In recent decades, arbitration of international commercial disputes has increased and is likely to continue to grow. Many businesses prefer arbitration to litigation in court because of its relative promptness, privacy and economy. However, in some instances, arbitration requires the support of national courts to be effective when arbitral awards are not satisfied through voluntary compliance of the parties. The most important convention seeking to regulate enforcement of arbitral awards is the New York Convention. The primary goal of the Convention is to make it easier for parties to recognize and enforce arbitral awards around the world. While requiring contracting countries to recognize and enforce arbitral awards, the New York Convention sets forth enumerated grounds upon which a court may refuse to enforce them. It dictates that recognition or enforcement may be refused only for a restricted number of clearly defined defenses, related to procedural fairness and public policy. Among these defenses, the public policy exception is most frequently invoked and has also become one of the most controversial grounds for refusing to enforce arbitral awards. This paper will examine the international conventions that govern international commercial arbitration, and analyze the problems that arise when parties use the court system to enforce arbitration awards. It will look specifically at whether the public policy defense is so vague that it fails to provide the uniform interpretation and application needed to guide national courts in reviewing the enforceability of an international arbitration award, and will propose helpful modifications. The individual chapters will narrow this focus by providing an overview of the public policy exception, followed by an assessment of existing international arbitration law, both substantive and procedural, followed by a partial inventory of the interpretive variations and case law considering the public policy exception, and ultimately a discussion of applicability and enforceability issues. / acase@tulane.edu

On April 18, 1989, eighteen school aged children from the metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut area, acting through their parents, commenced a civil action in the Hartford Superior Court. The suit named the State of Connecticut, constitutionally elected officials, and officials of various state commissions and agencies as defendants. The plaintiffs alleged significant constitutional violations under applicable sections of the State constitution which they believe constituted a denial of their fundamental rights to an education and rights to equal protection under the law. In the landmark civil rights decision of Sheff v. O'Neill, the Connecticut Supreme Court, on July 16, 1996, ruled that based upon these constitutional claims, the state had an affirmative obligation to provide Connecticut's school children with a substantially equal educational opportunity. This constitutionally guaranteed right encompasses the access to a public education which is not substantially and materially impaired by racial and ethnic isolation. The Court further concluded that school districting based upon town and city boundary lines are unconstitutional. The implications and potential ramifications of this decision are significant. This dissertation chronicles the events and examines the issues surrounding this landmark decision. The background contributing to the plaintiffs claims, the state's position, the historical evolution of the case, and reaction/actions and proposals to remedy and comply with the court's order are examined.

I apply complex systems thinking to investigate the inner workings of an innovative urban youth leadership program to reveal how development organizations can create an ecosystem to cultivate “change”. The global “youth bulge”, globalization, and a lack of opportunities leave young people without work and skills to survive in a complex world. New approaches, labeled social innovations, focus on finding transformative ways to solving systemic issues through financially sustainable, system-focused, holistic solutions. My dissertation entails a mixed-methods case study of a US-based development organization and program. I bring together trends in international development and youth development, complexity thinking, and the emergence of social innovations to examine how “change” can be cultivated. “Change” in this context refers to intentional advancement of individual capabilities, observed through the Capabilities Approach, and the concepts of “hard” and “soft” skills. The complex systems lens brings attention to the feedback loops (mechanisms), and how the elements and mechanisms come together to form an “ecosystem”. My findings explain how change happens through an ecosystem approach. The ecosystem consists of “Real Talk”, “Real Work”, and “Real Accountability”. These mechanisms work to reinforce each other to cultivate “leaderly” change in youth through a system of feedback loops. I introduce the term Leaderliness to capture the enhanced capabilities in the “soft skills” of self-confidence, interpersonal communication, self-efficacy, experience and understanding of a professional work environment. Specific individual cases of youth reveal the independent, unique experience that each individual pursues through the program. Diverse youth experience their own pathway to change, influenced by various personal factors. Diversity is an important element of the ecosystem, introducing differences for youth to learn from. Relationships encourage leaderly growth in youth, through interactions with peers and with Crew Leaders. The natural environment sets the scene, working to advance youth capabilities through the sun, heat, rain, insects, living plants. The cultivation of living plants in the hot, thick southern air provided meaningful, relevant work for youth. My research study contributes to the field of international development, social innovation and youth development, but also add to others looking to create positive a culture of “change”. / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation will examine the dangers created by governmental entities that possess or seek to possess weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), for possible use against other states. In order to counter such a threat, traditional notions of anticipatory self-defense such as preemption might prove ineffective as the deployment of WMDs can be carried out in a matter of minutes. As a result of this, some jurists and politicians have called for the broadening of anticipatory self-defense to include preventive force. While the use of preemptive force has been recognized as a legitimate form of selfdefense, such recognition has not been extended to the use of preventive force. This research attempts to answer the following questions: Under what circumstances can preventive force be used against a target state that develops WMDs with the alleged intention to use them? And what procedures would ensure that preventive force is used in a manner that minimizes the possibility of abuse by the state claiming to exercise its right of self-defense? The dissertation will propose a normative framework that will define the scope of the lawful use of preventive force when a state is claiming to be using such force against another state as an exercise of self-defense. The proposed legal framework takes into consideration both recent legal developments as well as relevant instances of state practice in order to circumscribe the use of preventive force to clearly defined cases. The determination of the legality of a preventive strike should be made by the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council would be presented with a proposed preventive strike by a state making the allegation that the strike is necessary to stop another state from developing WMDs that would be used against it in the future. In order to secure an approval for the preventive strike, the “preventor” state would have to show compelling reasons, such as the target state’s prior bad actions, as to why such a strike is necessary. / acase@tulane.edu

Arnold Winfred Reitze, Jr. / George Washington University, School of Law

Thesis (D. Jur.)--York University, 2000. / "Graduate Programme in Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University." Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ67940.

