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This paper explains the nature of David Li’s concept of ambiguous property rights and three angles to see right ambiguity from a Coasian-constrained choice-theoretical perspective and elaborate on that ambiguity in terms of five scenarios of de jure and de facto rights. The case of indigenous village housing in post-colonial Hong Kong under a mature system of the rule of law is used to demonstrate the ambiguities due to a gap between de jure and de facto property rights that may not degenerate into anarchy due to rational choices made under common law constraints driven ultimately by the land market. The implications of the case study for evaluating ambiguities in property rights in China are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This annual survey of significant court and tribunal decisions in Australia during 2020 considers matters spanning five thematic groupings. First, it addresses decisions that arose in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. Secondly, it examines how the common law has developed the National Employment Standards, particularly for low-paid and precariously employed workers, and general protections. Thirdly, it reviews cases concerning the definition of 'employment', emphasising that definition's ongoing arbitrariness. Fourthly, it examines the development of the common law as it relates to the termination of employment, especially in the context of the exercise of academic freedom. Finally, decisions relating to the limits of industrial activity are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mounting crisis in employment standards (ES) enforcement is prompting the adoption of new instruments and mechanisms among governments in common law jurisdictions aiming to improve workplace regulation. This shift, evident across all stages of the enforcement process, indicates the increasing influence of regulatory new governance. Using reforms in four jurisdictions as illustrative examples, this article raises serious cautions around the emergence of regulatory new governance in employment standards enforcement. The central argument of the article is that new modes of regulation that fail to account adequately for the power dynamics of the employment relationship risk entrenching processes of regulatory degradation. In light of this potential, the article outlines four principles for more effective ES regulation that aim to balance aspects of traditional regulatory models with a selective application of more promising elements of regulatory new governance, in particular participatory arrangements that involve workers in enforcement processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most common law jurisdictions worldwide, an offender’s remorse is a mitigating factor in sentencing. It matters whether or not a person who has committed a crime is truly sorry for what they have done. And yet how judges evaluate such expressions is unclear. Drawing on 18 interviews with judges in the New South Wales criminal justice system in Australia, this article examines the status of offenders’ live, sworn evidence in the judiciary’s assessment of offenders’ remorse. These interviews with the judiciary reveal that remorse assessment often operates beyond semiotic, representational paradigms (such as ‘demeanour assessment’) and instead works, in experiential terms, as a feeling. When it comes to offenders getting into the witness box and speaking of their remorse, it seems that sometimes something gets felt by judges at the level of embodied affect that then enables them to declare: ‘This person is remorseful.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical analyses of domestic legal traditions in the social science literature demonstrate that common law states have better economic freedoms, stronger investor protection, more developed capital markets, and better property rights protection than states with civil law, Islamic law, or mixed legal traditions. This article expands upon the literature by examining the relationship between domestic legal traditions and human rights practices. The primary hypothesis is that common law states have better human rights practices on average than civil law, Islamic law, or mixed law states because the procedural features of common law such as the adversarial trial system, the reliance on oral argumentation, and stare decisis result in greater judicial independence and protection of individual rights in these legal systems. We also examine how the quality of a state’s legal system influences repression focusing on colonial legacy, judicial independence, and the rule of law. A global cross-national analysis of state-years from 1976 to 2006 shows that states with common law traditions engage in better human rights practices than states with other legal systems. This result holds when controlling for the quality of the legal system and standard explanations for states’ human rights practices (economic growth, regime type, population size, military regime, and war involvement). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]