The legal historical development of fairness in the South African common law of contract is investigated in the context of the political, social and economic developments of the last four centuries. It emerges that the common law of contract is still dominated by the ideologies of individualism and economic liberalism which were imported from English law during the nineteenth century. Together with the theories of legal positivism and formalism which are closely related to parliamentary sovereignty and the classical rule of law, these ideals were transposed into the common law of contract through the classical model of contract law which emphasises freedom and sanctity of contract and promotes legal certainty. This approach resulted in the negation of the court’s equitable discretion and the limitation of good faith which sustain the social and economic inequalities that were created under colonialism and exacerbated under apartheid rule. In stark contrast, the modern human rights culture grounded in human dignity and aimed at the promotion of substantive equality led to the introduction of modern contract theory in other parts of the world. The introduction of the Constitution as grounded in human dignity and aimed at the achievement of substantive equality has resulted in a sophisticated jurisprudence on human dignity that reflects a harmonisation between its Western conception as based on Kantian dignity and ubuntu which provides an African understanding thereof. In this respect, ubuntu plays an important role in infusing the common law of contract with African values and in promoting substantive equality between contracting parties in line with modern contract theory. It is submitted that this approach to human dignity should result in the development of good faith into a substantive rule of the common law of contract which can be used to set aside an unfair contract term or the unfair enforcement thereof. / Private Law / LL. D.

Reasonableness as a concept used in determining delictual liability or liability in tort law, is either embraced or perceived by some as frustrating. It is a normative concept which is inextricably linked with the concepts of fairness, justice, equity, public policy and the values of the community. These concepts assist in providing value judgements in determining liability. It is apparent from this study that the influence of reasonableness is predominantly implicit on the French law of delict, but more explicit on the South African law of delict and Anglo-American tort law. Its influence varies with respect to each element of tort or delictual liability. In order to hold a person liable for a delict or tort, it is only reasonable that all the elements of a delict or tort are present. Common to all the jurisdictions studied in this thesis is the idea of striking a balance between the defendant’s interests promoted, the plaintiff’s interests adversely affected and the interests of society. Where liability is based on fault, the reasonableness of conduct is called into question. In respect of causation whichever test or theory is used, what must ultimately be determined is whether according to the facts of the case, it is reasonable to impute liability on the defendant for the factually caused consequences. Whether loss or harm is required, assumed or not required, the question of the appropriate remedy or compensation which is reasonable under the circumstances is called into question. In South African and Anglo-American law, the multiple uses of the standards of the reasonable person, reasonable foreseeability of harm, reasonable preventability of harm, whether it is reasonable to impose an element of liability, or whether it is reasonable to impute liability, often cause confusion and uncertainty. At times, the role of these criteria with regard to a specific element may be valid and amplified while, at other times, their role is diminished and controversial. However, there is nothing wrong with the concept of reasonableness itself; indeed, it is a necessary and useful concept in law. Rather, it is the way that it is interpreted and applied in determining liability that is problematic. / Private Law / LL. D.

