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Full-Text Articles in Comparative and Foreign Law

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 …


Thoughts From Across The Water On Hearsay And Confrontation, Richard D. Friedman Jan 1998

Thoughts From Across The Water On Hearsay And Confrontation, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

This article draws on the history of the hearsay rule, and on recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, to argue that the right to confrontation should be recognised as a basic principle of the law of evidence, and that aspects of the Law Commission's proposals for reform of the hearsay rule, and of the Home Office's proposals for restrictions on the right of cross-examination, are therefore unsatisfactory.


From Blackstone To Bentham: Common Law Versus Legislation In Eighteenth-Century Britain, James Oldham May 1991

From Blackstone To Bentham: Common Law Versus Legislation In Eighteenth-Century Britain, James Oldham

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Province of Legislation Determined: Legal Theory in Eighteenth Century Britain by David Lieberman


Crime And The Courts In England 1660-1800, Frank C. Shaw May 1987

Crime And The Courts In England 1660-1800, Frank C. Shaw

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800 by J.M. Beattie


Statute Of Frauds--The Doctrine Of Equitable Estoppel And The Statute Of Frauds, Michigan Law Review Nov 1967

Statute Of Frauds--The Doctrine Of Equitable Estoppel And The Statute Of Frauds, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

In 1677 the English Parliament enacted the first Statute of Frauds to prevent "many fraudulent practices, which are commonly endeavored to be upheld by perjury and subornation of perjury." The trial system then existing in England was forced to depend upon unreliable juries, and relied upon few rules of evidence besides the rule treating parties to an action as incompetent witnesses. Thus, in passing the Statute, Parliament sought to minimize the abuses possible under the trial system by providing that virtually no important contract would be enforceable unless reduced to writing.


Federal Rule 44.1 And The "Fact" Approach To Determining Foreign Law: Death Knell For A Die-Hard Doctrine, Arthur R. Miller Feb 1967

Federal Rule 44.1 And The "Fact" Approach To Determining Foreign Law: Death Knell For A Die-Hard Doctrine, Arthur R. Miller

Michigan Law Review

The objective of this article is to analyze Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 44.1, which was developed as part of the reforms of the last decade and became effective on July 1, 1966 and to assess its capacity to rationalize the process of determining foreign law in the federal courts. What follows is an excursion through the past doctrine and into the probable future treatment of foreign law in the federal courts, an exploration of the interrelationship between the new Rule and other phases of federal civil procedure, and an analysis of the prospect that the Rule's effectiveness may be …


British Antitrust In Action, Michael Conant Apr 1961

British Antitrust In Action, Michael Conant

Michigan Law Review

The Restrictive Trade Practices Act of 1956 was the first positive anti-monopoly statute in the United Kingdom since the Statute of Monopolies in 1623. Now that the statute has been in effect four years there are sufficient decisions and consent orders to make possible a report on its operation. Since most American readers are unfamiliar with the legal and economic background of the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, the prior common law in this area and the 1948 monopolies investigation statute will be summarized first. This summary is followed by an analysis of the structure of the 1956 Act, of the …


Required Joinder Of Claims, Dieter L. Hoegen May 1957

Required Joinder Of Claims, Dieter L. Hoegen

Michigan Law Review

In review we can say that within a comparatively broad field of the American law required joinder of claims is the rule. There are some exceptions. The German law has no rule of compulsory joinder of claims. Here, there are some exceptions, too. In this sense and within a field which is marked out by the American rule and the German exceptions, the relationship of rule and exceptions is reversed in the two systems.


Required Joinder Of Claims, Dieter L. Hoegen Apr 1957

Required Joinder Of Claims, Dieter L. Hoegen

Michigan Law Review

This comparative study is confined to the situation of one claimant against one claimee. The principles which will be considered seem to be rather well settled both in the American and the German law. The fact, however, that besides many a common result we shall find fundamental differences in the pertinent basic concepts of the American and German systems makes the discussion worthwhile. It may, at least, promote a reconsideration of the propriety of those concepts.


Judicial Review In Europe, Gottfried Dietze Feb 1957

Judicial Review In Europe, Gottfried Dietze

Michigan Law Review

The years following the Second World War witnessed a wave of constitution making in Europe. In East and West alike, popular government was instituted through new basic laws. But whereas the constitutions of Eastern Europe established a Rousseauistic form. of democracy through the creation of an omnipotent legislature, those of the West, while reflecting a belief in parliamentary government, to a larger or smaller degree limited the power of the legislature through the introduction of judicial review. This acceptance of judicial review can be attributed mainly to two factors. It sprung from a distrust of a parliamentarism under which, during …


Foreign Personal Representatives, Banks Mcdowell Jr. Jan 1957

Foreign Personal Representatives, Banks Mcdowell Jr.

