An inquest is an inquisitorial process, and this has an impact on the roles of the advocates and the jury, if there is one. This chapter explains their roles, and also when a professional may require separate legal representation, with some further tips on giving evidence from the perspective of an advocate.

ERISA’s underdeveloped civil enforcement mechanism, section 502(a), has generated extensive litigation. Judicially crafted strictures on the relief available to participants have arisen with respect to standing, scope of judicial review, causes of action, and remedies. While the Supreme Court has held those with a colorable claim to benefits have standing, precisely what that means has proven elusive. Judicial review of denied claims is strictly constrained. Court access requires that participants have exhausted internal review processes, and if the plan grants the administrator discretion to determine eligibility for benefits or construe the plan’s terms (which is virtually always), judicial review is restricted to a cursory scan for abuse of discretion. Deferential review survives even if the administrator is conflicted: lower courts are instructed to consider the conflict merely as one factor in and overall assessment of whether discretion was abused. Finally, the Court has held that ERISA does not permit the full panoply of damages one would expect in the aftermath of contractual or fiduciary breach. Consequential damages are unavailable for denied claims, and equitable relief for fiduciary breach is limited to what was typically available in equity in the days of the divided bench.

This chapter articulates the central argument (why a new legal form for social enterprises in India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore is needed and what it should entail); explains why the four Asian jurisdictions are selected as case studies; and examines the purposes of social enterprises and their two main business models. The chapter then provides an overview of social enterprises in the four Asian jurisdictions including: their operating domains, the drivers of the development of social enterprises, the challenges faced by them, the three main conflicts of interests afflicting them, and the legal forms used by social enterprises. Importantly, the chapter shows that the legal forms available to or used by social enterprises in the four Asian jurisdictions are unable to properly address the conflicts of interests, and thus, a new legal form is required.

We should act for only one client at a time, to avoid a conflict of interest (or a conflict of loyalty). So what happens when your law firm as a whole has two commercial clients trying to negotiate a merger and one lawyer in one team ‒ yourself ‒ suddenly learns something damaging about the other client that could derail the merger? Traditional role morality, virtue ethics and Confucian teaching require us to avoid situations where interests conflict. Loyalty is not contentious for most of us, except when we are setting our fees. However, the professional conduct rules that apply to current (concurrent) client conflicts and current–former (successive) client conflicts are some of the most complex in Greater China. Utilising scenarios around Big Pharma patents’ disputes, competing airlines and competing steelmakers, our diagrams set out the conduct rules of Greater China and suggest solutions according to general morality. Avoid joint representation in commercially competitive areas – regardless of an information barrier – and where a conflict emerges due to a firm merger, cease acting for both parties.

The Australian compulsory superannuation system contains nearly $AUD 3 trillion in funds, which is a substantial share of the personal wealth held by Australians. This means decisions made by superannuation trustees are important for everyone in Australia, both as beneficiaries and as participants in the Australian economy. The regulation of trustee decision-making, like the superannuation system as a whole, is founded on the equitable principles of trust law, but with an extensive overlay of legislative and regulatory intervention. Examining the regulation of decision-making in this context provides important insights into foundational trust law principles as well as a major component of wealth management in Australia.

Since its creation in 1988, the IPCC has taken increasing care to formalise its procedures. IPCC procedures define the creation and role of the IPCC Bureau, Task Forces and Working Groups, as well as the steps that must be taken by experts when preparing reports, and by administrators for overseeing the institution’s funding. Increasingly detailed over time and now running over several dozen pages, the IPCC procedures are not a boring part of IPCC studies. They are key observation points of the main issues that the IPCC has had to address over time. They reflect the compromises it has made in its efforts to give the greatest political efficiency to its reports, while ensuring that their scientific robustness remains irreproachable. The procedures therefore constitute a site from which many of the issues addressed in this book can be read. However, they should not be taken as descriptions of actual practices: their implementation is open to interpretation and thereby to debate. The drafting and amendment of procedures therefore remains an open process.

The inclusion of a chapter on ethical issues in a property law text is hardly conventional. You will struggle to find matters of professional and legal ethics or ethical duties and obligations discussed in either a text or arguably a course on property law. However, we believe a different way of tackling matters of ethics is required. It remains important to acquire a solid grounding in the legal and regulatory framework relevant to legal ethics, including the sorts of ethical and professional dilemmas confronted by both law students and legal practitioners in a rapidly changing profession. It is also important to gain an understanding of how ethical issues and dilemmas arise in property transactions, dealings and practice.

With the integration of technology into property law and the professional work of property lawyers and conveyancers, the role and context of ethical decision-making is relevant for both the student learning property law and the property law practitioner in the modern period.

The chapter analyses how the ECB was granted responsibility over prudential supervision as part of the EU banking union. This changed the EU perspective on financial services from internal market issue to a macroeconomic financial stability issue. The ECB now supervises directly the largest banking groups in the euro area and monitors the supervision of all other banks as well. The ECB’s role in the banking union raises new types of constitutional questions and requires a different analytical framework. A formal legal assessment, particularly on the legal basis for conferring specific tasks on the ECB under Article 127(6) TFEU, is complemented with a broader economic constitutional analysis. Here, the context in which the banking union was initiated is particularly important. The chapter also discusses the merits and caveats of combining banking supervision and monetary policy, where the conflict of interest is the main caveat particularly for an independent institution such as the ECB. It is also concluded that the supervision could return to the internal market setting and again be separated from monetary policy in the future.

In the United States, institutional review boards (IRBs) occupy a crucial independent oversight role and are, therefore, a familiar part of the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research landscape. IRBs serve as gatekeepers, providing ethical and regulatory oversight of research to ensure the adequacy of human subject protections. In this chapter, we provide an overview of IRBs, consider how to manage conflicts of interest, and highlight select ethical issues that arise in AD research.

The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), established in 1996, investigates and seeks to resolve disputes arising in connection with Hong Kong’s anti-discrimination ordinances. Its complaint-handling process involves recourse to conciliation, investigation and litigation. The EOC thus provides a hybrid multi-tier dispute resolution service. If conciliation fails, the EOC may investigate and eventually assist a person to pursue in court a complaint which is thought to merit further action. This chapter asks how the EOC can maintain neutrality and confidentiality when discharging its respective functions of conciliator, investigator and litigator in the same matter, without becoming entangled in actual or potential conflicts of interest. It examins how similar institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere have sought (or not) to resolve the tension in their roles when handling discrimination complaints. It then discusses recommendations and their underlying rationale for reconciling the EOC’s seemingly conflicting roles, in order to effectively resolve discrimination complaints and bridge the long-standing gap in public perception.

The ongoing convergence of the various corporate governance systems in the world is reflected by the increasingly important institute of the independent director. Even legal systems, like Germany, which require a dualistic board structure and thus have no or less need for independent directors have introduced independent directors. The paper examines the approach taken in Delaware and Germany and compares them. The comparison shows that while the concept of the independent director is the same in both jurisdictions, it has been implemented rather differently. The legal comparison may, thus, provide suggestions for improving the determination of independence of directors.

Clinical innovation is ubiquitous in medical practice and is generally viewed as both necessary and desirable. While innovation has been the source of considerable benefit, many clinical innovations have failed to demonstrate evidence of clinical benefit and/or caused harm. Given uncertainly regarding the consequences of innovation, it is broadly accepted that it needs some form of oversight. But there is also pushback against what is perceived to be obstruction of access to innovative interventions. In this chapter, we argue that this pushback is misguided and dangerous – particularly because of the myriad competing and conflicting interests that drive and shape clinical innovation.