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“Soft” affirmative action in the National Football League

Current statistics show a startling lack of diversity in corporate boardrooms. In February 2014, Fortune reported that just over 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs were minorities, a classification including African Americans, Asians, and Latin Americans. This is particularly disturbing given that these classifications of minorities comprised 36% of the United States population, and that many top business schools boast that ethnic or racial minorities comprise 25% or more of their student bodies.

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Why we need the European Union

The slogan ‘Take back control’ has played a vivid part in the debate about the UK’s future: it suggests an enfeebled Britain that should break free of ‘Brussels’. It is a pernicious misrepresentation of the role of the EU.

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Banks, politics, and the financial crisis: a demand for culture change (Part 2)

The retail side of banks’ business culture is of particular political significance; public disapproval of wholesale and shadow banking behaviour flow less readily into voter intentions. It is through the prism of experience of retail banking that politicians and the public believe themselves to be afforded insight into banks’ failure in these more remote areas

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What does Brexit have to do with human rights?

The economy and sovereignty are the two main themes dominating the political campaign preceding the EU Referendum that is taking place on 23 June. The sovereignty argument revolves around the notion of “taking back control from Brussels” and human rights are amongst the examples of control lost to the EU cited by leave campaigners.

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Filling the void: the Brexit effect on employment law

Having been cast as unnecessary “red tape”, a burden on business, inflexible, uncompetitive and inefficient, it is widely assumed that a sizeable number of domestic employment laws derived from European Law will be in the firing line in the event of a Brexit.

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Why Congress should pass the Multi-State Worker Tax Fairness Act

On 17th May, a massive fire caused Metro-North Railroad to reduce its commuter train service to and from Grand Central terminal. In light of this service disruption, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates Metro-North, “encouraged” commuters “to consider working from home.”

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Why Sykes-Picot is (still) important

The centenary of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement has been marked by what can only be described as a deluge of writing. Opinions have been numerous, sometimes tiresomely so, and have ranged exceedingly widely.

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Protecting prisoners’ rights: the case of Anders Breivik

In April 2016, Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, successfully challenged the conditions of his confinement on human rights grounds. In 2011 Breivik killed eight people with a car bomb in the centre of Oslo and then shot sixty nine political activists at a summer camp on the island of Utoya. He was sentenced to twenty one years imprisonment.

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The “Silk Road Spirit” in a time of globalization

In September 2013, during a visit to Central and Southeast Asia, Chinese President Xi Jinping first proposed the initiative of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. Consequently, the Collaborative Innovation Centre of Silk Road Economic Belt Studies has been established in Xi’an, China, which was the eastern starting point of the ancient road.

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Backward tracing

Some of the controversies in contemporary Equity are of both theoretical and practical significance. This is particularly true of the controversy concerning so-called “backward tracing”. If a defendant misappropriates trust money in order to buy a car, then the beneficiary can trace the value of his equitable proprietary interest in the money into the car.

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The emergence of lawfare [infographic]

The security of individual nations and the wider world is protected through many means, force or diplomacy, culture or environment. Law is increasingly deployed as an alternative to military force, although its use dates back as far as international law itself. Even private sector and other non-governmental attorneys play a leading role in lawfare.

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Freedom of information lives on

The Freedom of Information Act is here to stay. At any rate for the time being. That is the good news implicit in the statement on 1st March 2016 by Matt Hancock, the Cabinet Office Minister, that “this government is committed to making government more transparent”.

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Sykes-Picot: the treaty that carved up the Middle East

The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement has long been regarded as a watershed – a pivotal episode in the history of the Middle East with far-reaching implications for international law and politics. A product of intense diplomacy between Britain and France at the height of the First World War, this secret agreement was intended to pave the way for the final dissolution of Ottoman power in the region.

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