Student selection is particularly challenging in South Africa. Heterogeneous educational backgrounds require that it is necessary to assess prospective students' potential rather than their current abilities that crystallised from inadequate school education. Dynamic assessment assesses learning potential versus traditional psychometric measures, which are static measures of cognitive ability, measuring what a person has already learned. The aim was to determine the predictive validity of a selection battery. The following predictors were included in the study; matric results, Potential Index Battery, LPCAT, bridging course status and gender. The results confirmed that static measures of intelligence and matric results showed lower predictive validity than learning potential tests. The learning potential measure appeared to be a more valid predictor of academic performance and is suitable to include in a selection battery. Gender and bridging course factors did not reflect significant differences in academic performance. There were indications that students perform better in successive years of study, once they have adjusted to tertiary education. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M. Comm. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

Developing an adjudicative institutional framework for effective social security provisioning in South Africa entails the establishment of a system that gives effect to the rights (of access) to social security and to justice. These rights are protected in the Constitution and in various international law instruments. In the Constitution, the Bill of Rights guarantees everyone the right to have access to social security, including appropriate social assistance for persons who are unable to support themselves and their dependants. It further requires the State to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of the right to access to social security. Since a dispute resolution (adjudication) framework is an integral part of any comprehensive social security system, it is included in the constitutional obligation of the State. The establishment of a social security adjudication system is an intersection of the right of access to social security and the right of access to justice. The Constitution states that everyone has the right to have any dispute that can be resolved by the application of law decided in a fair public hearing before a court or, where appropriate, another independent and impartial tribunal or forum. In addition, other rights protected in the Constitution have a bearing on the realisation of the rights of access to social security and to justice. There is a close correlation between all the rights in the Bill of Rights, as they are interrelated, interdependent and mutually supporting. They must all be read together in the setting of the Constitution as a whole and their interconnectedness must be taken into account in interpreting rights; and in determining whether the State has met its obligations in terms of any one of them. These rights, which include the right to equality (section 9), the right to human dignity (section 10) and the right to just administrative action (section 33) must thus be considered in establishing a social security adjudication system. Also to be considered are other constitutional prerequisites for the establishment of a social security adjudication system, such as the limitation and enforcement of rights (sections 36 and 38 respectively); principles relating to courts and the administration of justice (Chapter 8) and basic values and principles governing public administration (Chapter 10). In establishing a social security adjudication system in South Africa, international law standards and developments in comparative systems must also be taken into account. The Constitution adopts an international law- and comparative law-friendly approach. It states that when interpreting fundamental rights, international law must be considered while foreign law may be considered (section 39). This thesis aims to develop an adjudicative and institutional framework for effective social security provisioning in South Africa that realises the rights of access to social security and to justice in the South African social security system. This is achieved by exploring the concept of access to justice, and its application in the social security adjudication system. The current social security adjudication system is evaluated against the concept of access to justice applicable in international and regional law instruments, comparable South African (non-social security) systems and comparative international jurisdictions. Principles and standards on the establishment of a social security adjudication system are distilled; and a reformed system for South Africa is proposed. / Mercantile Law / LL.D.

Em um contexto de demandas sociais tendencialmente crescentes, uma das alternativas para o aumento da arrecadação de receitas pelo Estado reside no manejo de aplicações financeiras. Os investimentos financeiros estatais, a rigor, já acontecem, mas nem sempre o objetivo claro e explícito de obtenção de resultados financeiramente interessantes e, eventualmente ou mesmo por isso , sob gestão economicamente ineficiente. Às vezes, até se enxerga o foco na obtenção de rendimentos relevantes na ação estatal, mas sem uma disciplina específica, o que pode abrir espaço a uma gestão de ativos desqualificada ou mesmo fraudulenta, com sérios prejuízos aos cofres públicos e, em situações extremas, ampliação ainda maior das despesas públicas. O objetivo desta tese, portanto, é reconhecer que nem sempre o Estado atua na economia com propósito interventivo e que, na qualidade de investidor institucional vale dizer, de ente que tem o dever de proceder aos investimentos e às aplicações financeiras que digam com as melhores práticas de administração dos ativos públicos , precisa atuar sob o jugo de normas jurídicas claras, que permitam ao Estado ampliar suas receitas dentro de limites razoáveis de exposição a risco financeiro e disponibilizem aos órgãos de fiscalização e controle da Administração Pública as ferramentas necessárias para, também quanto a esse aspecto, aferir a eficiência da ação estatal. Para tanto, têm-se como pressupostos o anacronismo da resistência cultural às aplicações financeiras dos entes da Administração Pública e a noção de que quaisquer ferramentas de obtenção de receitas pelo Estado estão sujeitas a algum grau de risco. Com base nas bem-sucedidas experiências nacionais e internacionais, será possível concluir, ao final, que é admissível, do ponto de vista constitucional e legal, a ação do Estado como investidor nos mercados financeiro e de capitais e que é viável a formulação de parâmetros gerais para a disciplina jurídica do Estado investidor. / In a context of growing social demands, financial investments become one of the alternatives for the State to increase its revenues. State investments, as a matter of fact, already do happen, but not always with the clear and explicit objective of obtaining financially interesting earnings, often due economically inefficient management. Sometimes it is possible to see in government investments some focus on obtaining relevant income, but not under a specific regulation, which can lead to an unqualified or even fraudulent management that may cause serious damage to the exchequer and, in extreme situations, expansion of the government spending. Hence the intent of this thesis is to acknowledge that the State does not always act in the economy with regulatory purposes and that, as an institutional investor i.e., an organization which has the duty of making financial investments in accordance to the best practices in public asset management , it must be framed by clear legal rules, which should allow the State to maximize its revenues within reasonable limits of financial risk exposure and the oversight and control agencies to assess the State efficiency and compliance. It is assumed that the cultural resistance to state financial investments is anachronistic as well as every state means of obtaining revenues is subject to some level of financial risk. Based on well succeeded experiences in Brazil and abroad, it will be possible to conclude, in the end, that it is constitutionally and legally admissible that the State acts as an investor in financial and stock markets and that it is possible to suggest some standards on legal regulation for this issue.

