Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

High Courts And Election Law Reform In The U.S. And India, Manoj Mate

Journal Articles

Over the past decade, the push for electoral reform in India and the United States – the world’s two largest democracies – has been prominent in the politics and governance of both nations. The supreme courts in each country have played important, but distinct, roles in recent electoral reform efforts, responding to different facets and regimes of political corruption. In the 1990s, the Indian Supreme Court became increasingly assertive in requiring greater levels of disclosure and transparency for political parties in India. In a series of decisions in 2002 and 2003, the Indian Supreme Court challenged the Central Government’s failure …

The Rise Of Judicial Governance In The Supreme Court Of India, Manoj Mate

Journal Articles

This article analyzes how the Supreme Court of India, through its activism and assertiveness, has emerged as arguably the most powerful court among democratic polities. Over the past four and a half decades, the Court dramatically expanded its role in the realm of rights and governance, asserting the power to invalidate constitutional amendments under the basic structure doctrine, control judicial appointments, and govern in the areas of environmental policy, monitoring and investigating government corruption, and promoting electoral transparency and accountability. In this article, I argue that the Court’s shift toward greater, yet selective, assertiveness in India’s governance can most adequately …

Rights As Wrongs: Legality And Sacrality In Thailand, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

Interviews with injury victims in northern Thailand (Lanna) conveyed a pervasive sense of injustice in their daily lives but a notable absence of the language of rights. Despite the proliferation of rights-based discourses, organisations, and institutions in Thai society, interviewees tended to disfavour the pursuit of rights because they believed that resort to the legal system would subvert Lanna traditional practices and would add to the bad karma that caused their suffering in the first place. This article traces fundamental contradictions in northern Thai concepts of justice arising from the imposition of “modern” systems of law and religion by the …

Dressing And Addressing The Kenyan Judiciary: Reflecting On The History And Politics Of Judicial Attire And Address, Willy Mutunga

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comparative Criminal Law, Luis E. Chiesa

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 47 in The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law, Markus Dubber & Tatjana Hörnle, eds.

Criminal law is a parochial discipline. Courts and scholars in the English speaking world seldom take seriously the criminal statutes, cases and scholarly writings published in the non-English speaking world. The same is true the other way around. This is unfortunate. Much can be learned from comparing the way in which the world’s leading legal systems approach important questions of criminal theory.

This Chapter introduces the reader to comparative criminal law with the aim of demonstrating how comparative analysis can enrich both domestic …

Public Interest Litigation And The Transformation Of The Supreme Court Of India, Manoj Mate

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 10 in Consequential Courts: Judicial Roles in Global Perspective, Diana Kapiszewski, Gordon Silverstein & Robert A. Kagan, eds. (2013).

The Supreme Court of India today is arguably one of the most powerful constitutional courts in the world. The Court has taken on an active and central role in the governance of the Indian polity through its activity in public interest litigation cases, and in some cases, has virtually taken over functions that were once the domain of Parliament and the Executive. Within the past two decades, the Indian Court wrested control over judicial appointments from the Executive, …

(Still) A “Real And Substantial” Mess: The Law Of Jurisdiction In Canada, Tanya J. Monestier

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Checkpoint Watch: Bureaucracy And Resistance At The Israel/Palestinean Border, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

This essay sketches my personal impressions of the changes that have occurred over the last decade in Israeli checkpoints in and around Jerusalem. These changes are both in the physical design of the checkpoints as well as in their human management. My particular focus is on the women’s human rights organization MachsomWatch. The role of MachsomWatch has changed in a way that parallels the solidification and the bureaucratization of the border. Nowadays, MachsomWatch women - originally avid protestors of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank - have, despite themselves, become a routine feature in the occupational apparatus. This essay’s …

Vertical And Horizontal Perspectives On Rights Consciousness, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

