Professor Dr. Nicolás Etcheverry Estrázulas will discuss following issues: • the search for universal ethics • Do we need universal standards in ethics? • If so, can we find them? Where? • a possible definition of ethics • trying to understand the nature of man • Senses – Reason – Will – Affections. How do they interact? • How do all the above contribute to our freedom? • Can we define truth and righteousness? • the main issues of ethics • Can we teach how to handle freedom? • different ways of approaching and understanding freedom • Finally, what is freedom really? • Looking for role or life models: Do we have them? • What is or should be the...

The US law of international commercial arbitration is for the first time the subject of a "Restatement of the Law" by the American Law Institute -- a project designed, like all US Restatements, to bring coherence and some progressive thinking to a body of American law in great need of that. Portions of the Restatement (notably recognition and enforcement of international awards) have been completed and approved. Others (notably confirmation and annulment of awards) are in draft form. And still others (notably enforcing the arbitration agreement, judicial intervention in arbitral proceedings, and investor/state arbitration) still remain to be launched. Professor George Bermann, of Columbia Law School and Chief Reporter of the Restatement, will present both the general lines of debate...

Against the background of globalization, contemporary international economic law has the features of internationalization of national norms and domestication of transnational provisions. By its side, a case law is emerged which is relied upon by both institutional and ad hoc dispute resolution bodies. As services and investment are inseparable in nature, the dichotomies between the norms governing international trade and those regulating international investment are transcended. At the same time, the number of participants in both trade and investment has greatly increased and will continue to grow. These developments have posed challenges to the current regime. The international community must consider alternatives for improving the system of international economic law and give directions to its future development.

Comparative lawyers have been fascinated by the challenges that are thrown by legal transplants. In mixed jurisdictions where two or more legal traditions have taken root comparative jurists are able to observe how these legal traditions sometimes conflict and sometimes mingle with each other. In the case of Sri Lanka where Colonial masters found fairly well developed indigenous laws the introduction of their laws have had to be done in not a destructive way but in a complimentary manner. The British Colonial administration which is responsible for forming the present state of law and legal system in Sri Lanka respected not only the indigenous laws but also the Roman Dutch law that had been introduced by their predecessors the Dutch....