Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Improving Taiwan's Civil Procedure By Citizen Participation: Focusing On Expert Testimony In Public Interest Cases, Yin-Song Hsu

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

“The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.”

United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr's famous quotation adequately explains the institutional purpose of citizen participation in important trials. Court decisions require both logical reasoning and a practical adherence to the reality of citizens’ experiences. Currently, the Taiwanese public believes that judicial decisions are often not in line with national perceptions of law. In addition, judges’ limited social experiences often cause the public to distrust their verdicts. The life experiences of citizens can properly fill in the gaps in judicial knowledge and supplement the …

Developing A Legal Framework Governing Public University Endowments In Saudi Arabia: Lessons From The American Experience With Umifa And Upmifa, Rayan Jamal Alkhalawi

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Saudi universities have recently started building and growing their endowments. Despite the increasing interest in university endowments, there is currently no specific legal framework that governs the area of university endowments in Saudi Arabia. The lack of a specific legal framework obstructs the advancement of university endowments. Therefore, this dissertation delineates the development and characteristics of the prevailing legal framework governing university endowments in the United States. The dissertation focuses on the development of the Uniform Management of Institutional Fund Act and the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Fund Act. The dissertation also uses in depth interviews with professional working …

Derivative Suit Under The Saudi Companies Law: Theory And Best Practice, Ahmed Saeed Khabti

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Saudi Arabia has been focused on diversification of its economy and attracting foreign investors. Countries that provide strong shareholder protection are more likely to attract foreign investors. However, there is a need for greater protection of minority shareholders in Saudi Arabia. This is because Saudi’s companies law fails to equip minority shareholders with adequate protective rights. A current issue with the new Saudi companies law can be linked to derivative suit, which is very important for both foreign investors and local investors. Derivative suit in Saudi Arabia is very limited and difficult to pursue because under article 79 of Saudi …

Protecting Minority Shareholders In Close Corporations: An Analysis And Critique Of The Statutory Protection In The Saudi Companies Law, Abdulrahman Nabil Alsaleh

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Worldwide, the protection of minority shareholders in public corporations has received most of the corporate scholars’ attention. This tendency, therefore, has been reflected in the negligence of the same group but in close corporations. A close corporation minority shareholder confronts distinctive issues caused by the locked-in structure of close corporations. The lack of liquid secondary market, the oppression by majority shareholders, and the high expectations held by minority shareholders all contribute to the minority shareholders’ concern that they may be deprived of a voice in management or opportunistically be taken advantage of by those in power. Although these structural issues …

Insider Trading Framework In United States And Egyptian Stock Markets, Elsayed Eldaydamony

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the law of insider trading in both the American and Egyptian legal systems. It seeks to pinpoint the policy rationale behind prohibiting insider trading, the theories of civil enforcement and criminalization, and the concept of tipping in the United States. It also analyzes the express statutory prohibition under Egyptian law. Furthermore, it explains the doctrinal link between securities fraud and insider trading in the U.S. as well as the enforcement mechanisms in place at the SEC, the NYSE, and the NASDAQ. It also surveys the surveillance authority of the Egyptian Financial Regularity Authority and of the Egyptian …

Evaluating A Unified Intellectual Property System Of Internet Service Providers In The Electronic Commerce Law -- A Comparative Research Between China And The U.S., Yifan Huang

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

As the Electronic Commerce Law went into effective in Jan. 1st, 2019, not only did China establish a unified IP protection system of ISPs, but also set up a blueprint for a comprehensive mechanism of ISPs for the future improvement. The question is whether this new law can effectively prevent the serious IP infringement issues of ISPs and therefore successfully improve the IP protection in China. To answerer this question, the dissertation analyzes the development of the mechanism of ISPs in copyright and trademark regimes before the Electronic Commerce Law, and seeks to demonstrate the impact of the Electronic Commerce …

Rethinking The 1948 Genocide Convention For North Korean Political Camps, Hyunmok Lee

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The term genocide implies attacks on only four groups – national, racial, ethnic and religious – enumerated in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In terms of protection of political group, severe political persecutions targeting a certain political group would not establish a successful genocide charge in courts and international courts have rendered judgements applying crimes against humanity to such atrocities. However, it is important to consider the possibility of protecting political groups regarding the victims in the North Korean political camps were selected on political grounds and their groupness is …

Public/Private Distinction In Islamic Jurisprudence: Reflection On Islamic Constitutionalism, Faris F. Almalki

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The study seeks to attract scholars' attention to the importance of normative theory in the process of constitutionalism in the Islamic world. The study argues that Islamic jurisprudence requires a state or a public authority to ensure the conformity of outward with Islamic norms. Accordingly, the preservation of Islamic norms is a central value controlling the dynamics of public/private distinction. Thus, the central value determines the meaning of limited government, and the study argues this central value in constitutional level defines people's liberties. Then, the study discusses the effect of the Islamic normative theory on the liberal-Islamic model of constitutionalism. …

