Law Commons^™

Looking For Law In China, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

I have been looking for law in China for over forty years. When I started in 1963, only a handful of other Westerners had also embarked on what then seemed an exotic academic excursion. Since then, after U.S.-China relations were reestablished in 1972, many other Americans have had reason to join in the search. Now, the growing potency of China's economic strength and international reach has made efforts to understand China more important than ever, and law has become a necessary medium for use in such efforts.

This article offers insights into critical institutions and practices that mark the legal …

'Une Chose Publique'? The Author's Domain And The Public Domain In Early British, French And Us Copyright Law, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Much contemporary copyright rhetoric casts copyright as a derogation from a primordial public domain. Placing the public domain in the initial position buttresses attempts to contain a perceived over-expansion of copyright. I do not take issue with the normative role these endeavors assign to the public domain. The public domain is today and should remain copyright's constraining counterpart. But normative arguments that also claim the support of history may be fundamentally anachronistic. The ensuing examination of the respective domains of author and public at copyright's inception, in 18th-19th century Britain, France and America, reveals more ambiguity than today's critiques generally …

Inducers And Authorisers: A Comparison Of The Us Supreme Court's Grokster Decision And The Australian Federal Court's Kazaa Ruling, Jane C. Ginsburg, Sam Ricketson

Faculty Scholarship

On June 27, 2005, the US Supreme Court announced its much-awaited decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster Ltd. A few months after this, the Federal Court of Australia handed down its decision at first instance in relation to parallel litigation in that country concerning the KaZaa file sharing system. Both decisions repay careful consideration of the way in which the respective courts have addressed the relationship between the protection of authors' rights and the advent of new technologies, particularly in relation to peer-to-peer networks.

In the Grokster case, songwriters, record producers and motion picture producers alleged that two popular …

Innovation Through Intimidation: An Empirical Account Of Defamation Litigation In China, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Consider two recent defamation cases in Chinese courts. In 2004, Zhang Xide, a former county-level Communist Party boss, sued the authors of a best selling book, An Investigation into China's Peasants. The book exposed official malfeasance on Zhang's watch and the resultant peasant hardships. Zhang demanded an apology from the book's authors and publisher, excision of the offending chapter, 200,000 yuan (approximately U.S.$25,000) for emotional damages, and a share of profits from sales of the book. Zhang sued in a local court on which, not coincidentally, his son sat as a judge.

In 2000, Song Dianwen, a peasant, sued …

The Regulation Of Labor And The Relevance Of Legal Origin, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Arguably the most important social science research of the past decade has centered on comparative law and economics. In a celebrated series of articles, the economists Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and intermittent collaborators have explored empirically how a country's legal origin – English common law, French civil law, Germanic code, Scandinavian law, or Soviet socialist law – affects its subsequent institutional and economic development. The common law emerges as the hero of this analysis: Compared with other countries and especially with civil law countries, common law bearers have, ceteris paribus, better legal protection of shareholders and …

Constitutional Lessons From Europe, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Given his range of interests, a tribute to Francis Jacobs could appropriately address just about any area of contemporary legal concern. But Francis Jacobs is one whose writings on and off the bench have, for an American, been especially illuminating, due to his unique capacity to translate fundamental issues of European constitutional law into terms that we can grasp. And so, notwithstanding the quantity of writing on the recent constitutional adventure of the European Union ("EU") that has already accumulated, I add yet one more set of reflections on this theme in Francis Jacobs' honor, this time on the possible …