Regardless of the intellectual coherence of hierocratic theory and the pope’s formal status as head of the universal Catholic Church and lynchpin of its central administration, the practical reality of papal monarchy had to reconcile that curial centralism with the logistical impossibility of exercising and enforcing direct control over all of Catholic Europe. Configured by local variables and interests, the integration of regional churches and polities within the papal network rested insecurely on a delicate balance combining delegation of authority, administrative decentralization, and local acquiescence. Incomplete subjection left space for local agency to exploit the perceived benefits of papal authority and obstruct its unwelcome intrusions. Using England as a case study, this chapter considers various manifestation of those complex ties (the activities of papal emissaries, and responses to and exploitation of the legal, fiscal, and dispensatory claims and structures), emphasizing the bottom-up perspective on medieval papal monarchy.

This case study provides a comprehensive analysis of the intricate political risks faced by TikTok, the Chinese social media giant, within the complex US political landscape. Beginning with an exploration of the security concerns articulated by the US government, the discussion centers on TikTok’s data collection practices and their perceived impact on US national security. The narrative unfolds by elucidating the multifaceted strategies employed by TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, to address these challenges, including litigation, endeavors toward Americanization, and technological adaptations. It also examines the evolution in the US government’s stance as well as TikTok’s adaptive strategies aimed at sustaining and expanding its presence in the US market. The study depicts the responses of the Chinese government to US policies, unraveling the broader implications of these developments on the global political-economic landscape, exploring the dynamics involved in US-China relations, and providing a deeper understanding of the complexities inherent in such interactions. Finally, this case study invites readers to engage in contemplation on the broader themes of political risks faced by multinational corporations, the challenges inherent in navigating global legal frontiers, and the intricate nature of US-China relations.

This chapter focuses on the litigation that followed the tsunami, which hit the Okawa Elementary School. The tsunami resulted in the death of the children visiting the school. The following litigation concerned the question of whether appropriate safety measures had been put in place at the school before the tsunami occurred. The two lawyers leading the litigation for the parents of the children report on how they used innovative approaches in the litigation proceedings. The legal innovation employed concerns the composition of the litigation team, the involvement of the children’s parents, the creation of witness statements addressing the emotional aspects of the disaster, the identification of the entity that should be liable, the doctrine determining liability, digitalisation of litigation and the distribution of risk in modern societies.

While national rules regarding the scope, availability and issuance of utility models vary from country to country, most utility model regimes offer protection for tangible products, with many, but not all, jurisdictions excluding processes, biological materials and computer software from the scope of protection. The duration of utility model protection ranges from five to fifteen years, with most countries offering ten years of protection. In most countries, utility model applications are not formally examined and must simply disclose the product in question. Given the lack of examination, obtaining utility models is generally viewed as faster and cheaper than obtaining patents. This combination of speed and cost, in theory, makes utility models potentially attractive to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that cannot afford to obtain full patent protection. Similar considerations have also been raised as advantageous to innovators in low-income countries.

The global landscape for existing utility model rights is a helpful starting point to the discussion on utility model innovation policy at the country-level as well as firm strategy. WIPO data indicates that approximately 3.0 million utility model applications were filed globally in 2022, a growth rate of 2.9% from the previous year and close to the global total of 3.5 million applications for standard patents. Only about one-half of the world’s countries provide for utility model systems, yet companies from around the world acquire these rights. Utility models are important players in the IP environment, and the unique qualities of the system and differential representation require specific analysis. In this chapter, we review existing empirical data and present additional data regarding UM filings and litigation worldwide. Our purpose is to provide background and context for the more detailed discussion in the remaining chapters in this book.

