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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).


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Carlan et al. as discussed by the authors argue that the Daubert evidentiary reform only has a chance of succeeding in the torts context if courts adopt conceptions of scientific evidence actually utilized in the scientific community.
Abstract: CARL F. CRANOR [*] DAVID A. EASTMOND [**] I INTRODUCTION The U.S. Supreme Court, urged on by legal scholars, affected industries, a number of lower court decisions, and some in the scientific community, has instituted substantial evidentiary reform of admissibility requirements for scientific evidence in the law. [1] Evidentiary reform, however, is beginning to pose problems of its own, [2] and a growing number of scholars are concerned about its impact on tort law. [3] Courts appear to be struggling to find the right guidance for admitting and excluding evidence. Indeed, it appears that there will be intra- and inter-circuit disagreements about general causation for the same substance.[4] Some courts appear to have overreacted to the Supreme Court's gatekeeping mandate and have rejected evidence that was derived by the methods and procedures of science as revealed by scientific practice and highly regarded scientific bodies. Such consequences are not surprising due to the subtle tensions between science and law. Given the tension, then, how should the science/law interaction be addressed in order to retain fidelity to the principal goals and strengths of both fields? The legal picture is further complicated by the realities of toxicology. In general, little is known about the universe of approximately 100,000 chemical substances or their derivatives registered for commerce (with 800 to 1000 new substances added to the list each year).[5] Surprisingly, for seventy-five percent of the 3000 top-volume chemicals in commerce, the most basic toxicity results cannot be found in the public record.[6] Yet these knowledge gaps will be slow to close because both animal and human studies are costly and take years to conduct, interpret, and understand. It takes even longer to develop a scientific consensus about any toxic properties. For a significant subset of these substances, including carcinogens, chronic toxicants, and some reproductive toxicants- those with long latency periods or associated with erratic exposure patterns- these problems are exacerbated.[7] Lack of scientific knowledge about substances poses two significant problems. First, the way in which some courts have implemented evidentiary reform has, in all likelihood, precluded some litigants with reliable, but not ideal, scientific evidence from a jury trial. These litigants were prevented from using whatever good evidence might have been available.[8] This problem may arise in part from the fact that human beings become "captured" by certain ideas; in their admissibility decisions, some courts appear to have been captured by ideas about scientific evidence that are more restrictive than those utilized in the scientific community. Daubert evidentiary reform only has a chance of succeeding in the torts context if courts adopt conceptions of scientific evidence actually utilized in the scientific community. Much of this article addresses this issue. Second, scientific ignorance about the universe of substances may be so great that current tort law rules of liability are inadequate to address properly the problems they pose. Current tort law liability rules, combined with evidentiary burdens and standards of proof, function well when both sides have plausible fact scenarios about the likelihood of what happened. When there is considerable ignorance on one side, however, as is the case in many toxic tort suits, the party with the burden of proof will lose. To address widespread ignorance about substances, courts may need to consider different legal doctrines. To protect the public better and ensure the possibility of justice between parties, courts may need to tailor new standards of liability, or shift burdens of proof once a plaintiff has presented a prima fade case to induce better testing and safety investigations by firms that create and use potentially toxic substances. In addressing the first problem, courts need to recognize that scientific ignorance and the slow accumulation of knowledge make proving causation difficult. …

23 citations

Book
19 Oct 1999
TL;DR: The 1996 Criminal Code of the Russian Federation as mentioned in this paper replaces the 1960 RSFSR Criminal Code and was adopted by the State Duma on 24 May 1996 and formally entered into force on 1 January 1997.
Abstract: The 1996 Criminal Code of the Russian Federation replaces the 1960 RSFSR Criminal Code and was adopted by the State Duma on 24 May 1996. It officially entered into force on 1 January 1997. This updated translation contains all amendments up to 1 September 1999. Appended is an index which serves simultaneously as a glossary of the principal terms of Russian criminal law, drawing in part on Butler's earlier translations of the 1958 Fundamental Principles of Criminal Legislation of the USSR and the 1960 RSFSR Criminal Code. The introduction examines criminal law reforms in the Russian Federation, including Russian legal policy toward criminal law. The editor also includes an explanation of how to use the criminal code.