School districts and states have increasingly abandoned traditional school reform efforts in favor of simply closing low-performing schools. This movement reflects growing frustration among policymakers with the disappointing effects of previous school improvement policies, and the view that some schools may simply lack the capacity to undertake meaningful improvements. This paper focuses on arguably the most aggressive school closure policies in the nation--those in New York City. Over the past decade, New York City has closed over 100 schools. Using a longitudinal database of students and schools, I explore the implementation and effects of closure and reconstitution of middle schools in New York City, and assess the links between school closure and student academic development and behavior. My descriptive findings indicate that schools selected for closure have significantly lower school-average state test score exams and lower attendance rates compared to other middle schools for several years prior to closure, and that students who attend these schools are almost exclusively Hispanic and Black, more likely to come from low-income families, and more mobile than other middle school students in the district. I also find that students enter these middle schools already at a significant academic disadvantage. I examine characteristics of the reconstituted schools that replace the closed schools, and find that in terms of demographics, reconstituted schools enroll students similar to those served by the closed schools that they replaced. However, the reconstituted schools serve higher performing students with fewer absences and tardies in the year prior to enrolling in middle school. To assess the impact of school closure on student academic outcomes, I use propensity-score matching within a difference-in-differences framework. I find a small, positive effect of school closure on student test scores and rates of absences. As a robustness check, I conduct a second set of analyses using student fixed-effects models that produced similar results: students learn slightly less at chronically underperforming schools, compared to what would have happened had they attended an alternate school. School closure appears to be a somewhat effective in improving student academic outcomes. It is not clear, however, whether the policy is efficient given the small effects and the considerable disruption associated with the policy. Future research should examine the fiscal costs associated with closure, compared to costs of other policies with similar effects.

TITLE: Selected questions of normative regulation of the Czech educational system AUTHOR: Michaela Fořtová DEPARTMENT: Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy SUPERVISOR: JUDr. Stanislav Sádovský, PhD., LLM, MSc ABSTRACT: The thesis is devoted to the problems of normative regulation in the sphere of the Czech educational system. At the very beginning it defines regulation and its influence within the framework of jurisprudence in the form of normative regulation. Therefore the dissertation deals with the term of legal standard, its structure and the types of legal norms. It indicates normative regulation in practice, thus in selected laws. Thereafter it performs classification of normative instruments in education, which is made on the basis of law sources difference. The end of this thesis is dedicated to normative regulation of the educational system, which is illustrated by selected documents. Then regulation is evaluated and possibilities of its improvement suggested. KEYWORDS: school system, rule-making, law sources, self-government, inspection

Among the multitude of interventions to address the worst forms of child labor (WFCL), one of the responses to the presence of WFCL has been the institution of child labor monitoring (CLM). While systems to systematically monitor children with respect to their exposure and risks have been implemented, the degree of their efficacy and ultimately their effect on the targeted populations begs academic scrutiny. This dissertation seeks to provide an empirical view of the community-level dynamics that emerge in response to a community-based CLM program and their effects, in turn, on the CLM itself. An embedded multiple case study methodology, surveying longitudinally at two points in time using a mix of purposive and probability sampling techniques, was employed for this study. Two communities, Ahokwa in the Western Region, and Dwease in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, were selected as cases. The study finds that between the two points of observation - before and after the introduction of CLM - a profound reduction of WFCL is observed in Dwease, whereas much less reduction was observed in Ahokwa. A point-by-point analysis within and between the two villages reveals that individual, social and institutional factors worked together to transform behavior in Dwease. The principal change catalysts in Dwease were (a) a heightened awareness of child work hazards and a deepened parental investment in child education working at the individual level, coupled with (b) new norms created by the town’s opinion leaders and the emergence of peer accountability at the social level, and (c) monitoring carried out by the Community Data Collection (CDC) and enforcement carried out by the Community Child Protection Committee (CCPC) - the two new institutions constituting CLM at the community-level. The underlying social dynamic proved to be decisive: a tipping point was crossed in Dwease whereby progressive opinion leaders in the community, who, once sensitized to recognize the pejorative effects of CL/WFCL, created new social norms and spurred a critical mass of community members to rid their community of CL/WFCL. This study shows that with sufficient local ownership, and if properly instituted, the tandem operation of child protection committees and child labor monitoring enables a community to effectively detect, police and mitigate the practice of child labor and WFCL. / acase@tulane.edu

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