Trend Report | Part 1 - HiiL

In civil law systems, the legislators is supposed to have this task. But civil codes seldom give formulas,
schedules or other concrete criteria for calculating remedies. This makes it difficult to learn about
envisaged outcomes for a given issue, beyond the given case with the specific circumstances and facts.
Increasingly, sharing rules are developed. In some countries, child support guidelines are very clear for
determining concretely what the just amounts are. 194 Most countries also have a clear formula for a fair
amount of severance pay (See text box below) and for damages for non-contractual responsiblities. 195
A good criminal justice system nowadays needs sentencing guidelines.
Sharing rules that clearly indicate what people can expect as an outcome (how much compensation they
get, what behaviour they should refrain from in the future, what they can expect the other party to
undertake) are useful in helping to determine what we want to achieve. A first step to explicate our ideas
about fair outcomes can be to make an inventory of the outcomes that are obtained in practice. 196
A Sharing Rule for Severance Pay
Work and Business > Dismissal > Notice & Compensation
Azerbaijan
Sharing Rule
Redundancy indicates the situation in which employees cannot be utilized for work anymore (when
business is going badly, for instance, or the work activities the employee undertook are no longer
part of business activities). In situations like these, the employer notified the labour office and the
employee gets severance pay.
Severance pay is 15 days pay for every year worked plus one month’s wages (because there is no
notice period). All accrued leave payments and benefits are due.
Praxis Associated Lawyer, Azerbaijan
Besides delivering on information needs, sharing rules can also provide benchmarks: they provide yet
another term of reference for evaluating whether outcomes obtained in practice are fair. 197
Such sharing rules drastically reduce outcome variance and, hence, assure people that they get an
outcome that other people get in similar situations, i.e. get an outcome that is normal. 198
Fair and just outcomes cannot be found by soul searching alone. Although people tend to have
reasonable ideas about fairness, they often disagree what is appropriate and they have every reason to
disagree if it is about an extra $1000, or a month in prison that they have put up with.
194 In the USA, easily accessible on-line at http://www.supportguidelines.com/main.html; in Canada, the Federal
Government adopted and disseminated detailed comprehensive guidelines on Child Support in 2011, available at
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/pi/fcy-fea/lib-bib/pub/guide/pdf/guide.pdf
195 For Latin America, see Pagés-Serra C. &. Heckman J.J., "The Cost of Job Security Regulation: Evidence from Latin
American Labor Markets," RES Working Papers 4227, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department
(2000); Holzmann R., Vodopivec M. “Reforming Severance Pay: An International Perspective”, World Bank (2011),
gives an overview.
196 Results of efforts to do such can be found on www.microjusticeworkplace.net and www.echtscheidingswijzer.nl.
197 Yeazell S.C., “Transperency for Civil Settlements: NASDAQ for Lawsuits?”, UCLA School of Law, Law-Econ Research
Paper No. 08-15 (2008)
198 Barendrecht, M., & Verdonschot, J. H. (2008) ‘Objective Criteria: Facilitating Dispute Resolution by Information
about Going Rates of Justice’ Available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1246697
HiiL Trend Report – Part 1: Challenges and Promising Approaches 98