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The evolution is charted, through adjudication, of the rules governing sex equality in European Community (EC) law. The first section, ‘The Normative Structure’, provides an overview of the Treaty of Rome rules and secondary legislation that constitute the domain of sex equality, while the second examines how Art. 141 (which provides that male and female workers shall receive equal pay for equal work) evolved once it had been constitutionalized by the European Court of Justice. Section III, ‘Judicialization: The Court and the Legislator’, focuses on the relationship between the Court, its case law on sex equality, and the production of directives by the EC legislator; the impact is also briefly discussed of the Court's rulemaking on national judicial and legislative processes; topics included are indirect discrimination, occupational pensions, pregnancy and maternity rights. In the fourth section, ‘Adjudicating Sex Equality Law’, an analysis is made of the aggregate data on litigation and adjudication in the field, focusing on how precedent‐based lawmaking has organized the development of this area. The conclusion addresses a range of theoretical issues.

In recent years, legal options have gained acceptance in the European Union. Legal options refer to the ex ante and ex post choices that are created by law. Not surprisingly, legislators have tended to introduce choice for Member States or private parties when they have found it difficult to make headway with resolving a conflict. This chapter contends that allowing firms the choice of different legal rules would be beneficial and would respond to industry demands for low-cost regulatory choices. It shows that bringing options to the forefront of company law reform can reduce costs for small and medium-sized firms, and provide clear benefits to companies that differ in their ownership and control structure from most large public corporations. Switching to a company law regime with different sorts of options can have a good effect on stakeholders as well. As a regulatory strategy, it advocates a step-by-step change, beginning with the adoption of a limited number of opt-in provisions.

This chapter explains why international agreements have increasingly been used to address international cooperation problems. It outlines the process of treaty making, and explains how process can shape outcomes. It then details the key features of treaties, such as the minimum participation level, basic obligations, withdrawal, and the use of trade restrictions. The appendix provides a comprehensive listing of multilateral environmental treaties currently in force, with information on date of adoption and entry into force, membership, and provisions for trade restrictions and administration.

The exploration of the development of the gender mainstreaming strategy and its effect on, European legislation concerning gender equality, from its beginnings to today is the aim of this chapter.The focus is on the role of the European Union in promoting substantive equality for men and women improving legislation in the European Union context and favouring a cultural change in the gender equality perspective. Gender mainstreaming is analysed as the main legislative and cultural shift done for promoting gender equality in all European policies. Gender mainstreaming legislation requires the adoption of a gender perspective by all the central actors in the policy process and, even considering its limits and blunders, and is still the most crucial transnational strategy currently in existence that promotes gender equality in all domains of social life. The legislation enquiries raised at the beginning of the gender mainstreaming implementation process in the EU around 1996 focused on the potential role of the EU in bridging the gap between formal and substantive equality, until nowadays and most recent guidelines, are the issues of the discussion in the chapter.

While U.S. federal chemical policy development largely ceased after 1980, major developments occurred in other countries and internationally. In 2006 the European Union significantly overhauled the chemical policies of its twenty-six member counties. This new regulation required registration and full chemical information dossiers on all 143,000 chemicals manufactured and used in Europe and government authorization of those chemicals of very high concern. Since then, several Asian countries have passed new laws to harmonize with the new European standards. Meanwhile, several new treaties have been negotiated by the United Nations to manage chemicals in global chemical markets.

This chapter defends a sceptical perspective on “racial privacy,’ and explores the grounds policymakers can and should rely on for declining to coerce a form of arguably sensitive data. Informational privacy receives protection in contemporary US law through a large volume of constitutional, statutory and common law rules. However "racial" information received little legal protection. This has always been true in the US. Far from banning racial identification and data collection out of regard for privacy, US legislation requires classification by race. It is required through the decennial census; and it is required by federal labour and employment regulations. A California referendum to ban racial data collection failed. Too many Californians were convinced that the capacity to collect information about race was essential to protect civil rights and health. Race is well recognized in the European Union as a category of "sensitive" information. The same is not true in the US although race can be a socially sensitive subject matter, and the concept of racial privacy does make rare appearances in US case law. But racial privacy requirements remain absent from the massive, main body of information privacy law. The treatment of race as a private matter is impractical given the ease with which what Americans think of as a person's "race" can be discerned from their physical appearance. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the group association rights. In NAACP v. Alabama, the Supreme Court held that the membership list of a civil rights group need not be released to state government. While the creation of a racial privacy right in the United States makes little sense, the continued recognition of the right of persons of all races to privately associate contributes to racial justice.

