process was analyzed in a more comprehensive way, not restricted to the diligences carried out by the Officers of Justice. It happens that within each forum, so that the manager can identify the particularities of his organization, it is necessary to carry out the management of processes and people in his work units, with the same focus and essence of the strategic management encouraged by the National Council of Justice (CNJ), including by monitoring the work of judges and servers with a more scientific look. Being aware of how the procedural actors have performed their duties is fundamental to know the difficulties that the Judiciary has faced to deliver the judicial provision with reasonable time and quality. Following this line of reasoning, it is assumed that the collection of systematized data and report presentations can provide a more precise service. During the research, the inductive method was used, through a study of data extracted from the e-Proc system with regard to the errands sent to the command center of the county in September 2016. In addition, a bibliographic and normative study of the procedures of the Court of Justice of Tocantins was carried out, and the interpretation of the results obtained in the local research was done in consonance with the theoretical references and with the methodology adopted. It was concluded that the collection of data from the judicial units that are directly or indirectly linked to the execution of warrants should be better structured as a tool to identify specific needs and, therefore, to obtain better results.