我國近年勞工意識抬頭，受雇者日漸重視自身工作權益，罷工運動頻傳，其中，工會理事表示，過去上對下的單向考評制度並不公平，因此，工會所訴求之員工績效評估方式，不再只是主管打員工的考績，而是雙向評估，亦即，員工亦打主管的考績。會計師事務所為服務型組織，成敗基於人，故衡量成員之績效相當重要。因此，本文以其員工之績效評估為例，探討其適當之績效評估制度為何。本研究以問卷方式蒐集資料，並以我國大專院校之會計系、所學生為受測對象。透過情境設計，結合不同績效評估制度，以了解並推論會計師事務所員工對向上績效評估制度公平程度之認知。本研究之結論有二，第一，會計師事務所員工對績效評估制度公平程度之認知，會受到向上績效評估影響，且在有向上績效評估時，認為績效評估制度比較公平。第二，向上績效評估結果是否納入受評主管之年底績效，會影響員工對績效評估制度公平程度之認知，且當該結果納入績效時，員工認為績效評估制度比較公平。易言之，當向上績效評估結果無法直接影響受評主管之年底績效，員工仍認為事務所之績效評估制度有欠公平。 / Labor consciousness is rising in recent years, and labor are paying more and more attention to their interest. The director of a labor union after one striking activity pointed out that the traditional (top-down) performance evaluation approach is unfair, and requested for a two-way performance evaluation approach, that is, subordinate also evaluate the performance of their supervisor in addition to the traditional way. This research studies the performance evaluation system of accounting firm, for it is a service organization, it’s very important to measures the performance of members, and establishing an appropriate performance evaluation system is an continuing challenge for them. To infer the perception regarding the fairness of performance evaluation of the staff of the accounting firm, the research uses method of questionnaire survey to collect data, a combination of different performance evaluation systems with designed context is embedded in the questionnaire. Students of the department of accounting of universities participate in the experiment. There are two findings. First, the perception of fairness of performance evaluation system by the staff of the accounting firm will be affected by the upward appraisal system. Moreover, the performance evaluation system will be considered fair when there is an upward appraisal system. Second, the staff’s perception of fairness of performance evaluation system will also be affected if the results of upward appraisal system is counted as the performance of the supervisor. Furthermore, the performance evaluation system will be considered fair when the results of upward appraisal system will be counted as the supervisor’s performance. In other words, the performance evaluation system will be considered unfair if the results of upward appraisal system have no direct impact on the supervisor’s performance.

