Transnational Law Commons^™

Political Community In Carl Schmitt's International Legal Thinking, Markus Gunneflo

Markus Gunneflo

Wigmore's Treasure Box: Comparative Law In The Era Of Information, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

This article revisits the work of a canonical but quixotic figure in early American comparative law, John Henry Wigmore, as a lens through which to imagine what comparative law's role might be in the era of globalization. Wigmore's "pictorial method", compared here to the "treasure boxes" of Ming and Ch'ing Dynasty Chinese emperors, in which precious objects of different scales and eras were appreciated aesthetically side by side, presents a challenge to the many "modernist" approaches to comparative law in existence today. An exploration of the intellectual history of comparative law through the disjuncture of Wigmore's work engenders a treatment …

Infinity Within The Brackets, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

The ethnographic subjects of this article are UN-sponsored international conferences and their legal documents. Drawing upon fieldwork among Fiji delegates at these conferences, in this article I demonstrate the centrality of matters of form, as distinct from questions of “meaning,” in the negotiation of international agreements. A parallel usage of documents and of mats among Fijian negotiators provides a heuristic device for exploring questions of pattern and scale in the aesthetics of negotiation.

You Say You Want A (Nonviolent) Revolution, Well Then What? Translating Western Thought, Strategic Ideological Cooptation, And Institution Building For Freedom For Governments Emerging Out Of Peaceful Chaos, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

With nonviolent revolution in particular, displaced governments leave a power and governance vacuum waiting to be filled. Such vacuums are particularly susceptible to what this Article will call “strategic ideological cooptation.” Following the regime disruption, peaceful chaos transitions into a period in which it is necessary to structure and order the emergent governance scheme. That period in which the new government scheme emerges is particularly fraught with danger when growing from peaceful chaos because nonviolent revolutions tend to be decentralized, unorganized, unsophisticated, and particularly vulnerable to cooptation. Any external power wishing to influence events in societies emerging out of peaceful …

Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan

Felice J Batlan

This essay introduces the Chicago-Kent Symposium on Women's Legal History: A Global Perspective. It seeks to situate the field of women's legal history and to explore what it means to begin writing a transnational women's history which transcends and at times disrupts the nation state. In doing so, it sets forth some of the fundamental premises of women's legal history and points to new ways of writing such histories.

The Cathedral Rules As The Wto’S Remedy, Ashley H. Song Ms.

Ashley Song

Coase’s assumption of zero transaction cost is not realistic in the WTO; it bears substantive amount of transaction costs. Unlike Coase, Calabresi and Melamed, in their article of “Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral,” endogenously admit that transaction cost exists and utilize it for the application of a property and liability rule. I would like to apply the property, liability, and inalienability rules to the WTO– mainly, to the wrongful acts of the WTO members– and which remedy according to which rule can be effectual or reach the welfare maximization in Pareto Optimal.