Law Commons^™

Decolonizing Legal Influence: China's Role In The Changing Landscape Of The Ethiopian Legal Profession, 2000-2018, Mekkonen Firew Ayano

Journal Articles

Over the last two decades, the legal profession in Ethiopia has changed fundamentally. The government has increased the number of law schools from one in 1993 to more than three dozen by 2021. It has introduced strict licensure rules to formalize and regulate legal services and, more recently, in 2022, it has proclaimed the creation of law firms and an independent bar association. The market for legal services has expanded, allowing lawyers to reach out to clients in the country’s peripheries and move onward to attract global clients. These changes are inextricably tied to global currents that have diffused Anglo-American …

Our Imperial Federal Courts, Matthew J. Steilen

Journal Articles

This essay is a response to Christian R. Burset, Advisory Opinions and the Problem of Legal Authority, 74VAND.L.REV.621(2021).

“The article is significant for the archival work alone. It is useful, as well, for the impressive synthesis of the existing secondary literature, collected in the footnotes, which makes a convenient reading list for us mere mortals. The argument of the article is ambitious. As the Table of Contents suggests, its structure is complex: the author asks us to visit three different jurisdictions (two British and one American, each thousands of miles apart), in three different decades, in three different political and …

Misappropriation Theory: How The World’S Two Largest Economies Regulate Insider Trading, Thomas Hare

Journal Articles

Prior to the government adopting policies of economic reform in the late 1970s, the People’s Republic of China (“the PRC” or “China”) did not have a formal securities market or an accompanying regulatory scheme. For the most part, it was not operationally feasible for a market to develop and flourish in China because the PRC had a centrally planned economy with state-owned enterprises as the primary form of business ownership. However, economic reform brokered conditions where stock trades casually began in markets located in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu and several other cities in the early 1980s. This informal trading persisted until …

Porous Bureaucracy: Legitimating The Administrative State In Taiwan, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

Scholars and politicians have sometimes presented bureaucracy as inherently conflicting with democracy. Notably, bureaucrats themselves are rarely consulted about that relationship. In contrast, I draw on interviews and participant observation to illuminate how government administrators understand their own place in democratic government in Taiwan, one of the few successful third-wave democracies. The administrators I work with root their own legitimacy not in separated powers or autonomous expertise, but in their ongoing collaboration with legislators and publics. They define their own accountability not just as executive legislative mandates but as producing them in the first place, and figure bureaucracy as a …

Reconceptualizing Entrenched Notions Of Common Law Property Regimes: Maori Self-Determination And Environmental Protection Through Legal Personality For Natural Objects, Bridget Williams

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Is China A “Rule-By-Law” Regime?, Kwai Hang Ng

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Transformative Constitutions And The Role Of Integrity Institutions In Tempering Power: The Case Of Resistance To State Capture In Post-Apartheid South Africa, Heinz Klug

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Alternative Dispute Resolution Works: Lessons Learned From The Bashingantahe, Alexander J. Buszka

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comparative Analysis As An Antidote To Tunnel Vision In Criminal Law Reform: The Example Of Complicity, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

In the context of criminal law reform, the tunnel vision that is produced by deeply embedded paradigms or patterns of criminality has the effect of stifling creativity. If left unchecked, the assumptions that serve as the backdrop to our criminal justice system will likely prevent reformers from giving serious consideration to alternatives that are in tension with the dominant patterns of criminality. I will end by arguing that one way of avoiding this outcome is by engaging in the comparative analysis of criminal law. Comparative analysis serves as a kind of “second opinion” that may help criminal law reformers to …

The Songs Of Other Birds, Anya Bernstein

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 14 in Insiders, Outsiders, Injuries, and Law: Revisiting The Oven Bird’s Song, Mary Nell Trautner, ed..

