Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Criminal Performances: Film, Autobiography, And Confession, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This article questions the criminal justice emphasis on filmed confession as the superlative evidentiary proffer that promotes accuracy and minimizes unconstitutional coercion by comparing filmed confessions to autobiographical film. It suggests that analyzing filmed confessions as a kind of autobiographical film exposes helpful tensions between the law's reliance on confession as revealing the inner self and the literary and filmic conception of confession as constituting one self among many. Through a close examination of several filmed confessions along side an examination of the history of autobiographical writing and film, this article shows how filmed confessions do not reveal the truthfulness …

Human Rights Outlaws: Nuremberg, Geneva, And The Global War On Terror, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

International human rights law was born from the ashes of World War II. The most important post-World War II products are the United Nations, the Nuremberg Trials, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions of 1949. But that was not the end of the story. International human rights law continued to develop and expand right up to September 11,2001, most notably through the adoption of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights2 and the Convention Against Torture, 3 and the establishment of the International Criminal Court.4 With the exception of the criminal court, the United States …

Foreign Authority, American Exceptionalism, And The Dred Scott Case, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

At least since Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1831, the idea that America is distinctive from other nations has permeated much political and social commentary. The United States has been variously perceived as unique in its history, its culture, its national values, its social movements, and its social and political institutions. While the term technically refers only to distinctiveness or difference, "exceptionalism" may have positive or negative aspects – what Harold Koh has called "America's Jekyll-and-Hyde exceptionalism." In the legal realm, claims of exceptionalism have been offered to support what Michael Ingnatieff identifies as "legal isolationism" – or refusal by …

Law And The Market: The Impact Of Enforcement, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Are the U.S. capital markets losing their competitiveness? A fascinating question, but what does it mean and how can it be intelligently assessed? This Article will explore the newly popular thesis that draconian enforcement and overregulation are injuring the United States and will offer a sharply contrasting interpretation: higher enforcement intensity gives the U.S. economy a lower cost of capital and higher securities valuations. This higher intensity attracts some foreign listings, but deters others.

This Article will proceed by first mapping the marked variation in the intensity of enforcement efforts by securities regulators in selected nations and then relating these …

Consent In Mediation , Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

This brief comparative analysis of the United States and English approaches to mediation consent raises policy questions about the merits of mandatory mediation. Is England on a better course by requiring consent at the front end of mediation? Will mediation be stronger in the long run when it has a consensual foundation? Arguably, the use of cost sanctions in England's mediation regime makes it close to a mandatory mediation system. For some litigants, participating in mediation will be potentially less costly than arguing that it was not unreasonable to refuse mediation. But despite the mandatory gloss, mediation is still a …

Teaching Comparative Perspectives In Mediation: Some Preliminary Reflections Symposium: Transatlantic Perspectives On Alternative Dispute Resolution, Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

The study of comparative law and legal process in any subject area offers the usual advantages of learning about other countries' legal cultures and developing a deeper understanding of one's own legal tradition. In the case of mediation, it is important to evaluate critically what is learned through comparative analysis. Mediation is still developing as a profession; it is newly institutionalized in legal cultures; and, it is relatively new to the canon of legal education. National legal traditions have responded differently to the implementation of mediation. Thus, lawyers must have an understanding of the differences and nuances in mediation law …

Property As Constitutional Myth: Utilities And Dangers, Laura S. Underkuffler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Many Uses Of Federalism, Donald L. Horowitz

Faculty Scholarship

This paper forms part of a symposium on Sanford Levinson's Our Undemocratic Constitution. It points out that although almost no large state that is governed democratically is not a federation, there are only about 24 federations in the world and all but four of these antedate the Third Wave of Democratization, which began in 1974. Most new democracies have not found federalism attractive. Yet, for many such countries, devolution (or scaling-down) federalism, in contrast to the scaling-up federalism originally devised in 1787, has great potential to alleviate conflicts in severely divided societies. Many of these are small or medium-sized states. …