Michigan Legal Studies Series

In dealing with the legal rules affecting foreign personal representatives, the author of the present monograph is to be commended for the lucid analysis in the following pages of the principal questions that an executor or administrator appointed in one state will encounter in the administration of a single estate on a multi-jurisdictional basis: his right to sue and liability to suit in other states, the effects of his extra-legal action outside the state of his appointment, and the possibilities of reforming existing laws so as to make feasible a system of single administration of decedents' estates. This analysis is …


Schwartz: The Code Napoleon And The Common Law World, J. G. Castel Jan 1957

Schwartz: The Code Napoleon And The Common Law World, J. G. Castel

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Code Napoleon and the Common Law World. Edited by Bernard Schwartz.


Lawson: A Common Lawyer Looks At The Civil Law, F. S. C. Northrop May 1956

Lawson: A Common Lawyer Looks At The Civil Law, F. S. C. Northrop

Michigan Law Review

A Review of A Common Lawyer Looks at the Civil Law. By F. H. Lawson.


Comparative Negligence, William L. Prosser Feb 1953

Comparative Negligence, William L. Prosser

Michigan Law Review

It is the purpose of this article to inquire, so far as possible, into the actual operation of the damage apportionment statutes, and to offer some conclusions as to the most desirable form of act for any legislature about to set forth upon these relatively uncharted seas.


Restraints On Alienation Of Legal Interests In Michigan Property: Ii, William F. Fratcher Apr 1952

Restraints On Alienation Of Legal Interests In Michigan Property: Ii, William F. Fratcher

Michigan Law Review

"Estate for life" is a generic term embracing interests in land of several types. The duration of such an estate may be measured by the life of the tenant himself, by the life of some other person, by the joint lives of a group of persons (i.e., the life of the member of the group who first dies), or by the life of the survivor of a group of persons. In the last two cases the tenant himself may or may not be a member of the group. When the duration of the estate is measured by the life of …


Restraints On Alienation Of Legal Interests In Michigan Property: I, William F. Fratcher Mar 1952

Restraints On Alienation Of Legal Interests In Michigan Property: I, William F. Fratcher

Michigan Law Review

During the century and a half which followed the Norman Conquest, the owner of land who attempted to transfer it might meet with opposition from three interested parties, his feudal overlord, his heir apparent and his tenant. His feudal overlord might object to a transfer by way of substitution, that is, one under the terms of which the transferor did not retain a reversion; because the proposed transferee was not a suitable person to perform the feudal services due for the land. As these services were frequently of a personal or military nature such an objection was not necessarily captious. …


Insolvent Decedents' Estates, Kurt H. Nadelmann Jun 1951

Insolvent Decedents' Estates, Kurt H. Nadelmann

Michigan Law Review

The problems of insolvent decedents' estates have created special difficulties in all legal systems. Two unrelated fields of the law are involved: decedents' estates and insolvency. Treatment of the topic in works on one or the other field is often scanty and few studies exist which deal exclusively with insolvent decedents' estates law. Research in the conflicts problems of the field has led the writer to investigate the differences in the treatment of insolvent decedents' estates in this country, other common law countries, and countries of the civil law. Results of this study are used to discuss problems of the …


Optional Terms (Jus Dispositivum) And Required Terms (Jus Cogens) In The Law Of Contracts, Arthur Lenhoff Nov 1946

Optional Terms (Jus Dispositivum) And Required Terms (Jus Cogens) In The Law Of Contracts, Arthur Lenhoff

Michigan Law Review

In speaking of statutory law in the common law courts, lawyers have ascribed to it a limiting office, namely, that of interference with the parties' freedom to act and transact at their pleasure. A closer consideration shows them that the function of statutory law varies not only with the legal system to which it belongs, but also with the structural changes within a single legal system.


Fortescue's De Laudibus: A Review, Max Radin Aug 1944

Fortescue's De Laudibus: A Review, Max Radin

Michigan Law Review

In this opus perfectissimum, Dr. Chrimes, whose book, English Constitutional Ideas in the Fifteenth Century, marks him as the man best fitted for the task, has filled one of the gaps which existed in the scientific examination of the sources of English law. We have Mr. Nicholl's Britton and Professor Woodbine's Glanvil and his still unfinished Bracton, Mr. Ogg's edition of Selden's Dissertatio, and the Hughes-Crump-Johnson edition of The Dialogue on the Exchequer. All these are admirable. There are left only St. Germain and Fleta, both of which cry aloud for an editor of the quality …


Revocation Of Wills By Subsequent Change In The Condition Or Circumstances Of The Testator, Elizabeth Durfee Jan 1942

Revocation Of Wills By Subsequent Change In The Condition Or Circumstances Of The Testator, Elizabeth Durfee

Michigan Law Review

Among the oldest rules in the law of wills are those by which a will is held to be revoked by implication by certain changes in the circumstances of the testator. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these rules. Special reference will be made to statutes, both those which deal generally with the subject and those which provide specifically for the effect of particular events, such as marriage; no attempt will be made, however to analyze the latter type of statute exhaustively. By way of introduction, a brief historical survey of the doctrine should be made.