In this essay, written for a volume that re-engages with David Engel's classic article, The Oven Bird's Song, I consider how we decide how to situate what we encounter in our research. Comparing the findings of my own research in Taipei with Engel's work in Thailand and America, I ask how we can decide to give different interpretations of seemingly similar social phenomena -- specifically, our interlocutors' evident distaste for invoking the law.

Although many of my interlocutors in Taiwan expressed …

Environmental Principles In U.S. And Canadian Law, Errol E. Meidinger, Daniel Spitzer, Charles Malcomb

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 29 in Principles of Environmental Law, Ludwig Krämer & Emanuela Orlando, eds.

Canadian Federalism In Design And Practice: The Mechanics Of A Permanently Provisional Constitution, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

This paper examines the interaction between constitutional design and practice through a case study of Canadian federalism. Focusing on the federal architecture of the Canadian Constitution, the paper examines how subnational units in Canada actually compete with the central government, emphasizing the concrete strategies and tactics they most commonly employ to get their way in confrontations with central authority. The evidence affirms that constitutional design and structure make an important difference in the tactics and tools available to subnational units in a federal system, but that design is not fully constraining: there is considerable evidence of extraconstitutional innovation and improvisation …

Two Examples Of “Quasi-Constitutional Amendments” From The Italian Constitutional Evolution—A Response To Richard Albert, Nicola Lupo

Buffalo Law Review

In response to Richard Albert’s Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, 65 BUFF. L. REV. 739 (2017).

Informal Constitutional Change, Oran Doyle

Buffalo Law Review

In response to Richard Albert’s Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, 65 BUFF. L. REV. 739 (2017).

Respecting The Mystery Of Constitutional Change, Jonathan L. Marshfield

Buffalo Law Review

In response to Richard Albert’s Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, 65 BUFF. L. REV. 739 (2017).

Quasi-Constitutional Change Without Intent—A Response To Richard Albert, Reijer Passchier

Buffalo Law Review

In response to Richard Albert’s Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, 65 BUFF. L. REV. 739 (2017).

Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, Richard Albert

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

You’Re It! Tag Jurisdiction Over Corporations In Canada, Tanya J. Monestier

Journal Articles

In September 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in Chevron v. Yaiguaje, a case that legal commentators had been keeping an eye on for years. The Chevron case has spanned several decades as well as several continents, and the enforcement action in Ontario was the latest in a series of procedural moves aimed at enforcing a nearly $10 billion Ecuadorian judgment against the oil giant. In Chevron, the plaintiffs sought to have the judgment enforced in Ontario against both Chevron (the judgment debtor) and Chevron Canada (a seventh-level indirect subsidiary of the judgment debtor). The Chevron case …

Africa And The Rule Of Law, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

The rule of law is often seen as a panacea for ensuring a successful, fair and modern democracy which enables sustainable development. However, as Makau Mutua highlights, this is not the case. Using the example of African states, he describes how no African country has truly thrown off the shackles of colonial rule and emerged as a truly just nation state – even though many have the rule of law at the heart of their constitutions. This, he argues, is because the Western concept of the rule of law cannot be simply transplanted to Africa. The concept must be adapted …

Distinctive Identity Claims In Federal Systems: Judicial Policing Of Subnational Variance, Antoni Abat I Ninet, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

It is characteristic of federal states that the scope of subnational power and autonomy are subjects of frequent dispute, and that disagreements over the reach of national and subnational power may be contested in a wide and diverse array of settings. Subnational units determined to challenge nationally-imposed limits on their power typically have at their disposal many tools with which to press against formal boundaries. Federal systems, moreover, frequently display a surprising degree of tolerance for subnational obstruction, disobedience, and other behaviors intended to expand subnational authority and influence, even over national objection. This tolerance, however, has limits. In this …

Keepin' It "Real": Israel's Segregation Of Transgender Prisoners And The Transgender/Cisgender Binary, Lihi Yona

Buffalo Journal of Gender, Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Rights As Wrongs: Legality And Sacrality In Thailand, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

