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This study aims to systematise the methodology used in comparative urban planning law and propose primary contexts for comparison in planning law.

This study undertook a review of comparative law methodology discourse and sought to establish connections between the discourse and the field of planning law.

This study argues for establishment of a realistic goal for comparative planning law by focusing on the planning law's modifiability. The goal of comparison in planning law should not be to find universally desirable principles or better solutions. Rather, the goal should be to identify a motive for devising a solution. This is because it is not only difficult to establish legal values that are universally applicable to planning law but also inappropriate to determine superiority of planning laws that have been developed over time by each jurisdiction’s sovereignty and policies on land use. When determining comparable systems for analysis among legal systems that are functionally equivalent, it is important to consider the context of land use relations alongside the comparative analysis to be done. To set realistic goals, the context should not be extended indefinitely but be systematised. Based on the foundational relationship underlying planning law, including the tension between planning authorities and property owners, this study presents five specific contexts for comparative analysis: “Strength of Property Rights,” “Level of Judicial Intervention,” “Plan- or Development-led System,” “Allocation of Planning Power” and “Level of Participation.” Examination of these contexts will allow better understanding of the similarities and differences among different systems and practical application of the results of comparative studies.

This study presents a novel approach to systematising the methodology and framework of comparative planning law.

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the concept of ḍamān al-milkiyyah (ownership risk) and to assess its application in contemporary Islamic financial products and services.

The methodology adopted is that of descriptive research.

From an Islamic law of contract perspective, the concept of ḍamān al-milkiyyah is central to legitimate profit-making transactions and hence must be adhered to in practical applications of Islamic finance.

This study should help motivate further investigation into the position of ḍamān al-milkiyyah among different parties in existing Islamic financial products and services.

Policymakers and regulators should ensure that Islamic financial products and services are structured in a way that does not allow parties to profit without adequately bearing the liability for potential loss.

The condition of ḍamān al-milkiyyah as a source of legitimate profit reflects the idea that the role of finance in Islam is to promote and ensure social benefits.

This paper emphasizes the importance of ḍamān al-milkiyyah as a fundamental condition for profit in Islamic financial transactions.

With the aim of monitoring the existing regulations that are applicable to community of owners facing delinquency, in view of the importance of this issue for the achievement of the Urban Agenda, the present study aims to analyse the most stringent and controversial measures available for the community of owners facing delinquency from a comparative perspective.

The present work addresses the recent legislative amendments that have taken place at national level in this field in several countries and analyses to what extent they have addressed the delinquency problem faced by community of owners.

The current paper shows that, in the end, legal certainty, the prospective legal and economic effects on mortgage lending and constitutional concerns are the underlying reasons behind the reluctance to implement some stringent measures to face delinquency. It also shows that recent amendments concerning alternative dispute resolution mechanisms are a missed opportunity.

Community of owners plays a key role in cities for the achievement of the Urban Agenda, so the periodical contributions from co-owners are paramount to the proper implementation of urban regeneration, energy efficiency and accessibility policies. To this end, the paper analyses existing regulations that are applicable to community of owners facing delinquency, which may increase in the coming years due to the current socioeconomic context.

This paper builds on existing research and goes one step further by addressing the recent legislative amendments that have taken place recently at national level in this field. These measures may serve as an inspiration to other EU legal systems.

The field of broad-based employee ownership within corporations is a specific application of the foundational topic of property ownership. It is situated at the intersection of a broad range of scholarly disciplines including economics, law, finance and management. Each discipline contributes vocabulary and distinctions describing this field. That broad spectrum of disciplinary inquiry is a strength but it also lends a “ships passing in the night” quality to discussions of employee ownership. This paper attempts to unravel the narrative diversity surrounding this topic. Four meanings of ownership are introduced. Those meanings are in turn embedded within two abstract models of the corporation; the corporation as property and the corporation as social institution.

There is no experimental design The paper presents a conceptual overview and introduces a taxonomy of four meanings and two models of ownership.