This thesis examines the validity of exclusionary clauses in medical contracts, more especially, hospital contracts in which the healthcare provider exonerates itself against edictal liability arising from the negligent conduct of its staff, resulting in the patient suffering damages. In assessing whether these types of clauses should be outlawed by our courts, this thesis attempts to synthesize six major traditional areas of law, namely, the law of delict, the law of contract, medical law and ethics, international and foreign law, statutory law and constitutional law into a legal conceptual framework relating specifically to exclusionary clauses in medical contracts in South Africa. This thesis highlights systemic inconsistencies with regard to the central issue, namely, whether these types of clauses are valid or not, especially, given the fact that the practice of exclusionary clauses or waivers in hospital contracts has hitherto traditionally been assessed within the framework of the law of contract. The alignment of the various pre-existing areas of statutory and common law with the Constitution highlights that an inter-disciplinary and purposive approach under the value-driven Constitution, brings about a less fragmented picture in assessing the validity of these types of clauses. This approach accords with the new solicitude of the executive, the judiciary, the legislature and academia to transform the South African legal system not only in terms of procedural law but also substantive law. This has resulted in the alignment with constitutional principles and the underlying values to test the validity of these types of clauses, alternatively, contracts. Whereas pre-constitutionally the assessment of disclaimers in hospital contracts was done against the stratum of antiquated principles, namely, freedom of contract and the sanctity of contract, ignoring values such as reasonableness, fairness and conscionability, post-constitutionally, because the values that underlie the Bill of Rights and which affects all spheres of law, including the law of contract, concepts such as fairness, equity, reasonableness should weigh heavily with the decision-maker. In this regard, broader medico-legal considerations, normative medical ethics and the common law principles of good faith, fairness and reasonableness play a fundamental role in the assessment of contractual provisions, including the practice of disclaimers or exclusionary clauses in hospital contracts. This thesis critically examines how these types of clauses or contracts ought to be adjudicated eventually against the background of such alignment. It concludes that the entering into a hospital contract, in which the patient exonerates a hospital and its staff from liability flowing from the hospital or its staff's negligence causing damages to the patient, would be inconsistent with the Constitution and invalid. In the old order in which traditional divisions of law have been encouraged, a fragmented approach resulted in legal in congruencies which, in turn, created turbulence and a lot of uncertainty. This approach is apposite to that which the new constitutionally based legal system, aims to achieve. The rights in the Bill of Rights which are interconnected and which influences all spheres of law, including contract law, offers a fairer basis upon which, the validity of contracts, or contractual provisions, can be measured than, the pure contract approach. In this regard, although contracts or contractual provisions in the past may have been unfair and unreasonable, the courts, however, refused to strike them down purely on this basis. The law of contract, as a legal vehicle for adjudicating the validity of exclusionary clauses or waivers in hospital contracts, is therefore not ideal. This is primarily due to the antiquated approach the South African courts have always taken in this area of law. The law of delict, statutory law and medical law, standing alone, also does not provide a satisfactory answer. What is needed is an integrated approach in which the traditional areas of law are united and wherein constitutional principles and values, give much guidance and direction. Alternatively, should the unification of the traditional areas of law not be possible in bringing about fair and equitable results, the introduction of legislative measures may very well be indicated. / Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Public Law / unrestricted

L’intérêt social est la raison d’être principale de la règlementation des conventions réglementées. Il est délimité par des intérêts voisins et par l’intérêt personnel abrité par ces conventions, dont le jeu conflictuel peut léser la société. L’existence d’un conflit et de sa justification peuvent être présumées. L'intérêt social est désormais celui de l’entreprise vue dans son contexte économique large. Un intérêt de groupe est distinctement reconnu. La qualification des conventions sert à identifier celles qui doivent être contrôlées. La mise en oeuvre de la protection de l’intérêt social s’opère à travers la prévention des conflits d’intérêts, moyennant une révélation de l'intérêt personnel. Cette révélation déclenche la procédure d'appréciation par les organes sociaux concernés. Des garanties législatives et jurisprudentielles assurent la primauté de l’intérêt social, par la limitation de l’exercice de certains droits et par l’application judiciaire stricte du respect des obligations légales qui pèsent sur les intéressés. La convention frauduleuse est nulle. Celle non autorisée qui est préjudiciable à la société est annulable; et ses conséquences sont supportées par l’intéressé qui engage sa responsabilité civile et même parfois sa responsabilité pénale. La comparaison du traitement de ce sujet dans les trois systèmes juridiques libanais, français et américains a dévoilé des failles dans les deux premiers ; des projets de réforme sont proposés. / The corporate interest is the main reason behind the regulation of related party transactions. Its limits are defined by similar interests and the personal interest embodied in these transactions. The inter-action of these conflicting interests may harm the company. The existence of a conflict and of its justification may be presumed. The corporate interest is from now on that of the enterprise seen within its wide economic context and the interest of a group of companies is distinctively acknowledged. The qualification of those transactions helps identify those that are subject to scrutiny. The protection of the corporate interest is achieved by the prevention of the conflicts of interests through the disclosure of the personal interest. This disclosure triggers the concerned corporate bodies’ evaluation process. Legislative and jurisprudential guarantees ensure the predominance of the corporate interest through limitations on the exercise of certain rights and a strict judicial enforcement of legal duties laid on the interested party. The fraudulent transaction is void. The unauthorized one that is damaging to the company is voidable and its consequences are assumed by the interested party who may be exposed to civil and, sometimes, criminal liability. The comparison of the treatment of this subject in the Lebanese, French and American legal systems revealed the weaknesses in the first two; amendment proposals are made.

