The global financial crisis of 2008 and the following public uproar over offshore tax evasion and corporate aggressive tax planning scandals gave rise to unprecedented international cooperation on tax information exchange and coordination on corporate tax reforms. At the behest of the G20, the OECD developed a comprehensive package of ‘consensus-based’ policy reform measures aimed to curb base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) by multinationals and to restore fairness and coherence to the international tax system. The legitimacy of the OECD/G20 BEPS Project, however, has been widely challenged. This paper explores the validity of the legitimacy concerns raised by the various stakeholders regarding the OECD/G20 BEPS Project.

The Global Forum on transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes has undertaken peer reviews on the implementation of the global standard of exchange of information on request, both from the perspective of formalities available and from the perspective of actual implementation. In the review reports Global Forum advises jurisdictions on required amendments of regulations and practices. With these advices, the Global Forum exercises regulatory authority. The article assesses the legitimacy of the exercise of such authority by the Global Forum and concludes that the exercise of such authority is not legitimate for the reason that the rule of law is abused by preventing jurisdictions to adhere to due process rules.

The emergence of global tax governance was triggered by common tax problems, which are now still being faced by international society of nation-states. In the creation of this framework, international institutions have been playing a major role. One of these institutions is the World Bank (Bank). However, those who write about the virtues and vices of the main creators of the framework usually disregard the Bank. This article, therefore, argues that this disregard is not justified because the Bank has also been playing a prominent role. Since two informal decisions taken in the past have contributed to this position of the Bank, the article gives in addition to it answers to the following two related questions: whether these informal decisions of the Bank were legal and if so, what implications, if any, they have for the Bank’s legitimacy.

The Law Commission of England and Wales is currently working to produce a New Sentencing Code that will seek to remedy problems with one of the most heavily used and unsatisfactory areas of statutory law. It responds to the problems of complexity and inaccessibility in the current sentencing legislation, and more fundamentally in the process by which sentencing legislation is created and implemented. The aim is to introduce the new Code as a consolidation Bill in 2018 with a view to it being in force from early 2019. This article provides an overview of the problems endemic to the current law and how the Commission envisages that the new Sentencing Code will provide not only a remedy, but a lasting one.
It is important to understand from the outset that the scope of the Commission’s work on sentencing is to reform procedure. The project and the resulting legislation will not alter the length or level of sentence imposed in any case. The penalties available to the court in relation to an offence are not within the scope of the project and will not change. The change will be in the process by which each sentence is arrived at.

The partner states in the East African Community (EAC) have modernized their commercial laws to claim their post-colonial identity and facilitate development. While law reform and the harmonization of laws are both methods of shaping laws, the national law reform programmes in the EAC mainly aim to ensure that the laws reflect the domestic socioeconomic circumstances, in contrast to the harmonization of national commercial laws, which focuses on the attainment of economic development. This article observes that the reformed and harmonized commercial laws in the EAC are mainly legal transplants of the principles of transnational commercial law that have been adapted to meet domestic needs and aspirations.

This article reviews the authors’ experience in implementing an in-house workplace mediation programme at Intel Corporation. The authors describe the business value proposition and how workplace mediation connects into the broader corporate conflict management systems. The text focusses on key implementation design elements, such as how the programme is positioned vis-à-vis the formal HR processes; the critical role played by the triage process; and important benefits of utilizing co-mediation. This article will inform readers about the business and employee benefits of workplace mediation.

This contribution assesses the consensus-based analysis and reasoning of the European Court of Human Rights in recent judgments concerning equal marriage rights and compares it to the Court’s past jurisprudence on European consensus and the margin of appreciation awarded to Member States regarding the issue of equal marriage rights. The contribution aims to analyse whether there is a parallel to be seen between the rapid global trend of legalisation of same-sex marriage and the development or evolution of the case law of the ECtHR on the same topic. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the Court’s consensus-based analysis is problematic for several reasons and provides possible alternative approaches to the balancing of the Court between, on the one hand, protecting rights of minorities (in this case same-sex couples invoking equal marriage rights) under the European Convention on Human Rights and, on the other hand, maintaining its credibility, authority and legitimacy towards Member States that might disapprove of the evolving case law in the context of same-sex relationships. It also offers insights as to the future of European consensus in the context of equal marriage rights and ends with some concluding remarks.

