Law Commons^™

Living Among Guatemalan Mayans Is Fascinating Experience, Irene Scharf

Irene Scharf

I have just lived a dream. Five years ago I learned of a school where students of all ages could study Spanish intensively while living among the Guatemalan Mayans. Peace Accords had been signed in 1996, the government was encouraging tourism, and it was, finally, safe to visit.

Why a dream? Because, 25 years ago, when I traveled through Central and South America, I promised my family I would avoid Guatemala because of the perceived was dangers. During that trip, as I met my Europeans and other who had visited, remained safe, and found it a fascinating country, I vowed …

One Redeeming Quality About The 112th Congress: Refocusing On Descriptive Rather Than Evocative Short Titles, Brian Christopher Jones

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The consensus with regard to the 112th Congress is that it was a massive failure: the Congress passed fewer laws than in previous years, and the contemptuous debates over the debt ceiling and the so-called "fiscal cliff" did not win this Congress many supporters. So what redeeming qualities could have been present in such an irredeemable Congress? I believe that there was at least one: a returning focus on descriptive short titles for laws, rather than a perpetuation of the evocative and tendentious short titles that have been commonplace over the past couple of decades. A recent publication of mine …

Macao’S Legal System Under Globalization And Regional Integration: Between Tradition And Evolution, Dan Wei

DAN WEI

No abstract provided.

Bilingual Welfare Notice Not Required - Guerrero V. Carleson, 9 Cal. 3d 808, 512 P.2d 833, 109 Cal. Rptr. 201 (1973), Mary Beth Diez

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Professional Legal Writing Declaring Your Independence, Patrick R. Hugg

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

This article proposes two controversial assertions about the writing of many lawyers and judges today and offers a central theme for improving that writing. These bold propositions are offered in an effort to awaken and perhaps inspire the legions of overworked, harried legal scriveners inhabiting our legal community to adopt a new methodology of writing. Too many legal writers today are forced by the various (nefarious) circumstances of their work to crank out reams of hastily conceived and poorly edited text. The time has arrived for us to admit to this unacceptable state of affairs and to declare independence from …

The Transformative Potential Of Attorney Bilingualism, Jayesh M. Rathod

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In contemporary U.S. law practice, attorney bilingualism is increasingly valued, primarily because it allows lawyers to work more efficiently and to pursue a broader range of professional opportunities. This purely functionalist conceptualization of attorney bilingualism, however, ignores the surprising ways in which multilingualism can enhance a lawyer's professional work and can strengthen and reshape relationships among actors in the U.S. legal milieu. Drawing upon research from psychology, linguistics, and other disciplines, this Article advances a theory of the transformative potential of attorney bilingualism. Looking first to the development of lawyers themselves, the Article posits that attorneys who operate bilingually may, …

The Scarlet Letter: The Supreme Court And The Language Of Abortion Stigma, Paula Abrams

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Why does the Supreme Court refer to the woman who is seeking an abortion as "mother"? Surely the definition has not escaped the attention of a Court that frequently relies on the dictionary to define important terms or principles. And why does the Court choose to describe the fetus as a child? What message does this language send about abortion and the woman who seeks an abortion? The Court's abortion decisions embody an ongoing debate on the legitimacy of constitutional protection of the right to choose. This debate unfolds most obviously as a discourse on constitutional interpretation; disagreements within the …

"Linguistic Cleansing": Strategies For Redesigning Human Perception And Behavior, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

James Madison recognized the need to balance competing interests in his analysis of factious groups. In Federalist No. 10, Madison sets out the idea of faction in the following words. “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Madison goes on to describe two “cures” for faction. One is to “destroy the liberty” that allows it to bloom, …

Chinese Second Language Teacher Education And Teacher Self-Development, Xiaoping Gao

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper addresses three key components in Chinese Second Language Teacher Education: the history, development and objectives of the field, the curricula of teacher education, and student teachers' self -reflection in teaching practices and its role in teacher self -development. Given the changes in the objectives and contexts of teaching Chinese as a second language. it emphasizes that student teachers' self - reflection in supervised teaching practice is central to realize teachers' self -development and to meet the requirement of International Standards for Chinese Language Teacher.

Multilingualism And Multiculturalism: Transatlantic Discourses On Language, Identity, And Immigrant Schooling, Rosemary C. Salomone

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In September 2010, an eye-catching article appeared on the front page of the New York Times “Arts” section. The headline read, “Cultures United to Honor Separatism.” Basque and Catalan nationalists, Sinn Fein leaders, and others were convening on the island of Corsica, not to chart out war strategies, as might have been expected, but rather to discuss cultural politics. As time would tell, pitched battles over sovereignty and independence seemed to be yielding to equally passionate calls for linguistic and cultural recognition. Facing the pressure of English as the global lingua franca, historically militant groups were placing their …

A Rejoinder To Professor Schauer's Commentary, Yale Kamisar

Articles

It is quite a treat to have Professor Frederick Schauer comment on my Miranda article.1 Professor Schauer is a renowned authority on freedom of speech and the author of many thoughtful, probing articles in other areas as well, especially jurisprudence. I am pleased that in large measure, Schauer, too, laments the erosion of Miranda in the last four-and-a-half decades2 and that he, too, was unhappy with the pre-Miranda due process/“totality of circumstances”/“voluntariness” test.3 I also like what Schauer had to say about “prophylactic rules,” a term that has sometimes been used to disparage the Miranda rules.4 As Schauer observes, the …

Appraisal Theory: Old And New Questions, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

I describe my current thinking on two old questions—the causal role of appraisals and the relationship of appraisal theories to basic emotions theories and constructivist theories, and three (sort of) new questions—the completeness of appraisals, the role of language, and the development of automaticity in emotional responses.