Federated Learning is an emerging privacy-preserving distributed machine learning approach to building a shared model by performing distributed training locally on participating devices (clients) and aggregating the local models into a global one. As this approach prevents data collection and aggregation, it helps in reducing associated privacy risks to a great extent. However, the data samples across all participating clients are usually not independent and identically distributed (non-i.i.d.), and Out of Distribution (OOD) generalization for the learned models can be poor. Besides this challenge, federated learning also remains vulnerable to various attacks on security wherein a few malicious participating entities work towards inserting backdoors, degrading the generated aggregated model as well as inferring the data owned by participating entities. In this work, we propose an approach for learning invariant (causal) features common to all participating clients in a federated learning setup and analyse empirically how it enhances the Out of Distribution (OOD) accuracy as well as the privacy of the final learned model. Although Federated Learning allows for participants to contribute their local data without revealing it, it faces issues in data security and in accurately paying participants for quality data contributions. In this report, we also propose an EOS Blockchain design and workflow to establish data security, a novel validation error based metric upon which we qualify gradient uploads for payment, and implement a small example of our Blockchain Causal Federated Learning model to analyze its performance with respect to robustness, privacy and fairness in incentivization. / L’apprentissage fédéré est une approche émergente d’apprentissage automatique distribué préservant la confidentialité pour créer un modèle partagé en effectuant une formation distribuée localement sur les appareils participants (clients) et en agrégeant les modèles locaux en un modèle global. Comme cette approche empêche la collecte et l’agrégation de données, elle contribue à réduire dans une large mesure les risques associés à la vie privée. Cependant, les échantillons de données de tous les clients participants sont généralement pas indépendante et distribuée de manière identique (non-i.i.d.), et la généralisation hors distribution (OOD) pour les modèles appris peut être médiocre. Outre ce défi, l’apprentissage fédéré reste également vulnérable à diverses attaques contre la sécurité dans lesquelles quelques entités participantes malveillantes s’efforcent d’insérer des portes dérobées, dégradant le modèle agrégé généré ainsi que d’inférer les données détenues par les entités participantes. Dans cet article, nous proposons une approche pour l’apprentissage des caractéristiques invariantes (causales) communes à tous les clients participants dans une configuration d’apprentissage fédérée et analysons empiriquement comment elle améliore la précision hors distribution (OOD) ainsi que la confidentialité du modèle appris final. Bien que l’apprentissage fédéré permette aux participants de contribuer leurs données locales sans les révéler, il se heurte à des problèmes de sécurité des données et de paiement précis des participants pour des contributions de données de qualité. Dans ce rapport, nous proposons également une conception et un flux de travail EOS Blockchain pour établir la sécurité des données, une nouvelle métrique basée sur les erreurs de validation sur laquelle nous qualifions les téléchargements de gradient pour le paiement, et implémentons un petit exemple de notre modèle d’apprentissage fédéré blockchain pour analyser ses performances.