The Codification Of The French Customs, John P. Dawson Apr 1940

The Codification Of The French Customs, John P. Dawson

Michigan Law Review

A renewed attack on central problems of English legal history can gain fresh perspective from the history of French law. France and England entered the later middle ages with a common fund of legal and political institutions. Much of the area that was to be included in modern France was united with England under a common sovereign; political institutions were shaped by the same basic forces into similar forms of feudal organization; private law was largely composed of unformulated popular custom, remarkably similar even in detail. As early as the thirteenth century the tendencies toward divergence, both in law and …


Restricted Testation In New Zealand, Australia And Canada, Joseph Dainow May 1938

Restricted Testation In New Zealand, Australia And Canada, Joseph Dainow

Michigan Law Review

One of the long accepted differences between the common law and the civil law has been the freedom of testamentary disposition of the former as contrasted with the limitations of the latter. Thus, while the continental testator was limited in the amount of property that he could leave away from the members of his immediate family, the Englishman could cut them all off without a penny. In other common-law countries the same liberty was continued; but recent years have witnessed important departures.


Alternative Parties And The Common Law Hangover, Dale E. Bennett Nov 1933

Alternative Parties And The Common Law Hangover, Dale E. Bennett

Michigan Law Review

Professor Edson R. Sunderland stated in 1920 that a glaring failure chargeable to the legal profession in America was "its ignorance and indifference to improvements in procedural practice developed in other jurisdictions," pointing out that while discoveries by foreign scholars in the field of medicine were eagerly accepted, similar innovations in the field of law were uniformly ignored regardless of merit. Such apathy is largely attributable to the legislatures, but the courts cannot be given an entirely clean bill of health, for attempted procedural reforms have often been nullified, in whole or in part, by technical construction and an attempted …


Limitation Of Actions And The Conflict Of Laws, Edgar H. Ailes Feb 1933

Limitation Of Actions And The Conflict Of Laws, Edgar H. Ailes

Michigan Law Review

All civilized States, in the interest of an efficient administration of justice, have felt compelled to fix time limits beyond which access to their courts would be denied to aggrieved parties. Interest reipublicae ut sit finis litium. This was true even of Roman law in which actions were normally perpetual. Since the limitations enacted by various legislatures differ widely, and since debts are transitory, permitting suit wherever the creditor can find the debtor (at least in countries where the Common Law prevails), it is of the first practical importance that definite rules of Conflict of Laws be evolved to …


The Scope Of Judicial Review, Edson R. Sunderland Feb 1929

The Scope Of Judicial Review, Edson R. Sunderland

Michigan Law Review

There was nothing known to the common law which was, or could properly be called, a true appeal from one court to another, and this was so in England until the judicature act of 1873. There were, however, certain imperfect and restricted methods by which some sort of redress could be had for an unjust decision.


Book Reviews, Edwin W. Patterson, Edson R. Sunderland, C E. Griffin May 1922

Book Reviews, Edwin W. Patterson, Edson R. Sunderland, C E. Griffin

Michigan Law Review

The title of this brilliant little volume might, more accurately, have been, "The Spirits of the Common Law," for it depicts the common law as the battleground of many conflicting spirits, from which a few relatively permanent ideas and ideals have emerged triumphant. As a whole, the book is a pluralistic-idealistic interpretation of legal history. Idealistic, because Dean Pound finds that the fundamentals of the 'common law have been shaped by ideas and ideals rather than by economic determinism or class struggle; he definitely rejects a purely economic interpretation of legal history, although he demands a sociological one (pp. io-ii). …


A New Function For Courts - Declaring The Rights Of Parties, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1919

A New Function For Courts - Declaring The Rights Of Parties, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

In a recent opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States Justice Holmes makes this interesting observation:- "The foundation of jurisdiction is physical power, although in civilized times it is not necessary to maintain that power throughout proceedings properly begun." Paraphrased, the statement comes to this: In early times the basis of jurisdiction is the existence and the constant assertion of physical power over the parties to the action, but as civilization advances the mere existence of such power tends to make its exercise less and less essential.


Sociological Interpretation Of Law, Joseph H. Drake Jun 1918

Sociological Interpretation Of Law, Joseph H. Drake

Articles

It is not the purpose of this paper to essay a definition of either of the formidable words in the title. The object is rather to call attention away from the metaphysical question, what is law? to the sociological question, how may we best attain justice in the administration of law? and, by the aid of some examples from history and comparative law, to justify as legal and constitutional the sociological method of interpretation. That such justification is necessary is evident from the fact that although the dictum of Mr. Justice. HOLMES in the dissenting opinion in Lochner v. New …


The Statute Of Uses And Active Trusts, Edgar N. Durfee Jan 1918

The Statute Of Uses And Active Trusts, Edgar N. Durfee

Articles

To explain the survival of uses, alias trusts, after the Statute of Uses, one is probably justified in assuming a sympathetic attitude toward this Equitable institution on the part of the Common Law Judges. Maitland, Equity, 29. But, however predisposed the Judges might be, they would have to satisfy themselves, perhaps others as well, that they were interpreting rather than nullifying the Statute. Only such uses could be saved as could be "distinguished." The case of the use raised upon a chattel interest is clear enough, as it was without the letter, and fairly without the mischief, of the Statute. …