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The author addresses “the dialogue between the deaf and the dumb” that occurred between the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Italian Constitutional Court (ItCC) regarding the Taricco affair. At the request of the Italian courts, the ECJ has ruled on the interpretation of Article 235 TFEU in the fight against VAT fraud (“Taricco rule”) in two judgments which, despite some shortcomings in their implementation, are innovative, i.e., based on new principles of global law that provide effective judicial protection of economic and social human rights. The author notes the failure of the dialogue between the ItCC (“deaf”)—which has blocked the door to the Taricco rule by virtue of being unable to grasp the novelty of the two judgments—and the ECJ (“dumb”)—incapable of interpreting and disseminating global law. This article identifies the path to a constructive dialogue in what the author calls a “knowledge dialogue,” suitable to create a shared understanding of global principles for a uniform system of protection of fundamental rights.

The expansion of the global constitutional principle of no-impunity and its application to serious violations of social and economic rights are part of the process of constitutionalization of global law and its principles through jurisprudential cross-fertilization. The author identifies in the ECJ’s innovative approach to serious tax frauds in the Taricco judgment an opportunity to develop a judicial dialogue between international and national courts aimed at strengthening the paradigm of the no-impunity-imprescriptibility of the new criminal jurisdiction centered on the International Criminal Court (ICC). As announced in the Policy Paper on Case Selection and Prioritisation (PCSP), the ICC will now expand its focus on prosecuting with national governments such serious crimes as “financial crimes”. The ICC is not formally extending its jurisdiction to these cases, but this process has begun—based on the Rome Statute that recognizes that serious international crimes “threaten the peace, security and well-being of the world”.

This chapter gives an overview of the history of Swiss banking, of how Zurich became a financial center and of how the social role of the Swiss banker emerged over time. It introduces how financial analysts present themselves as a group and how they distinguish themselves from other groups in banking. It shows that, to become influential, analysts depend heavily on the notion that bankers are not a homogeneous group but a conglomerate of various sub-professional groups with diverging self-ascriptions that are in ongoing competition for legitimacy and influence.

The conditions for just taxation as set out by early-sixteenth-century moral theologians were extremely limited. Yet in line with the ever-growing need to expand resources to meet the expenses of warfare and state-building, the conceptual tools were overhauled. In terms of who had the authority to tax, moral theologians increasingly stressed the authority of princes, limiting the necessity of popular consent. Simultaneously, they abandoned the idea of taxation as an exceptional occasion and endorsed its perennial character, assimilating it to a princely salary. In consequence, a certain amount of spending for luxury was no longer associated with vice but regarded as a necessity for the adequate upkeep of royal majesty in the interest of the res publica. Uncertainty increased, however, over the proportionality of taxation and the increasing complexity of state finance. Around 1640, some theologians therefore questioned the theologians’ ability to provide adequate counsel on these matters.

This chapter provides a brief overview of Benford's law. It states Benford's law of digit bias and describes its history. The chapter then discusses the origins of Benford's law and gives numerous examples of data sets that follow this law, as well as some that do not. From these examples this chapter extracts several explanations as to the prevalence of Benford's law. Finally, the chapter closes with a quick summary of many of the diverse situations in which Benford's law holds, and why an observation that began in looking at the wear and tear in tables of logarithms has become a major tool in subjects as diverse as detecting tax fraud and building efficient computers.