This chapter describes changes aimed at improving the working lives of doctors. The British Medical Association (BMA) negotiated a ‘New Deal’, which established a contractual limit for doctors-in-training of fifty-six hours worked per week from August 2003. The European Working Time Directive (EWTD) was created by the Council of the European Union in 1993, which defines minimum requirements in relation to working hours, rest periods, annual leave, and working arrangements for night workers. Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) was a major reform of postgraduate medical training, devised to improve the quality of patient care through better education and training for doctors.

This chapter will examine the regulation of the Big Five investment banks in the context of the changes which took place in the structure of banking after the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the introduction of the European Union’s Consolidated Supervision Directive in 2004.

This chapter focuses on the Scottish Mediation Network (SMN) and the Scottish Mediation Register (SMR). It begins with a historical background on the SMN before discussing how the SMR works. The objectives of the SMN are: to promote mediation and other related forms of conflict management for the benefit of the public, individuals and society in Scotland and elsewhere; to encourage awareness, understanding and appropriate use of mediation; to support and promote education, training and research in skills and best practice in the use of mediation; to create and encourage links among the various fields of mediation; and to promote and organise standards of professional conduct and training. The chapter also considers the impact of the European Union Mediation Directive on mediation in Scotland and concludes by discussing the collaboration among mediators in the country.

The buildings sector accounts for 40% of European energy requirements. Two thirds of the energy used in European buildings is consumed by private households, and their consumption is growing every year as rising living standards lead to an increased use of air conditioning and heating systems. Research shows that more than one-fifth of the present energy consumption and up to 30–45 million tonnes of CO2 per year could be saved by 2010 by applying more ambitious standards both to new and refurbished buildings–these savings would represent a considerable contribution to meeting the European Kyoto targets (European Council, 2002). Without comprehensive measures, energy consumption and CO2 emissions from the building sector will continue to grow. Sustainable energy strategies for buildings will therefore increase in importance. Even today, so-called ‘zero emission buildings’ can be realized with existing planning approaches and technologies. Such buildings do not need an external energy input (for example from oil, gas or supplied electricity) other than solar energy. This is achieved by a combination of a high-level of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. This chapter focuses on buildings in the housing and service sectors, presents new building design strategies, technologies, and building components as well as the new legal framework set by the European Buildings Directive. It also discusses the question of raising awareness, and presents some thoughts on how changing life patterns may impact the buildings of the future. Residential buildings mainly need energy for space heating; with present building standards, space heating represents about 70% of the overall energy demand of existing buildings. In many European countries there are substantial efforts to increase energy efficiency—nevertheless, not all the potential for energy savings has been realized by far, and oil is still a major energy source for heating. In recent years, heat demand for new buildings was reduced significantly by technical measures. However, the number of low energy or passive buildings in Europe is still very limited, despite the fact that they can be constructed at acceptable costs.

This chapter examines reverse engineering and the decompilation of computer programs, both of which are highly regulated under the current copyright regime. It begins with a practical overview of reverse engineering and decompilation of software, focusing on types of reverse engineering prevalent in the software industry, the various stages of reverse engineering, and the motivation and methods for reverse engineering. It then looks at the reasons for and benefits of decompilation, which is a category of reverse engineering, and examines software interoperability. At this stage the chapter considers what EU and US copyright laws say about decompilation, with particular emphasis on the role that the idea-expression dichotomy plays in decompilation scenarios. It also discusses the problem of entitlement with respect to intellectual property rules, and more specifically in the case of decompilation of computer programs. It provides a critical evaluation of Article 6 of the Software Directive in enabling decompilation in order to achieve interoperability. The chapter concludes with a commentary on reverse engineering in the cloud environment under copyright law.

Integration of environmental flows into land, water, and energy management requires legislation, policies, and regulations. This chapter offers an overview of instruments available at local, regional, and national scales, and across political boundaries. Legislation and policies that explicitly regulate environmental flow provisions vary from country to country (e.g., the South African National Water Act, the Australian National Water Initiative). Rivers that cross international borders have received special attention in conventions and agreements (e.g., the Mekong River Agreement). The European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) integrates water management and ecosystem conservation. International constitutions and treaties on natural resource management and ecosystem protection (e.g., the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands) offer support for the concept of environmental flows.