By-laws are considered to be one of the primary tools of local government to enable them to manage and regulate the affairs of their constituent jurisdictions. It is therefore of critical importance that bylaws are current, not in conflict with provincial and national legislation, efficient and in line with practical requirements, and empowers the local authority sufficiently to manage its own affairs. There are three major causes that require local authorities to change and update by-laws. The first major cause is the reorganisation of the pre-1994 municipal boundaries. The second is the change to a constitutional dispensation that created three distinct spheres of government with their defined areas of legislative and executive powers. The third is the new order environmental legislation and philosophy that is in line with internationally accepted principles of sustainable development and human rights, and differs from the pre- 1994 legislation. The principle of cooperative governance requires local authorities not to be in conflict with other organs of state or national and provincial legislation. The result is that many local authorities require new by-laws, including waste management by-laws. Many such projects were undertaken by local authorities, one by the City of Johannesburg as part of the iGoli 2000 project. The by-laws also have to adequately capacitate the local authority to regulate all aspects of waste management in a practical and functional manner. These practical and functional requirements must be considered and included in the waste management by-laws where relevant. A guideline should as a minimum cover the following elements: -ensuring cooperative governance, -ensuring compliance with specific requirements set by the Constitution and other legislation such as the Municipal Systems Act, -alignment of by-laws with the legal mechanisms available for service delivery, and -ensuring it provides guidance on what elements should be considered to meet the practical and functional requirements of local authorities. This dissertation provides a guideline that meets criteria set out in legislation, policies and strategies. The discussion encompasses a vast field of the law and waste management practice, and attempts to provide local authorities with an introduction and references to the most salient aspects that has to be considered when drafting and implementing waste management by-laws. / Thesis (M. Environmental Management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

The Islamic legislative drafting methodology is meant to bring the family law of Islamic countries into line with current conceptions of gender equality found not only in the West but in Islamic law (the shari’a) as well. The methodology involves identifying the fundamental principles of shari’a and recognizing that they must be adapted to the socio-economic conditions in which they are to be applied.

The Islamic legislative drafting methodology is meant to bring the family law of Islamic countries into line with current conceptions of gender equality found not only in the West but in Islamic law (the shari’a) as well. The methodology involves identifying the fundamental principles of shari’a and recognizing that they must be adapted to the socio-economic conditions in which they are to be applied.

The problem of this study is to determine the relation of a pupil's capacity in spatial and visual imagery to his drafting achievement, and to his mechanical aptitude.

This thesis documents my process as Scenic Designer for Richard O'Brien's musical, The Rocky Horror Show, presented by the University of Central Florida Conservatory Theatre. This production premiered on the University of Central Florida's Mainstage Theatre 29 March 2007 and ran for fifteen performances, closing on 15 April 2007. This thesis includes my research and analysis of the published script and a production journal which documents my process for our specific production. In this document, I illustrate how my communication and meetings with the director and members of the design team moved from initial conversations into the research, development, and construction processes in order to create the realized production. I explain the challenges and obstacles I faced in the development and construction stages and how my communication with members of the design and production staff led to the final design. Throughout this document, I present figures displaying the preliminary sketches, renderings, construction process, and production photographs that illustrate how the production moved from an idea to a reality. I also present a self analysis of the process and final product through personal reflection and outside response.

The study addresses the automated translation of architectural drawings from 2D Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) data into a Building Information Model (BIM), with emphasis on the nature, possible role, and limitations of a drafting language Knowledge Representation (KR) on the problem and process. The central idea is that CAD to BIM translation is a complex diagrammatic interpretation problem requiring a domain (drafting language) KR to render it tractable and that such a KR can take the form of an information model. Formal notions of drawing-as-language have been advanced and studied quite extensively for close to 25 years. The analogy implicitly encourages comparison between problem structures in both domains, revealing important similarities and offering guidance from the more mature field of Natural Language Understanding (NLU). The primary insight we derive from NLU involves the central role that a formal language description plays in guiding the process of interpretation (inferential reasoning), and the notable absence of a comparable specification for architectural drafting. We adopt a modified version of Engelhard's approach which expresses drawing structure in terms of a symbol set, a set of relationships, and a set of compositional frameworks in which they are composed. We further define an approach for establishing the features of this KR, drawing upon related work on conceptual frameworks for diagrammatic reasoning systems. We augment this with observation of human subjects performing a number of drafting interpretation exercises and derive some understanding of its inferential nature therefrom. We consider this indicative of the potential range of inferential processes a computational drafting model should ideally support. The KR is implemented as an information model using the EXPRESS language because it is in the public domain and is the implementation language of the target Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) model. We draw extensively from the IFC library to demonstrate that it can be applied in this manner, and apply the MVD methodology in defining the scope and interface of the DOM and IFC. This simplifies the IFC translation process significantly and minimizes the need for mapping. We conclude on the basis of selective implementations that a model reflecting the principles and features we define can indeed provide needed and otherwise unavailable support in drafting interpretation and other problems involving reasoning with this class of diagrammatic representations.

