Law Commons^™

The Canadian Criminal Jury, Neil Vidmar, Regina Schuller

Faculty Scholarship

The Canadian criminal jury system has some unique characteristics. In contrast to American law, that gives precedent to free speech over fair trial, and English law, that favors fair trial over free speech, Canadian law occupies a middle ground balancing these competing values .Jury selection procedure in most trials is similar to that of England: jurors are assumed to be “impartial between the Queen and the accused” and are selected without a voir dire. However, in cases involving exceptional pretrial publicity or involving accused persons from racial or ethnic minority groups, jurors are vetted by a “challenge for cause” process …

Property Rights In Land, Agricultural Capitalism, And The Relative Decline Of Pre-Industrial China, Taisu Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Comparing Regulatory Oversight Bodies Across The Atlantic: The Office Of Information And Regulatory Affairs In The Us And The Impact Assessment Board In The Eu, Jonathan B. Wiener, Alberto Alemanno

Faculty Scholarship

‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ asked the Roman poet Juvenal – ‘who will watch the watchers, who will guard the guardians?’ As legislative and regulatory processes around the globe progressively put greater emphasis on impact assessment and accountability, we ask: who oversees the regulators? Although regulation can often be necessary and beneficial, it can also impose its own costs. As a result, many governments have embraced, or are considering embracing, regulatory oversight--frequently relying on economic analysis as a tool of evaluation. We are especially interested in the emergence over the last four decades of a new set of institutional actors, the …

Restatements, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Written for an encyclopedia on European private law, this brief article first addresses the term restatements and then compares the U.S. Restatement of the law as prototype with different European restatements of the law in the area of private law.

Comparative Law, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Written for an encyclopedia on European private law, this brief
article addresses term, purposes, methods and development of
comparative law. Special attention is given to the role of comparative
law in European private law studies, European law-making and European
adjudication.

Rollen Und Rollenverständnisse Im Transnationalen Privatrecht [Roles And Role Perceptions In Transnational Private Law], Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Downloadable Document is in German

Summary

1. The private lawyer’s role is inseparably connected with the paradigms and doctrines of private law. This is so because the role played by private lawyers constitutes a large part of their understanding of the discipline. At the same time, the shared understanding of the discipline has necessary consequences for the roles played by lawyers in it.

2. Roles and role perceptions in private law are contingent upon space and time. The most important factor affecting private lawyers today is the growing detachment of private law from the state, through globalization, Europeanization, and privatization …

The Functionalism Of Legal Origins, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

This article, written on request for the centennial issue of Ius Commune Europaeum, connects the economic literature on legal origins (La Porta et al) and the World Bank's Doing Business reports with discussions in comparative law about the functional method. It finds that a number of parallels and similarities exist, and that much of the criticism that has been voiced against functionalism should apply, mutates mutants, also to these more recent projects. The attraction that these projects have derive not, it is argued, from their methodological sophistication, but instead from "the strange lure of economics" and from the ostentatious objectivity …