Digital Commons Network^™

Privacy And National Politics: Fingerprint And Dna Litigation In Japan And The United States Compared, Dongsheng Zang

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Drawing cases from two related areas of law-fingerprint and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) data-this Article proposes a modified framework, built on the Balkin-Levinson emphasis on national politics: First, national politics understood as partisan rivalry cannot account for what I call doctrinal lock-in in this Article, where I will demonstrate that in different stages of American politics-the Lochner era, the New Deal era, and Civil Rights era-courts across the nation ruled predominantly in favor of public data collectors-state and federal law enforcement in fingerprint cases. From the 1990s, when DNA data became hot targets of law enforcement, the United States Supreme Court …

"Benevolent Paternalism" Revisited, Daniel H. Foote

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Nearly thirty years ago, in an article entitled “The Benevolent Paternalism of Japanese Criminal Justice” (Benevolent Paternalism), I sought to set out a model for the Japanese criminal justice system, the “benevolent paternalism” model. As the label reflects, I viewed the Japanese criminal justice system as consisting of two sides, a “paternalistic” side and a “benevolent” side. This essay begins with a short summary of the model; it then turns to an examination of major developments in the intervening three decades and considers whether the model remains relevant today.

Justice System Reform And Internationalization, Daniel H. Foote

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As discussant. normally my role would be to offer trenchant and perceptive critiques of each of the three main reports. those by Professors Takamizawa. Matsuo. and SuamL Those reports are broad in scope, both geographical and historical; each report is outstanding: and each provides much food for thought. Yet even if time and space permitted, I myself lack sufficient knowledge regarding China. Southeast Asia and Europe to provide a thorough critique. Instead. in this essay I will shift the focus back to Japan and examine various respects in which the justice system reforms have sought to promote internationalization.

Fundamental Rights, Federal States, And Sovereignty: Some Random Remarks, Donald H. Regan

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I am not an EU lawyer. The days are long gone when I could know a substantial fraction of EU law just by knowing about the free movement of goods. I get a fleeting glimpse of where the EU is going every year at the Jean Monnet Seminar in Dubrovnik, but no more than a glimpse. Still, when the editors invited me to write this Editorial Note, I could not refuse. Looking for inspiration, I read or reread all the previous twelve Notes. This was an enjoyable and informative exercise in itself, but only a few of the essays suggested …

Citizen Participation: Appraising The Saiban’In System, Daniel H. Foote

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Of the many reforms affecting the Japanese judiciary that were undertaken in connection with the recommendations of the Justice System Reform Council, one reform above all attracted widespread public attention: the introduction of the so-called saiban'in system. In this system, mixed panels of professional judges and lay jurors judge guilt and assess penalties in serious criminal cases. Following a five-year preparation period, the new system went into effect for the specified categories of crimes for which indictments were issued on or after May 21, 2009, with the first trials under the new system commencing in August 2009. Pursuant to the …

Learning From The Unique And Common Challenges: Clinical Legal Education In Jordan, Nisreen Mahasneh, Kimberly A. Thomas

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Legal education worldwide is undergoing scrutiny for its failure to graduate students who have the problem-solving abilities, skills, and professional values necessary for the legal profession.1 Additionally, law schools at universities in the Middle East have found themselves in an unsettled environment, where greater demands for practical education are exacerbated by several factors such as high levels of youth unemployment. More specifically, in Jordan there is a pressing need for universities to respond to this criticism and to accommodate new or different methods of legal education. Clinical legal education is one such method.3 We use the term "clinical legal education" …

Theater Of International Justice, Jessie Allen

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In this essay I defend international human rights tribunals against the charge that they are not “real” courts (with sovereign force behind them) by considering the proceedings in these courts as a kind of theatrical performance. Looking at human rights courts as theater might at first seem to validate the view that they produce only an illusory “show” of justice. To the contrary, I argue that self-consciously theatrical performances are what give these courts the potential to enact real justice. I do not mean only that human rights tribunals’ dramatic public hearings make injustice visible and bring together a community …

Apologies As Intellectual Property Remedies: Lessons From China, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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It is a frequent refrain that “the world is shrinking.” In this same vein, the global influence of China is clearly rising. Chinese businesses are becoming more prominent in the global market, and as such, the influence and effect of Chinese law is likewise gaining in import. Chinese intellectual property law is no different.