An Empirical Study Of Workers' Demands Through Industrial Actions: A Comparative Analysis Of The United States, Germany And The People's Republic Of China Under The Bargaining Model, Xiaohan Sun

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The Chinese traditional manufacturing industry used to rely on raw materials and low labor costs to achieve a competitive advantage, however, the Chinese lowest–cost labor market is no longer competitive and the Chinese manufacturing industry is not the strongest player in the high-tech area. The transition of manufacturing industry is confronted with difficulties and challenges.

From the prior research, one of the reasons over labor conflicts is the awareness of rights consciousness. Employment dispute cases have had a significant increase since 2008, and labor disputes gradually increased since the year 2014. Industrial actions, such as strikes and protests, became the …

A Comparative Study Of The Law Of Dismissal In The U.S. And China, Zhenxing Ke

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The Labor Law in China, enacted in 1994, was the first statute in China to stipulate dismissal protections. The Employment Contract Law, a more recent law that went into effect in January 2008, strengthened Chinese dismissal protections. For example, in the summary termination about the misconduct, this law only allows six instances for termination, and if a misconduct committed by an employee is not covered in these six instances, it is hard for an employer to discharge this employee legally.

In contrast, America has a more flexible employment law. In America, the doctrine of dismissal is dominated by the …

Gender Equality Menace Under Liberia Domestic Relations Law, Yah-Yeplah Dolo-Barbu

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Like most Africa countries, Liberia has a dual legal system, that is, the customary and statutory. Cultural and traditional practices influence some of the laws. Laws in both legal systems discriminate against women in overt ways, especially laws that deal with the private sphere, such as marriage, divorce, custody, domestic violence, property, legitimacy, and inheritance. This dissertation seeks to identify inequality in the Liberian Domestic Relation laws that arise from facially discriminatory laws, facially neutral laws and omissions in the law. It also posits that the court’s role in interpreting these issues has been inadequate, and the legislature is reluctant …

The Tension Between Korean Environmental Protection Policies And U.S. Investors' Interests Under The U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, Changsung Kang

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

South Korea’s low carbon and ‘green growth’ policies possess potential regulatory changes that reduce foreign investors’ interests and legitimate expectations concerning the profitability of their businesses. Although international investment law protects a government’s right to protect legitimate public welfare objectives, such as environmental protection, the investor-State dispute settlement provision allows foreign investors to seek compensation for a country’s law and policies contrary to their interests. On the other hand, investor-State dispute settlement provisions inherently have many problems. Despite the problems, protecting both foreign investors’ interests and States’ regulatory sovereignty is very important. For this reason, this dissertation examined why the …

Toward The Search For The Proper Liability Rule For Harms Resulting From Sources Of Risk: A Different Approach To The Choice Between Strict Liability And Fault-Based Regime, Wen-Hsuan Yang

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

An important issue in Taiwan today concerns the rising tension between strict liability and negligence. Article 191-3 of the Civil Code of Taiwan imposes a fault-based standard of liability on persons conducting dangerous activities. On the other hand, the majority of scholars believe that to afford greater protection, this rule should be changed into a strict liability rule.

Traditionally, three arguments make it preferable to impose strict liability under certain circumstances. First, strict liability induces more safety incentives on the part of the defendant. Second, fairness requires that one who benefits from conducting dangerous activities should bear the risk of …

Potential Regulatory Systems For Carbon Capture And Sequestration (Ccs): Legal Analysis Of The Current And Future Regulatory Systems And Recommendations For Acceptance In South Korea, Moonsook Park

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to create legal and regulatory systems for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), based on demonstrating rationales of this technology. This dissertation analyzes whether or not existing international and domestic (including the United States, Australia, China, and South Korea) laws could cover potential legal issues. After exploring desirable directions for addressing key legal issues regarding CCS, this dissertation ultimately aims to set up a legal and regulatory framework for CCS in South Korea.

Specifically, permits, environmental impact assessments, liability, and property rights issues are of common importance, which are priority areas to establish well. In …

Achieving Justice Through Adr: An Analysis Of The Korean Mediation System, Yonghwan Choung

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to reconsider Korean judicial mediation as a part of alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) and to discuss the possible legal transition of Korean judicial mediation into private sector mediation.

