Volume 2, Issue 4

There is considerable debate about the role private litigation should play in the enforcement of antitrust law. This article focuses on one of the most controversial private enforcement mechanisms – damages actions – and assesses whether and how much such actions have contributed to deterring antitrust violations in Japan. It does so by answering two questions: (1) how much have damages actions contributed to the detection of antitrust violations?, and (2) how much have damages actions contributed to an increase in the sanctions for antitrust violations? Based on original data concerning damages actions between 1990 and 2010, the article argues that damages actions have somewhat contributed to deterring certain antitrust violations, bid-rigging in particular, but that an almost equivalent measure of deterrence could have been generated more efficiently by imposing higher penalties through public enforcement.

The Single Window concept refers to an «exchange» facility that allows parties involved in trade and transport to lodge standardized information and documents with a single entry point to fulfill all import, export, and transit-related regulatory requirements. The implementation and use of up-to-date Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) facilitates trade and a Single Window should lead to a close co-operation between all involved governmental authorities and agencies as well as the trading community.

This article argues that the Kyoto Protocol to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change was doomed to face difficulties ab initio. Moving the climate change agenda forward multilaterally among the 195 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is proving to be a serious challenge. The lack of progress in UNFCCC negotiations in recent years, especially the failure to obtain an international agreement on emissions limitations targets and timetables by all major developed and developing country emitters, has led many to question whether the UNFCCC is, in fact, the best and most effective forum for mobilizing a global response to climate change. The current approach to negotiating a comprehensive, universal, and legally binding global agreement on climate change is unlikely to succeed. The article concludes that no breakthroughs will take place regarding a global climate change agreement until there is more political maturity on the side of the U.S., and until rapidly emerging economies such as China and India indicate that they are ready to play their part in tackling the climate change challenge, since they are part of the solution. Large emitters of GHG need to be involved for negotiations to come to a conclusion. Much progress is still needed until we reach an international agreement that covers all the world’s countries and that is strong enough to tackle climate change effectively and is equitable enough to gain the sympathy of all countries.

The Taiwanese government has long used and endorsed aboriginal culture (e.g., in the form of theme parks, cartoons, music, and films) to grow local industries and attract tourism. By showcasing indigenous culture on the world stage, Taiwan's entertainment and tourism industries have developed in mainstream society a sense of pride in its living native treasures. The conscious effort to diversify what it means to be Taiwanese has resulted, somewhat ironically, in a sort of communal identity. Accordingly, some scholars believe that indigenous culture should belong to the public domain. Indeed, the injection of aboriginal culture into the mainstream has had positive and negative effects. On the one hand, the entry of indigenous culture into the mainstream has provided formerly overlooked minority groups with new resources and societal leverage, as well as educated the Taiwanese people about diversity. On the other hand, the capitalization of traditional culture by non-aboriginal entities can be detrimental to aboriginal self-sufficiency and preservation efforts. This paper examines the different levels of protection of traditional culture for aboriginal tribes. Part II discusses the legislations currently in place for the benefits of the aborigines, and the recent controversy surrounding government procedures in defining the legal statuses of the aboriginal tribes. Part III looks at the efficacy of domestic legislation vis-à-vis international treaties. Part IV describes the role of intellectual property rights in a private settlement between a film production company and the Seediq tribe.

The consensus over independent constitutional judicial review – that it inevitably stems from electoral and inter-branch competition – has been weakened by recent empirical discoveries; however, empiricists have yet to offer a coherent explanation why non-competitive, authoritarian, governments would tolerate constitutional courts that strike down their legislation. This article proposes a “Constitutional Investment Theory” that solves this puzzle: expressive symbolism is central to these regimes’ calculus for acquiescing in the activation of judicial review; the variable perdurability of judicial review depends on how much trust the regime invest in the judiciary; and activism in judicial review is the likelier to emerge the higher the transaction costs of retaliating against offending courts. Evidence from Singapore and pre-2000 Taiwan lends support to this theory.