ERISA’s pension plan content controls constrain the terms of most deferred compensation programs in several broad areas. At the outset, the accumulation of pension savings is influenced by rules governing eligibility for plan participation, the rate at which benefits accrue under defined benefit plans, and when benefits vest (become nonforfeitable). To preserve a system of voluntary plan sponsorship, most matters were left unregulated, including the central design issues of a pension plan, namely, the extent of workforce coverage and the level of benefits. Where it chose to regulate, Congress restricted but did not eliminate freedom of contract. Instead of mandating particular plan features, it set minimum standards for certain key terms, leaving sponsors the flexibility to exceed the baseline. Legislative intervention was not directed to ensuring a particular level of retirement income. Instead, reliability is the principle animating ERISA’s pension content controls. The employer may craft the program to cover as many or as few workers as desired, at any benefit level it chooses, but once a pension promise is made, the statute backs it up by restricting plan terms that would undercut the commitment.

This chapter examines a key aspect of the worldwide sanctions response: sanctioning individuals personally, including wealthy oligarchs holding vast, often-hidden wealth. This chapter explores how and why certain individuals were sanctioned, like Putin’s daughters and prominent Russian government and business figures. Lesser-known sanctioned figures are also discussed. It also discusses the difficulties of linking assets to sanctioned individuals once wealth is laundered and converted into certain types of assets. The chapter discusses measures taken by various jurisdictions to improve the effectiveness of sanctions by promoting financial transparency.

This chapter reviews how the recent sanctions have been enforced, both by domestic authorities and through multilateral cooperation. chapter also examines strategies taken by would-be sanctions evaders to conceal their attempts to circumvent the broad sanctions. Enforcement plays a key role in the ability of the sanctioning jurisdictions to effectively implement their sanctions and incentivize change in the behavior of the target or by parties indirectly affected by the sanctions.

It is often said, invoking the seventeenth-century Chancellor Lord Nottingham, that the Chancery – or modern courts of equitable jurisdiction – ‘mends no man’s bargain’. This chapter suggests that a legal system which holds that opinion is unwise to do so, that modern courts are not constrained to share that opinion, and that Lord Nottingham himself did not hold it. In various cases, Nottingham granted relief which modified a contractual bargain, or showed himself willing to do so. The power of courts to do so continued to be recognised into the nineteenth century, when it came under fire from the dogma that freedom of contract is sacrosanct. However, modern cases show that the legal system must also advance other values. The necessity to avoid unjust windfalls is an example. The courts can do so, and should be willing to modify contracts in limited situations, without necessarily relying on the language of equity.