Law Commons^™

Judicial Independence And Company Law In The Shanghai People's Courts, 1992-2008, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

This chapter draws on a detailed study of corporate law adjudication in Shanghai from 1992 to 2008. The purpose of the study was to better understand the demonstrated technical competence, institutional autonomy, and political independence of one court system in the People's Republic of China ("PRC") in a sector outside of the criminal law. The study consisted of a detailed examination and comparison of full-length corporate law opinions for more than 200 reported cases, a 2003 Shanghai High Court opinion on the 1994 Company Law (describing a decade of corporate case outcomes), a 2007 report on cases implementing the Company …

The Development Of Modern Corporate Governance In China And India, Nicholas C. Howson, Vikramaditya S. Khanna

Book Chapters

Corporate governance reform has become a topic of considerable debate both in the US and in many emerging markets. Indeed, the discussion is important because these reforms may have potentially long-standing effects upon the global allocation of capital, and in understanding the ways in which governance norms are communicated across markets and nations in an ever-globalizing world. In this chapter we examine the corporate governance reform efforts of the world's two biggest and fastest growing emerging markets, the People's Republic of China (PRC or China) and India. In the process we find that our understanding of how and why corporate …

Rethinking Treaty Shopping: Lessons For The European Union, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, C. H. Panayi

Book Chapters

Whilst treaty shopping is not a new phenomenon, it remains as controversial as ever. It would seem that the more countries try to deal with it, the wider the disagreements as to what is improper treaty shopping and what is legitimate tax planning. In this paper, we reassess the traditional quasi-definitions of treaty shopping in an attempt to delineate the contours of such practices. We examine the various theoretical arguments advanced to justify the campaign against treaty shopping. We also consider the current trends in treaty shopping and the anti-treaty shopping policies under the OECD Model and the US Model. …

International Capital Taxation., Rachel Griffith, James R. Hines Jr., Peter Birch Sørensen

Book Chapters

Globalization carries profound implications for tax systems, yet most tax systems, including that of the UK, still retain many features more suited to closed economies. The purpose of this chapter is to assess how tax policy should reflect the changing international economic environment. Institutional barriers to the movement of goods, services, capital, and (to a lesser extent) labour have fallen dramatically since the Meade Report (Meade, 1978) was published. So have the costs of moving both real activity and taxable profits between tax jurisdictions. These changes mean that capital and taxable profits in particular are more mobile between jurisdictions than …

Comparative Federalism And The Role Of Judiciary, Daniel Halberstam

Book Chapters

The distinctive feature of federalism is to locate the central and constituent governments' respective claims of organizational autonomy and jurisdictional authority within a set of privileged legal norms that are beyond the arena of daily politics. For the most part, the debate about the role of the judiciary as federal umpire has taken place within two separate disciplinary compartments: comparative politics and law. Building on recent e��orts to bring these two disciplines closer, this article provides a fresh look at three common criticisms of granting the central judiciary power to protect federalism. It argues that political safeguards of federalism are …

Private Enforcement Against International Cartels In Latin America: A Us Perspective, Daniel A. Crane

Book Chapters

A recent empirical study estimates that from 1990 to the end of 2005, 283 private international cartels were discovered and that the overcharges from these cartels totaled $500 billion. Estimates of the percentage of all detected cartels range from one in six or seven to one in 10. If the one in 10 number is correct, that would mean that overcharges from international cartels in the last 15 years were $5 trillion, or about $330 billion per year. Even assuming that the detection rate is higher today due to the success of the US Justice Department's leniency program and stepped …

China's Restructured Commercial Banks: Nomenklatura, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

In the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, and accelerating after 2003 the People's Republic of China (PRC or China) has implemented an ambitious reform program directed at the commanding heights of what once pa ed for China ' financial system-the large state-owned and state-managed commercial banks. Contrary to a good deal of advice offered by policy and finance specialists, China did not liquidate or fully privatize these institutions. Instead, the PRC sought to avoid the significant social (and no doubt political) cost associated with liquidation, or real privatization, by instead changing (1) the internal dynamics of, and …

Federal Powers And The Principle Of Subsidiarity., Daniel Halberstam

Book Chapters

Federal systems across the world are generally designed according to the principle of subsidiarity, which in one form or another holds that the central government should play only a supporting role in governance, acting if and only if the constituent units of government are incapable of acting on their own. The word itself is related to the idea of assistance, as in “subsidy,” and is derived from the Latin “subsidium,” which referred to auxiliary troops in the Roman military. See Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. (1983).