Interviews with injury victims in northern Thailand (Lanna) conveyed a pervasive sense of injustice in their daily lives but a notable absence of the language of rights. Despite the proliferation of rights-based discourses, organisations, and institutions in Thai society, interviewees tended to disfavour the pursuit of rights because they believed that resort to the legal system would subvert Lanna traditional practices and would add to the bad karma that caused their suffering in the first place. This article traces fundamental contradictions in northern Thai concepts of justice arising from the imposition of “modern” systems of law and religion by the …

Dressing And Addressing The Kenyan Judiciary: Reflecting On The History And Politics Of Judicial Attire And Address, Willy Mutunga

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comparative Criminal Law, Luis E. Chiesa

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 47 in The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law, Markus Dubber & Tatjana Hörnle, eds.

Criminal law is a parochial discipline. Courts and scholars in the English speaking world seldom take seriously the criminal statutes, cases and scholarly writings published in the non-English speaking world. The same is true the other way around. This is unfortunate. Much can be learned from comparing the way in which the world’s leading legal systems approach important questions of criminal theory.

This Chapter introduces the reader to comparative criminal law with the aim of demonstrating how comparative analysis can enrich both domestic …

(Still) A “Real And Substantial” Mess: The Law Of Jurisdiction In Canada, Tanya J. Monestier

Journal Articles

In Morguard Investments Ltd. v. De Savoye, the Supreme Court of Canada established that a court could assert jurisdiction over an out-of-province defendant in cases where there was a "real and substantial connection" between the forum and the action. Years later, the Ontario Court of Appeal in Muscutt v. Courcelles attempted to provide guidance on the content of the real and substantial connection test by enumerating eight factors for a court to consider in deciding whether to assume jurisdiction over an ex juris defendant. Most provincial courts have enthusiastically and uncritically embraced the Muscutt approach to jurisdiction.

The author argues …

Checkpoint Watch: Bureaucracy And Resistance At The Israel/Palestinean Border, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

This essay sketches my personal impressions of the changes that have occurred over the last decade in Israeli checkpoints in and around Jerusalem. These changes are both in the physical design of the checkpoints as well as in their human management. My particular focus is on the women’s human rights organization MachsomWatch. The role of MachsomWatch has changed in a way that parallels the solidification and the bureaucratization of the border. Nowadays, MachsomWatch women - originally avid protestors of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank - have, despite themselves, become a routine feature in the occupational apparatus. This essay’s …

Vertical And Horizontal Perspectives On Rights Consciousness, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

It has become commonplace to assert that rights consciousness is expanding globally and that individuals worldwide demonstrate an increasing awareness of and insistence upon their legal entitlements. To marshal empirical support for such claims is, however, exceedingly complex. One important line of socio-legal research on rights consciousness adopts what might be called a “vertical” perspective, tracing the flow of legal norms and practices from prestigious international organizations and world centers of cultural production to local settings, where they may be adopted, resisted, or transformed. Vertical perspectives on rights consciousness have contributed new understandings of law in contemporary societies around the …

Global Laws, Local Lives: Impact Of The New Regionalism On Human Rights Compliance, Stephen Joseph Powell, Patricia Camino Pérez

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Reforms And Constitutionalism In Africa: Reflections On Some Current Challenges And Future Prospects, Charles Manga Fombad

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civilized Borders: A Study Of Israel's New Border Regime, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

At Israel’s new border crossings with the West Bank, modernization has become the buzz-word: not only referring to modernized mechanical means – a Wall, newly designed crossings, and micro-mechanics such as turnstiles, signs, and fences – but also to new and sophisticated scientific technologies, such as sensor machines and scanners, and to modernized means of identification, such as advanced computer systems and biometric cards. This paper considers the transformation of the Israel-West Bank border to be a result of four major processes: reterritorialization, bureaucratization, neoliberalization, and de-humanization. I utilize in-depth interviews with top military and state officials and with human …