Canada has a complex system of courts that seek to serve Canadians in view of the traditional objectives of civil justice – principally accessibility, efficiency, fairness, efficacy, proportionality and equality. The Canadian court system is generally considered by its users to work well and to have legitimacy. Yet, researchers have found that ‘there is a tendency for people involved in a civil case to become disillusioned about the ability of the system to effect a fair and timely resolution to a civil justice problem’. This article will discuss the ways in which reforms of procedural law and civil justice have originated and continue to be made throughout Canada, both nationally and provincially, as well as the trends and influences in making these reforms. With hundreds of contemporary procedural reforms having been discussed, proposed and/or completed since the first days of Canadian colonisation on a national basis and in the Canadian provinces and territory, providing a detailed analysis will prove challenging. This article will nonetheless provide a review of civil justice and procedural reform issues in Canada, focusing principally, at the provincial level, on the systems of Ontario and Quebec. Importantly, I will seek to reconcile the increasing willingness to have an economically efficient civil justice and the increased power of judges in managing cases, with our court system’s invasion of ADR and its prioritisation of informal modes of adjudication.

For the past two years we have been monitoring in Greece several refugee related disputes such as disputes between refugees, intercultural disputes, disputes between refugees and the local community and disputes between refugees and the camp administration. We have also noticed that almost all refugees had smartphones as they were easy to carry with them and allow them to stay connected with those left behind or been relocated. Therefore in order to offer dispute resolution services we had to address two main issues: mobility & speed. We thought that technology could fit perfectly in this context. So, we decided, to develop a smartphone application for refugees that could create the environment for ODR. The App will not only resolve disputes online but try to prevent disputes or their escalation. Some of its innovative features will be personalized texts, language selection, disputes menu, automatic appointment of mediator, case filing, video, audio and text communication. It will have a friendly interface and be very easy to use even for those who have limited knowledge of technology and its download and use will be free for all refugees. The process will be conducted online by specially trained mediators and will be informal & flexible.

The booming of cross-border e-commerce has bred online dispute resolution (ODR) mechanisms, to adapt to the growth of cross-border high-volume and low-value e-commerce transactions. China is the largest B2C e-commerce market in the world. However, along with a prosperous e-commerce market, a great number of disputes have erupted. Under this circumstance, how to establish a reasonable, convenient and efficient online dispute settlement (ODS) method is significant. This paper will briefly look at various ODS channels. By comparing the existing Chinese mechanism and UNCITRAL documents, the paper intends to help provide the reader with greater understanding of the Chinese style, point out the obstacles and challenges in China with quantitative and qualitative analysis, and make some suggestions on the future direction of China ODR system.

This article is a brief report on the two-day conference on ‘Equal Access to Information & Justice, Online Dispute Resolution’, organized by the ICC in Paris on 12-13 June. Over 160 lawyers, magistrates, academics, researchers, dispute resolution organizations and online dispute resolution providers, from over 30 countries and representing each continent debated about the use of technology for the resolution of all types of disputes. The 60 speakers explored the future of dispute resolution and the role of technology in all legal fields, from mediation in conflict zones, to commercial and civil disputes. The huge potentials greatly underexplored were discussed. It was noted that much remains to be done to educate users and convince state courts, dispute resolution organizations, merchants and other services’ providers to offer access to justice online. Efforts must be undertaken to allow users seek remedy in an affordable way. The solution for an equal access to justice is to make such access available online. The issues of ethics and standards were also discussed, as well as the increase concern of data protection and cybersecurity. The recording of the discussions on the panels are available on the ICC Digital Library (ICCDRL).