Anglo-American And Continental Systems: Marsupials And Mammals Of The Law., Richard O. Lempert

Book Chapters

When Peter Tillers invited me to participate in this festschrift for Mirjan Damaška, I proposed to write a short concluding essay reviewing the articles in this volume and drawing links between them. Perhaps I should have anticipated that this would be no easy task, and maybe even have foreseen that it was an assignment I would eventually shun. I should have known that there would not be the six to eight articles I anticipated but the 17 that have been submitted. Had I thought more, I would have realised that there would be many people, myself included, who would seek …

The Provincial Archive As A Place Of Memory: The Role Of Former Slaves In The Cuban War Of Independence (1895-98), Rebecca Scott

Book Chapters

Prof. Scott focuses on the study of the role of former slaves in the Cuban War of Independence, in light of the avoidance of the theme of race within this war in Cuban historiography. She discusses reasons for the silence on race issues, and for the historic construction of the "myth" of racial equality in this era.

Regulatory Frameworks In International Law, Hilary Charlesworth, Christine M. Chinkin

Book Chapters

Regulatory theory is concerned with how various forms of regulation, including law, govern social interaction. Much of the theoretical work on legal regulation has been developed in the context of domestic law. This chapter examines international law in the particular setting of regulation of outsider entities, such as failed and nascent states, that is where international regulation fills the vacuum caused by the collapse of domestic institutions and the rule of law. Through a brief examination of international regulation in Bosnia–Hercegovina and East Timor, this chapter asks what light a regulatory lens sheds on international law. Drawing on Hugh Collins's …

Home And Homelessness In The Middle Of Nowhere, William I. Miller

Book Chapters

In Iceland one must have a home; it is an offense not to-in some circumstances, a capital offense. A sturdy beggar was liable for full outlawry, which meant he could be killed with impunity. The laws are hard on vagrants. Fornication with a beggar woman was unactionable; it was lawful to castrate a vagabond, and he had no claim if he were injured or killed during the operation. One could take in beggars solely for the purpose of whipping them, nor was one to feed or shelter them at the Thing on pain of lesser outlawry. Their booths at the …

Internationalization Of Labor Disputes: Can Adr Mechanisms Help?, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Book Chapters

My task is to assess the ways in which ADR procedures may be adapted to deal with international labor disputes. ADR refers to various methods by which neutral third parties assist persons engaged in a conflict to settle their differences without invoking the decision-making power of the state or another sanction-imposing body. Both mediation and arbitration are included among such methods. In mediation, the neutral aims for the parties to agree on a mutually acceptable solution. In arbitration, the neutral imposes a solution after presentations by the contending parties. A third term - conciliation - is sometimes used and generally …

Tres Vidas, Una Guerra Rafael Iznaga, Bárbara Pérez Y Gregoria Quesada Entre La Emancipación Y La Ciudadanía, Rebecca Scott

Book Chapters

In this article, Scott takes a microhistorian approach as she looks at the ways in which three Cubans of color (Rafael Iznaga, Bárbara Pérez and Gregoria Quesada), from the same rural neighborhood, sought to define and attain citizenship during and immediately after the Cuban War of Independence from 1895-1898. Juxtaposing oral and written sources, Scott shows how such evidence can be both complementary and contradictory, and how each source should be examined in light of the others.

Rafael Iznaga fought in the war as a soldier of the Liberation Army, and returned with prestige and status. While his life can …

China, Nicholas C. Howson, Lester Ross, Donald Clarke

Book Chapters

The mere notion of bankruptcy, liquidation or reorganisation of industrial enterprises was long considered anathema in the People's Republic of China (PRC or China), and directly contrary to the underlying logic of a centrally planned, state-owned economy and industrial system. The state's reluctance to allow bankruptcies was rooted in the ideology of the governing Communist Party but also reflects fiscal constraints with respect to payments to unemployed workers and the recapitalisation of state-owned commercial banks forced to write off loans as bad debts. However, such notions have gained wider acceptance concurrent with:

• China's ongoing transformation to a socialist market economy; …

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.