This thesis analyses the legal status and the importance of short titles in the legislative processes of the Westminster Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, and the US Congress. Through a large quantitative survey of US short titles that spanned over 30 years and 18 Congresses, it was demonstrated that there has been a paradigm shift in the way the US Congress titles its bills, in which it transitioned from a largely descriptive, technical style to a wider range of styles, among which a more explicitly evocative style became both acceptable and frequently used. Such titles are permeating the legislative process and the US statute book with what I argue is overly political language, and are blurring the lines between proselytizing and what has historically been regarded as a formally descriptive (not political) element of legislative drafting. Conversely, save for a few choice titles, the Westminster Parliament and Scottish Parliament continue to employ mostly descriptive short titles, similar to the previously innocuous style of the US Congress. From a contemporary and historical perspective in all three jurisdictions, the short titles of bills have been viewed as relatively insignificant reference points for those engaged and/or interacting with legislation from a drafting, legislative process or larger legal or political perspective, and have subsequently received little attention in the academic community. By employing a comparative research approach primarily focused on a cross-disciplinary literature review and hypothesis testing through three empirical projects, this thesis draws upon both qualitative and quantitative methods of research to answer the primary research questions. The main empirical method used was a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with lawmakers, staffers, bill drafters, government officials and media members from all three jurisdictions. Although the legal status of short bill titles in each jurisdiction differed, many individuals from each jurisdiction viewed short bill titles as a considerably important part of the lawmaking process. Also, to varying degrees in each jurisdiction, interviewees repeatedly offered the opinion that short titles: may affect a bill’s chances of becoming law; are at times misleading; serve as more than referential points; at times may pressure legislators to vote for a bill; may be used as framing devices; and sometimes employ language that is not justified during the legislative process. These support the proposition that short titles have legislative process and political implications. The interviews support the legislative process analysis of the three jurisdictions that Chapter IV discusses, which is that the Scottish Parliament operates with the strictest regulations in regards to short title accuracy. In addition to being the only jurisdiction studied that openly endorses a ‘proper form’ in which bills must be drafted (which explicitly mentions short titles), many Scottish interviewees stated that such titles were important in the legislative process for different reasons than US and Westminster interviewees, stressing descriptive legal accuracy and taking care in regard to bill scope, among other concerns. The thesis’ quantitative survey portion includes separate surveys and sample populations from the US and Scotland. Though data collection was marred by an error in the US, thus hindering the analysis of such data, the Scottish results suggested that short bill titles may have psychological effects when analysing the favourability of proposals: all four evocative naming types produced higher favourability ratings than bland titles, and some results were statistically significant. However, the naming types were not statistically significant in assessing why the measure was supported or whether participants desired more information on bills. In response to the absence of short bill title standards in the US Congress and Westminster Parliament, and with the aim of describing how the Scottish Parliament standards might be made more thorough, the thesis provides short title recommendations that are suitable for all three jurisdictions. These recommendations largely accentuate proper form for language and processes in order to ensure short title accuracy, and have the potential, if applied consistently, to significantly reduce the chances of overtly political or evocative language entering the country’s legislative processes or statute books. While acknowledging that in all three institutions studied short bill titling may be in many respects a small aspect of the monumental and lengthy policy process, this thesis advances the proposition that it is considerably important to those who interact with and encounter legislation frequently, and that preventing evocative language from entering short bill titles is a benefit for the legislative processes of all three jurisdictions.

