Principal (commercial law)

About: Principal (commercial law) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1579 publications have been published within this topic receiving 35379 citations. The topic is also known as: Principal (commercial law).

A neo-institutional analysis of the hidden interaction between the Israeli Supreme Court and the Ministry of Finance: the right to healthcare services

Abstract: Background Under structural conditions of non-governability, most players in the policy arena in Israel turn to two main channels that have proven effective in promoting the policies they seek: the submission of petitions to the High Court of Justice and making legislative amendments through the Economic Arrangements Law initiated by the Ministry of Finance. Nevertheless, an analysis of the principal trends emerging from the High Court of Justice rulings and legislative amendments through the Economic Arrangements Law indicates that these channels are open to influence, primarily by forces that are essentially neo-liberal. Little is known about the effects of these trends on the right to healthcare services, which in Israel has not been legislated as an independent constitutional law in Basic Laws.

Assessing the Insurance Role of Tort Liability After Calabresi

Abstract: I INTRODUCTION In his landmark 1961 article, Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Torts, Judge Calabresi provides a theoretical framework for analyzing tort liability as a risk-spreading device that functions in a manner similar to insurance. (1) In our article, we examine the insurance objective of tort liability from the standpoint of modern tort law. Since Calabresi's foundational article, there have been many changes in tort law as a consequence of the rise in mass toxic torts, design-defect cases, hazard-warnings cases, and punitive-damages awards. The changes in tort law over the past half century have altered the legal landscape in a manner that compromises the private-insurance analogy for tort liability. In many situations, tort liability does address the losses suffered by injured parties, but the tort analog to an insurance premium for this coverage is either absent or incomplete. Nonetheless, understanding how tort liability serves an insurance function is critical to assessing the role of modern tort liability. In this article, our objective is to examine the performance of tort liability, focusing particularly on its insurance role. We examine the situations in which tort liability is well suited to providing compensation and circumstances in which its role is more limited. In situations in which there are impediments to the successful role of tort liability, we examine whether these same impediments also hinder insurance markets. Despite impediments to achieving an outcome that provides both efficient incentives for safety and optimal levels of insurance, on balance tort liability performs a socially constructive role. Calabresi's insight that the tort system serves a fundamental insurance function has proved to be a seminal contribution to the discipline of law and economics, which at the time of his article largely consisted of only one other major contribution, Coase's analysis of externalities. (2) Unlike the Coase theorem, which highlighted the potential efficiency of private bargains, Calabresi emphasized that the tort system serves a critical insurance role in ensuring that the price of goods reflects their true cost. (3) Calabresi's risk-spreading theory of tort liability has had tremendous impact on the conceptualization of the role of tort liability. Law-and-economics theories derived from Calabresi's seminal insight continue to regard insurance and deterrence as the two principal objectives of tort law. (4) Much of the impetus for the adoption of strict liability rather than negligence-based liability can be traced to this insurance function. Strict liability for product-related accidents has an attractive feature in that it establishes a form of product-risk insurance for all product damages irrespective of concerns regarding negligence. (5) The fundamental role of tort liability in providing insurance is so great that it serves as one of the chief criteria for determining whether strict liability is the applicable liability rule. In particular, the widely used risk-utility test for strict liability for products includes the following insurance concept: "The feasibility, on the part of the manufacturer, of spreading the loss by setting the price of the product or carrying liability insurance." (6) Thus, based on this approach, whether a firm should be found liable for the harm under strict liability depends on whether the cost can feasibly be spread by the seller of the product. In that instance, exploiting the risk-spreading role of tort law makes imposing liability on the seller more desirable. How and when tort liability does in fact serve this insurance function given the structure of modern tort law is the focus of our article. In this article we provide only a partial assessment of the role of tort liability, focusing primarily on the insurance function. Tort liability also serves a deterrence role, which we document. Moreover, even if tort liability has shortcomings, the appropriate reference point for assessing its performance is not a hypothetical perfect social institution, but rather is the performance of institutions that currently exist or which feasibly could be established, such as safety regulations. …

The Economics of Agency Law and Contract Formation

Abstract: This article addresses issues that arise in agency law when agents make contracts on behalf of principals. The main issue is whether the principal should be bound when the agent makes a contract with some third party on his behalf which the principal would immediately wish to disavow. The resulting tradeoffs resemble those in tort law, so the least-cost-avoider principle is useful for deciding when contracts are valid and may be the underlying logic behind a number of different legal doctrines applied to agency cases. In particular, an efficiency explanation can be found for the undisclosed principal rule, which says that the principal is generally bound even when the third party is unaware that the agent is acting as an agent for him.

The Notion of ‘Direct Participation in Hostilities’ and Its Implications on the Use of Private Contractors under International Humanitarian Law

Abstract: The principal purpose and aim of this article is to determine and explain the constitutive elements of the notion of the phrase ‘direct participation in hostilities’. Private military and security contractors or more generally the outsourcing of specific military functions in this regard will serve as example to explain the vitality and criticality of understanding the notion of ‘direct participation in hostilities’, particularly in contemporary armed conflicts, both of an international and non-international character. Although private contractors are the serving examples the legal analysis shall be perceived as a possible normative understanding of the terminology examined and its implications. To accomplish this mission several prerequisite determinations and explanations concerning the International Law of Armed Conflict are indispensable, especially for non lawyers to understand this important question. To understand the topic under examination in this paper, it is important to be aware of the main pillars of the complexity of International Humanitarian Law and its distinct differences to, e.g., International Human Rights Law (Provost 2002: 34).