International Law's Erie Moment, Harlan Grant Cohen

Michigan Journal of International Law

The episode put the question starkly: Who fills the gaps in international law and how? A series of tribunals operating under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had adopted broader interpretations of vague treaty language than those recommended by the state parties. In response, government ministers from the three state parties, Mexico, Canada, and the United States, operating through the Free Trade Commission (FTC) established by the treaty, adopted "Notes of Interpretation" clarifying their view of the treaty's meaning. International tribunals are generally tasked with examining state practice, either to recognize rules of customary international law …

Conceptions Of Civil Society In International Lawmaking And Implementation: A Theoretical Framework, Laura Pedraza-Farina

Michigan Journal of International Law

The last two decades have seen an unprecedented explosion in the number of civil society organizations seeking to influence national and international policy making and implementation. Global leaders, activists, scholars, and policy experts have increasingly called for the inclusion of civil society in international governance and in the national implementation of international commitments. Most recently, the wave of civil uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa has put fostering civil society participation high on the agenda of national governments and international organizations. Indeed, most international organizations have devised mechanisms to engage with civil society and regard civil society …

Time To Define 'The Cornerstone Of Public Order Legislation': The Elements Of Offensive Conduct And Language Under The Summary Offences Act 1988 (Nsw), Julia Ann Quilter, Luke J. Mcnamara

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article addresses a contradiction that has long been at the heart of the criminal law concerned with ‘public order’. Although crimes such as offensive conduct and offensive language are amongst the most frequently prosecuted offences in Australia, their legal nature is poorly understood and rarely the subject of judicial scrutiny or academic explanation. In the context of ongoing controversy over whether such offences have a legitimate place on the statute books, we confront this oversight. This article draws on the High Court of Australia’s decision in He Kaw Teh v The Queen1 to lay out a methodology for construing …

How Do You …? Use Film Viewing To Enhance Students’ Analytical Skills?, Alfredo Herrero De Haro

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Many teachers, and I have been one of them, treat listening skills as something that is innate and that can be neither learnt nor taught. That is, as something that students either can or cannot do, and as something that teachers have no control over. However, trial and error in lessons has shown me how, irrespectively of students’ level in the L2, there are certain things that we can teach students to make them better listeners and to help them understand how to improve their (foreign) language comprehension.

The starting point will be preventing our students from being passive listeners, …

Teaching A Mother Tongue Far Away From The Motherland: An Analysis Of Chinese Language Curriculum In Australian High Schools, Min Tao, Wei Wang

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article is concerned with the situation of teaching of Chinese as a first language or a mother tongue in Australia. Based on the analysis of the curriculum documents, students ' identities and exam papers in Victoria and New South Wales, the two biggest states in Australia, we argue that 1 ) the emergence of Chinese as a first language curriculum in Australia where English is the de facto national language is attributed to the globalisation and commercialisation in education; 2) the curriculum design of Chinese as a first language represents the curriculum' s Euro-centric mind-set and this also results …

Chinese Language Teaching And Teacher Training In Australia, Xiaoping Gao

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

摘要：

自国家汉办2006年启动海外汉语教师志愿者项目以来，志愿者的素质问题逐渐成为志愿者选派、培训及国际汉语教育专业人才培养关注的焦点。本文旨在探讨赴澳大利亚志愿者的必备素质与培养策略。文章以澳大利亚的中文教育状况为背景，通过对比澳洲本土教师从业资格与志愿者的选拔条件、培训内容，提出满足澳大利亚教学需求的志愿者应具备良好的英语沟通能力、扎实的专业素养、踏实的敬业精神，娴熟的多媒体课件制作技巧、和适合学生特点的组织管理课堂教学活动的技能。本文并就如何培养志愿者的上述素质提出了相应的培养策略，以期丰富国际汉语教师志愿者的选拔、培训及相关研究，探索高质量国际汉语人才培养的新途径。

Collaborative Creation Of Spoken Language Corpora, Michael Haugh, Wei-Lin Melody Chang

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Analysing authentic interactions at progressively greater levels of complexity is one means of promoting deeper engagement with pragmatic phenomena amongst L2 learners. However, effective analysis often requires a greater amount of data than learners can feasibly gather. It is proposed here that encouraging students to collaborate through the creation of a corpus of spoken interactions is one potentially effective way to help them engage with a much richer set of interactional data than they might normally encounter. Here we report on a corpus created through “crowdsourcing” the collection and transcription of recordings of spoken interactions, the Griffith Corpus of Spoken …