Causation has, at the very minimum, two functions in legal responsibility regimes. First, there is no responsibility without a conduct with causal consequences, making causation a condition of responsibility. Second, causation determines and delimits the extent of liability. The first claim of this study is that the decision of the International Law Commission to construct a responsibility regime unconditional on damage did not result in the exclusion of causation from the conditions of responsibility. There are at least two signs demonstrating that the attempt to exclude responsibility-grounding causation from State responsibility did not hold ground in practice. First, there is abundant case law pre- and postdating the codification of the Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA), confirming that responsibility-grounding causation exists in international law. Second, notwithstanding the denial of ARSIWA and its commentaries, reading between the lines reveals that several concepts of State responsibility are of a causal nature and their application inevitably implies a causal inquiry. There are two interrelated explanations for this. First, at the heart of the system of State responsibility lies the concept of the ‘internationally wrongful act’. I argue that the law of State responsibility lacks a coherent action theory. In particular, a causal theory of action would explain several anomalies visible in the case law. The second explanation rests on approaching causation in the law of international responsibility as a general principle of law. The prevailing view in the case law and the academic contributions is that causation and, more specifically, certain standards of causation are general principles of law. In making the second claim of this thesis, I will argue that this is only partially true. Causation is a general principle in as much as the existence of a causal link is a condition of responsibility and one possible condition of delimiting liability. ARSIWA therefore runs contrary to this general principle. However, the authorities arguing for a specific test of causation, be it directness, proximity, foreseeability or other tests, do not have a substantial basis to do so. What remains, as an empirical and inductive method in line with Article 38 (1) d) of the ICJ Statute, is to distil the actual practice of international courts and tribunals. My third claim is that there is merit in this exercise and it is possible to identify recurring solutions to recurring problems of causation. This study is the second one to conduct this survey and analysis of the case law, following the footsteps of Brigitte Stern, updating and complementing her otherwise exhaustive and authoritative text on the subject. The thesis concludes with a list of the distilled principles and postulates on respective problems of causation, in particular on the applicability and the limits of the ‘but for’ test, the applicable standard of remoteness, multiple causation and contributory negligence.

The law of the World Trade Organization (WTO) both explicitly and implicitly requires that a determination of causation be made at a number of points. In several of the WTO covered agreements, an important part of making a determination about causation involves separating those factors that are causative from those that are immaterial to the outcome in question (this process of separation is known as a 'non-attribution analysis'). This thesis argues that there are six parts of the law of the WTO that require, either explicitly or implicitly, that a causation and non-attribution analysis be undertaken. These are: (1) Safeguard Measures (Articles 2.1 and 4.2(a) and (b) of the Agreement on Safeguards ); (2) Anti-Dumping measures (Articles 3.1 and 3.5 of the Anti-Dumping Agreement ); (3) Countervailing Duties (Article 15.5 of the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement (SCM Agreement)); (4) Serious prejudice (Articles 5(c) and 6.3 of the SCM Agreement); (5) the relationship between a measure and its policy objective (Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and Article XIV of the General Agreement on Trade in Services ); and (6) the relationship between a responding Member's failure to comply with a DSB ruling and the complainant Member's level of nullification and impairment (Articles 22.6 of the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes and 4.10 of the SCM Agreement). This thesis will first examine the current approach in the jurisprudence to analysing causation and non-attribution in these parts of the law of the WTO. To that end, it will suggest that there is a trend in the current jurisprudence to attempt to make an a priori inference about the effects of a cause from the nature of the cause itself. This thesis will suggest that this approach reflects a misconception of causation, and it will propose an alternative, three-part methodology for interrogating causation based on the use of econometric analysis, which has been developed from guidance given by the Appellate Body in US-Wheat Gluten.

Dispute Settlement in International Economic Law - Selected Aspects Abstract At the time of the emergence of investor state arbitration, such regulation of states was seen as necessary to protect Western investors from expropriation of their investments by developing states, in which there was an absence of rule of law and the protections that flow from that. The ICSID Center was established primarily to ensure the availability of an assured impartial and independent dispute resolution service. The increase in the number of cases over the years, together with sometimes expansive, unexpected and inconsistent interpretations of International Investment Agreement provisions by tribunals, had triggered a worldwide debate and a number of countries had adopted reform measures. The EU has proposed a Permanent Investment Court to address criticism, aimed at investment arbitration and to be included as a measure under the TTIP. This concept has been also adopted in the CETA, and if successful, is likely to be adopted in other treaty agreements as the European Parliament has expressed a preference for the proposed investment court under the TTIP to be included in other free trade agreements. The concept of a permanent legal body providing public proceedings and decisions, establishing binding case law to address...

