Common Law Commons^™

What Is In A Name: Why The European Same-Sex Partnership Acts Create A Valid Marital Relationship, Edward Brumby

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Subordinate Or Independent, Status Or Contract, Clarity Or Circularity: British Employment Law, American Implications, Harry Hutchison

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Parol Evidence Rule: A Comparative Study Of The Common Law, The Civil Law Tradition, And Lex Mercatoria, Alberto Luis Zuppi

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Constitutional Review In America And The Commonwealth: Judicial Protection Of Human Rights In The Common Law World, Po Jen Yap

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

A Funhouse Mirror Of Law: The Entailment In Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice, Peter A. Appel

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Mandatory Death Penalty In Ghana: A Comparative Constitutional Perspective On Dexter Johnson V. Republic, Andrew Novak

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The article examines the Supreme Court of Ghana's decision to uphold the mandatory death penalty, contrasting it with the global trend towards abolition. It highlights the tension between the court's textual interpretation of the constitution and international human rights pressures, emphasizing the need for legislative reform to align with human rights standards.

Changing Tides: The Introduction Of Punitive Damages Into The French Legal System, Matthew K.J. Parker

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Federal Rules At 75: Dispute Resolution, Private Enforcement Or Decisions According To Law?, James R. Maxeiner

Georgia State University Law Review

This essay is a critical response to the 2013 commemorations of the75th anniversary of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were introduced in 1938 to provide procedure to decide cases on their merits. The Rules were designed to replace decisions under the “sporting theory of justice”with decisions according to law.

By 1976, at midlife, it was clear that they were not achieving their goal. America’s proceduralists split into two sides about what to do. One side promotes rules that control and conclude litigation: e.g.,plausibility pleading, case management, limited discovery, cost indemnity for discovery, and summary …

The Controversy Over Citations To Foreign Authorities In American Constitutional Adjudication And The Conflict Of Judicial Philosophies: A Reply To Professor Glendon, Michel Rosenfeld

Articles

The controversy over U.S. Supreme Court justices citing foreign authorities in constitutional cases reflects a deeper ideological divide between restrictive and expansive judicial philosophies. This debate, evident in cases like Lawrence v. Texas and Roper v. Simmons, transcends traditional labels like originalism or political ideology, focusing instead on whether judges should defer to majoritarian decisionmaking or actively shape evolving rights. The article argues that the furor over foreign citations will diminish once the broader philosophical clash over judicial interpretation is resolved, as differences over foreign authorities are secondary to this central divide.

The Evolution Of The Common Law And Efficiency, Nuno Garoupa, Carlos I. Gómez Ligüerre

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Saving The Trees One Constitutional Provision At A Time: Judicial Activism And Deforestation In India, Lennon Banks Haas

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Innovation In China: Fragmentation, Structured Uncertainty, And Technology Standards, Michael Murphree, Dan Breznitz

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

This Article discusses the history of China’s attempts to develop indigenous technology standards. A case study is presented on China’s attempts to develop digital optical storage media standards, the failure of which we attribute to fragmentation of production and structured uncertainty in China’s economy. Despite the market failures of China’s domestic standards development efforts, we conclude by highlighting some of the appurtenant benefits they produce for Chinese manufacturers.

Creditors And The Feme Covert, James Oldham

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As is well-known, the Court of King’s Bench in Marshall v. Rutton (1800), under Chief Justice Lloyd Kenyon, overruled earlier King’s Bench decisions by Lord Mansfield that had allowed creditors to prevail in suits against married women in an expanding set of factual circumstances. As Kenyon confessed in Marshall, he had never been satisfied with the Mansfield decisions, and had wished that a case “should come to take away all the difficulties.” The Marshall case fulfilled his wish. Kenyon, however, was not the powerful leader of King’s Bench that Mansfield had been, and but for fortuities of judicial turnover, …

Contract Law In A Comparative Perspective, Suharnoko Suharnoko

Indonesia Law Review

Media reports on cases of the theft of pre-paid pulses taking place nowadays have created a misunderstanding in terms of the appropriate application of criminal law. In the context of existing legal provisions concerning consumer protection as set forth both under the Consumer Protection Law as well as in part under the Telecommunications Law, law enforcement agencies are leaning towards applying general criminal provisions (theft) which, after a careful observation of the Indonesian Criminal Code, in fact do not extend to corporate criminal acts. This paper purports to explain that the currently occurring cases of the theft of pre-paid pulses …

Prosecution Appeals Of Court-Ordered Midtrial Acquittals: Permissible Under The Double Jeopardy Clause?, David S. Rudstein

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Canada The New Shangri-La Of Global Securities Class Actions?, Tanya Monestier

Law Faculty Scholarship

There has been significant academic buzz about Silver v. Imax, an Ontario case certifying a global class of shareholders alleging statutory and common law misrepresentation in connection with a secondary market distribution of shares. Although global class actions on a more limited scale have been certified in Canada prior to Imax, it can now be said that global classes have "officially" arrived in Canada. Many predict that the Imax decision means that Ontario will become the new center for the resolution of global securities disputes. This is particularly so after the United States largely relinquished this role in Morrison v. …

Retrying The Acquitted In England Part Iii: Prosecution Appeals Against Judges' Rulings Of "No Case To Answer", David S. Rudstein