One notable aspect of Chinese intellectual property law is the availability of apology as a remedy. Despite a culture that places a high value on apology, and considerable legal scholarship and precedent regarding apology as remedy, many in the United States scoff at the notion of …

Criminalizing Corporate Killing: The Irish Approach, Bruce Carolan

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The debate on criminal corporate liability in the United States might benefit from a comparative perspective: How have other countries treated the criminal liability of corporate entities? This benefit might be enhanced by focusing on a country with a similar legal heritage to the United States—a country with a common law legal system inherited from the British. And, it would help if that country were concurrently examining the issue of criminal corporate liability. Interesting questions might include: What issues dominate the debate? How are issues of punishment, reparations, and rehabilitation handled? Is a legislative approach contemplated? The purpose of this …

Student-Edited Law Reviews And Their Role In U.S. Legal Education, Daniel H. Foote

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>p>For well over a centur y student-edited law reviews have been a major vehicle for publication of scholarship on law in the United States. At those law reviews, students bear responsibility for nearly all aspects of the publication process, including the vitally important task of selecting what works will be published. Criticisms have been raised over various aspects of this system, but they have not stemmed the rise of student-edited law reviews. Today, such law reviews are firmly entrenched as a central feature of the U.S. legal system; and, facilitat­ ed by advances in technology, the number of student-edited …

Legal Education For The Future: Global Perspectives, Daniel H. Foote

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This is a report on "FutureEd 2: Making Global Lawyers for the 21st Century," a conference on legal education held at Harvard Law School (HLS) on October 15-16, 2010, In which this author had the opportunity to participate. The conference was the second In a series of three conferences jointly organized by HLS and New York Law School (NYLS). The first conference was held at NYLS in April 2010; the third and final conference was held at NYLS, in April 2011．The goals of the conferences were to stimulate thinking and research about the future of legal education; to promote concrete …

Procedural Protection Of Constitutional Rights In Brazil, Keith S. Rosenn

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Brazil has developed one of the most complex systems of judicial review in the world. In addition, it has developed a wide variety of constitutional actions for the purpose of protecting the huge number of constitutional rights conferred by its lengthy Constitution. In theory, constitutional rights can be protected in ordinary actions. Because ordinary actions typically take a great many years to resolve in Brazil, the framers of the 1988 Constitution, building on Brazil's prior constitutions and foreign models, constitutionalized a wide array of procedural devices to try to assure that the huge number of individual, social and economic rights …

Policymaking By The Japanese Judiciary In The Criminal Justice Field, Daniel H. Foote

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When one speaks of policymaking by the judiciary, the image that often comes to tnind is the U.S. judiciary, especially the Supreme Court of the United States. That reaction is understandable. Examples abound of policymaking by courts in the United States; and a seemingly never-ending stream of books and articles discuss, analyze, and, depending on the authors'point of view, praise or decry "policymaking" or "judicial activism" by U.S. courts. The field of criminal justice frequently is offered as a prominent example of judicial policymaking in the United States. Expansion in due process protections and other rights for criminal suspects and …

The Muezzin's Call And The Dow Jones Bell: On The Necessity Of Realism In The Study Of Islamic Law, Haider Ala Hamoudi

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The central flaw in the current approach to shari'a in the American legal academy is the reliance on the false assumption that contemporary Islamic rules are derived from classical doctrine. This has led both admirers and detractors of the manner in which shari'a is studied to focus their energies on obsolete medieval rules that bear no relationship to the manner in which modern Muslims approach shari'a. The reality is that given the structural pluralism of the rules of the classical era, there is no sensible way that modern rules could be derived from classical doctrine, either in letter or in …

Judicial Review And United States Supreme Court Citations To Foreign And International Law, Ronald A. Brand

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Recent decisions by the United States Supreme Court and extracurricular discussions between some of the Justices have fueled a debate regarding whether and when it is appropriate for the Court to make reference to foreign law in cases involving the interpretation and application of the United States Constitution. This debate has, to some extent, paralleled the argument over whether the Constitution is best interpreted by looking at the intent of the original drafters - an originalist approach - or by considering it to be a "living" document that must be interpreted to take account of contemporary realities. This article considers …