Four meanings of ownership are introduced. The meanings are ownership as compensation, investment, retirement and membership. Those meanings are in turn embedded within two abstract models of the corporation; the corporation as property and the corporation as social institution.

No hypotheses are advanced. This is not a research paper. A conceptual overview that makes use of taxonomy of meanings and models is introduced to help clarify confusions abundant in the field of employee ownership. Readers may differ with the categories of meanings and models introduced in this conceptual overview.

The ambition of the paper is to describe the various meanings and models of employee ownership presently in use in both academic and applied settings. It is not necessary or desirable to assert the primacy of a single meaning or model in order to achieve progress. The analysis provided here surfaces a range of assumptions about ownership that have heretofore been implicit in both scholarship and in practice. Making those assumptions explicit should prove useful to both scholars and practitioners of employee ownership.

The concept of employee ownership enjoys a relatively broad appeal with the public. Among the academic disciplines that have trained their lights upon it, a more mixed reception prevails. Much of the academic and policy controversy derives from confusion about the nature and structure of employee ownership. This paper attempts to address that confusion by presenting a taxonomy of meanings and models that may prove useful for future research.

This study is one of the first efforts to comprehinsively map the various meanings and models of broad-based employee ownership.

The issue of cybersecurity has been cast as the focal point of a fight between two conflicting governance models: the nation-state model of national security and the global governance model of multi-stakeholder collaboration, as seen in forums like IGF, IETF, ICANN, etc. There is a strange disconnect, however, between this supposed fight and the actual control over cybersecurity “on the ground”. This paper aims to reconnect discourse and control via a property rights approach, where control is located first and foremost in ownership.

This paper first conceptualizes current governance mechanisms through ownership and property rights. These concepts locate control over internet resources. They also help us understand ongoing shifts in control. Such shifts in governance are actually happening, security governance is being patched left and right, but these arrangements bear little resemblance to either the national security model of states or the global model of multi-stakeholder collaboration. With the conceptualization in hand, the paper then presents case studies of governance that have emerged around specific security externalities.

While not all mechanisms are equally effective, in each of the studied areas, the author found evidence of private actors partially internalizing the externalities, mostly on a voluntary basis and through network governance mechanisms. No one thinks that this is enough, but it is a starting point. Future research is needed to identify how these mechanisms can be extended or supplemented to further improve the governance of cybersecurity.

This paper bridges together the disconnected research communities on governance and (technical) cybersecurity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore board functions and their location in family firms.

Through structured induction in a four-case study of medium-sized Swedish family firms, the authors demonstrate that board functions can be located in other arenas than in the common board and suggest propositions that explain their distribution.

(1) The board is but one of several arenas where board functions are performed. (2) The functions performed by the board vary in type and emphasis. (3) The non-family directors in a family firm serve the owners, even sometimes governing them, in what the authors term “bidirectional governance”. (4) The kin strategy of the family influences their governance. (5) The utilization of a board for governance stems from the family (together with its constitution, kin strategy and governance strategy), the board composition and the business conditions of the firm.

Being a case study the findings are restricted to concepts and theoretical propositions. Using structured induction, the study is not solely inductive but still contains the subjectivity of induction.

Governance agents should have an instrumental view on the board, considering it one possible governance arena among others, thereby economizing on governance.

The institutional pressure toward active boards could paradoxically reduce the importance of the board in family firms.

The board of a family company differs in its emphasis of board functions and these functions are performed with varying emphases in different governance arenas. The authors propose the concept of kin strategy, which refers to the governance importance of the structure of the owner and observations on bi-directional governance, indicating that the board can govern the owners.

Blockchain, which was originally created to enable peer-to-peer digital payment systems (bitcoin), is considered to have several benefits for different sectors, such as the real estate one. In a standard European-wide real estate transaction, several intermediaries are involved. As a consequence, these agreements are usually time-consuming and involve extra difficulties to cross-border operations. As blockchain, combined with smart contracts, may have an important role in these transactions, this paper aims to explore its prospective challenges, limitations and opportunities in the real estate sector and discover how the traditional intermediaries have to face a possible implementation of this technology.

