Jurisprudence Commons^™

Judicial (Self-)Portraits: Judicial Discourse In The French Legal System, Mitchel De S.-O.-L'E. Lasser

Mitchel Lasser

The French legal system, according to its official pronouncements, functions on a rigid conception of the interpretive and creative role of the civil, private law judge. This conception may be thought of as an "official portrait": It is an image or representation of the judge and of the nature of the judicial role. The official portrait, which represents an interpretive ideology that posits a perfectly grammatical mode of reading the legal code, has been the source of much confusion, especially to common lawyers. This portrait's predominance in the French legal system, and its effect on French judicial practice, has never …

Comparative Readings Of Roscoe Pound's Jurisprudence, Mitchel De S.-O.-L'E. Lasser

Mitchel Lasser

No abstract provided.

"Lit. Theory" Put To The Test: A Comparative Literary Analysis Of American Judicial Tests And French Judicial Discourse, Mitchel De S.-O.-L'E. Lasser

Mitchel Lasser

The formalism/policy dichotomy has structured American jurisprudential analyses of judicial decisionmaking for most of the twentieth century. In this Article, Professor Lasser analyzes and compares American multi-part judicial tests and French civil judicial discourse to demonstrate that the dichotomy reflects and informs the ways in which judicial decisions are written. Drawing on the works of Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, and Paul de Man, he constructs a literary methodology to analyze American and French judicial discourse. Professor Lasser contends that the formalism/policy dichotomy is part of a larger process by which the American and French judicial systems justify how they produce …

Comparative Law And Comparative Literature: A Project In Progress, Mitchel De S.-O.-L'E. Lasser

Mitchel Lasser

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing Constitutional Punishment, Paulo D. Barrozo

Paulo Barrozo

Constitutional orders punish — and they punish abundantly. However, analysis of the constitutionality of punishment tends to be reactive, focusing on constitutional violations. Considered in this light, the approach to constitutional punishment rests on conditions of unconstitutionality rather than proactively on the constitutional foundations of punishment as a legitimate liberal-democratic practice. Reactive approaches are predominantly informed by moral theories about the conditions under which punishment is legitimate. In contrast, proactive approaches call for a political theory of punishment as a legitimate practice of polities. This Article integrates the reactive and proactive approaches by bridging the divide between moral and political …

Comparative Law In A Time Of Globalization: Some Reflections, Thomas C. Kohler

Thomas C. Kohler

This piece discusses the tension between internationalization of legal ordering and the growing pressure against local and national ordering. Using Aristotle, Tocqueville, the Reception of Roman Law as forebears of the problem, I discuss three major European Court of Justice decisions (Laval, Viking and Schmidberger) as examples of the displacement of local ordering. I conclude that the task of comparative law is to focus on the importance of local ordering, keeping the human at the center and not vague principles generated by international bodies with no or little local ties.

“Friend To The Martyr, A Friend To The Woman Of Shame”: Thinking About The Law, Shame And Humiliation, Michael L. Perlin, Naomi Weinstein

Michael L Perlin

The need to pay attention to the law‘s capacity to allow for, to encourage, or (in some cases) to remediate humiliation, or humiliating or shaming behavior has increased exponentially as we begin to also take more seriously international human rights mandates, especially – although certainly not exclusively – in the context of the recently-ratified United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a Convention that calls for “respect for inherent dignity,” and characterizes "discrimination against any person on the basis of disability [as] a violation of the inherent dignity and worth of the human person...."

Humiliation and shaming, …

Truth In Adjudication—A Civil/Common Law Divide, Mathilde Cohen

Mathilde Cohen

Conclusion — The Migration Of Legal Ideas: Legislative Design And The Lawmaking Process, Robert Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This is the conclusion for an edited volume on legislative usage of foreign and international law, N. Lupo & L. Scaffardi, Legal Transplants and Parliaments: A Possible Dialogue Amongst Legislators? (2014). I assess the general turn in comparative law studies towards the behavior of elected officials, as well as the preference for increased formality in the use of foreign law. The essays in this book analyze the legal experiences of Brazil, Namibia, Australia, South Africa, Spain, the European Union, China, Canada, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Italy. Many of these countries (but not all, especially the U.S.) …

Directors’ Legal Duties And Csr: Prohibited, Permitted Or Prescribed In Contemporary Corporate Law?, Benedict Sheehy, Donald Feaver

Benedict Sheehy

Abstract: The interaction between CSR obligations and directors’ legal duties is seriously under examined. This article addresses that lack by examining directors’ duties in case law and legislation across the major commonwealth countries and the USA. It provides an analysis of leading cases and examines how they deal with the issues of the shareholder primacy doctrine, corporate legal theory, CSR and directors’ duties. The article reviews fiduciary relations and duties, analyses the directors’ duties to exercise power in the best interests of the company as a whole and for proper purposes. As this area of law is highly contested there …

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

M. C. Mirow