This chapter delves into the question of the impact of extraterritorial and secondary sanctions on private contractual relations. It opens with a discussion of the characterisation of extraterritorial and secondary sanctions as potential legal or factual impediments to the performance of contractual obligations. A detailed analysis of the case law follows, bringing to the fore some degree of reluctance on the part of judicial authorities to allow operators to suspend the performance of their contractual obligations or to terminate contractual relations on account of their exposure to extraterritorial or secondary sanctions, at least in the absence of sanctions or force majeure contractual clauses. The chapter also explores the potential tension between such sanctions, on the one hand, and measures – commonly referred to as blocking statutes – enacted by states or by the EU to thwart their effects, on the other hand. A discussion, in this respect, of the relevant case law reveals a quest for a balance between policy objectives and economic soundness and shows the existence of incongruent views on the compatibility of sanctions clauses with blocking statutes.

National courts are central actors in the EU legal system. In a system of remedies against EU acts, they take on a filtering function. Comparatively few civil society actors – individuals, groups, or companies – have direct access to the EU courts. This chapter focuses on the autonomous role that national courts can and do take on in addressing alleged rights violations by the EU. The chapter explores how enterprising civil society actors seize on the ambiguities inherent in a multi-level jurisdiction with contested hierarchies. In focusing on such efforts, this chapter is less interested in doctrinal questions of how to resolve conflicts inherent in a pluralist legal order. Rather, it looks at the circumstances under which civil society litigants – individuals, groups, and companies – address a claim to a national court and where national courts have historically been open to such claims.

Chapter 10 provides an overview of the role and functions of private enforcement within regulatory regimes and the availability of redress. It draws attention to different ‘models of legal responsibility’ upon which regulatory regimes rely in allocating and distributing legal rights and duties between those who are subject to regulation and those whom regulation is intended to protect (‘regulatory beneficiaries’). This chapter is the most legally focused chapter in the volume, selectively highlighting several features of the institutional and enforcement context in which regulation occurs. Examples are private litigation, collective redress mechanisms, the role of courts as authoritative and final interpreters of the law and ‘alternative’ avenues for redress.

Chapter 2 examines the local context of the pueblo of El Cobre and its members’ response to the privatization of the mining estate and their ensuing enslavement. It probes the unorthodox character of this community and the villagers’ vernacular collective self-identification as “cobreros,” or natives of El Cobre, an identification that they pressed on the court to counter their captivity and make other claims. The bonds of pueblo towered over and above possible internal cleavages along formal free or slave status, class, race, and gender. The cobreros’ collective action was possible precisely because of their social bonds and (informal) organization as a pueblo. The community empowered Gregorio Cosme Osorio, one of their own, to be their apoderado or legal representative in the royal court in Madrid, a rare liaison position for a colonial racialized man and another extraordinary aspect of the case. The chapter then turns trans-local as it traces Cosme’s journey and the networks he created from El Cobre to Madrid to litigate collective freedom. The chapter also examines the financial, administrative, political, and social challenges that these colonial litigants faced in accessing the judicial arena, particularly at the imperial level.

This introduction to Section 4 of the volume on court judgements and related works discusses the nature of recent research on the subject and comments on the increased availability of primary sources (in the form of sijillāt) from the Ottoman period onwards, including a representative bibliography of recent scholarship on the subject.

Litigation is a complex matter, calling for more sophisticated inquiries than what can be measured by a binary variable, namely, whether or not a Chinese company had experienced US lawsuits. This dichotomy glosses over crucial aspects of Chinese companies’ interactions with the US adjudicatory system. For instance, while prominent Chinese companies such as Huawei have litigated hundreds of lawsuits in the United States, most others were involved in no more than a few cases. However, the coding in Chapter 4 grouped them together in terms of US litigation experience. In fact, those that litigate infrequently may have more in common with Chinese companies that have managed to avoid US lawsuits altogether than prominent repeat players. To unveil important information lost from collecting and coding the data as a binary variable and to ameliorate possible biases in survey data concerning sensitive topics, this chapter explores a hand-collected objective dataset: federal lawsuits involving Chinese companies. It also presents three detailed case studies to demonstrate how Chinese companies with direct investments in the United States navigate the complex host-state legal system. These case studies (i.e., Lenovo, Huawei, and Fuyao Glass) will revisit the hypotheses and findings of prior chapters.