The Brexit vote and Donald J Trump as the leader of the Free world in 2016 brought in a new world order. Two hugely important and unexpected events of 2016. Both have called into question the stability of established international commercial dispute resolution schemes in the United Kingdom and the United States in our tech savvy world. As the impact of both events unfolds, adaptations made to the existing dispute resolution schemes will be negotiated and the role that technology can play in the new approaches to international commercial dispute resolution will be determined. Consequently, there has been the changing face of Western politics after the Cold War, based on traditional group identity giving way to an uncertain landscape in which the political class struggle to define. The impact and disruption of technology in politics has given everyone a voice regardless of social class. Consequently, the EU under Mr Juncker and the UK Prime Minister seem to have mutual respect in their negotiations, given that the UK has made a number of notable concessions in order to move the trade discussions forward.
Under Donald Trump presidency, the state of North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) seems binary with the probing question will NAFTA survive or not. NAFTA is currently undergoing transformation, a process that incorporates Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS).

Information technology has dramatically changed the way consumers and businesses transact around the world. Many consumer goods (such as videos, music and software) are purchased online through the Internet instead of through physical stores. Businesses have similarly migrated many of their commercial transactions online, including proposals, due diligence, negotiation and signing. However, most dispute resolution processes have not yet made a similar move; they occur face-to-face, even when the dispute arose online. This has led to a new type of dispute resolution, called ODR (or Online Dispute Resolution). ODR is the use of technology to resolve disputes, and it is being promoted in many countries around the world as a model for civil justice in an online age. North America and the European Union (EU) have aggressively promoted ODR, and there are many ODR projects currently underway. As one of the leading online economies in the world, Japan is facing many of the same challenges as the rest of the world in providing fast and fair resolutions to online consumers. But to date, ODR has not gotten much traction in Japan. Recently, the Japanese Consumer Network published a report about ODR for cross-border e-commerce transactions and encouraged the government to establish a working group for implementation of ODR. However, discussion by multiple stakeholders towards practical implementation of ODR has not yet started in earnest. This article aims to focus the discussion about how to implement ODR in Japan, providing information about the latest developments in global ODR frameworks and envisioning the challenges ODR faces in the Japanese market.

This article contains the Introduction of a book with the same title recently published by Cambridge University Press, which is reproduced here with its permission. The book offers an updated analysis of the various consumer dispute resolution processes, its laws and best practices, which are collectively referred as the Law of Consumer Redress. The book argues that many consumer redress systems, and in particular publicly certified Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) entities, are more than a mere dispute resolution mechanism as they provide a public service for consumers that complements, and often replaces, the role of the courts. In examining the current redress models (i.e., public enforcement, private enforcement and other market options), the book calls for greater integration amongst these various redress options. It also advocates, inter alia, for processes that encourage parties to participate in ADR processes, settle meritorious claims and ensure extrajudicial enforcement of final outcomes. Lastly, the book calls for a more efficient rationalization of certified ADR entities, which should be better coordinated and accessible through technological means.

Lord Justice Briggs has been intimately involved in the development of technology for improving access to justice in the UK. He was the author of a report that energized the move toward online dispute resolution in the courts. These remarks are a retrospective look at his work, now that he is a member of the UK Supreme Court, and no longer involved day-to-day in ODR development.

The Chambres Africaines Extraordinaires (CAE), ad hoc chambers operating under the auspices of the Dakar municipal courts, were constructed to try Hissène Habré. In targeting Habré, the CAE was designed to appease Chadian calls for justice (from Habré’s victims, on one hand, and the Déby regime, on the other), resolve Senegal’s impasse over the legality of Habré’s culpability and allow the African Union to meet its leadership obligations. To this tall order, the CAE was required to exercise legitimate judicial authority in the contested sphere of international criminal law (ICL), where content is pluralist and political.
This article examines the CAE’s finding of Habré’s culpability for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture. The article shows that the CAE applied a novel construction of liability under ICL and argues that it did so in order to strengthen its authority and legitimacy. By so doing, the CAE has made a significant addition to the field of ICL. This article explores the CAE’s application of joint criminal enterprise (JCE) to consider how the internationally formulated doctrinal standard is reshaped by CAE practice.