Revisiting Class Actions Against the Crown: Balancing Public and Private Legal Accountability for Government Action

- After the Popolo della Libertŕ's win at the 13th and 14th of April 2008 elections, most of the Newscasts on both public and private television welcomed the inaugural speeches made by the President of the Senate Schifani, the President of the Chamber Fini and the Prime Minister Berlusconi as the confirmation of the Italian right wing tradition of government. Looking closer, apart from the formal tributes towards President Napolitano, the three inaugural speeches introduce a substantial breach as regards republican democracy, the balance of popular sovereignty, parliamentary representation and government action, the recognition of the plurality of creeds and religious confessions, of cultural and political pluralism, and the synthesis of the rights of freedom and equality resolutely pursued by the Constituent Assembly. The entire system of the equilibrium of powers between the State bodies and a central part of the bill of rights of the republican Constitution is brought into discussion: with the predominance of the principle of freedom over the principle of equality, the democratic game is bereft of the fundamental dialectics between freedom and equality perceived by Norberto Bobbio as the inseparable nucleus of modern constitutionalism. Thus, it has to be the historian's task to try and re-establish a virtuous circle between politics, culture and the ability to intervene in the most delicate topics concerning the quality of Italian democracy today. Key words: Republican Constitution, Freedom/Equality, Renato Schifani, Gianfranco Fini, Silvio Berlusconi, Norberto Bobbio, Gustavo Zagrebelski, Politics/Culture, Italian Democracy.

Download Full-text

Measuring Accounting Fraud and Irregularities Using Public and Private Enforcement

The Accounting Review ◽

10.2308/tar-2018-0592 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Dain C. Donelson ◽

Antonis Kartapanis ◽

John M. McInnis ◽

Christopher G. Yust

Keyword(s):

Future Research ◽

Private Enforcement ◽

Type I ◽

Accounting Fraud ◽

Public Enforcement ◽

Public And Private ◽

Legal Standards ◽

Class Actions ◽

Public And Private Enforcement ◽

Fraud Prediction

Most accounting studies use only public enforcement actions (SEC cases) to measure accounting fraud. However, private cases (securities class actions) also play an important enforcement role. We discuss the legal standards and processes for both public and private enforcement regimes, emphasize the importance of screening cases for credible fraud allegations, and show both yield credible fraud measures. Further, we demonstrate these research design choices affect inferences from prior research and a hypothetical research setting. Finally, we show common measures of accounting irregularities using Audit Analytics to proxy for fraud result in significant false positives and negatives and develop a fraud prediction model for use in future research. We recommend using both public and private enforcement with appropriate screening when examining accounting fraud to reduce Type I and II errors, or reporting the sensitivity of findings across regimes. This is particularly important given the reduction in accounting-related enforcement after 2005.

Download Full-text

The Interaction of Public and Private Enforcement of Competition Law Before and After the EU Directive – a Hungarian Perspective

Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies ◽

10.7172/1689-9024.yars.2016.9.14.2 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 9 (14) ◽

pp. 43-67

Author(s):

Tihamér Tóth

Keyword(s):

Competition Law ◽

Class Action ◽

Private Enforcement ◽

Special Focus ◽

Public And Private ◽

Class Actions ◽

Eu Directive ◽

Before And After ◽

Public And Private Enforcement ◽

The Eu

The paper explores the changes the EU Directive on harmonizing certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions will bring about in Hungary, with a special focus placed on damages liability rules, the interaction of public and private enforcement of these rules, and the importance of class actions. Amendments of the Competition Act introduced in 2005 and 2009 had created new rules to promote the idea of private enforcement even before the Directive was adopted. Some of these rules remain unique even now, notably the legal presumption of a 10% price increase for cartel cases. However, subsequent cases decided by Hungarian courts did not reflect the sophistication of existing substantive and procedural rules. There has only ever been one judgment awarding damages, while most stand-alone cases involved minor competition law issues relating to contractual disputes. The paper looks at the most important substantial rules of tort law (damage, causality, joint and several liability), the co-operation of competition authorities and civil courts, as well as at (the lack of) class action procedures from the perspective of the interaction of public and private enforcement of competition law.

Download Full-text

The Confluence of Public and Private International Law

10.1017/cbo9780511609855 ◽

2009 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Alex Mills

Keyword(s):

International Law ◽

Private International Law ◽

Public And Private

Download Full-text

Public and private sectors under national health insuracne

Archives of Internal Medicine ◽

10.1001/archinte.135.7.910 ◽

1975 ◽

Vol 135 (7) ◽

pp. 910-915

Author(s):

W. J. McNerney

Keyword(s):

National Health ◽

Public And Private

Download Full-text

Doctoral Studies in Psychology in Spain

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027//1016-9040.8.1.28 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 28-33

Author(s):

Yolanda García Rodríguez

Keyword(s):

Doctoral Programs ◽

Legal Reform ◽

The State ◽

Teaching Program ◽

Doctoral Studies ◽

Public And Private ◽

Teaching And Research ◽

Doctoral Thesis ◽

Critical Phase ◽

The Individual

In Spain doctoral studies underwent a major legal reform in 1998. The new legislation has brought together the criteria, norms, rules, and study certificates in universities throughout the country, both public and private. A brief description is presented here of the planning and structuring of doctoral programs, which have two clearly differentiated periods: teaching and research. At the end of the 2-year teaching program, the individual and personal phase of preparing one's doctoral thesis commences. However, despite efforts by the state to regulate these studies and to achieve greater efficiency, critical judgment is in order as to whether the envisioned aims are being achieved, namely, that students successfully complete their doctoral studies. After this analysis, we make proposals for the future aimed mainly at the individual period during which the thesis is written, a critical phase in obtaining the doctor's degree. Not enough attention has been given to this in the existing legislation.

Download Full-text