This thesis analyzes the enforcement measures for the protection of intellectual property rights in an international and regional framework. The challenges posed by the digital technology / the difficulties faced by right holders, judiciary, public agencies, international and regional organizations in the implementation stages will be discussed by referring to the legal texts such as the TRIPS Agreement, the EU Enforcement Directive and Regulations. All dimensions of counterfeiting and piracy will constitute an important focus of this thesis. The thesis will seek to clarify uncertainties arising from the jurisdictional conflicts for the determination of the applicable law and competent courts in intellectual property cases involving foreign elements.

This research involves a legal impact study of the State College Nuisance Property Ordinance and an assessment of State College Rental Property Managers in the role of place manager/intimate handler of offender. The impact of the Ordinance was assessed by employing an interrupted time series design which examined five years of pre-ordinance violations against five years of post-ordinance violations. The assessment of State College Rental Property Managers in the role of place manager/intimate handlers of offenders was assessed through a mail survey. The survey contained items that measured the level to which State College Rental Property Managers have assumed this role. This level was then regressed against the offenses covered under the Ordinance in order to determine if this role has an impact on reducing and/or deterring offenses in rental units. The data suggest that the Ordinance was successful in reducing violations in nuisance rental units. In addition, the analyses of the survey revealed that a higher level of place manager/intimate handler of offender was positively correlated with criminal and ordinance violations. / Dr. Randy L. Martin Dr. Kathleen J. Hanrahan Dr. Jennifer J. Roberts Dr. John A. Lewis

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<p>Judicial remedies are, amongst others, a vehicle through which respect, protection, promotion and fulfilment of human rights can be delivered to those who need them. A remedy is the perspective from which litigants judge either the success or failure of judicial decisions. Judicial remedies make the rights whole, they complete the justiciability of human rights because without them human rights remain statements of legal rhetoric. The nature of the remedies that the courts grant is not only based on the normative nature of the rights they seek to enforce. They are also influenced by factors such as the goals and objectives of judicial remedies as defined, amongst others, by the ethos of either corrective or distributive forms of justice. This thesis explored these factors and their impact on judicial remedies. Stress is put on the impact of the separation of powers doctrine, institutional competence concerns and on the forms of justice pursued by courts. The study is based on the judicial enforcement of the socio-economic rights protected in the South African 1996 Constitution. The research undertaken here was intended to guide scholars, legal practitioners and judicial officers who confront socio-economic rights issues as part of their daily work.</p>

This paper applies an intuitive approach based on stock market data to a unique dataset of large concentrations during the period 1990-2002 to assess the effectiveness of European merger control. The basic idea is to relate announcement and decision abnormal returns. Under a set of four maintained assumptions, merger control might be interpreted to be effective if rents accruing due to the increased market power observed around the merger announcement are reversed by the antitrust decision, i.e. if there is a negative relation between announcement and decision abnormal returns. To clearly identify the events' competitive effects, we explicitly control for the market expectation about the outcome of the merger control procedure and run several robustness checks to assess the role of our maintained assumptions. We find that only outright prohibitions completely reverse the rents measured around a merger's announcement. On average, remedies seem to be only partially capable of reverting announcement abnormal returns. Yet they seem to be more effective when applied during the first rather than the second investigation phase and in subsamples where our assumptions are more likely to hold. Moreover, the European Commission appears to learn over time. (authors' abstract)

The class action is an important instrument for the enforcement of consumers' rights, particularly in personal actions for low sums known as Negative Expected Value (NEV) suits. Collective redress actions transform NEV suits into Positive Expected Value suits using economies of scale by the aggregation of smaller actions into a single legal action which is economically worthwhile pursuing. Collective redress promotes adherence to the law, deters illegal actions and furthers public interests. Collective redress also helps in the management of multiple cases in court. The introduction of a new class action model in Israel has proven to be very workable in the sense that it has improved access to justice, albeit that this system currently suffers from over-use, referred to in this work as the "flood problem". The purpose of this research is to introduce a class action model which brings with it the advantages of the Israeli model, as well as improvements upon it so as to promote consumer confidence in low figure transactions by individuals with large, powerful companies. The new model suggested in this work relies on the opt-out mechanism, monitored by regulatory bodies through public regulation or by private regulators. The reliance on the supremacy of public enforcement and follow-on actions over private stand-alone actions should make the system of collective redress more efficient than the current Israeli model, reducing the risk of a flood of actions whilst at the same time improving access to justice for large groups of claimants. Thus far, no unified European class action mechanism has been developed, and only some member states have developed their own systems. The model discussed in this work may be implemented as a unified set of rules in Europe, with some additional adjustments, such as those covering cross-border trade, to promote confidence in trade within the European Union.

The subject matter of this thesis is – trademark owners’ rights and civil remedies for their infringement. In this final work legal acts that regulate rights of trademark owners‘and civil remedies for their infringement, actual jurisprudence in trademark cases also some statistical data are analyzed. The purpose of this thesis is to valuate the efficiency of trademark owners’ rights.