It has become commonplace to assert that rights consciousness is expanding globally and that individuals worldwide demonstrate an increasing awareness of and insistence upon their legal entitlements. To marshal empirical support for such claims is, however, exceedingly complex. One important line of socio-legal research on rights consciousness adopts what might be called a “vertical” perspective, tracing the flow of legal norms and practices from prestigious international organizations and world centers of cultural production to local settings, where they may be adopted, resisted, or transformed. Vertical perspectives on rights consciousness have contributed new understandings of law in contemporary societies around the …

Priests In The Temple Of Justice: The Indian Legal Complex And The Basic Structure Doctrine, Manoj Mate

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 3 in Fates of Political Liberalism in the British Post-Colony: The Politics of the Legal Complex, Terence C. Halliday, Lucien Karpik & Malcolm M. Feeley, eds. (2012).

Global Laws, Local Lives: Impact Of The New Regionalism On Human Rights Compliance, Stephen Joseph Powell, Patricia Camino Pérez

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Reforms And Constitutionalism In Africa: Reflections On Some Current Challenges And Future Prospects, Charles Manga Fombad

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Uprooted Justice: Transformations Of Law And Everyday Life In Northern Thailand, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

Studies of law in everyday life tend to view law either as instrumental in shaping specific decisions and practices or as constitutive of the cultural categories through which humans apprehend their world and perceive law as relevant to a greater or lesser extent. This article, however, suggests that circumstances may arise in which law’s role in relation to everyday life is neither instrumental nor constitutive but instead becomes one of radical dissociation. Based on an analysis of injuries in northern Thailand, it examines two transformational episodes in Thai legal and political history. The first occurred at the turn of the …

Civilized Borders: A Study Of Israel's New Border Regime, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

At Israel’s new border crossings with the West Bank, modernization has become the buzz-word: not only referring to modernized mechanical means – a Wall, newly designed crossings, and micro-mechanics such as turnstiles, signs, and fences – but also to new and sophisticated scientific technologies, such as sensor machines and scanners, and to modernized means of identification, such as advanced computer systems and biometric cards. This paper considers the transformation of the Israel-West Bank border to be a result of four major processes: reterritorialization, bureaucratization, neoliberalization, and de-humanization. I utilize in-depth interviews with top military and state officials and with human …

Sustainable Decentralization: Power, Extraconstitutional Influence, And Subnational Symmetry In The United States And Spain, James A. Gardner, Antoni Abat I Ninet

Journal Articles

In the Madisonian tradition of constitutional design, the foundation of a sustainable federalism is thought to be a scientifically precise balancing of national and subnational power. Experience shows, however, that national and subnational actors in highly diverse systems are capable of developing a rich array of extraconstitutional methods of mutual influence, so that the formal, constitutionalized balance of power rarely settles the question of the actual balance of power between levels of government. A more important factor in ensuring the long-term sustainability of a meaningfully federal system is the degree of symmetry across subnational units in their relation to the …

Pirate Trials, The International Criminal Court And Mob Justice: Reflections On Postcolonial Sovereignty In Kenya, Mateo Taussig-Rubbo

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Transnational Class Actions And The Illusory Search For Res Judicata, Tanya J. Monestier

Journal Articles

The transnational class action—a class action in which a portion of the class consists of non-U.S. claimants—is here to stay. Defendants typically resist the certification of transnational class actions on the basis that such actions provide no assurance of finality for a defendant, as it will always be possible for a non-U.S. class member to initiate subsequent proceedings in a foreign court. In response to this concern, many U.S. courts will analyze whether the “home” courts of the foreign class members would accord res judicata effect to an eventual U.S. judgment prior to certifying a U.S. class action containing foreign …

Planting The Promised Landscape: Zionism, Nature, And Resistance In Israel/Palestine, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

This article reveals the complex historical and cultural processes that have led to the symbiotic identification between pine trees and Jewish people in Israel/Palestine. It introduces three tree donation techniques used by Israel, then proceeds to discuss the meaning of nature in Israel, as well as the meaning of planting and rooting in the context of the Zionist project. The article concludes by reflecting on the ways that pine trees absent Palestinian presence and memory from the landscape, and explains how Palestinian acts of aggression toward these pine landscapes relate to the Israel/Palestine relationship.