En dépit de leurs histoire et géographie distinctes, les systèmes juridiques romano-germanique et de common law ont longtemps influencé et continuent encore d’influencer, au Cameroun, le développement de la procédure pénale en général et des droits de la défense en particulier.D’une influence distincte et imposée dès la colonisation, avec pour caractéristiques principales, en matière pénale, l’existence de deux codes de procédures pénales et une disparité des droits de la personne poursuivie en fonction de la partie du territoire camerounais (ex-Cameroun oriental/ ex-Cameroun occidental), le législateur est parvenu en 2005, sur la base d’une influence commune et voulue des systèmes juridiques romano-germanique et de common law, à construire une procédure et un système de défense pénale uniques, caractérisés par un accroissement des droits de la défense.Produits des compromis et vecteurs du creuset d’influences réciproques des différents systèmes de droit romano-germanique et de common law, les droits de la défense au Cameroun, de la phase préparatoire à la phase décisoire du procès pénal, ont été construits autour des lignes de partage variables, qui traduisent plus une volonté de métissage du droit que l’hégémonie d’un seul système. / Despite their separate history and geography, civil and common law legal systems have long influenced and continue to influence, in Cameroon, the development of criminal procedure in general and the rights of the defence in particular.From a separate and imposed influence since colonization, with main characteristics, in criminal matters, the existence of two criminal procedure codes and a disparity of defense rights depending on the part of the Cameroon territory (eastern Cameroon / western Cameroon), the legislator in 2005, on the basis of a common and desired influence of civil and common law legal systems, succeeded to build a common procedure and criminal defence system, characterized by an increasing of the rights of defence.Products of compromises and vectors of crucible reciprocal influences of civil and common law legal systems, the rights of the defence in Cameroon, from the pre-trial phase to the trial phase of the criminal trial, were built around variable dividing lines, reflecting more a willingness to miscegenation than the hegemony of a single law system.

L’assistance dans l’élaboration d’un acte juridique est une technique ancienne à laquelle le législateur continue aujourd’hui d’avoir recours. Pourtant, elle semble susciter peu d’intérêt, de sorte que la légimité de son existence peut être mise en doute. L’objet de cette démonstration est donc de comprendre ce phénomène d’assistance afin de savoir s’il renvoie à une institution singulière et autonome. Apparaissant sous une double forme à l’occasion de la formation d’un acte juridique, l’assistance peut être tantôt “habilitante”, tantôt “facilitante”. Si ce dualisme est utile dans la détermination du régime, il est avant tout, sur le plan notionnel, source de confusion. Dans tous les cas, l’assistance affiche toutefois une unité substantielle. Caractérisée comme un “être avec” et un “agir avec”, l’assistance est une technique de protection intermédiaire refusant toute substitution qui consiste pour l’assistant à être aux côtés de l’assisté afin de l’aider à exprimer une volonté en conformité avec ses intérêts. Ce phénomène se doit par conséquent d’obéir à des règles clairement identifiées, ce qui n’est pas toujours le cas à ce jour. Tout en mettant en évidence le droit positif, cette étude se propose donc d’apporter certaines précisions dans le fonctionnement de l’assistance envisagé à la fois dans la seule relation établie entre les deux principaux protagonistes, mais aussi au-delà. Si l’assistance se déploie entre l’assisté et l’assistant, elle rayonne nécessairement sur l’acte juridique ainsi passé et sur des tiers à la relation d’assistance. / Assistance is a method that the legislator has had recourse to for long in the drafting of a legal transaction and it still does nowadays. However, it seems to arouse so few interest that the legitimacy of its existence may be doubted. The purpose of this demonstration therefore is to understand this practice and determine whether it can be considered as a singular and autonomous institution or not. Assistance can play two parts during the drafting of a legal transaction, sometimes as an “enabler”, sometimes as a “facilitator”. While this duality proves to be useful in the determination of the regime, it mostly brings a lexical confusion. In any case though, assistance conveys a substantial unity. Both defined as “being with” and “acting with”, assistance is an intermediary protection technique that excludes any kind of substitution and consists, for the designated assistant, in standing by the assisted to help him to state a will in accordance with his interests. As a consequence, it has to comply with clearly identified rules, which is, to date, not necessarily the case. Whilst presenting the positive law, this study aims at clarifying the functioning of assistance, both taken as the relationship established between the two main protagonists and beyond. Although assistance mainly concerns the assistant and the assisted, it inevitably has an impact on the legal transaction concluded thereby and the related third parties.

This thesis investigates the changes and challenges technology has created in the field of technical illustration. Technical illustration includes the fields of technical drawing as well as scientific and medical illustration. Previously, technical illustrators learned and used traditional illustration methods, without the aid of computers. However, technology has rapidly entered the field and has changed the education, work environment, skills, and role of the technical illustrator. I note both the benefits and disadvantages that current technical illustrators are facing in their work. I explore both sides of the digital media and traditional art debate while focusing on the technical illustrator's role, tools and methods used in the illustration process, education, idea-generation, and the future of technical illustration. By emphasizing the issues associated with the incorporation of digital media into traditional methods, I hope to bring awareness to the transformation of technical illustration and the future of this discipline.