Attempting To Ensure Fairness In The Glare Of The Media, Richard D. Friedman

Book Chapters

All legal systems worthy of credit have a commitment to achieving fairness between the parties to the litigation. In addition, common law legal systems have a longstanding commitment to openness in judicial proceedings. At the same time, and in part for the same reasons, they also have a longstanding commitment to freedom of expression. There is inevitably a tension among these three goals, because in cases of great public interest openness leads to publicity, and publicity may threaten or at least appear to threaten the fairness of a trial. In addition, sometimes publicity may create an intrusion on the lives …

In Defense Of Revenge, William I. Miller

Book Chapters

One of the risks of studying the Icelandic sagas and loving them, is, precisely, loving them. And what is one loving when one loves them? The wit, the entertainment provided by perfectly told tales? And just how are these entertaining tales and this wit separable from their substance: honor, revenge, individual assertion, and yes, some softer values, too, like peacefulness and prudence? Yet one suspects, and quite rightly, that the softer values are secondary and utterly dependent on being responsive to the problems engendered by the rougher values of honor and vengeance. Is it possible to study the sagas and …

The Autonomy Of Law: Two Visions Compared, Richard O. Lempert

Book Chapters

During the past decade the effort to understand the place of the legal system in society has, in England and America, given rise to a renewed interest in the possibility of legal autonomy (Thompson, 1975; Balbus, 1973; 1977; Trubek, 1977). More recently, on the continent of Europe, especially in Germany, scholars have focused on an apparently radical form of autonomy — embodied in the idea of an autopoietic system — in an effort to understand how law functions (Luhmann, 1985 d; Teubner, 1984). These two approaches to understanding the legal system paint pictures that have much in common, but they …

The Jury, Seditious Libel And The Criminal Law, Thomas A. Green

Book Chapters

The seditious libel trials of the eighteenth century constitute an important chapter in the history of freedom of the press and the growth of democratic government. While much has been written about the trials and about the administration of the criminal law in eighteenth-century England, little has been said about the relationship between the libel prosecutions and the more pervasive and long-standing problems of the criminal law. We have perhaps gone too far in positing-or simply assuming-a separation between political high misdemeanors and common-run felony cases such as homicide and theft. For there were points of contact between the two: …

Soviet Tort Law: The New Principles Annotated, Whitmore Gray

Book Chapters

AT 2:20 A.M. ON MAY 1, 1962, while riding his bicycle along the Simferopol' Highway in the company of Baturin, Pronin fell and injured his shoulder. Leaving his bicycle with Pronin, Baturin went on foot to a nearby village to summon medical aid. Pronin waited for him for awhile, and then decided to go back to the village of Volosovo in a passing car. Seeing the Tula-Moscow bus coming, he ran onto the road and waved. The driver, Markelov, seeing Pronin run onto the road 50 feet ahead of the bus, swerved to the left, went into the left lane, …

Local Government In Great Britain, Thomas M. Cooley

Book Chapters

Professor Cooley's brief overview of the subject as context for his editing of the Commentaries: "As the local institutions of Great Britain have very largely been remodeled in our day, it seems desirable to give some brief account of them, as they exist at the present time..."

The British Colonial System, Thomas M. Cooley

Book Chapters

Regarding the subject, Professor Cooley writes: "In a note to the first book of these Commentaries (p.109), the Colonial System of Great Britain is spoken of as the grandest in extent and power that the world has ever known. A more detailed account of the system, and of the countries and places embraced within it, than was given in the place referred to, will justify the statement there made, and at the same time will give us particulars of British Colonial government in all its varieties."

Local Government In The United States, Thomas M. Cooley

Book Chapters

Professor Cooley offers the readers of the Commentaries a brief statement regarding laws of the United States in local jurisdictions: "To present completely local government as it exists in the United States would require a volume.... What we shall say, therefore, will be aimed at an explanation of certain general features, which are to be met with in all the states, and of some of the most important peculiarities."

The Territories Of The United States, Thomas M. Cooley

Book Chapters

Writing to flesh out the comparisons between the United States and Great Britain following previous such chapters, Professor Cooley writes: "In the common acceptation of those terms the United States has no colonies and no foreign possessions." Professor Cooley then gives a relatively brief history of the admission of new states in constitutional philosophy and history. Later in the chapter he asserts, "Before any states can be admitted to the union, there must be a state ready to admit; and this implies that there shall be a state with a constitution and laws, so when admitted, it can proceed at …