In Search Of Sub-National Constitutionalism, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Two recent trends, one favoring federalism as a form of governmental organization and the other favoring written constitutions, have lately combined to produce an impressive proliferation of subnational constitutions. Documents that can fairly be described as constitutions now govern the affairs of subnational units - states, provinces, cantons, Länder - in federal states on every continent. What remains unclear, however, is whether the proliferation of subnational constitutions indicates a corresponding spread of the practice of subnationalism constitutionalism - whether, that is, the appearance of subnational constitutions around the globe evinces a spreading ideological commitment to a strong role for subnational …

Migrant Children, Compulsory Education And The Rule Of Law In China, Brian Holland

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judicial Patronage Of 'Honor Killings' In Pakistan: The Supreme Court's Persistent Adherence To The Doctrine Of Grave And Sudden Provocation, Moeen H. Cheema

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Rise Of Spanish And Latin American Criminal Theory, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Individual Accounts In Social Security Reform: Lessons From Abroad And Special Considerations For Women, Karen E. Menter

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Moral Relativism And Human Rights, Torben Spaak

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Powers Of Illegality: House Demolitions And Resistance In East Jerusalem, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

This article examines how techniques of illegality based in planning laws and policy are utilized to dominate the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. Although the demolition of homes is the most spectacular spatial mechanism of illegality exercised by Israel in East Jerusalem, my focus in the first part of the article is on more mundane techniques of illegality, such as mapping, filing, and arbitrariness. The second part of the article introduces the notion of resistance and explores the illegal building carried out by East Jerusalemite Palestinians as an act of spatial protest. In examining tactics of "everyday" resistance, I suggest …

The Place Of Translation In Jerusalem's Criminal Trial Court, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

The court-appointed translator is largely an invisible actor in the legal space. The Israeli context provides an extreme example of this invisibility: apart from a general statutory definition of the court's obligation to translate criminal proceedings, the work of translation in the Israeli courtroom is mostly unregulated by state law, rendering it highly susceptible to informal manifestations. This article offers a critical empirical investigation into the micropractices of translation performed in the Jerusalem criminal trial court in 2002. On the face of things, the court-appointed translator performs a technical task in the everyday working of the court. Expected to mediate …

Law, Authority, And Gender In Post-Revolutionary Iran, Louise Halper

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Making Comparative Criminal Law Possible, Lutz Eidam

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Gender Equality And Women's Solidarity Across Religious, Ethnic And Class Difference In The Kenyan Constitutional Review Process, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

This paper examines Kenyan's women's struggle to gain new legal authority for gender equality and women's empowerment in the Kenya Constitutional Review process. Specifically it examines the efforts of the campaign to "safeguard the gains of women in the Draft Constitution," a campaign launched by a coalition of four civil society organizations in Kenya after the release of a new Draft constitution in 2002. Its focus is the 2002 Draft, the Draft's relationship to the current Kenyan Constitution and to recent constitutional proposals, from a gender perspective.

The constitutional review process is part of a larger movement to democratize the …

Foreign Judgments At Common Law: Rethinking The Enforcement Rules, Tanya J. Monestier

Journal Articles

England and Canada have adopted divergent approaches to the enforcement of foreign civil and commercial judgments. An English court will only enforce a foreign judgment where the defendant submitted to the junsdiction of the foreign court, or was present in the foreign jurisdiction when served with process. This position. while protecting domestic defendants, is outdated and does little to further the objectives underpinning judgment enforcement- Canadian courts, by contrast, have been far more liberal than their English counterparts, enforcing foreign judgments in cases where there is a "real and substantial connection" between the dispute and the judgment forum. While this …