Law Commons^™

Making Democracy Harder To Hack, Scott Shackelford, Bruce Schneier, Michael Sulmeyer, Anne Boustead, Ben Buchanan, Amanda N. Craig Deckard, Trey Herr, Jessica Malekos Smith

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

With the Russian government hack of the Democratic National Convention email servers and related leaks, the drama of the 2016 U.S. presidential race highlights an important point: nefarious hackers do not just pose a risk to vulnerable companies; cyber attacks can potentially impact the trajectory of democracies. Yet a consensus has been slow to emerge as to the desirability and feasibility of reclassifying elections—in particular, voting machines—as critical infrastructure, due in part to the long history of local and state control of voting procedures. This Article takes on the debate—focusing on policy options beyond former Department of Homeland Security Secretary …

More Than Bric-A-Brac: Testing Chinese Exceptionalism In Patenting Behavior Using Comparative Empirical Analysis, Jay P. Kesan, Alan Marco, Richard Miller

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Although many developing economies are increasingly influencing the global economy, China’s influence has been the greatest of these by far. Once hindered from competition by political and economic restrictions, China is now a major economic player. As China’s economic might has grown, so too has the demand for intellectual property protection for technologies originating from China. In this article, we present a detailed empirical study of Chinese patenting trends in the United States and the implications of these trends for the global economy. We compare these trends to patenting trends from earlier decades. Specifically, we compare Chinese patenting trends to …

The Yukos Money Laundering Case: A Never-Ending Story, Dmitry Gololobov

Michigan Journal of International Law

The Yukos case has unveiled the possible dangers of money laundering legislation in the hands of governments with transitional economies and weak democratic traditions. Even if the anti-money laundering laws of the country comply with international pronouncements to the letter, there are still a number of ways the laws could be used for the sole purpose of persecuting political opponents. In the Yukos case, the money laundering charges were interrelated with the charges of corporate tax evasion, which, taken separately, in Russia, represent a rather weak tool for suppressing the political opponents, but taken together they are perfect for the …

Russian Compliance With Articles Five And Six Of The European Convention Of Human Rights As A Barometer Of Legal Reform And Human Rights In Russia, Jeffrey Kahn

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note examines two of Russia's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR): the Article 5 right to liberty and security, and the Article 6 right to a fair trial to gauge Russian compliance with European human rights norms. These articles lie at the heart of systematic legal reform in the Russian Federation. This Note defends the thesis that the agonizingly slow progress of judicial reform and the advancement of human rights in Russia is a function of the inevitable lag of conceptual norms behind institutional reform. Part I explores the weak place of the rule of law …

A Property Theory Perspective On Russian Enterprise Reform, Michael Heller

Book Chapters

Why have Russian enterprises performed so poorly since privatization? This is a problem with many answers, each independently sufficient: the bleak mix includes vacillating macroeconomic policy, endemic corruption, a corrosive tax structure, poor human capital, and so forth. Even well-performing companies must hide good results because visible profits or dividends provoke confiscatory taxation and mafia visits. In such a difficult environment, the rule of law generally, and corporate governance in particular, may seem not to count. Macroeconomic implosions dwarf subtle distinctions in corporate dividend rules or minority voting rights.

Corporate Governance Lessons From Russian Enterprise Fiascos, Merritt B. Fox, Michael A. Heller

Articles

This Article draws on a rich array of deviant behavior in Russian enterprises to craft lessons for corporate governance theory. First, Professors Fox and Heller define corporate governance by looking to the economic functions of the firm. Based on this definition, they develop a typology that comprehensively shows all the channels through which bad corporate governance can inflict damage on a country's real economy. Second, they explain the causes of Russian enterprise fiascoes by looking to the particular initial conditions prevailing at privatization-untenable firm boundaries and insider allocation of firm shares-and the bargaining dynamics that have followed. This focus offers …

The Tragedy Of The Anticommons: Property In The Transition From Marx To Markets, Michael A. Heller

Articles

Why are many storefronts in Moscow empty, while street kiosks in front are full of goods? In this Article, Professor Heller develops a theory of anticommons property to help explain the puzzle of empty storefronts and full kiosks. Anticommons property can be understood as the mirror image of commons property. By definition, in a commons, multiple owners are each endowed with the privilege to use a given resource, and no one has the right to exclude another When too many owners hold such privileges of use, the resource is prone to overuse - a tragedy of the commons. Depleted fisheries …

