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This paper aims to build a legal intelligent auxiliary discretionary system for predicting the penalty and damage compensation values. After extensively considering current the characteristics of the current Chinese legal system, a practical legal intelligent auxiliary discretionary system based on genetic algorithm-backpropagation (GA-BP) neural network (NN) is proposed herein.

An experiment is designed to analyze cases involving mental anguish compensation in medical disputes, and a Chinese legal intelligent auxiliary discretionary adviser system is built based on a GA-BP NN. Because BP neural networks perform well for nonlinear problems and GAs can improve their ability to find optimal values, and accelerate their convergence, a combined GA–BP algorithm is used. In addition, an ontology is used to reduce the semantic ambiguities and extract the implied semantic information.

We confirm that a case-based legal intelligent auxiliary discretionary adviser system based on a GA-BP NN and ontology techniques has good performance in prediction. By predicting the mental anguish compensation values, the legal intelligent auxiliary discretionary adviser system can help judges to handle cases more quickly and ordinary people to discover the suggested compensation or penalty. In contrast to BP NN or SVM, the result seems more close to the actual compensation rate.

Recently, smart court has been developed in China; the purpose of which is to build the legal advice system for improving judicial justice and reducing differences in sentencing. A practical legal advice system is an urgent requirement for the judiciary.

This paper presents a study of a case-based legal intelligent auxiliary discretionary adviser system based on a GA-BP NN and ontology techniques. The findings offer advice to optimize legal intelligent auxiliary discretionary adviser systems for mental anguish compensation in medical disputes.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

Starting with an explanation of the language of law, the article outlines the characteristics of legal literature and the expectations of computer‐based systems. There follows a brief evaluative survey of the development of major legal text retrieval systems throughout the world with an indication of the areas of research in progress. The final section deals with systems in the United Kingdom and the problems associated with research funding and the general organization of legal information in the country. 8 refs.

The object of this research is the reconstruction of the existing legal response by European Union states to the phenomenon of immigration. It seeks to analyse the process of conferral of protection.

One main dimension is selected and discussed: the case law of the national courts. The study focuses on the legal status of immigrants resulting from the intervention of these national courts.

The research shows that although the courts have conferred an increasing protection on immigrants, this has not challenged the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the states to decide, according to their discretionary prerogatives, which immigrants are allowed to enter and stay in their territories. Notwithstanding the differences in the general constitutional and legal structures, the research also shows that the courts of the three countries considered – France, Germany and Spain – have progressively moved towards converging solutions in protecting immigrants.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the different legal orders analysed.

This paper examines the critical importance of specific legal foundations common to economies that have developed and now enjoy high standards of living. It explains the economic cycle and identifies the importance of a legal system to all types of capital and to the operation of the cycle to satisfy human need fulfillment. The paper also addresses how one economy’s lack of rudimentary legal foundations can contaminate or adversely affect extant economies, including well‐developed economies. It offers a prescription for legal elements essential to all economies that aspire to a “free market” and argues why leaders, policy makers, and providers of capital should promote and even insist on such foundations in emerging and transition economies. This paper should appeal to a broad array of individuals with an interest in the role of law in emerging and transition economies, including researchers, policy makers, strategists, and analysts.

Examines access to justice, within the Australian context of an adversarial system, from a consumer’s perspective. It is argued that the current system of justice represents the most conservative element of Australian society and that the courtroom discourse structure and the legal professional code of practice do little to ensure access to justice or quality of service. Inequality in communication and in the distribution of wealth, affecting all spheres of social life, especially the legal system, pose major barriers to access to justice. Stemming from these two principal barriers to equality in access to justice, a multitude of other barriers are perceived to exist. These perceived barriers are magnified by various platforms of social and political analysis as well as historical, contextual factors and administrative action. Attention is drawn to the emerging need for a continuous alignment of administrative and justice systems with democratic justice principles and global social changes.

Legal syncretism seeks to provide a rather different account of how laws interact with one another as the people deal with them. The purpose of this study is to provide a rather different account of how laws interact with one another as the people deal with them in the society.

This paper discusses the current concept of legal pluralism as to whether it really holds as the right theory for building a harmonious and trustworthy legal system in a multi-cultural country such as Indonesia. This study involves socio-legal research drawing on empirical data. It discusses the practice of legal pluralism in Indonesia by analyzing the characteristics of her legal system, especially the roles of customs and religion in it.

