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Full-Text Articles in Comparative and Foreign Law

How Does The Law Put A Historical Analogy To Work?: Defining The Imposition Of "A Condition Analogous To That Of A Slave" In Modern Brazil, Rebecca J. Scott, Leonardo Augusto De Andrade Barbosa, Carlos Henrique Borlido Haddad Dec 2017

How Does The Law Put A Historical Analogy To Work?: Defining The Imposition Of "A Condition Analogous To That Of A Slave" In Modern Brazil, Rebecca J. Scott, Leonardo Augusto De Andrade Barbosa, Carlos Henrique Borlido Haddad

Articles

Over the last decades, the Brazilian state has engaged in concerted legal efforts to identify and prosecute cases of what officials refer to as “slave labor” (trabalho escravo). At a conceptual level, the campaign has paired the constitutional protection of human dignity and the “social value of labor” with an expansive interpretation of the offense described in Article 149 of the Criminal Code as “the reduction of a person to a condition analogous to that of a slave.” At the operational level, mobile teams of inspectors and prosecutors have intervened in thousands of work sites, and labor prosecutors …


Transparency And Comparative Executive Clemency: Global Lessons For Pardon Reform In The United States, Andrew Novak Jan 2016

Transparency And Comparative Executive Clemency: Global Lessons For Pardon Reform In The United States, Andrew Novak

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article argues for transparency in the clemency process and contends that the concept of clemency as a benign sovereign’s “act of grace” is no longer appropriate in the modern world where executive action is subordinate to principles of constitutional due process and administrative equity. Despite calls for federal clemency reform in the United States, little comparative research examines clemency elsewhere in the common law world. This Article compares common law countries’ constitutional clemency mechanisms designed to promote openness, public and victim participation, and rational decision-making. In addition, this Article proposes four reforms to the U.S. pardon system that other …


Retention And Reform In Japanese Capital Punishment, David T. Johnson Jan 2016

Retention And Reform In Japanese Capital Punishment, David T. Johnson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article focuses on the failure of abolition and of death penalty reform in Japan in order to illustrate contingencies in the trajectory of capital punishment in the modern world. Part I describes three facts about postwar Japan that help explain why it retains capital punishment today: a missed opportunity for abolition during the American occupation of the country after World War II; the long-term rule of a conservative political party; and economic and geopolitical power that has enabled the country to resist the influence of international norms. Part II describes a few ways in which Japanese capital punishment has …


Prosecuting Rape Victims While Rapists Run Free: The Consequences Of Police Failure To Investigate Sex Crimes In Britain And The United States, Lisa Avalos Jan 2016

Prosecuting Rape Victims While Rapists Run Free: The Consequences Of Police Failure To Investigate Sex Crimes In Britain And The United States, Lisa Avalos

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Imagine that a close friend is raped, and you encourage her to report it to the police. At first, she thinks that the police are taking her report seriously, but the investigation does not seem to move forward. The next thing she knows, they accuse her of lying and ultimately file charges against her. You and your friend are in shock; this outcome never entered your minds. This nightmare may seem inconceivable, but it has in fact occurred repeatedly in both the United States and Britain—countries that are typically lauded for their high levels of gender equality. In Britain, where …


From Arbitrariness To Coherency In Sentencing: Reducing The Rate Of Imprisonment And Crime While Saving Billions Of Taxpayer Dollars, Mirko Bagaric Jan 2014

From Arbitrariness To Coherency In Sentencing: Reducing The Rate Of Imprisonment And Crime While Saving Billions Of Taxpayer Dollars, Mirko Bagaric

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Dealing with criminals and preventing crime is a paramount public policy issue. Sentencing law and practice is the means through which we ultimately deal with criminal offenders. Despite its importance and wide-ranging reforms in recent decades, sentencing remains an intellectual and normative wasteland. This has resulted in serious human rights violations of both criminals and victims, incalculable public revenue wastage, and a failure to implement effective measures to reduce crime. This Article attempts to bridge the gulf that exists between knowledge and practice in sentencing and lays the groundwork for a fair and efficient sentencing system. The Article focuses on …


Is There A Future For Leniency In The U.S. Criminal Justice System?, Nora V. Demleitner May 2005

Is There A Future For Leniency In The U.S. Criminal Justice System?, Nora V. Demleitner

Michigan Law Review

The spring 2004 release of the gruesome pictures of sexual humiliation and torture at Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad revealed how some U.S. troops, intelligence officers, and private contractors treated Iraqi prisoners taken during and after the war. High-ranking government officials may have condoned, if not encouraged, the abuses. Only reluctantly have they agreed to extend protections customarily accorded civilians and military fighters during a war to individuals detained in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Congressional investigations appear to have stalled, military inquiries have been manifold but resultless. Only a handful of low ranking soldiers have been court-martialed, and a …


An Empirically Based Comparison Of American And European Regulatory Approaches To Police Investigation, Christopher Slobogin Jan 2001

An Empirically Based Comparison Of American And European Regulatory Approaches To Police Investigation, Christopher Slobogin

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article takes a comparative and empirical look at two of the most significant methods of police investigation: searches for and seizures of tangible evidence and interrogation of suspects. It first compares American doctrine regulating these investigative tools with the analogous rules predominant in Europe. It then discusses research on the American system that sheds light on the relative advantages and disadvantages of the two regulatory regimes.


The Emerging International Consensus As To Criminal Procedure Rules, Craig M. Bradley Jan 1993

The Emerging International Consensus As To Criminal Procedure Rules, Craig M. Bradley

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article will demonstrate that these general claims, as well as certain observations about specific countries, were, with one significant exception, substantially wrong when they were written. More importantly, due to significant developments in several countries in the years since those reports came out, they are even more wrong now. That is, not only have the U.S. concepts of pre-interrogation warnings to suspects, a search warrant requirement, and the use of an exclusionary remedy to deter police misconduct been widely adopted, but in many cases other countries have gone beyond the U.S. requirements.


Some Impressions And Reflections On Observing Legal Proceedings In The People's Republic Of China, Christina B. Whitman, Sallyanne Payton Jan 1978

Some Impressions And Reflections On Observing Legal Proceedings In The People's Republic Of China, Christina B. Whitman, Sallyanne Payton

Articles

Very few foreign visitors have been allowed an opportunity to observe legal proceedings in the People's Republic of China. We were included in the first American group ever favored with a professional exchange legal tour. During the month of May 1977, we spent three weeks in China with a group of Black American judges and lawyers, headed by the Hon. George C. Crockett, Jr., Judge of the Recorder's Court of Detroit. Since we ourselves would be skeptical of the claim of a visitor to the United States who purported to have "studied" the American legal process during the course of …


Report On Prosecution, Rollin M. Perkins Nov 1931

Report On Prosecution, Rollin M. Perkins

Michigan Law Review

The logical starting point was the discovery and restatement of existing knowledge and information on these subjects, and because of the tremendous mass of material which has appeared in the form of surveys and reports within the last decade and a half, it was deemed wise to enlist the services of an expert in such matters. The analysis which he has produced, let it be added, amply justifies the Commission in his selection.