Law Commons^™

Interpreting Bills Of Rights: The Value Of A Comparative Approach, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Jack Tsen-Ta LEE

Foreign Law And The U.S. Constitution, Kenneth Anderson

Kenneth Anderson

Medical Error As Reportable Event, As Tort, As Crime: A Transpacific Comparison, Robert B. Leflar, Futoshi Iwata

Robert B Leflar

All nations seek to reduce the human toll from medical error, but variations in legal and institutional structures guide those efforts into different trajectories. This article compares legal and institutional responses to patient safety problems in the United States and Japan, addressing developments in civil malpractice law (including discoverability of internal hospital documents), administrative practice (including medical accident reporting systems), and - of particular significance in Japan - criminal law. In the U.S., battles over rules of malpractice litigation are fierce; tort law occupies center stage. The hospital accreditation process plays a critical role in medical quality control, and peer …

Too Many Questions, Too Few Answers: Reconciliation In Transitional Societies, Erin Daly, Jeremy Sarkin

Erin Daly

Understanding reconciliation in times of political transition raises fundamental and ultimately unanswerable questions about the human condition. Talk of reconciliation invariably comes after there has been some gross violation of norms: widespread disappearances, killings, torture, and rape. Reconciliation necessarily conjures its antecedents and forces us to ask how men (and sometimes women) can visit such horrors upon one another. When we look at the face of evil, are we, as many people contend, seeing ourselves, or on the contrary are some people capable of evil in a way that others would never approach? Reconciliation is perhaps deeply compelling, however, because …

Seasons Of Resistance: Sustainable Agriculture And Food Security In Cuba, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

Beginning in the mid-1990s, Cuba embarked upon a transformation of the agricultural sector that has been hailed by some observers as a model of socially equitable and ecologically sustainable agriculture. Cuba shifted from an export-oriented, chemical-intensive agricultural development strategy to one that promoted organic agriculture and encouraged production for the domestic market. This article places Cuba's agricultural reforms in historical context by examining the evolution of Cuban agriculture from the colonial period until the present through the lens of food security and ecological sustainability. The article argues that Cuba, for most of its history, was food insecure and ecologically compromised …

Feist Goes Global: A Comparative Analysis Of The Notion Of Originality In Copyright Law, Daniel J. Gervais

Daniel J Gervais

he 1991 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc. delivered was hailed both as a landmark decision and a legal bomb. Was Feist so original as to deserve all the attention? After all, it did not establish a new originality paradigm as such but only ended a long division among federal circuits concerning the protection under copyright of factual compilations. A number of circuits had adopted a test similar to the one articulated in Feist (i.e., based on creative selection), while others required only evidence of labor, a test known as sweat of the …

Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan: 2001 Epilogue, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

Japan is on a steeper trajectory toward the incorporation of informed consent principles into medical practice than the “gradual transformation” observed in a 1996 article, Informed Consent and Patients’ Rights in Japan. Among the most significant recent developments from 1996 to 2001 have been these seven: (1) the 1997 enactment of the Organ Transplantation Law permitting the use of brain death criteria in limited circumstances in which informed consent is present; (2) the strengthening of patients’ rights in clinical drug trials; (3) the continued trend toward increasing disclosure to patients of cancer diagnoses; (4) initiatives by the health ministry toward …

Miranda, Confessions, And Justice: Lessons For Japan?, Richard Leo

Richard A. Leo

This chapter explores whether a Miranda-like warning and waiver regime could be successfully implemented in Japan. The chapter reviews the social science and legal scholarship on Miranda's impact on American interrogation practices and suspect behavior, concluding that most American suspects continue to waive their rights and law enforcement personnel continue to obtain a high number of confessions and convictions. Next, the chapter discusses the contemporary law and practice of interrogation in Japan. In Japan, interrogation appears to be routinely psychologically coercive and virtually all defendants make either partial admissions or full confessions to alleged offenses. Confessions are regarded as superior …

Book (Oup): On Law, Politics, And Judicialization: Path Dependence, Precedent, And Judicial Power, Alec Stone Sweet

Alec Stone Sweet

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Courts And Parliamentary Democracy (Special Issue On Delegation), Alec Stone Sweet

Alec Stone Sweet

No abstract provided.

The Introduction Of Jury Trials And Adversarial Elements Into The Former Soviet Union And Other Inquisitorial Countries, James W. Diehm

James W. Diehm

The Liability Of International Arbitrators: A Comparative Analysis And Proposal For Qualified Immunity, Susan Franck

Susan D. Franck

International arbitration has become the preferred way of resolving international commercial disputes. Although the parties have an opportunity to play a role in the selection of arbitrators, there may nevertheless be concerns about the integrity of the dispute resolution process. This article examines the nature of the relationship between the parties and the arbitrators. It then explores how a variety of countries address the issues of arbitrator liability or immunity from the common law, civil law and Islamic law perspectives. The article ultimately recommends the adoption of a qualified immunity standard, which balances the needs for arbitrators to function independently …

Symposium Prosecuting Transnational Crimes: Cross-Cultural Insights For The Former Soviet Union, James W. Diehm

James W. Diehm

Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

This article analyzes the development of the concept of informed consent in the context of the culture and economics of Japanese medicine, and locates that development within the framework of the nation's civil law system. Part II sketches the cultural foundations of medical paternalism in Japan; explores the economic incentives (many of them administratively directed) that have sustained physicians' traditional dominant roles; and describes the judiciary's hesitancy to challenge physicians' professional discretion. Part III delineates the forces testing the paternalist model: the undermining of the physicians' personal knowledge of their patients that accompanies the shift from neighborhood clinic to high-tech …

Implications Of United States Labor Laws For Foreign Corporations With Operations In The United States, Michael Cozzillio, Laurence Hoffman

Michael J. Cozzillio

No abstract provided.