Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Tribal Law: It’S Not That Scary, Adam Crepelle

Buffalo Law Review

Tribal law is often presented in a negative light. Indeed, the Supreme Court’s skepticism about tribal law has resulted in severe limitations on tribal jurisdiction. This Article challenges perceptions of tribal law by surveying tribal law. While tribal law does rely on tribal customs, tribal law is largely consistent with mainstream American law. Tribal laws are often modeled on state codes or the Restatement.

This Article contends tribal law mirrors western law for two primary reasons—efficiency and legitimacy. Regarding efficiency, borrowing a western law is easier than creating a law from scratch; plus, many laws are common across cultures. A …

Populist Secularism, Seval Yildirim

Journal Articles

This article argues that in the context of a developing democracy, the rise of religiously oriented parties should be viewed contextually as part of an ongoing process of democratic negotiation and consolidation. Using Turkey as a case study, this article argues that religion and secularism are best viewed as parts of a symbiotic relationship, informing each other’s identity, and defining characteristics through an ongoing process of negotiation.

The article discusses commonly used concepts relevant to secularism in general and argues for the need to distinguish between the secular, secularism, and secularization as a governance project. Through a historical survey of …

Decolonizing Legal Influence: China's Role In The Changing Landscape Of The Ethiopian Legal Profession, 2000-2018, Mekonnen Firew Ayano

Journal Articles

Over the last two decades, the legal profession in Ethiopia has changed fundamentally. The government has increased the number of law schools from one in 1993 to more than three dozen by 2021. It has introduced strict licensure rules to formalize and regulate legal services and, more recently, in 2022, it has proclaimed the creation of law firms and an independent bar association. The market for legal services has expanded, allowing lawyers to reach out to clients in the country’s peripheries and move onward to attract global clients. These changes are inextricably tied to global currents that have diffused Anglo-American …

Europe And The Federal Conceit, Paul Linden-Retek

Book Reviews

Reviewing The constitutional theory of the federation and the European Union, by Signe Rehling Larsen.

Crisis can obscure and confuse. The past decade’s tribulations of the European Union and its structures of governance have left theorists grappling to comprehend the precise terms of Europe’s political and constitutional transformation. But crisis also can occasion a return to first principles—often those forgotten or themselves obscured by political transformations—that clarify thinking about political form and might even illuminate the contours of crisis itself. This is what Signe Rehling Larsen has done in her remarkable book on federation and European Union. In what follows, …

Our Imperial Federal Courts, Matthew J. Steilen

Journal Articles

This essay is a response to Christian R. Burset, Advisory Opinions and the Problem of Legal Authority, 74VAND.L.REV.621(2021).

“The article is significant for the archival work alone. It is useful, as well, for the impressive synthesis of the existing secondary literature, collected in the footnotes, which makes a convenient reading list for us mere mortals. The argument of the article is ambitious. As the Table of Contents suggests, its structure is complex: the author asks us to visit three different jurisdictions (two British and one American, each thousands of miles apart), in three different decades, in three different political and …

Misappropriation Theory: How The World’S Two Largest Economies Regulate Insider Trading, Thomas Hare

Journal Articles

Prior to the government adopting policies of economic reform in the late 1970s, the People’s Republic of China (“the PRC” or “China”) did not have a formal securities market or an accompanying regulatory scheme. For the most part, it was not operationally feasible for a market to develop and flourish in China because the PRC had a centrally planned economy with state-owned enterprises as the primary form of business ownership. However, economic reform brokered conditions where stock trades casually began in markets located in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu and several other cities in the early 1980s. This informal trading persisted until …

History, System, Principle, Analogy: Four Paradigms Of Legitimacy In European Law, Paul Linden-Retek

Journal Articles

The constitutional dimension of European Union law promises—in its most ambitious forms—reflexive structures of post-national democratic community. But this ambition poses profound philosophical challenges for how we think about the legitimacy of European judiciaries—the relation between legal decision-making and the ideal of post-national self-authorship. European constitutional law not only coordinates new forms of public power, but its jurisprudence also normatively justifies (or fails to justify) that power in what must be similarly reflexive discourses of legitimation.This article argues that theorists of European law have thus far paid too little attention to the thicker socio-cultural registers through which this legitimation occurs. …

