Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

The Environmental Limitations To Property Rights In Brazil And The United States Of America, Leonardo Munhoz

Dissertations & Theses

This thesis aims to comparatively analyze the legislative evolution that environmental protection has experienced in the Brazilian versus the American legal systems and their relationship with property rights.

Demonstrably, Brazil’s concern with the environment actually came into focus in the 1980s and it therefore received treatment within the Federal Constitution of 1988, as a diffuse right, contributing to better, stronger environmental protection.

Similarly, the protection of the environment in the American Constitution and its statutes as well as their enforcement and interpretation within the legal system are explored.

Of concern is the notion that environmental protection and third-generation rights consequently …

Legal Origin Theory [Book Review], Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

In this volume, Simon Deakin, Professor of Law at the University of Cambridge and Katharina Pistor, the Michael I Sovem Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, considered the merits of Legal Origin Theory (LOT) in three fields of inquiry: the study of comparative law, the analysis of the relation between law and markets, and the understanding of the role of legal systems in social ordering. In their succinct and provocative introduction, Deakin and Pistor discuss the evolution of this legal theory without shying away from its controversial nature.

Politics Of Religious Freedom: Contested Genealogies, Peter G. Danchin, Saba Mahmood

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

New Affirmative Defense To The Fcpa For Countries Exiting Major Internal Strife, Chris Rohde

Law Student Publications

This paper examines whether the current exception to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), or the affirmative defenses provided by the FCPA, allow American companies to be this positive influence. Part I examines the background of the FCPA, the current exception and affirmative defenses, and the recent increase in enforcement. Part II examines the issue of whether the current exceptions and affirmative defenses permit US companies to invest in countries currently exiting major internal strife. 4 Unfortunately, neither the exception nor the affirmative defenses provide companies the leeway necessary to enter these markets without serious risk of running afoul of …

Germany Vs. Europe: The Principle Of Democracy In German Constitutional Law And The Troubled Future Of European Integration, Russell A. Miller

Scholarly Articles

This Article introduces the Demokratieprinzip. In Part II, I begin by more fully documenting the Euro-skeptical turn in Germany's relationship with Europe, paying particular attention to the central role played by the Constitutional Court's interpretation of the Demokratieprinzip. Part III, in four subparts, provides a doctrinal introduction to the principle of democracy. First, I map the principle's bases in the text of the German Grundgesetz (Basic Law or Constitution). Second, I present the gloss the Constitutional Court has given the principle, making special reference to the Court's recent decisions involving challenges to Germany's participation in measures seeking to advance European …

Is Japan Ready To Legalize Same-Sex Marriage?, Yuki Arai

Cornell Law School LL.M. Student Research Papers

Marriage is one of the most significant stages in one’s life. For many decades, gays and lesbians have been excluded from the legal institution of marriage solely because of their sexual orientation. However, the situation concerning same-sex marriage has drastically changed in many societies including the U.S. in the past several years. This recent wave of the opening of same-sex marriage has yet to reach my home country, Japan. In Japanese society where no religion opposing to same-sex activity is influential, gays and lesbians have not been persecuted criminally or religiously, which caused the absence of gay and lesbian rights …

Foreign Investments And The Market For Law, Erin O'Hara O'Connor, Susan D. Franck

Scholarly Publications

In this Article, Professors O’Hara O’Connor and Franck adapt and extend Larry Ribstein’s positive framework for analyzing the role of jurisdictional competition in the law market. Specifically, the authors provide an institutional framework focused on interest group representation that can be used to balance the tensions underlying foreign investment law, including the desire to compete to attract investments and countervailing preferences to retain domestic policymaking discretion. The framework has implications for the respective roles of BITs and investment contracts as well as the inclusion and interpretation of various foreign investment provisions.

Transplanting Secured Transactions Law: Trapped In The Civil Code For Emerging Economy Countries, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Bich T. Nguyen

Articles

It is time for Vietnam to amend its secured transactions law by creating a body of secured transactions law separate from the Civil Code. This new secured transactions law should embody the international community’s unitary approach. Separating secured transactions law from the Civil Code would allow Vietnam to revise its secured transactions law to respond and adapt to market reality, without waiting for the entire Civil Code to be revised all at once.

Limits Of Procedural Choice Of Law, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Commercial parties have long enjoyed significant autonomy in questions of substantive law. However, litigants do not have anywhere near the same amount of freedom to decide procedural matters. Instead, parties in litigation are generally considered to be subject to the procedural law of the forum court.