Similar to other states’ judicial problems, Korea has also faced overloaded case dockets, congestion of the civil process, an expensive legal process, and emotional stress on parties during the procedures. The Korean judicial authority continuously developed the Korean mediation programs, which can be categorized as court-related mediation, including court-annexed and court-connected mediations. Based on enactment of the Judicial Conciliation of Civil Disputes Act of 1990 (“JCCDA”) …

Compensatory Damages Granted In Personal Injuries: Supplementing Islamic Jurisprudence With Elements Of Common Law, Majed Alshaibani

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation discusses the types of compensatory damages, monetary and non-monetary losses, granted in Saudi Arabian personal injury cases. The main issue of this paper is to determine the missing types of monetary and nonmonetary losses when estimating compensation, thereby unjustly leaving injured parties without fair compensation. The problem of this study is that some victims do not get compensation personal injuries claims, such as loss of wages, lost earning capacity, and emotional distress. This is due to many reasons. One of the most obvious reasons is the absence of clearly written personal injuries statutes that cover all types of …

An Empirical Study Of China's Change-Of-Venue System In Anti-Corruption Litigation: Implications For Anti-Corruption Reform, Jinting Deng

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Presenting the first empirical study of the change-of-venue (COV) system in Chinese corruption cases, this dissertation assesses the role of the COV system in China’s anti-corruption campaign. Although COV is routinely triggered in Chinese corruption cases, COV remains understudied and poorly understood. Scholars, judges, and practitioners expected that the COV system would increase sentences by removing defendants from the jurisdictions of local judges where they would benefit from bias and cronyism. However, this dissertation’s empirical findings – from an analysis of over 800 corruption cases in Beijing – indicate that, after accounting for other variables, sentences for corruption did not …

Reforming The Death Penalty In Egypt: An Islamic Law Perspective, Gaber Mohamed

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The main goal of this thesis is to reform the imposition of the death penalty in the Egyptian legal system through the tools and theories of Islamic law. This subject will be discussed in three main chapters: The first chapter will be a survey of the current application of the death penalty in the Egyptian legal system, including the death penalty’s history, laws, courts, appeals, legal procedures, and general comments on the current application of the penalty. The second chapter will be about the death penalty in Islamic law – including the sources of Islamic law, the crimes that merit …

A Legal Analysis On Enterprises Overseas Fundraising -- A Comparison Between The U.S. Market And The Taiwanese Market, Ke Ho

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1990’s, Taiwan’s government has made efforts to upgrade economic development by attraction more foreign enterprises to enter the domestic capital market. However, in the early 2000s, statistics indicated that the number of such new enterprise listings in Taiwan actually decreased. Some believe a very important factor in the decrease to the number of new listings in Taiwan is the current regulatory framework’s lack of flexibility. It is assumed that the regulatory intensity for foreign enterprises is very high. In order to review this intensity on the foreign issuer, this dissertation presents research on the law regulating a foreign …

A Comparative Study Of Trade Dress In The U.S. And South Korea: Rethinking On The Laws And Precedents In The Apple V. Samsung, Sukchan Sim

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Trade dress originally included the packaging or dressing of products, however in this time it has been extended to put together the impression of design of products. Product configuration, the design and shape of the product itself, may also be considered a form of trade dress. The Lanham Act protects trade dress if it serves the same source-identifying function as a trademark. In U.S., trade dress was developed continuously for a long time and some significant case suggested guidelines reflecting the modern industry. In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v Samara Brothers, Inc., or TrafFix Devices, Inc. v. Marketing Displays, Inc., …

Corrupt Practices In Saudi Arabia: An Analysis Of The Legal Provisions And The Influence Of Social Factors, Abdulmajeed Alshalan

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

In 2015, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (Nazaha) conducted a survey to assess corruption in Saudi Arabia. From this survey, two main findings deserve to be highlighted. First, the survey reveals that the practice of wasta was the most prevalent corrupt practice in Saudi society, constituting about 62 percent of such practices. This finding shows that it is essential to examine such a practice not only as a legal issue, but also as a social issue. Accordingly, the first part of this dissertation is devoted to providing a legal and social analysis of the practice of wasta. Another …

In Search Of Balance: A Critical Review Of Private Placement Regulations Of The United States And South Korea, Daeil Kim

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Two main objectives of the securities offering regulation are to protect investors from frauds and to facilitate capital formation. Balancing these two objectives is a difficult task particularly for the private placement regulation. The primary focus of this study is to assess whether the current private placement regulations of the United States and South Korea are properly balancing these two objectives.