Jurisprudential Schizophrenia: On Form And Function In Islamic Finance, Haider Ala Hamoudi

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Despite its explosive growth over the past several decades, Islamic finance continues to have trouble attracting large numbers of otherwise pious Muslims as potential investors. The underlying reason for this is that the means that the practice employs to circumvent some of the central Muslim bans relating to finance (most notably, the ban on interest) are entirely formal in their structure and are equivalent to conventional structures both legally and economically. However, the practice purports to serve functional ends; namely, through offering Muslims alternative means of finance that are intended to further Islamic ideals of fairness and social justice. This …

Getting Away With Murder: Guatemala's Failure To Protect Women And Rodi Alvarado's Quest For Safety, Angélica Cházaro

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This report examines the underlying conditions that cause women like Rodi to flee their home countries and seek protection elsewhere. The report starts with a description of the circumstances that led Rodi to leave Guatemala. It then analyzes the widespread violence against and murders of women in Guatemala, specifically focusing on the number of murders, the victims, the brutality of the crimes, the context in which they occur, and the theories behind the murders. It next looks to the aspects of the Guatemalan legal and judicial systems that render women vulnerable to violence and then fail to protect them. It …

Courts As Forums For Protest, Jules Lobel

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For almost half a century, scholars, judges and politicians have debated two competing models of the judiciary's role in a democratic society. The mainstream model views courts as arbiters of disputes between private individuals asserting particular rights. The reform upsurge of the 1960s and 1970s led many to argue that courts are not merely forums to settle private disputes, but can also be used as instruments of societal change. Academics termed the emerging model the hein"public law" or "institutional reform" model.

The ongoing debate between these two views of the judicial role has obscured a third model of the role …

Citizen Participation In Judicial Decision Making: Juries, Lay Judges And Japan, Richard O. Lempert

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In the late 1920s and 1930s Japan had a jury system. It was suspended in 1943 as a wartime measure, but it had fallen into desuetude long before that. Arguably it was like the Spanish jury, which has several times risen during periods of relative political liberalism or populism and been suppressed during periods of militarism and autocracy. That is, it may be more than a coincidence that use of the Japanese jury fell precipitously during the 1930s as militarism took hold of the Japanese nation. Now the reinstatement of the Japanese jury is again being seriously considered. Similarly it …

Living With The Death Penalty, Samuel R. Gross

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The debate over the death penalty in the United States - such as it is - is framed in terms of criminal justice policy. The issues are the same ones we consider when the question is the length of prison sentence for a drug crime: Does the defendant deserve the penalty? Is it cost effective by comparison to other available sanctions? Will it deter others from committing the crimes for which he was convicted? Can we impose this punishment fairly? Can we make sure that innocent people are not condemned?

Thoughts From Across The Water On Hearsay And Confrontation, Richard D. Friedman

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This article draws on the history of the hearsay rule, and on recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, to argue that the right to confrontation should be recognised as a basic principle of the law of evidence, and that aspects of the Law Commission's proposals for reform of the hearsay rule, and of the Home Office's proposals for restrictions on the right of cross-examination, are therefore unsatisfactory.

Strong Criticism Of The American System Of Trial By Jury, Yale Kamisar

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I grieve for my country to say that the administration of the criminal law in all the states in the Union (there may be one or two exceptions) is a disgrace to our civilization.

"The Door That Never Opens"?: Capital Punishment And Post-Conviction Review Of Death Sentences In The United States And Japan, Daniel H. Foote

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The capital punishment system and current standards for collateral review of capital sentences appear quite similar in the United States and Japan. On a deeper level, though, the systems are moving in very different directions. Given. the extensive literature on capital punishment and capital habeas in the United States, this article focuses chiefly on Japan, examining the process by which the standards governing postconviction review have been relaxed and the impact of that change. Japan's Supreme Court bears the image of being a highly conservative, passive institution resistant to dramatic .change of any sort. Yet this examination reveals that, in …

