Civic Engagement
The Shaky Foundation of the English Doctrine of Frustration: Efficiency or Justice?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Guanghua Yu
No doctrine of English contract law is as controversial as the doctrine of frustration. Scholars have endeavored to explain or rationalize the doctrine either from the efficiency perspective or from the justice perspective. Neither approach is, however, promising for explaining the current status of the law or guiding meaningful law reforms. The efficiency approach would compel judges to move beyond their familiar chartered water of contract liability rules or may require information judges do not have during their adjudication. The justice perspective is equally problematic if not more difficult. While the key idea behind private law is corrective justice, the very decision judges have to make on whether a contract has been frustrated is based on distributive justice. When distributive justice is forced into the private law of contracts, the coherence or rationale of private contract law is eroded. This paper explains the shaky foundation of the English doctrine of frustration. It also considers ways of improving the theoretical foundation of the doctrine.
Stochastic Democracy: Corruption-resistant Governance for All
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Peter Schubert
The case is made for a new form of democratic governance based upon stochastic selection from pre-screened volunteers. Districts are selected using statistical methods based on demographics and census. Hierarchy is determined by algorithmic selection, with stochastic repopulation from a selection of existing members at all levels, those from the volunteer pool. A means of regulating the government is presented we're in the entirety of a stochastic democracy is designed to be fair and equitable to all citizens with representation as nearly equal as possible. Theoretical Studies have shown stochastic democracy to scale well, to respond well to increases or decreases in population, and for rapid startup within a single day. In this work the case for initiating stochastic democracy after a failed State event is made for consideration by those responsible for forming a new government. Essential prerequisites are identified, procedures for transparent and verifiable procedures are outlined, and a checklist for successful verification and validation is presented. The result is and inclusive means by which a region or country can initiate a corruption resistant form of governance for the betterment of it's citizens.