Language Of Lullabies: The Russification And De-Russification Of The Baltic States, Sonia Bychkov Green

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article argues that the laws for promotion of the national languages are a legitimate means for the Baltic states to establish their cultural independence from Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Resolving Economic Disputes In Russia's Market Economy, Karen Halverson

Michigan Journal of International Law

The purpose of this paper is to examine the recent transformation of state arbitrazh into economic courts along with the development of commercial arbitration in Russia, and to consider the relative utility of these mechanisms for resolving disputes in Russia's evolving market economy. Part I describes state arbitrazh and details its evolution into the existing system of economic courts. Part II discusses the past and recent development of commercial arbitration in Russia as an alternative to litigating domestic disputes. Part III considers various social and historic factors that hinder genuine reform.

Advising The Neocapitalists, James J. White

Articles

I write to reflect on what American lawyers can and will do for these emerging free market economies. I am more skeptical than most.

The Role Of Law In The Soviet System: Looking Back And Moving Forward, Sarah J. Reynolds

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of Russian Law: The End of the Soviet System and the Role of Law by F.J.M. Feldbrugge

Extremist Threats To Fragile Democracies: A Proposal For An East European Marshall Plan, Victor Williams

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of Black Hundred: The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia by Walter Laquer, and Free to Hate: The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia by Paul Hockenos

The Feasibility Of Debt-Equity Swaps In Russia, Thomas M. Reiter

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note examines the origins, development, and mechanics of debt-equity swap programs in Latin America before discussing the various goals and policy considerations involved in formulating debt-equity swap programs. Next, the Note describes Russia's debt situation and sketches the outlines of a debt-equity swap program that will reduce Russia's foreign debt while stimulating foreign direct investment.

Empowering The Russian Consumer In A Market Economy, James P. Nehf

Michigan Journal of International Law

One purpose of this article is to examine how the legislative product of a declining socialist state will benefit Russian consumers during the unusual circumstances characterizing the period of market transformation. A second purpose is to familiarize Western consumerists with the decidedly pro-consumer features of the Russian law. Part I analyzes the consumer law's provisions that elevate the legal status of consumers when they purchase goods and services. Part II examines the legislation from a different perspective - as a set of legal norms affecting the operation of consumer markets generally. Part III discusses the enforcement mechanisms established in the …

The New East European Constitutional Courts, Herman Schwartz

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article will describe some aspects of the different tribunals in Russia, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania, and will compare them with each other and with the U.S. Supreme Court. The first part will begin by explaining a few basic differences between the American and Continental systems of judicial review, and will then describe the functions of the new East European constitutional courts. The second part will use the decisions of the new Russian Constitutional Court to illustrate the new courts' exercise of authority, and will summarize the recent activities of a few other new constitutional courts.

Models For A Gorbachev Constitution Of The U.S.S.R., John N. Hazard

Michigan Journal of International Law

Western Sovietologists were startled when Secretary General Mikhail S. Gorbachev set his craftsmen to work in the Summer of 1988 to prepare a revised structure for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ("U.S.S.R."). While some hint of what was to come had been given by publications prior to the 19th Communist Party Conference, and while some of these appeared in the theses to be debated at the Conference, Westerners expected little more than a call from the tribune for change in attitudes. Basic State structures established by Leonid Brezhnev in his 1977 Constitution had not previously been questioned. Critics levelled …

The Well-Ordered Police State: Social And Institutional Change Through Law In The Germanies And Russia, 1600-1800, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change Through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800 by Marc Raeff

Legal Education In The Soviet Union And Eastern Europe, Whitmore Gray

Articles

The following notes are based on interviews with law professors, law students and lawyers during a brief trip in 1970 to Moscow, Budapest and Prague. On previous visits in 1959 and 1965 the writer had visited law schools in Kiev, Baku, Tbilisi, Alma Ata, Leningrad, Prague and Warsaw, and had sat in on lectures, recitation sections, and examinations.1 In looking this time for changes, the writer was particularly interested in whether there was some reflection there of the general student malaise which the United States has been experiencing, manifested in American law schools in student pressure for "relevant" courses and …

Civil Code Of The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic: An English Translation, Whitmore Gray, Raymond Stults

Books

This book is an English translation of the Soviet Civil Code as published in Sovetskaia Iustitsiia in 1964. This book also includes the Russian original.

