Volume 18, Issue 1 -

The classic account of the role of expert in civil proceedings revolves around a crucial notion. The idea is that the role the expert plays is correlated with an evident lack of technical or scientific knowledge within the context of the judiciary. Such an approach involves several questions ranging from how to perceive the need to supplement the basic judicial knowledge to whether there is such a thing as a binding aspect in the expert evidence. For civil lawyers the expert needs to be appointed depending on judicial discretion. The appointment of expert requires judicial evaluation on a case-by-case basis. Whether or not the attorneys encourage the judge to appoint an expert, the court remains capable of recognizing that certain facts are more likely candidates to a technical or scientific assessment. If the judge is persuaded that the case can be decided regardless the opinion of an expert, the decision can be based solely on the judicial knowledge and skills. On the contrary, the common law tradition leaves the attorneys with a burden of submitting to the court the technical or scientific knowledge they deem necessary for the judgment. In this different perspective, the judge is basically called upon to evaluate the expert witnesses and select their convincing statements through the cross-examination of the parties. In both systems, the crucial question is how technical or scientific knowledge can be translated for legal decisionmaking. The judge and the expert use different languages and approach the factual questions very differently. Scientists offer empirical research studies and make general statements about natural phenomena; lawyers focus their attention on the individual decisionmaking required in the courtroom. Nonetheless, disputes involving technical or scientific issues make it inevitable that the judge and the expert face with the problem of mutual understanding. The way in which legal scholars have usually managed those differences is by adopting a structured cooperation between the judge and the expert. By construing such a relationship as a form of mutual training, they find some room for warranting an effective gatekeeping role to the judge. But such a cooperation is more a theoretical possibility than a pragmatic opportunity. Instead, reshaping the expert evidence into a lay judge can offer a concrete opportunity to entrench the scientific or technical knowledge of the court in several cases.

1. Declaration of intention. - 2. The past: common constitutional traditions at the genesis of the European integration process. - 3. From Maastricht until (the Charter of) Nice: the Common constitutional traditions’ present perfect - 4. After the entry into force of the Charter: common constitution traditions today: still a meaningful concept? - 5. Relevance of the common constitution traditions in the (next) future. - 6 Final remarks.

The regulation of all traditional branches - banking, securities and insurance - of financial law is going through a change in retail customer protection: in this area of the law, an eventual convergence of solutions in client protection initiatives may be found. In a context oriented towards acting in accordance with the best interest of customers, EU legislator currently seeks a new “frontier” in the protection of retail customers and tends to develop new tools and strategies in addition to the disclosure of information and conduct of business rules, in order to remove potentially detrimental products from the market. This contribution examines the “product oversight and governance” principle intended to remedy problems associated with products misselling. In the details, this trend is analyzed with reference to the upcoming insurance distribution directive.

With the advent of autonomous vehicles, especially self-driving cars, there is great promise for society. However, cars are not islands; they operate in a community of vehicles. Laws and regulations are crafted to allow the maximum benefit for the community while imposing the fewest costs. Unfortunately, a full accounting of these benefits and costs is not entirely clear at promulgation. Because the technologies and how they will be used are so uncertain, regulatory bodies have to try to build on what they have done in the past, sometimes successfully and sometimes unevenly. This paper will examine several regulatory attempts involving these new technologies in the United States, both on the federal and state levels. Also considered will be the interaction of these regulations under a federal system with defined and specific responsibilities for both sovereigns. A view on future developments is provided to gauge the directions additional regulation could take. Finally, generalizable lessons from this approached will be summarized.

This paper discusses the role and usage of traditional and non-traditional consumer data in the retail financial markets of the European Union in the context of the economic theories, policies, and law within which they work. Across Europe there is no common practice of using the credit data of consumers, which can be exploited for several purposes. Traditionally, they are used by the lending industry as a risk-management tool to underwrite borrowing decisions or price risks, but they can also be used as a practice of creditworthiness assessment. In some Member States, consumer data are part of a broader information centralisation system for the prudential supervision of banks and the financial system as a whole. Within this already complex picture, emerging technologies and the processing of new generations of personal data are starting to give way to new business models that can transform retail financial markets ( Fintechs ). Whatever the function the data perform, their source, type, breath, and depth differ greatly from country to country. Unlike for the harmonisation of EU rules on credit to consumers for the creation of the internal market, the underlying consumer data infrastructure remains fragmented at national level, failing to achieve univocal, common, or defined policy objectives under a harmonised legal framework. Likewise, the establishment of the Banking Union and the prudential supervision of the Euro-area demand standardisation and convergence of the data used to measure debt levels, arrears, and delinquencies. The many functions and different usages of credit data suggest that the policy goals to be achieved should inform the design and structure of the databases, as well as the role, legal, and institutional framework of the organisations managing the data system (the Data Brokers). This is also because fundamental rights and consumer protection concerns arise from the dissemination and sharing of traditional and non-traditional data, as well as from their expanding uses. This is an area of the EU internal market that demands the attention of the EU legislator without further delays.