Porous Bureaucracy: Legitimating The Administrative State In Taiwan, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

Scholars and politicians have sometimes presented bureaucracy as inherently conflicting with democracy. Notably, bureaucrats themselves are rarely consulted about that relationship. In contrast, I draw on interviews and participant observation to illuminate how government administrators understand their own place in democratic government in Taiwan, one of the few successful third-wave democracies. The administrators I work with root their own legitimacy not in separated powers or autonomous expertise, but in their ongoing collaboration with legislators and publics. They define their own accountability not just as executive legislative mandates but as producing them in the first place, and figure bureaucracy as a …

Reconceptualizing Entrenched Notions Of Common Law Property Regimes: Maori Self-Determination And Environmental Protection Through Legal Personality For Natural Objects, Bridget Williams

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Transformative Constitutions And The Role Of Integrity Institutions In Tempering Power: The Case Of Resistance To State Capture In Post-Apartheid South Africa, Heinz Klug

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is China A “Rule-By-Law” Regime?, Kwai Hang Ng

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Alternative Dispute Resolution Works: Lessons Learned From The Bashingantahe, Alexander J. Buszka

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comparative Analysis As An Antidote To Tunnel Vision In Criminal Law Reform: The Example Of Complicity, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

In the context of criminal law reform, the tunnel vision that is produced by deeply embedded paradigms or patterns of criminality has the effect of stifling creativity. If left unchecked, the assumptions that serve as the backdrop to our criminal justice system will likely prevent reformers from giving serious consideration to alternatives that are in tension with the dominant patterns of criminality. I will end by arguing that one way of avoiding this outcome is by engaging in the comparative analysis of criminal law. Comparative analysis serves as a kind of “second opinion” that may help criminal law reformers to …

Forum Selection Clauses And Consumer Contracts In Canada, Tanya J. Monestier

Journal Articles

Every day, billions of people use the online social media platform, Facebook. Facebook requires, as a condition of use, that users “accept” its terms and conditions—which include a forum selection clause nominating California as the exclusive forum for dispute resolution. In Douez v. Facebook, the Supreme Court of Canada considered whether this forum selection clause was enforceable, or whether the plaintiff could proceed with her suit in British Columbia.

The Supreme Court of Canada ultimately decided that the forum selection clause was not enforceable. It held that the plaintiff had established “strong cause” for departing from the forum selection clause. …

The Songs Of Other Birds, Anya Bernstein

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 14 in Insiders, Outsiders, Injuries, and Law: Revisiting The Oven Bird’s Song, Mary Nell Trautner, ed..

In this essay, written for a volume that re-engages with David Engel's classic article, The Oven Bird's Song, I consider how we decide how to situate what we encounter in our research. Comparing the findings of my own research in Taipei with Engel's work in Thailand and America, I ask how we can decide to give different interpretations of seemingly similar social phenomena -- specifically, our interlocutors' evident distaste for invoking the law.

Although many of my interlocutors in Taiwan expressed …

Environmental Principles In U.S. And Canadian Law, Errol E. Meidinger, Daniel Spitzer, Charles Malcomb

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 29 in Principles of Environmental Law, Ludwig Krämer & Emanuela Orlando, eds.

Canadian Federalism In Design And Practice: The Mechanics Of A Permanently Provisional Constitution, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

This paper examines the interaction between constitutional design and practice through a case study of Canadian federalism. Focusing on the federal architecture of the Canadian Constitution, the paper examines how subnational units in Canada actually compete with the central government, emphasizing the concrete strategies and tactics they most commonly employ to get their way in confrontations with central authority. The evidence affirms that constitutional design and structure make an important difference in the tactics and tools available to subnational units in a federal system, but that design is not fully constraining: there is considerable evidence of extraconstitutional innovation and improvisation …

Informal Constitutional Change, Oran Doyle

Buffalo Law Review

In response to Richard Albert’s Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, 65 BUFF. L. REV. 739 (2017).