23 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Second-order regulation as mentioned in this paper is a regulatory design choice the Supreme Court makes in each criminal case raising constitutional questions about law-enforcement conduct: not what the Constitution requires but how to implement its requirements.
Abstract: This Article interrogates a critical, yet understudied, regulatory design choice the Supreme Court makes in each criminal case raising constitutional questions about law-enforcement conduct: not what the Constitution requires but how to implement its requirements. In particular, the Court must decide whether to address its decision directly to rank-and-file officers or instead to political policymakers, such as legislators and police administrators, who in turn will regulate officers on the street. In the former, dominant model, termed here first-order regulation, the Court tells officers precisely what they can and cannot do. In the latter model, second-order regulation, the principal objective instead is to enunciate constitutional values and create incentives for political policymakers to write the conduct rules. Framed differently, the Court, as principal, enlists political policymakers as its agents in the regulatory enterprise. Although first-order regulation predominates, a careful search uncovers bits of second-order regulation in spaces such as inventory searches and interrogation, and analogies in fields like employment and desegregation. The Article claims that second-order regulation should, in some domains, benefit suspects and criminal defendants in the aggregate by increasing the expected value of their constitutional protections. It should meanwhile facilitate efficient prosecution of the guilty. The benefits of agency, in other words, should in some cases outweigh the costs. Shifting rulemaking responsibility from the Court to political leaders harnesses certain comparative advantages of political institutions and permits experimentation in search of workable, well-tailored safeguards to protect constitutional rights. Even more important, social science research suggests that affording law-enforcement greater opportunity to participate in its own regulation encourages “buy in” that leads to improved compliance. The agency costs, in contrast, including “slippage” in the form of potentially underprotective rules, can often be reduced to tolerable levels. After making the general case for the second-order approach, the Article sketches where it should work especially well or poorly. It then reimagines several of the Court’s first-order decisions in a second-order model. Finally, it suggests a role in second-order regulation for other potential catalyst institutions, such as legislatures and state courts.

23 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the alternative view, politics is always present in constitutional law, in that sense, when the principled disagreements reflect deep divisions within the society as discussed by the authors, and the constitutional law of racial equality has therefore been as political as any area of law.
Abstract: The principal accomplishment of John Marshall's Supreme Court, according to George Lee Haskins and Herbert A. Johnson, was to subject politics to the discipline of law.1 In the system Marshall helped mold, ordinary politics may lie behind the adoption of constitutional provisions, but once placed in the Constitution, the provisions take on a meaning independent of politics. The rhetoric of discourse is transformed as arguments over principles replace arguments over interests.2 An alternative view of politics and constitutional law remains available even as we acknowledge Marshall's achievement. In the alternative view, constitutional provisions are verbal formulations that could gain substantial agreement while fundamental questions of principle remained unresolved. Politics is the craft of accommodating principled disagreements within a broader framework of agreement, and of developing acceptable compromises on issues when interests conflict. In the alternative view, politics is always present in constitutional law. Both principles and interests shape its formulations and reformulations. Constitutional law is especially political, in that sense, when the principled disagreements reflect deep divisions within the society. In United States history questions arising from the issue of race have regularly involved precisely that sort of principled disagreement. The constitutional law of racial equality has therefore been as political as any area of law could be. Constitutional law results from the litigation of contested cases. The process of

23 citations

Book
21 Aug 2014
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a framework for LONIAC, including the preconditions of a NIAC, as well as the principal LONIC treaty provisions.
Abstract: 1. The framework 2. The preconditions of a NIAC 3. Thresholds and interaction of armed conflicts 4. Insurgent armed groups and individuals 5. Foreign intervention in a NIAC 6. Recognition 7. State responsibility 8. The principal LONIAC treaty provisions 9. Additional treaty texts 10. NIAC war crimes 11. LONIAC customary international law 12. LONIAC and human rights law Conclusions.

23 citations


Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20222
202130
202037
201953
201839
201755