The Article analyzes the Internet governance in the Chinese context, with a particular focus on the Xinjiang Uighur Special Administrative Region. China is characterized by a tamed version of the Internet, whose governance is founded on the interaction between a highly sophisticated set of censorship tools and psychological self-censorship. In the Xinjiang Uighur Region, this architecture bonds with the war on Islamic terror. Indeed the censorship grip is stronger in the Islamic region, resulting in frequent cut off from the national Internet and in a slow connection speed. Moreover, the Xinjiang has turned into a laboratory for new censorship tools, which further compress rights and freedoms. Here the infringements affect, besides first generation rights (as in the rest of China), also second generation rights, towards which the government usually shows a great commitment. The result is a censorship that creates two different Internet, thus creating a discrimination between Uighur Chinese and Han Chinese.

Nowadays, Cybercrime is one of the most dangerous and harmful of crimes. States must improve their fighting strategies against this phenomenon in order to protect society and its own integrity. This research, entitled “Law vs Cybercrime” aims to systematize the proceedings for confronting Cybercrime in modern legal systems and to analyze the Cuban legal framework for Cybercrime. This essay analyzes the theoretical and definitional foundations of Cybercrime, the challenges with controlling cybercrime-related acts presents to legal systems, attempts to systematize the proceedings for confronting Cybercrime in modern states legal systems as well as the international legal systems, and finally, analyzes the current Cuban legal regulations against Cybercrime. At the end of the essay can be found the conclusions according to the objectives of this investigation.

International Health Regulations (IHR) of the World Health Organization (WHO) are fundamental to ensure an adequate response of the international community to health emergencies such as the spread of the virus Ebola in 2014. This notwithstanding, WHO's Member States appear reluctant to comply with the IHR and in particular they violate the ban on unnecessary trade and travel restrictions. After having presented the lack of compliance with the IHR, the present article analyses the means at the disposal of the WHO for sanctioning the behaviour of its Member States, both from the perspective of WHO's internal rules and from the perspective of the law of international responsibility, evaluating if countermeasures might represent a viable solution. The conclusions will offer a broad reflection on the codification process of the rules on the responsibility of international organisations concluded by the International Law Commission in 2011.

The revised peace agreement between the Colombian Government and the FARC, officially approved by the Congress on 30 November 2016, covers several crucial issues, including the destiny of the FARC rebels in the aftermath of the world’s longest civil war. The establishment of an effective DDR process is an essential step to ensure that FARC's members will meaningfully transition into civilian life and it represents one of the most controversial aspects amongst those addressed during the four years peace negotiations that led to the signature of the current deal. The present article, after providing an overview of the essential features of DDR programmes and the context-specific factors that can either facilitate or hamper their implementation, will first look at Colombia’s past attempts to reintegrate former FARC combatants and then it will discuss the DDR process outlined in the peace deal under implementation, arguing that, in comparison to the previous efforts and at least on paper, it satisfies many of the key requirements for success, in primis being part of a comprehensive transitional justice process.

In order to be counted as autonomous , a weapons system must perform the critical functions of target selection and engagement without any intervention by human operators. Human rights organizations, as well as a growing number of States, have been arguing for banning weapons systems satisfying this condition – that are usually referred to as autonomous weapons system (AWS) in this account – and for maintaining meaningful human control (MHC) over any weapons systems. This twofold goal has been pursued by leveraging on ethical and legal arguments, which spell out a variety of deontological or consequentialist reasons. Roughly speaking, deontological arguments support the conclusion that by deploying AWS one is likely or even bound to violate moral and legal obligations of special sorts of agents (military commanders and operators) or moral and legal rights of special sorts of patients (AWS potential victims). Consequentialist arguments substantiate the conclusion that prohibiting AWS is expected to protect peace and security, thereby enhancing collective human welfare, more effectively than the incompatible choice of permitting their use. Contrary to a widespread view, this paper argues that deontological and consequentialist reasons can be coherently combined so as to provide mutually reinforcing ethical and legal reasons for banning AWS. To this end, a confluence model is set forth that enables one to solve potential conflicts between these two approaches by prioritizing deontological arguments over consequentialist ones. Finally, it is maintained that the proposed confluence model significantly bears on the issue of what it is to exercise genuine MHC on existing and future AWS. Indeed, full autonomy is allowed by the confluence model in the case of some anti-materiel defensive AWS; it is to be curbed instead in the case of both lethal AWS and future AWS which may seriously jeopardize peace and stability.