This paper analyses the current intermediaries in the real estate sector in European Union (EU), their functions and how can blockchain strengthen the security of these transactions while reducing their time. The author uses a legal methodology to approach it.

Blockchain, combined with smart contracts, has both challenges and opportunities for the real estate sector. On the one hand, it may improve procedures, allow EU transactions and the interconnection between public administration. However, to not reduce parties rights, this blockchain should have some special features, such as the possibility of being amended.

This paper provides a valuable overview of all the intermediaries that could be affected by blockchain protocols. It is of interest of blockchain developers, public administrations and researchers who are working on blockchain and property conveyancing.

As a typical nature-based solution to climate change, forestry carbon sinks are vital to achieving carbon neutrality in China. However, regulations in China are insufficient to promote the development of carbon offset projects in forestry. This study aims to identify the regulatory obstacles impeding the development of forestry offsets under China’s certified emission reduction (CCER) and explore ways to improve the regulatory system.

This study conducts a qualitative analysis using a normative legal research method. This study conducted a synthetic review of national and local regulatory documents to gain insights into the regulatory landscape of forestry offsets in China. The main contents and characteristics of these documents are illustrated. Furthermore, related secondary literature was reviewed to gain further insight into forestry offset regulations and to identify significant gaps in China’s CCER regulation.

Forestry offset regulations under the CCER are characterized by fragmentation and a relatively lower legally binding force. There is no systematic institutional arrangement for forestry offset development, impeding market expectations and increasing transaction costs. The main challenges in China’s regulation of forestry carbon sinks include entitlement ambiguity, complicated rules for registration and verification, a lack of mechanisms for incentives, risk prevention and biodiversity protection.

Forestry carbon sinks’ multiple environmental and social values necessitate their effective development and utilization. This study assessed forestry offset regulations in China and proposed corresponding institutional arrangements to improve forestry carbon sink regulations under the CCER.

This paper aims to compare and review alternative ways to adjust public ground leases.

Based on principles derived from a review of scientific literature, alternatives for the extension of leases are discussed based on the case of Amsterdam.

Many alternatives lead public ground-lease systems to produce results that are the opposite of what they are intended to be (as inspired by Henry George): new improvements result in higher rent, but additional location values do not result in higher rent. One exception is the lease-adjustment-at-property-transaction alternative, which may nevertheless result in fewer transactions.

Public leasehold systems are highly contested with regard to the extension of leases. Such systems are often aimed at capturing land-value gains. In practice, however, this tends to be more difficult than expected. Value capture by authorities, as intended by the system, results in counter-movements of lessees, who often gain public support to set lower leases. These political processes may even result in the termination of such public ground-lease systems. This paper reports on a search for possible solutions.

The comparison of various alternatives to ground-lease extension based on principles derived from literature is new, and it contributes insight into public ground-lease systems.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the legal issues of simultaneous Internet transmission of broadcasting programs of the Open University of Japan (OUJ) and to take legal measures to promote the mutual utilization of open university courses in Japan, the UK, China and Korea.

The author examines the legal relationship regarding Internet simultaneous distribution of broadcast courses at the OUJ. The author then considers the legal relationship between the UK, China and South Korea regarding the simultaneous transmission of broadcast courses over the internet. Based on that consideration, this paper clarifies legal measures to promote its utilization.

Internet transmission of broadcasting courses will be webcasting. Arguably, it can be assumed to be streaming and on-demand, albeit controversial. Webcasting will be publicly transmitted, but there is only an on-demand provision for Internet transmission. As webcasting is streaming and on-demand, it involves reproduction of broadcasting courses. Therefore, webcasting needs to provide streaming provision for public transmission rights and associate them with reproduction right.

The originality of this paper lies in clarifying the legal response of the object, subject and rights of webcasting from the perspective of the OUJ, in order to dispel legal problems that may arise in the future against this unexplored phenomenon. Additionally, this paper is valuable in that it presents legal consistency from the point of view of the comparative laws of Japan, the UK, China and South Korea, based on an examination of the legal response in Japan.