Although this particular conflict of laws rule has been in place for many years, a number of recent developments have challenged courts and commentators to consider whether and to what extent procedural rules should be considered mandatory in nature. If procedural rules are not mandatory but are instead merely “sticky” defaults, then it may …

Revolution Imagined: Cause Advocacy, Consumer Rights, And The Evolving Role Of Ngos In Thailand, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

This article describes the founding and evolution of a “Thai-style” NGO dedicated to consumer protection. Through a description of the NGO and the career of its founder, the article brings to light features of the evolution of NGO based advocacy in Thailand from the student uprising in 1973 to the present. The legacy of the 1973 October Generation of activists continues to influence development of NGOs but new emphasis on rights has emerged since the era of constitutional reform in the 1990s. Many NGOs now make use of litigation to attempt to achieve social change, but litigation, like other long-standing …

The Age Of Constitutions In The Americas, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been aptly called the “Age of Codifications.” The same period was also the Age of Constitutions. Although a great deal is known about the migration of prenational and transnational legal sources and ideas that led to national codes of civil and criminal law in Europe and the Americas, much less is known about similar processes on the constitutional level. Constitutional historians have been more parochial than their private law counterparts, most likely because of the relationship between constitutions and nations. In the light of independence, nations immediately needed constitutions to solidify gains and …

Procedural Justice Beyond Borders: Mediation In Ghana, Jacqueline Nolan-Haley, James Kwasi Annor-Ohene

Faculty Scholarship

Ghana enacted comprehensive alternative dispute resolution legislation in 2010 with the specific goals of providing access to justice and promoting domestic and foreign direct investment (The Act). A significant aspect of the Act was the inclusion of customary arbitration and mediation. The focus of this Article is on mediation as this is the first time that mediation has been included in a statute in Ghana. The Act’s definition of mediation reflects an understanding of the mediation process based upon the western values of individual autonomy and party self-determination. These principles represent a significant departure from the more communal values of …

Bulk Metadata Collection: Statutory And Constitutional Considerations, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephony metadata runs contrary to Congress’s intent in enacting the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The program also violates the statute in three ways: the requirement that records sought be “relevant to an authorized investigation;” the requirement that information could be obtained via subpoena duces tecum; and the steps required for use of pen registers and trap and trace devices. Additionally, the program gives rise to serious constitutional concerns. Efforts by the government to save the program on grounds of third party doctrine are unpersuasive in light of the unique circumstances of …

Redefining Relevancy And Exclusionary Discretion In Sir James Fitzjames Stephen’S Indian Evidence Act Of 1872: The Singapore Experiment And Lessons For Other Indian Evidence Act Jurisdictions, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In many jurisdictions, the rules of evidence can often be instrumental in determining the outcome of a dispute. But to what extent can evidence law be controlled by codification, or is it better to leave its regulation and development to the judges via common law? In an attempt to bridge the gap between the rules of an antiquated evidence statute and the modern realities of practice, Singapore’s Evidence Act was amended in 2012. Certain relevancy provisions were amended to allow greater admissibility of evidence, while new provisions were introduced to act as a check against abuse. However, it will be …

A Dynamic Theory Of Judicial Role, David Landau

Scholarly Publications

Recent scholarship has focused heavily on the activism of courts in the fragile democracies of the “Global South.” Courts in countries like India, Colombia, and South Africa have issued landmark decisions in difficult political environments, in the process raising unanswered questions about the appropriate conception of judicial role in these climates. Much of the judicial and academic effort in these contexts is self-consciously oriented towards using courts to carry out basic improvements in the quality of political systems seen as badly deficient. In other words, the core task is to improve the quality of the democratic system over time. These …

Egypt, Lila Meadows, Nadia Adib Bamieh, Janet E. Lord

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter is a factbook summarizing disability laws, organisations, and statistics in Egypt as of 2014.

The Model Penal Code And The Dilemma Of Criminal Law Codification In The United States, Stephen C. Thaman

All Faculty Scholarship

In this chapter, the author discusses the legal international comparative study of codification. The author draws upon insights gained from the IACL Thematic Conference of 2012.

On The Ninth Circuit's New Definition Of Piracy: Japanese Whalers V. The Sea Shepherd-Who Are The Real "Pirates" (I.E. Plunderers)?, Barry H. Dubner, Claudia Pastorius

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Reply To "Hollow Spaces", George A. Bermann, Jack J. Coe Jr., Christopher R. Drahozal, Catherine A. Rogers

Faculty Scholarship

This short essay responds to Chip Brower's thoughtful and meticulous critique of Tentative Draft No. 2 of the Restatement Third of the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration. While we appreciate the concerns he raises, we disagree with the conclusions he draws both about the Restatement and the drafting process. We address here what we understand to be Professor Brower's major criticisms of the work.

Exporting Standards: The Externalization Of The Eu's Regulatory Power Via Markets, Anu Bradford

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the unprecedented and deeply underestimated global power that the EU is exercising through its legal institutions and standards, and how it successfully exports that influence to the rest of the world. Introducing the notion of “the Brussels Effect,” the Article shows how market forces alone are sufficient to convert EU standards into global standards. Without the need to use international institutions or seek other nations’ cooperation, the EU has a strong and growing ability to promulgate regulations that become entrenched in the legal frameworks of developed and developing markets alike, leading to a notable “Europeanization” of many …

'Quack Corporate Governance' As Traditional Chinese Medicine – The Securities Regulation Cannibalization Of China's Corporate Law And A State Regulator's Battle Against Party State Political Economic Power, Nicholas C. Howson

