Law Commons^™

Accountants, Privilege, And The Problem Of Working Papers, Paul Paton

Dalhousie Law Journal

Full and frank disclosure between corporate issuers and their auditors and accounting advisors is critical for maintaining access to the information required for audits and public confidence in the capital markets. While tax authorities in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have the power to make broad requests for working papers, in all four jurisdictions, legislation or administrative practice reflects the determination that the best approach for balancing tax and capital markets requirements is for the revenue authorities to seek working papers only in exceptional circumstances. Additionally, limited forms of privilege for accountants have been recognized …

Setting The Table Doesn't Mean The Guests Will Come To Dinner: Televised Courts In Australia, Jane Johnston

Jane Johnston

The Australian courts are entering their second decade of experimentation with televised court proceedings. Yet, the process has been slow and largely unfulfilling for both the courts and the television networks. Developments in this field, compared to other countries, notably the United States, Canada and New Zealand, have progressed only on an ad hoc basis. A preliminary study indicates that the management in television newsrooms, notably news directors, have not been proactive in gaining camera access in any systematic or unified way. Indeed, the courts have argued: “we got the table set but nobody came to dinner”. In contrast, the …

'Treaties', 'Agreements', 'Contracts' And 'Commitments' - What's In A Name? The Legal Force And Meaning Of Different Forms Of Agreement Making, David Llewelyn, Maureen Tehan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The multi-dimensional nature of treaty and agreement making has assumed a central focus in the conduct of relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers in Australia and elsewhere. Whether as a means of resolving disputes, delivering government programmes, or establishing common understandings, agreement making, however defined and named, has become the key tool for engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Agreements come in all shapes and sizes ranging from registered Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUA) to Statements of Commitment, Memorandums of Understanding and Regional Agreements. In other jurisdictions these may be called 'treaties'. This paper examines the plethora of agreements in …

Air Travel, Accidents And Injuries: Why The New Montreal Convention Is Already Outdated, Andrew Field

Dalhousie Law Journal

The 1999 Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air (the "Montreal Convention") came into force in 2003. It is the latest in a series of attempts to replace a number of variations on the 1929 Warsaw Convention with a single agreement which regulates the rights and liabilities of international air carriers, their passengers and shippers. At the time, the Montreal Convention was hailed as providing better protection and compensation for victims of air accidents. However despite its recent adoption, in relation to claims for death and personal injuries the Montreal Convention is still firmly planted …

Treaty Solutions From The Land Down Under: Reconciling American Federalism And International Law, Cyril R. Emery

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

International Animal Law, With A Concentration On Latin America, Asia, And Africa, Neil Trent, Stephanie Edwards, Jennifer Felt, Kelly O'Meara

State of the Animals 2005

The status of domestic animal protection laws in Asia, Africa, and Latin America varies, as one might imagine, from country to country. Countries with high per capita incomes are more likely to have a large number of animal protection organizations, whose existence normally leads to the passage of protective legislation.1 The sociopolitical, cultural, and religious backgrounds of each country, as well as previous colonization, also influence whether it has animal protection legislation and whether these laws are enforced. Previous colonization is the case in many former British colonies, which often have very good laws but neither the means nor the …

The Promotion Of Free-Trade Areas Viewed In Terms Of Most-Favored-Nation Treatment And "Imperial Preference", Sydney M. Cone Iii

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article will first examine the relevant WTO provisions that permit free-trade agreements as exceptions to MFN treatment. It will then situate current U.S. policy in the context of the history and purpose of those provisions. Next, the discussion of history and purpose will take up a key debate in the original GATT negotiations, in which the United States championed MFN treatment, while European countries, in particular, Great Britain, sought to retain preferential trading arrangements-arrangements once associated with the rubric of "imperial preference." Against this background, the article will explore the question of whether current U.S. policy represents a reversion …

Agony In The Antipodes: The Generic Drug Provisions Of The Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

The Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), which entered into force on January 1, 2005, contains many remarkable provisions of interest to generic drug companies. The AUSFTA selectively exports U.S. generic drug laws of great import to generic drug manufacturers, and is uniquely intrusive into domestic pharmaceutical and political spheres. The AUSFTA is important both in its own right, and as a model for future U.S. free trade agreement negotiations.

Beyond the generic drug industry, the provisions are of interest to consumers who pay higher prices when generic drug entry is delayed, and stands as an example of the lack of …

Labour Intellectuals In Australia: Modes, Traditions, Generations, Transformations, Terence H. Irving, Sean Scalmer

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The article begins with a discussion of labour intellectuals as knowledge producers in labour institutions, and of the labour public in which this distinctive kind of intellectual emerges, drawing on our previously published work. Next we construct a typology of three ‘‘modes’’ of the labour intellectual that were proclaimed and remade from the 1890s (the ‘‘movement’’ the ‘‘representational’’, and the ‘‘revolutionary’’), and identify the broad historical processes (certification, polarization, and contraction) of the labour public. In a case study comparing the 1890s and 1920s we demonstrate how successive generations of labour intellectuals combined elements of these ideal types in different …

Smooth Sailing For Australia's Automatic Forfeiture Of Foreign Fishing Vessels, Warwick Gullett

Faculty of Law - Papers (Archive)

The High Court of Australia has brought to a close one chapter of the various legal proceedings arising out of Australia’s arrest of the Russian fishing vessel Volga in 2002. The vessel was arrested on the high seas immediately adjacent to Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) surrounding the Heard and McDonald Islands in the Southern Ocean. It was suspected (and later found as a matter of fact) to have been engaged in unlawful fishing for the prized Patagonian Toothfish within Australia’s EEZ two to three weeks prior to its detection and seizure by Australian authorities. The circumstances of the seizure …

Traditional Knowledge And Intellectual Property Rights In Australia And Southeast Asia, Christoph Antons

Faculty of Law - Papers (Archive)

This paper will present a short survey of various approaches to traditional knowledge and folklore protection in Australia and Southeast Asia. It seems that both the terminology used in the debate about traditional knowledge and folklore and the legal solutions envisaged are very diverse. Over the last decade there has been an explosion of international declarations and organisations advocating internationally harmonised notions of rights to culture, often on behalf of indigenous minorities or other local communities. This often leads to what Cowan, Dembour and Wilson2 have called “strategic essentialism”. The term refers to the attempts by activists from or working …