The research, conducted in five Indonesian cities, reveals that the current proposal of legal pluralism is not really helping to solve the difficulties faced by the Indonesian legal system. Therefore, this paper proposes legal syncretism or the theory of unity in diversity (bhineka tunggal ika) as an alternative to help cope with some of the difficulties faced by many legal systems in developing countries, especially Indonesia.

Although legal pluralism sounds promising, wrong and misleading interpretations have been provided by many of its proponents. Legal pluralism has been touted by many socio-legal scholars as a key concept in the analysis of law. Yet, after almost 20 years of such claims, there has been little progress in the development of the concept. Despite these confident pronouncements and the apparent unanimity that underlie them, however, the concept gives rise to complex unresolved problems. Legal syncretism seeks to provide a rather different account of how laws interact with one another as the people deal with them.

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) play an important role in economic development, with the dual objectives of social outreach and financial self-sufficiency. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of organizational structure and variations in legal systems on the MFI dual performance goals.

Using a sample that includes 1,518 MFIs from 105 different countries over a period of 20 years, this study analyzes the data by applying a model that includes six categories of organizational structures and variations of legal systems, including both civil and common law, with accounting performance measures for the dependent variables.

The analyses provide robust results indicating that MFIs structured as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have better social outreach than all other types of MFIs and exhibit better financial performance than MFIs registered as commercial banks or credit unions. Legal systems also played a role in MFI effectiveness.

Given the increasing importance of MFIs on economic development globally, this study has relevance on how the impact of MFI structural characteristics and macro-level influences on their dual performance criteria can be translated into management approaches and governance policies that can increase the effectiveness of these dual (i.e. social and financial) goals.

This study is more comprehensive than prior research in addressing the influence of organizational structures of MFIs and legal systems on MFI dual mission, namely, its financial performance and social outreach, thereby increasing our understanding of policy implications in sustaining the MFI’s developmental role.

The purpose of this paper is to draw from organizational ecology and institutional theory, the authors suggest that there will be a curvilinear relationship between legal system uncertainty and foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction in Southeast Asia. The authors extend theory by arguing that this is because uncertainty will provide opportunities for FDI that seek this form of operating environment, leveraging legal system uncertainty as a basis for competitive advantage.

The authors test and find support for the hypotheses using FDI data from nine Southeast Asian countries for the years 1995-2005.

In this paper, the authors hypothesize and find that the relationship between legal system uncertainty and FDI attraction is curvilinear in nature, such that FDI attraction decreases with legal system uncertainty down to an inflection point, but then increases beyond this point; and that the relationship between legal system uncertainty and FDI attraction is moderated by government intervention in the host country economy, such that the strength of this relationship is greater when government intervention is high rather than when it is low. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future inquiry are presented.

Conventional wisdom suggests that legal system uncertainty will negatively affect FDI attraction. However, to date, research on the effects of legal system uncertainty on FDI attraction in emerging markets has received very little attention. The aim of this research study is to shed new light on how, under certain conditions, legal system uncertainty will attract FDI in Southeast Asia.

This paper builds on the “Law and Finance” theory and aims to examine the effect of the legal and institutional environment on the governance–performance relationship in the context of non-US firms. More precisely, it examines whether and how the country’s legal system and the level of investor protection interact with the firm-level corporate governance and affect firm performance.

The authors used the “G-Index” governance score developed by the Governance Metrics International rating for a sample of 12,728 firm-year observations from 23 countries over the 2009–2016 period.

The results show that the interaction between the country-level institutions and corporate governance system significantly affect the firm performance. In particular, the findings indicate that firms operating in common law countries tend to exhibit a positive valuation effect and higher performance than firms with a comparable corporate governance level operating in civil law countries. More precisely, the authors find that in common law countries, higher investor protection with enhanced corporate governance is associated with better firm performance. However, firms operating in civil law countries with weaker investor protection and a comparable corporate governance level tend to experience a negative valuation effect.

The findings suggest that the institutional and legal environment is crucial and important in determining the value-maximizing level of good governance practices. Managers and regulators should carefully analyze the cost of these initiatives and should coordinate it with the needs of the country’s legal system. The challenge for the company will be how to adjust its corporate governance strategy according to the needs and demands of the country’s legal system in which the company operates to improve its performance. The regulators should ensure a fit between the specifics of the national legal and institutional environment and corporate governance standards and practices.