Search results

The Panama Canal expansion is one of the most important public works projects in recent times. Both the awarding of the contract and its execution have been surrounded by intense controversy. The situation came to a head in February 2014 when the contractor halted construction work due to the canal authority’s failure to maintain the economic balance of the contract. This article explains the circumstances surrounding this dispute and analyses the causes and consequences of modifications to the contract. These are classic problems that affect all public procurement systems. The lessons drawn from this extraordinary case are valid for other legal systems

The purpose of this article is to investigate the role that the principle of pacta sunt servanda plays in consumer contracts under the Common European Sales Law (CESL).

The new proposal for the CESL resembles quite closely other global and European instruments and collections of rules on contracts, such as the CISG, PECL, and DCFR. At a closer look, the concept of contract, and in particular the consumer contract, differences between the CESL and its predecessors becomes readily apparent. This article will point out these differences and thereby analyse the role of the pacta sunt servanda principle in consumer contracts.

The question must be answered whether the consumer protection provisions that weaken the bindingness of contracts will discourage traders from opting into CESL? The Article also shows the inconsistencies in the CESL in business‐to‐business (B2B) contracts in the areas relating to mistake and lack of conformity.

The article poses a question which is of such relevance that it should be more comprehensively discussed by European legislators before the CESL is adopted as an EU regulation.

For more than nine decades, the Jewish–Palestinian conflict has dominated all aspects of life in the Arab world. The Arabs have disregarded and neglected their political, economic, and social development since 1916 because of their obsession with defeating the Jews or driving them into the sea. When the Arab armies collectively failed to destroy the newly established Jewish state in 1948, the dynamics of the conflict changed. On the one hand, Arab rationalists such as King Abdullah ibn al-Husyan (King Abdullah-I) (d 1951) of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (HKJ) suggested accepting the United Nations Partition Plan as proposed by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947. On the other hand, most Arab countries followed the lead of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nassir, who advocated the destruction of Israel. The latter view was also adopted by the PLO during Ahmad Shukeiri's reign (1964–1967) and later by Yasir Arafat (1969–2004) and most Palestinian armed factions.

This study aims to investigate the legal consequences of the use of force majeure (FM) clause in a contract related to the prospect of business sustainability. In addition, this paper also examines the legal risk perspective toward the interpretation of FM clauses in contracts that incorporate the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic situation.

The research design in this paper uses the normative juridical method, which means that it is carried out with library research on secondary data in the field of law, in the form of primary and secondary legal materials and tertiary legal materials. Primary legal materials are in the form of regulations relating to the variable topics of this paper, namely, FM, COVID-19, contracts and legal risk management (LRM).

The study found that studies of FM are still limited in terms of the aspects of contract sustainability, and none has reviewed them using the LRM paradigm.

Given the fact that this pandemic is still ongoing and uncertain, the extent to which the broadening of the interpretation of FM in the contract by the parties and how much the designs offered above can help the parties, will greatly depend on the commitment of the parties. However, if the orientation is to maintain a long-term business relationship, it still fulfills the essence of a win–win solution that will greatly assist the parties in determining the continuity of the contract.

The results of this study are expected to provide benefit to the parties in an agreement affected by the COVID-19 outbreak and by regulators who wish to provide a legal basis in contract law.

Long-term business relationships will create sound, peaceful and conducive environment for modern business. This kind of situation will sustain the business as expected.

This study concludes that the interpretation of FM can be extended to accommodate the interests of the parties to the contract by considering several principles in contract law and other relevant clauses. In addition, this study also produced four essential designs for LRM oriented to long-term business relationships in a win–win solution.

This paper aims to explore complexities of compliance with international and customary law when faced with terrorist threats. The paper's thesis asserts that terrorism cannot be successfully repelled unless the legitimacy of international and domestic law is adhered to by states out of a sense of reciprocal obligation in accordance with the principle of pacta sunt servanda (pacts shall be respected).

This paper examines US pronouncements in order to assess strategic validity.

While the Middle East, particularly Iraq, has been the focus of the US “War on terrorism,” the paper suggests two questions: what has been the US response to terrorist threats in the Americas? Have US national security priorities post‐9/11 been unnecessarily diverted from the Americas where much needed support is promised but lacking, and instead have resources been concentrated far beyond domestic and international norms?

The paper examines the US national security priorities, concluding that they have been unproductively diverted from the Americas to the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular. The US fixation upon Middle East “regime‐change”, while neglecting to recognize the dangerous nexus and presence of organized crime and terrorist organizations in the Americas, is illustrative of how the present administration has diverted its post.

The purpose of this study is to focus on the influence of domestic legal traditions on dispute behavior, which has been widely examined in the conflict literature, within the World Trade Organization (WTO). States with a civil legal tradition hold treaties and agreements in high esteem. Therefore, they will be more likely to file trade complaints and pursue adjudication when compared to states with common or mixed legal traditions.