The ever-growing demand of wireless traffic poses a challenge for current cellular networks. Each new generation must find new ways to boost the network capacity and spectral efficiency (SE) per device. A pillar of 5G is massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) technology. Through utilizing a large number of antennas at each transmitting node, massive MIMO has the ability to multiplex several user equipments (UEs) on the same time-frequency resources via spatial multiplexing. Looking beyond 5G, cell-free massive MIMO has attracted a lot of attention for its ability to utilize spatial macro diversity and higher resilience to interference. The cell-free architecture is based on a large number of distributed access points (APs) jointly serving the UEs within a coverage area without creating artificial cell boundaries. It provides a promising solution that is focused on delivering uniform service quality throughout the mobile network. The main challenges of the cell-free network architecture lie in the computational complexity for signal processing and the huge fronthaul requirements for information exchange among the APs. In this thesis, we tackle some of the inherent problems of the cell-free network architecture by providing distributed solutions to the power allocation and mobility management problems. We then introduce a new method for characterizing unknown interference in wireless networks. For the problem of power allocation, a distributed learning-based solution that provides a good trade-off between SE performance and applicability for implementation in large-scale networks is developed with reduced fronthaul requirements and computational complexity. The problem is divided in a way that enables each AP (or group of APs) to separately decide on the power coefficients to the UEs based on the locally available information at the AP without exchanging information with the other APs, however, still attempting to achieve a network wide optimization objective.  Regarding mobility management, a handover procedure is devised for updating the serving sets of APs and assigned pilot to each UE in a dynamic scenario considering UE mobility. The algorithm is tailored to reduce the required number of handovers per UE and changes in pilot assignment. Numerical results show that our proposed solution identifies the essential refinements since it can deliver comparable SE to the case when the AP-UE association is completely redone. Finally, we developed a new technique based on a Bayesian approach to model the distribution of the unknown interference arising from scheduling variations in neighbouring cells. The method is shown to provide accurate modelling for the unknown interference power and an effective tool for robust rate allocation in the uplink with a guaranteed target outage performance. / Den ständigt växande efterfrågan på trådlös datatrafik är en stor utmaning för dagens mobilnät. Varje ny nätgeneration måste hitta nya sätt att öka den totala kapaciteten och spektraleffektiviteten (SE) per uppkopplad enhet. En pelare i 5G är massiv-MIMO-teknik (multiple-input-multiple-output). Genom att använda ett stort antal antenner på varje mobilmast har massiv MIMO förmågan att kommunicera med flera användarutrustningar (eng. user equipment, UE) på samma tid/frekvensresurser via så kallad rumslig multiplexing. Om man ser bortom 5G-tekniken så har cellfri massiv-MIMO väckt stort intresse tack vare sin förmåga att utnyttja rumslig makrodiversitet för att förbättra täckningen och uppnå högre motståndskraft mot störningar. Den cellfria arkitekturen bygger på att ha ett stort antal distribuerade accesspunkter (AP) som gemensamt serverar UE:erna inom ett täckningsområde utan att dela upp området konstgjorda celler. Detta är en lovande lösning som är fokuserad på att leverera enhetliga datahastigheter i hela mobilnätet. De största forskningsutmaningarna med den cellfria nätverksarkitekturen ligger i beräkningskomplexiteten för signalbehandling och de enorma kraven på fronthaul-kablarna som möjliggör informationsutbyte mellan AP:erna. I den här avhandlingen löser vi några av de grundläggande utmaningarna med den cellfria nätverksarkitekturen genom att tillhandahålla distribuerade algoritmlösningar på problem relaterade till signaleffektreglering och mobilitetshantering. Vi introducerar sedan en ny metod för att karakterisera okända störningar i trådlösa nätverk. När det gäller signaleffektreglering så utvecklas en distribuerad inlärnings-baserad metod som ger en bra avvägning mellan SE-prestanda och tillämpbarhet för implementering i storskaliga cellfria nätverk med reducerade fronthaulkrav och lägre beräkningskomplexitet. Lösningen är uppdelat på ett sätt som gör det möjligt för varje AP (eller grupp av AP) att separat besluta om effektkoefficienterna relaterade till varje UE baserat på den lokalt tillgängliga informationen vid AP:n utan att utbyta information med de andra AP:erna, men ändå försöka uppnå ett nätverksomfattande optimeringsmål. När det gäller mobilitetshantering utformas en överlämningsprocedur som dynamiskt uppdaterar vilken uppsättning av AP:er som servar en viss UE och vilken pilotsekvens som används när den rör sig över täckningsområdet. Algoritmen är skräddarsydd för att minska antalet överlämningar per UE och förändringar i pilottilldelningen. Numeriska resultat visar att vår föreslagna lösning identifierar de väsentliga förfiningarna eftersom den kan leverera jämförbar SE som när AP-UE-associationen görs om helt och hållet. Slutligen utvecklade vi en ny Bayesiansk metod för att modellera den statistiska fördelningen av de okända störningarna som uppstår på grund av schemaläggningsvariationer i närliggande celler. Metoden har visat sig ge en korrekt modell av den okända störningseffekten och är ett effektivt verktyg för robust SE-allokering i upplänken med en garanterad maximal avbrottsnivå. / <p>QC 20230503</p>