This chapter addresses the question of whether and how public interests are optimised by competitive tendering when allocating limited licences. Licence requirements apply inter alia to telecommunication frequencies, slots, concessions for public transport (taxi) or emergency rescue services, gambling or using natural resources, CO2 emission rights, places at universities, trade fairs or markets. The number of available licences is often limited owing to scarcity of natural resources, state-imposed quantitative restrictions or limited demand or supply. Despite the variety of sectors, all allocation regimes are subject to comprehensive principle-based regulation since EU and national constitutional law formulate substantive and procedural standards for allocating scarce licences. Standards and concretisations may also be found in legislation at the national and EU levels. Against this background, the chapter explores the choices which the legislature has made, or not made, in terms of competitive tendering, and of defining its modalities. Which balance of interests do these choices reflect? Have competing interests been optimised? Moreover, which legal and notably constitutional standards determine these choices regarding optimising public interests, notably in view of creating scarcity, inviting applications versus direct awards and defining allocation criteria and procedures?

In 1896 the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) published two volumes, titled On the Muhammadan Architecture in Gujarat, to “present a pretty comprehensive view of the Muslim remains in the British districts of Gujarat.”1 The two volumes, which covered the major Gujarati city of Ahmedabad as well as the coastal ports of Bharuch, Khambhat (Cambay), and several others, were chock full of grainy photographs and detailed architectural illustrations, with translations of various Arabic and Persian plaques.

In the port city of Khambhat, a team of archaeologists, enumerators, sketch artists, and photographers walked through the Jami Masjid, built 500 years earlier, in 1325. The photographs the team produced show snapshots of different architectural elements in the compound, zooming in on the carved pillars of the mosque, the domes, the courtyard, and various graves that dotted the mosque complex.

This chapter provides a case study of how the rule of law was temporarily strengthened in one subbranch of health and medical law. The authors are doctors who ensured wider access to HIV/AIDS services to three key populations by setting up primary healthcare clinics for drug users, men who have sex with men, and sex workers. Providing services is challenging as the latter two groups are engaged in behavior considered criminal, and their very existence is officially denied. Sex between men and adultery can be punishable by death. The doctors’ harm-reduction approach was gradually expanded province- and nation-wide during Khatami’s presidency (1997-2005), allowing even for methadone treatment and needle exchanges. Under President Ahmadinejad, the government returned to the revolutionary “war on drugs” and policing approach, closing the triangular clinics and forcing the authors into exile. The chapter illustrates how legal challenges intertwine with cultural, religious, and political responses to Iran’s HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The fragmentation of the European art market after the First World War resulted not only from the war itself but also from deliberate legislative choices. Post-1918 legislation was enacted in a climate of emergency, influenced by the imperative to generate fiscal revenue and protect art. Paris’s decline as an art hub was exacerbated by well-meaning but ill-conceived export and tax regulations, hindering its ability to regain pre-war prominence. Fears of economic and political seizure influenced Weimar policymakers, worsening German isolation. In contrast, Britain opted for minimal postwar intervention. These legislative approaches reflected different economic trajectories as much as they did postwar mentalities. The state’s attempt to protect art, extract profit from it, and avoid economic and cultural expropriation was a symptom of postwar nationalisation. It dealt the final blow to an already weakened European auction system.