The Benevolent Paternalism Of Japanese Criminal Justice, Daniel H. Foote

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Models for a criminal-justice system based on an ethos of rehabilitation and reintegration-such as Llewellyn's "parental" and Griffiths' "family" models-have been regarded as idealistic but unworkable in the real world, except perhaps in totalitarian or primitive societies. Professor Foote, however, has found in Japan just such a model, which he labels "benevolent paternalism." The Japanese criminal-justice system is benevolent in that its goal is to achieve reformation and reintegration into society through lenient sanctions tailored to the offender's particular circumstances. The system is paternalism in that it allows substantial discretion to the state in both gathering and using information about …

Child Protection Legal Process: Comparing The United States And Great Britain, Donald N. Duquette

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The legal response to child maltreatment-or the risk of child maltreatment-varies greatly from society to society and has been little studied, in part because of the idiosyncrasies of community values, social organization, history and legal traditions.2 Cross-country comparison of child abuse and neglect is especially difficult because the ambiguity of social standards and the imprecision of terms used makes it difficult to define the specific behavior one is studying. Even though child maltreatment is widely prohibited, the definition of what actually constitutes child abuse and neglect is not clear within a particular country, much less uniform from one society to …

Confessions And The Right To Silence In Japan, Daniel H. Foote

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In several highly-publicized recent cases in Japan, individuals convicted of murder and sentenced to death were acquitted in retrials obtained after decades on death row. These so-called "death penalty retrial cases'" generated great controversy and considerable reflection about the criminal justice system in Japan. A central, substantive issue presented by these cases relates to the procurement and use of confessions; each of these cases-and several other major recent Japanese cases in which defendants have been acquitted following bitterly contested trials-turned on the validity of repudiated confessions.

Consequently, much recent commentary has focussed on conf essions and related issues. Not surprisingly, …

Diagnosis Of The Current Code Of Criminal Procedure, Daniel H. Foote

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Approximately 35 years have passed since the current Code of Criminal Procedure went into effect, and today the manner in which that Code is interpreted and applied appears nearly stable. In truth, for most of the provisions and systems under the current Code about which there had been many questions of interpretation and application (e.g., interpretation of the provisions concerning hearsay evidence, discovery, exclusion of illegally-obtained evidence, and abuse of the authority to prosecute), some sort of conclusion (ichid no ketsuron) has been reached. In that sense, matters have "stabilized." However, in my view much more deep-seated problems remain unresolved. …

Summary Of Tokugawa Criminal Justice, Daniel H. Foote

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The summary set forth below is derived principally from the late Professor Yoshiro Hiramatsu's-comprehensive study of Tokugawa criminal justice. Hiramatsu's work focusses on the period from the promulgation of the Osadamegaki by the Shogun Yoshimune in 1742 through the end of the Tokugawa era in 1867. (As described by Professor Dan F. Henderson, Conciliation and Japanese Law, Tokugawa and Modern (1965), Vol. 1, at 7, fn. 26, the Osadamegaki, which consisted of two books, constituted "a compilation and rough codification of prior decrees and precedents", and "was the only such official attempt to systematize the law in the Tokugawa period." …

Prosecutorial Discretion In Japan: A Response, Daniel H. Foote

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Marsha Goodman's Prosecutorial Discretion in Japan, with its thoroughly researched description of the manner in which that discretion is exercised-including several new case studies-is an important addition to English-language literature on the Japanese legal system and raises numerous interesting issues regarding the Japanese criminal justice system.

Goodman focuses much of her attention on the lengthy battle over the abuse of prosecutorial discretion doctrine in Japan. This discussion provides a fine example of a classic pattern of legal debate in Japan. As in this case, defense counsel familiar with an issue frequently initiate movements for change in criminal procedure standards …

Some Non-Religious Views Against Proposed 'Mercy-Killing' Legislation Part I, Yale Kamisar

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In essence, Williams' specific proposal is that death be authorized for a person in the above situation "by giving the medical practitioner a wide discretion and trusting to his good sense." This, I submit, raises too great a risk of abuse and mistake to warrant a change in the existing law. That a proposal entails risk of mistake is hardly a conclusive reason against it. But neither is it irrelevant. Under any euthanasia program the consequences of mistake, of course, are always fatal. As I shall endeavor to show, the incidence of mistake of one kind or another is likely …