First, this study broadly reviews securities offering regulations and the historical developments of the private placement regulations of the United States and South Korea, and compares the current regulations of both countries. For the U.S. private placement regulation, this …

Improving The Effectiveness Of South Korean Product Liability Including Punitive Damages: A Comparative Analysis Between The United States And South Korea, Minsung Kim

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

As South Korean Product Liability Act was revised to adopt the U.S. doctrine of punitive damages, there is a theoretical necessity of reviewing the relations between the theory of product liability and the U.S. doctrine of punitive damages. The theory of product liability is closely related to the strict liability but the doctrine of punitive damages has been developed to regulate malicious misconducts. Due to the different basic concepts, the strict liability and malicious misconducts, the theory of product liability might not include the doctrine of punitive damages. In addition to the compatibility issue, functions of the punitive damages are …

A Legal Study On The Internal Control System For Direction Of Legislation In Korea, Sungbum Kwon

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The concept of internal control began in accounting professional groups, gradually expanded to the administrative control and the risk management from accounting control, and became an important area that cannot be excluded from the operation of the public companies in the U.S.

When the Enron scandal struck the credibility of the stock market in the U.S. in 2001, the authorities implemented reformative measures including the SOX enactment to protect investors. Although there has been a controversy over this legislation since the enactment of the SOX, it appears that the U.S. capital market has been restoring confidence with the efforts of …

Evaluating The Legal Issues Of Internet Service Providers In China -- A Comparative Copyright Analysis Of Chinese Isps, The U.S. Isps, And Japanese Isps, Yifan Huang

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is motivated by a legal challenge in the area of Chinese copyright protection: Baidu, which was considered a disaster by the copyright owners in China. To solve this legal challenge, the Chinese could learn from the legal experience of Japan and the U.S. regarding this issue.

The traditional ISP legal system provides a passive-reactive approach to the secondary copyright liability of ISPs. However, the Baidu issue in China indicates that a passive-reactive ISP model is not able to prevent copyright infringement. Recent cases in China and the U.S. reflect a new trend that the judicial branch adopts an …

A Comparative Law Perspective On Intermediaries' Direct Liability In Cloud Computing Context -- A Proposal For China, Shi Xu

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is motivated by two questions: How does the emergence of cloud-computing technology impact major countries’ copyright law regarding the issue of intermediaries’ direct liability? What should Chinese legislature body learn from those countries regarding this issue? Answering the first question lays a foundation for answering the second question.

Usually, a cloud-computing intermediary’s specific activity may possess risk of violating a copyright holder’s right of reproduction, right of communication to the public and right of distribution. Comparatively, that intermediary can raise defenses under the exhaustion doctrine and the fair use doctrine. Analysis on these two topics consists of two …

Unclaimed Money In Saudi Banks, Abdulrahman Almasnad

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

A law shall not violate its sources, especially if the sources are not subject to being overruled or ignored. However, one of the essential Islamic objectives is preserving the wealth “property.” This preservation requires protecting wealth from being acquired in illegitimate way, which will prevent the owners from controlling and enjoying their wealth. Islam protects true owners themselves from getting harmed or facing suffering caused by engaging in a transaction that involved their property. In making the law, Islamic scholars contend that any deliberate act that creates harm or makes someone suffer is “strictly prohibited” and must be rebuked. This …

Domestic Violence In Saudi Arabia, Sahar Alhabdan

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Family violence is a serious issue that affects women in Saudi Arabia. In response to cultural acceptance of violence between spouses in Saudi Arabia, the government issued its first law criminalizing domestic violence in 2013. The Protection from Abuse Act was proposed to improve protection for women and to punish the abusers, but several articles in the Act may reduce its effectiveness. Issuing laws prohibiting domestic violence cannot by itself protect women. Women should be protected under family law by preserving their rights to marry, divorce, obtain custody of children, and receive alimony. This dissertation will study the issue of …

Tort Reform In Saudi Arabia: Obstacles And Solutions, Othman Talbi

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Saudi Law is based on the broad guidelines of Sharia. This means that religion forms the basis of all Saudi law. Thus, because of the absence of a statutory law in Saudi Torts Law, Sharia’ principles take the place of the statutes. Consequently, when deciding tort cases judges need to consider these principles by interpreting them, and then apply them to each case individually. Furthermore, due to economic improvement and industrialization in Saudi Arabia, the nature and type of legal issues have changed. Therefore, complex cases have emerged for which it is very important to produce a reform resolving new …

The Reform Of The Corporate Duty Of Care In China -- From The Introspection Of Delaware And Taiwan, Jui-Chien Cheng

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The concept of fiduciary duty, derived from common law, was introduced to the Company Law of People’s Republic of China in 2005. The fiduciary duty plays an extremely important role in common law, particularly in U.S. corporate law. For this reason, one might have expected dramatic consequences from its introduction to Chinese law. In reality, however, few fiduciary lawsuits have been brought to the courts of China since 2005. There are three main reasons for the rarity of due care lawsuits.

First, Chinese fiduciary law has neither clear content nor a practical enforcement. This is especially true of the body …