The hypotheses in this study have been tested using a quantitative test with data from the WTO regarding trade disputes.

While civil law states are more likely to file complaints, they are less likely to pursue adjudication over a negotiated settlement.

This study brings to light how domestic legal systems affect state behavior within an international legal body.

The purpose of this study is to critically review the book Islamic Law and International Law by Emilila Powell.

The book review is undertaken from a comparative legal and political science perspective, including arguments and insights from international relations, international law, Islamic law, Islamic culture, religious studies, legal history and European as well as international political history.

While the empirical part of Powell’s work (chapters 5, 6 and 7) shows a methodologically veryc well done approach and at the same time highly interesting insights, both foundation and context show several critical points, in particular, a lack of differentiation with respect to the Western politico-legal tradition, its concepts and the resulting implications.

The book represents an excellent starting point that should inspire new, more intensive as well as exhaustive research on this topic.

The book generates valuable insights for practitioners such as judges at international courts dealing with issues involving so-called Islamic law states, as well as politicians or public service officials in the context of international law and international politics.

As the paper is a comprehensive review of the book based upon comparatively based insights from international relations, international law, Islamic law, Islamic culture, religious studies, legal history and European as well as international political history, the arguments of Powell are analyzed and commented upon in a comprehensive, well-founded and fair way. This should give potential readers a good understanding of Powell’s arguments, inspire a critical lecture of the book and contribute to the important discourse on the connex between international law and Islamic law.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the supervening loss of inter-organisational trust in long-term commercial contracts. The underlying research question is whether contract law – the legal institution regulating economic exchanges – should intervene and enable a party to a long-term commercial contract to extricate itself from a situation where a relationship of trust has broken down irretrievably.

This paper uses doctrinal methodology and theoretical conceptualisation to answer the underlying research question. The legal instrument chosen for analysis purposes is the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. This paper also draws on extant literature on inter-organisational trust (including conceptual and empirical studies) to support the arguments and propositions. Furthermore, this study proceeds to assess the substantive justifiability of the proposed remedial measure using four normative values: legal certainty and predictability, protection of the performance interest, economic efficiency and the preservation of the relation.

The central argument put forward in this paper is the reformulation of draft Article 6.3.1 proposed by the UNIDROIT Working Group on Long-Term Contracts, which confers a novel right to terminate for a compelling reason. This paper presents a multidimensional model of inter-organisational trust that would serve as the conceptual framework for the proposed reformulation of the provision and establishes a coherent juridical basis for the legal solution that would accord with the Principles of International Commercial Contracts’ general remedial scheme. As for the normative assessment, this paper demonstrates that the proposed remedial measure would significantly promote efficient outcomes and positively serve the norms of legal certainty, protection of the performance interest and the preservation of the relation.

This paper addresses the lacuna in current legal scholarship in relation to the adverse socio-economic effects following trust violation and deterioration in inter-organisational relationships. Additionally, the propositions and findings should contribute to the workings of the UNIDROIT in adopting new rules and principles that would serve the special requirements of cross-border trade.

Under international human rights law, states can limit the exercise of most human rights if it is necessary to protect the rights of others or collective interests. The hazards of epidemics and diseases have raised many legal, economic and social issues in their link with global health security, which renew the discussion regarding the effects of the COVID-19 on some civil and commercial transactions and financial and tax obligations. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the effects of COVID-19 on contractual obligations.

In this research, we are going to follow the method of the analytical and applied approach at the same time by analyzing the cases in which contractual obligations are affected by the circumstances of the COVID-19 and its legal implications, as well as to apply the theories related to this aspect to different cases.

The result of the study funded that the legal adaptation of the COVID-19 pandemic is limited to the theory of emergency circumstances and the theory of the force majeure, and the matter remains in the hands of the trial judge to attribute the incident imposed on him to one of the two cases according to the circumstances of the case.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on contractual obligations should be applied on each contract separately according to the extent of its impact on the contractors because the spread of the virus may have an impact on the obligations of one of the contractors, leading to exhaustion of the debtor, or it may lead to the impossibility of implementing the obligation.

The current study is an extension of the PF model research program that began after the Great Depression in the early 1930s. The purpose of the study is to introduce political dimensions to the PF defense-growth model and to assess the impact of political and conflict variables on EG. The study theorizes that excluding political factors from the PF defense-growth model hampers any realistic explanation of the problems of EG; that the influences of economic and military variables and their externalities effects vary across different political contexts; that political factors are at least as important as economic factors in determining the outcome of EG; that intrastate and interstate conflicts have differential effects on EG (both types of conflicts have negative effects on EG; however, intrastate conflicts have more damaging effects on growth than do interstate conflicts); and that the impact of conflicts on EG differs across regions.