San Diego International Law Journal

The Order in Council permitting the prosecution appeal of "Mo" Courtney's acquittal and allowing him to be retried for the same offense of which he had previously been acquitted stems from the Criminal Justice Act 2003. That Act, which applies in England and Wales, grants the government the right to appeal certain rulings by the trial judge in criminal prosecutions on an indictment, including a ruling that there is no case to answer, i.e., a directed verdict of acquittal, and if the appeal is successful, allows the reviewing court to order that the acquitted defendant?s trial be resumed or that …

Personal Jurisdiction Over Non-Resident Class Members: Have We Gone Down The Wrong Road?, Tanya Monestier

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Not Confused? Don't Be Troubled: Meeting The First Amendment Attack On Protection Of "Generic" Foreign Geographical Indications, Scott Danner

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Law And The Host Of The Canterbury Tales, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 51 (2009), Frederick B. Jonassen

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

U.S. Class Actions And The "Global Class", George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Robert Casad's articles on comparative civil procedure were among the first comparative law pieces that caught my eye when, as a freshly-minted associate at a leading New York law firm, I found myself leafing through comparative law journals, rather than amassing billable hours. I had no idea then that comparative law could be as fascinating as I have come to find it, certainly not in a field like civil procedure where the dividends of comparative law work were by no means obvious to me. (Comparative law was not even taught in any guise at Yale Law School in the late …

Retrying The Acquitted In England Part Ii: The Exception To The Rule Against Double Jeopardy For Tainted Acquittals, David S. Rudstein

San Diego International Law Journal

Parliament enacted a statute in 1996 intended to limit the double jeopardy bar in some situations in which the defendant obtained an acquittal through improper means, thereby permitting the government to retry the person for the same offense of which he previously was tried and acquitted. The statute, part of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996, allows a retrial when an individual's acquittal was tainted, which, under the statute, means an acquittal resulting from interference with, or intimidation of, a juror, witness, or potential witness. In allowing a retrial in such circumstances, the statute creates an exception to the …

Retrying The Acquitted In England, Part I: The Exception To The Rule Against Double Jeopardy For New And Compelling Evidence, David S. Rudstein

San Diego International Law Journal

More than 240 years ago, Sir William Blackstone, perhaps the most important commentator on the English common law, wrote that when a man is once fairly found not guilty upon any indictment, or other prosecution, before any court having competent jurisdiction of the offence, he may plead such acquittal in bar of any subsequent accusation for the same crime. This plea of autrefois acquit (a former acquittal), Blackstone explained, is based upon the principle that no man is to be brought into jeopardy of his life, more than once for the same offence, which he called a universal maxim of …

Trust Funds In Common Law And Civil Law Systems: A Comparative Analysis, Carly Howard

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Emergence Of Public Prosecution In London, 1790-1850, Bruce P. Smith

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Historians of English criminal justice administration have long asserted that criminal prosecution in England before the second half of the nineteenth century was overwhelmingly "private" in nature. Before the mid-nineteenth century, so the received wisdom goes, "prosecution was almost invariably the sole responsibility of the victim." As the subject's leading historian has observed, "the typical prosecution" in England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was "at the initiative of a private citizen who was the victim of a crime and who conducted the prosecution in almost all cases." Indeed, Parliament did not even establish a public prosecutor's office until …

The Presumption Of Guilt And The English Law Of Theft, 1750-1850, Bruce P. Smith

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

"When it is said that a defendant to a criminal charge is presumed to be innocent, what is really meant is that the burden of proving his guilt is upon the prosecution. This golden thread ... runs through the web of the English criminal law. Unhappily Parliament regards the principle with indifference - one might almost say with contempt. The statute book contains many offences in which the burden of proving his innocence is cast on the accused." (Glanville Williams, The Proof of Guilt: A Study of the English Criminal Trial (1955))

No principle in Anglo-American criminal law is more …

Did The Presumption Of Innocence Exist In Summary Proceedings, Bruce P. Smith

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Having long admired Norma Landau's pioneering work on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English magistracy, I am grateful to her for bringing her considerable expertise to bear on my article. Characteristically, Landau's criticism is extremely forceful. Unfortunately, the intriguing questions that Landau raises in her comment are obscured by a host of criticisms based on a misunderstanding of the claims that I advance. Landau attributes arguments to me that I do not make and ignores important ones that I do. In the process, she fails to engage with my central thesis: In summary proceedings that required suspects to “account” for materials …

Fairness And Welfare From A Comparative Law Perspective, Horacio Spector

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This Article discusses the relative value of law and economics and moral philosophy to explain private law in both common law and civil law jurisdictions. It argues that the recent philosophical paradigm, which revolves around the ideas of fairness and autonomy, is intellectually continuous with the School of Rationalist Natural Law. Though this School has been directly influential on the development of civilian private law, its ascendancy on common law cannot be documented. Paradoxically, recent philosophical explanations of private law bear on common law, while legal philosophers in civil law jurisdictions still follow Kelsen's research agenda, which focuses on the …

A Comparative View Of Standards Of Proof, Kevin M. Clermont, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In common-law systems, the standard of proof for ordinary civil cases requires the party who bears the burden of proof to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the facts alleged are true. In contrast, the prevailing standard of proof for civil cases in civil-law systems is indistinguishable from the standard for criminal cases: the judge must be firmly convinced that the facts alleged are true. This striking difference in common-law and civil-law procedures has received very little attention from either civilian or comparative scholars.

The preponderance standard applied in common-law systems is openly probabilistic and produces, on average, …

Do Judges Deploy Policy?, Mitchel De S.-O.-L'E. Lasser

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.