Articles

From the start of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) “corporatization ” project in the late 1980s, a Chinese corporate governance regime subject to increasingly enabling legal norms has been determined by mandatory regulations imposed by the PRC securities regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). Indeed, the Chinese corporate law system has been cannibalized by all - encompassing securities regulation directed at corporate governance, at least for companies with listed stock. This Article traces the path of that sustained intervention and makes a case — wholly contrary to the “quack corporate governance” critique much aired in the United States …

Feeling Another's Pain: Sympathy And Psychology Saga Style, William I. Miller

Articles

Progress is hardly a given in the humanities or the suspect sciences. In many ways we are not quite as astute as our grandparents, and they not as much as theirs, and so forth in an infinite entropic regress. Would I trade Montaigne or Stendhal’s psychological acumen for even the best work that comes from social psychology departments? In this short essay I want to show just how good some medieval people, medieval Icelanders to be exact, were at understanding the mental and emotional states of others, and if of others then presumably, though not necessarily, also of themselves. And …

Citizen Participation: Appraising The Saiban’In System, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

Of the many reforms affecting the Japanese judiciary that were undertaken in connection with the recommendations of the Justice System Reform Council, one reform above all attracted widespread public attention: the introduction of the so-called saiban'in system. In this system, mixed panels of professional judges and lay jurors judge guilt and assess penalties in serious criminal cases. Following a five-year preparation period, the new system went into effect for the specified categories of crimes for which indictments were issued on or after May 21, 2009, with the first trials under the new system commencing in August 2009. Pursuant to the …

The Role Of Comparative Law In Shaping Corporate Statutory Reforms, Marco Ventoruzzo

Journal Articles

This Essay discusses how comparative law played and plays a role in the statutory development of corporate laws. The influence of laws of other systems on the development of statutory law is common, explicit, and represents a tradition that accompanied legal reforms since the very beginning of the development of legislation.

Focusing on modern corporate law, I argue (but the argument could be extended to many other legal fields) that it is necessary to distinguish two basic ways in which comparative law influences legal reforms in one particular jurisdiction. The first one is through regulatory competition among different systems. In …

Insights From Canada For American Constitutional Federalism, Stephen F. Ross

Journal Articles

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566 (2012), has again focused widespread public attention on the Court as an arbiter of the balance of power between the federal government and the states. The topic of the proper role a nation's highest court in this respect has been important and controversial throughout not only American, but also Canadian history, raising questions of constitutional theory for a federalist republic: What justifies unelected judges interfering with the ordinary political process with regard to federalism questions? Can courts create judicially manageable doctrines to police …

Introduction-Papers From The 2013 American Society Of Comparative Law Annual Meeting, Sarah Howard Jenkins, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Corruption, Corporations, And The New Human Right, Andrew B. Spalding

Law Faculty Publications

We should no longer expect the Alien Tort Statute to be the principal federal statute that deters overseas corporate rights violations. That distinction rightly belongs to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an antibribery statute that rests on undisputed principles of corporate liability, contains a clear congressional statement of extraterritorial application, and routinely collects penalties from multinational corporate defendants. Scholars have not associated the FCPA with human rights, owing principally to a thin understanding of rights theory. But freedom from corruption can and should be understood as a human right, one that is as old as social contract theory but new …

Ongoing Issues In Russian Corporate Governance, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

This Article concerns Russian corporate governance today. It starts by arguing that there are fundamental differences between the policy questions raised by SOEs and those raised by non-SOEs and that the analysis needs to separate out these two kinds of corporations. The Article then goes on to consider several ongoing issues relating to non-SOEs. To start, it suggests the need for a set of rules, backed by reliably applied stiff sanctions, requiring disclosure of all situations where a person, by himself or as a member of a coordinated group, is the beneficial owner of sufficient shares to be able to …

Grappling At The Grassroots: Access To Justice In India's Lower Tier, Jayanth K. Krishnan, Shirish N. Kavadi, Azima Girach, Dhanaji Khupkar, Kilindi Kokal, Satyajeet Mazumdar, Nupar, Gayatri Panday, Aatreyee Sen, Aqseer Sodhi, Bharati Takale Shukla

Articles by Maurer Faculty

From 2010 to 2012, a team of academic and civil society researchers conducted extensive ethnographies of litigants, judges, lawyers, and courtroom personnel within multiple districts in three states: Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Himachal Pradesh. This Article provides an in-depth account of the everyday struggles these actors face in the pursuit of their respective objectives. The findings illustrate a complex matrix of variables-including infrastructure, staffing, judicial training and legal awareness, costs and continuances, gender and caste discrimination, power imbalances, intimidation and corruption, miscellaneous delays, and challenges with specialized forums-impact access to justice in the lower tier. The results of this study offer …

Private Enforcement Of Statutory And Administrative Law In The United States (And Other Common Law Countries), Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang, Herbert M. Kritzer

All Faculty Scholarship

Our aim in this paper, which was prepared for an international conference on comparative procedural law to be held in July 2011, is to advance understanding of private enforcement of statutory and administrative law in the United States, and, to the extent supported by the information that colleagues abroad have provided, of comparable phenomena in other common law countries. Seeking to raise questions that will be useful to those who are concerned with regulatory design, we briefly discuss aspects of American culture, history, and political institutions that reasonably can be thought to have contributed to the growth and subsequent development …