Atoms And The Law, E. Blythe Stason, Samuel D. Estep, William J. Pierce

Books

Early in 1951 a group of interested members of the faculty of The University of Michigan Law School conceived the idea of a research project, the purpose of which would be to investigate the principal unique legal problems being created and likely to be created in the future by peaceful uses of atomic energy. The group planned the preparation and publication of a series of manuscripts which might ultimately emerge as one or more printed volumes dealing with the legal problems affecting this new form of energy. Many phases of the subject were scrutinized, including the rule-making and licensing powers …

Soviet Civil Law: A Review, Roscoe Pound

Michigan Law Review

Here is an excellent and much needed book. Although the enthusiastic wishful thinking about things Russian, fashionable not so long ago, has for the most part abated, the rise of a new social and economic order on a great scale must call for careful study by lawyers and law-makers no less than by historians and economists and students of politics. Now that a generation has been at work constructively since the destructive era of militant communism after the revolution, we need accurate and objectively presented and interpreted information as to how the administration of justice goes on under "the dictatorship …

Pashukanis And Vyshinsky: A Study In The Development Of Marxian Legal Theory, Lon L. Fuller

Michigan Law Review

Reading Andrei Y. Vyshinsky's The Law of the Soviet Union ought to be a stimulating and rewarding experience. It is an exposition. of Soviet legal philosophy and of the theory and practice of Soviet public or "state" law. Throughout it purports to compare the premises that underlie Soviet law with those on which ''bourgeois" legal systems are based. Vyshinsky, a famous world figure and the present minister for foreign affairs of the U.S.S.R., wrote part of the book and supervised compiliation of the remainder. The decision of the American Council of Learned Societies to sponsor a translation of the work …

An Interim Account On Comparative Conflicts Law, Ernst Rabel

Michigan Law Review

Under the sponsorship of the American "Law Institute and subsequently of the University of Michigan, with the efficient assistance of the Faculty, notably of Hessel E. Yntema as editor, I published the first volume of a work on conflicts law in 1945. A second volume has just followed, after a long delay caused by the vicissitudes of postwar printing. The greater part of a third volume has been readied in the meantime, but its date of publication is not yet fixed.

The task consists in surveying the existing and proposed conflicts rules of the world and in ascertaining their background, …

The Law School 1947-1948, E. Blythe Stason

Michigan Law Review

The academic year 1947-1948 opened with the largest student enrollment in the history of the University of Michigan Law School, overflowing the Law Quadrangle and making the year notable for large classes and keen competition. The 417 beginning students, 329 second-year students, 345 seniors, 10 candidates for advanced degrees in law, and 6 special students, all add up to a grand total of 1107 prospective lawyers. This figure compares with an enrollment of 956 at a corresponding time in the fall semester a year ago, and 641 in the pre-war year 1940-1941.

Foreign Exchange Restrictions And Public Policy In The Conflict Of Laws: Part Ii, Evsey S. Rashba

Michigan Law Review

Political Laws have been the subject of a much disputed doctrine. It has been stated by Dicey, and by other authoritative writers in various countries, that a court has no jurisdiction to entertain an action for the enforcement of a "political law" of a foreign state. The term "political law" is not limited to the field of public law. It is, of course, only exceptionally that rules governing the relations between a state and its citizens are given extraterritorial effect. The doctrine goes further. It holds that rules which are technically a part of private law, but which are designed …

International Law - Validity Of Soviet Decrees

Michigan Law Review

The Soviet government, by a nationalization decree, confiscated all oil lands in Russia, among them the land of plaintiffs, Russian nationals, and sold oil extracted therefrom to defendant. Plaintiffs sought an accounting, claiming that the confiscatory decrees of the unrecognized Soviet government and seizure of oil lands thereunder had no legal effect. A communication from the State Department was introduced: "The Department of State is cognizant of the fact that the Soviet regime is exercising control and power in territory of the former Russian Empire and the Department of State has no disposition to ignore that fact. The refusal of …