Two Examples Of “Quasi-Constitutional Amendments” From The Italian Constitutional Evolution—A Response To Richard Albert, Nicola Lupo

Buffalo Law Review

In response to Richard Albert’s Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, 65 BUFF. L. REV. 739 (2017).

Respecting The Mystery Of Constitutional Change, Jonathan L. Marshfield

Buffalo Law Review

In response to Richard Albert’s Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, 65 BUFF. L. REV. 739 (2017).

Quasi-Constitutional Change Without Intent—A Response To Richard Albert, Reijer Passchier

Buffalo Law Review

In response to Richard Albert’s Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, 65 BUFF. L. REV. 739 (2017).

Judicial Supremacy In Comparative Constitutional Law, Manoj Mate

Journal Articles

This Article challenges the prevailing conception of judicial supremacy in comparative constitutional law as informed by U.S. and Western models of constitutionalism and argues for re-conceptualizing judicial supremacy in a way that captures the broader range of institutional roles courts play globally. Drawing on insights from global constitutional systems, this is the first article to argue for and develop an institutional conception of judicial supremacy that focuses on three key institutional roles played by courts globally: constitutional guardianship, institutional guardianship, and governance optimization. It then provides a dynamic account of the emergence of “expansive” judicial supremacy in India through a …

Quasi-Constitutional Amendments, Richard Albert

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

You’Re It! Tag Jurisdiction Over Corporations In Canada, Tanya J. Monestier

Journal Articles

In September 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in Chevron v. Yaiguaje, a case that legal commentators had been keeping an eye on for years. The Chevron case has spanned several decades as well as several continents, and the enforcement action in Ontario was the latest in a series of procedural moves aimed at enforcing a nearly $10 billion Ecuadorian judgment against the oil giant. In Chevron, the plaintiffs sought to have the judgment enforced in Ontario against both Chevron (the judgment debtor) and Chevron Canada (a seventh-level indirect subsidiary of the judgment debtor). The Chevron case …

Reflection On The Legality Of "Private" Discrimination In Light Of Recent Social And Economic Changes In Ethiopia, Mekonnen Firew Ayano

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Africa And The Rule Of Law, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

The rule of law is often seen as a panacea for ensuring a successful, fair and modern democracy which enables sustainable development. However, as Makau Mutua highlights, this is not the case. Using the example of African states, he describes how no African country has truly thrown off the shackles of colonial rule and emerged as a truly just nation state – even though many have the rule of law at the heart of their constitutions. This, he argues, is because the Western concept of the rule of law cannot be simply transplanted to Africa. The concept must be adapted …

Globalization, Rights And Judicial Review In The Supreme Court Of India, Manoj Mate

Journal Articles

This article examines the broader and evolving role of the Supreme Court of India in an era of globalization by examining the Court’s decisionmaking in rights-based challenges to economic liberalization, privatization, and development policies over the past three decades. While the Court has been mostly deferential in its review of these policies and projects, it has in many cases been active and instrumental in remaking and reshaping regulatory frameworks, bureaucratic structures, accountability norms, and in redefining the terrain of fundamental rights that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other litigants have invoked in challenges to these policies. This article argues that the …

Distinctive Identity Claims In Federal Systems: Judicial Policing Of Subnational Variance, Antoni Abat I Ninet, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

It is characteristic of federal states that the scope of subnational power and autonomy are subjects of frequent dispute, and that disagreements over the reach of national and subnational power may be contested in a wide and diverse array of settings. Subnational units determined to challenge nationally-imposed limits on their power typically have at their disposal many tools with which to press against formal boundaries. Federal systems, moreover, frequently display a surprising degree of tolerance for subnational obstruction, disobedience, and other behaviors intended to expand subnational authority and influence, even over national objection. This tolerance, however, has limits. In this …

India's Participatory Model: The Right To Information In Election Law, Manoj Mate

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Keepin' It "Real": Israel's Segregation Of Transgender Prisoners And The Transgender/Cisgender Binary, Lihi Yona

Buffalo Journal of Gender, Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.