The common law agency test is created in order to define which party (either the employee or the employer) administrates the relationship at the working place. It is known that common law agency test is usually applied in the context of the ERISA and amendments to it in COBRA of 1985, various tax statutes, and the NLRA. Moreover, since recently, this test is also used regarding the Occupational Safety and Health Act, Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and finally, Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Furthermore, the tests can be applied when some issues are considered in different common law causes when it is important to define a status of an employee. (more…)

Now China is speeding up drafting the Foreign Investment Law of the P. R. China, and adjusting some policies relating to the foreign investment. For a long time, the management function of the Ministry of Foreign Economic and Trade of P. R. China (MOFET, now the name of which has been changed to Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation-MOFTEC) mainly depend on the internal documents, and it is not good for foreign investors to know China’s stipulations on the foreign investment. And now, the central government decided that all the internal documents relating to foreign investment as well as its management should be made public according to law making procedure, otherwise it should be annulled. (more…)

Court if Appeals may review orders from certain administrative agencies. The function of this court is to examine the record of a case on appeal and to determine whether the trial court committed prejudicial error. The court can either reverse or modify the judgment. The court may also send it back to the lower court or if there is no prejudicial error, uphold the lower court’s judgment. (more…)

At March 2003 PricewaterhouseCoopers was offering ideas for corporations to consider in complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, far-reaching legislation affecting public companies and significantly changing the composition and responsibilities of their audit committees.
Ellen Masterson, Partner PricewaterhouseCoopers US Assurance Methodology, sad that boards and audit committees must be among the chief architects of reform. They are in a unique position to fulfill a dual role as protector of shareholder interests and trusted adviser to management. (more…)

The major legal aspect related to DC Snipers case is the issue of death penalty. Thus, there was controversy whether John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo who were serial killers involved in the case should receive the death penalty. Even though John Lee Malvo was only 17 he could still get the death penalty in Maryland and Virginia.

Those who support capital punishment have three major arguments. First, capital punishment should be justified because it serves as deterrence of crimes. In other words, fear of death causes people to deter from committing crimes. (more…)

People who think about the problem of false imprisonment often fall into two groups, which might be called Paleyites and Romillists. Paleyites are named after the 18th-century proto-utilitarian the Rev. William Paley. He was convinced that, even though it is wrong to pronounce an innocent person guilty, such convictions are unavoidable in any society. On the other it represents the necessity to create an adequate criminal law, compulsion to provide an appropriate level of security for the public in general. Therefore, a person should not be moved by the opportunity of false imprisonment, to get to actions that would lower the number of such convictions. (more…)

From June 1994 through October 1995, the Simpson story overtook our culture, sweeping away all other news–in fact, virtually all other public discussion–in its path. This was an event, one critic so aptly noted, that had “hijacked” American culture. To not know SimpsonSpeak circa 1994-95 spoke to a person’s cultural illiteracy, as well as to where America regrettably had arrived in the fading moments of the twentieth century.

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The twentieth century appeared to close much as it had opened—with sprees of violence directed against the Other. The murder of Matthew Shepard, the dragging death of James Byrd, the dozens of school shootings, and the murderous rampage of Benjamin Smith all stand as reminders that the bigotry that kills is much more than an unfortunate chapter in United States history. Racial, gender, ethnic, and religious violence persist as mechanisms of oppression. It is a sad commentary on the cultural and social life of the United States that a book such as this remains timely as we enter the twenty-first century. The dramatic cases cited above are but extreme illustrations of widespread, daily acts of aggression directed toward an array of minority communities. I use the term communities purposefully here, since these acts are less about any one victim than about the cultural group they represent. Hate crime is, in fact, an assault against all members of stigmatized and marginalized communities.

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