A Comparison Of Criminal Jury Decision Rules In Democratic Countries, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

This paper furnishes jury system information about the twenty-eight democracies (excluding the United States) that have been consistently democratic since at least the early 1990s and have a population of five million people or more (with allowance for Mexico and South Africa). I describe general rules that do not always apply to every crime in every context. In the United States, for example, we tend to use a randomly-selected jury of twelve people that sits for a single case; laws generally require unanimity to convict and unanimity to acquit. Failure to reach unanimity results in a “hung” jury, with the …

Contractual Expansion Of The Scope Of Patent Infringement Through Field-Of-Use Licensing, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

Patentees sometimes license their inventions through field-of-use licenses, which permit licensees to use the inventions, but only in specified ways. Field-of-use licensing is often procompetitive, because the ability to provide different licensing terms for different users can encourage broader licensing of inventions. But in recent United States cases, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and lower courts have upheld field-of-use licenses prohibiting activities that licensees would otherwise have been permitted by patent law, such as the repair and resale of patented products. The recent cases rely on the Federal Circuit's decision in Mallinckrodt, Inc. v. Medipart, Inc., where the court …

Comparativa Entre Les Reformes Dels Estatuts D'Autonomia De Catalunya I D'Andalusia [Comparative Analysis Of The Reforms Of The Charters Of Autonomy Of Catalonia And Andalucía], Albert Lamarca-Marquès, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

En els ordenaments jurídics continentals europeus no és habitual l’admissió d’escrits acadèmics independents adreçats als tribunals de justícia en el marc de procediments de gran importància. En els països del Common Law, especialment en les jurisdiccions nordamericanes, mitjançant el procediment anomenat d’Amicus Curiae es permet d’adreçar aquesta mena d’escrits als tribunals de justícia, que hauran de decidir si els tenen o no en compte. A través de les pàgines d’InDret, hem volgut oferir aquest document de comparació d’ambdós Estatuts per contribuir al debat jurídic en el marc del procés de reforma dels Estatuts d’Autonomia a l’Estat i en relació als …

Biometrics, Certified Software Solutions, And The Japanese Consumption Tax: A Proposal For The Tax Commission, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Significant change is anticipated in the Japanese Consumption Tax. The Japanese Tax Commission is recommending that the rate should double, multiple rates should be employed, and the "bookkeeping method" of accounting should be abandoned in favor of the European "invoice method."

The Tax Commission faces a tax policy dilemma. The aging population drives the need for a tax increase (making the Consumption Tax an obvious target for revenue enhancement) at exactly the same time the population is shrinking in overall size, thereby reducing the number of working-consumers who can pay the higher tax.

These are dramatic changes for the Japanese …

Digital Consumption Tax (D-Ct), Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Modern technology is dramatically changing the way consumption taxes are collected, but it is also changing the way policymakers assess the operation and impact of these taxes. Whether the design is a standard credit-invoice value added tax (VAT) of European design, or a retail sales tax (RST) of American design, or the credit subtraction VAT without invoices type of consumption tax (CT) of Japanese design, technology is having a profound impact.

Government certified transaction software is in place in the United States. The Streamlined Sales Tax offers taxpayers in 18 states the option of having their retail sales tax determined …

Of The Inequals Of The Uruguay Round, Srividhya Ragavan

Faculty Scholarship

Ten years ago, the TRIPs Agreement set a distinct tone in international law by requiring members to prioritize international trade obligations as a means to achieve national goals. Within the next five years, the AIDS crisis highlighted that compromising pressing national responsibilities - like a looming public health crisis - to fulfill international obligations may, in fact, detrimentally affect international trade. Meanwhile, access to medication continues to be an unresolved issue even as we celebrate the tenth anniversary of TRIPs and the end of the transitional period. This Article suggests that the success of TRIPs depends on its ability to …

Leading A Constitutional Court: Perspectives From The Federal Republic Of Germany, Peter E. Quint

Faculty Scholarship

This article, which was a contribution to a Symposium on the office of the Chief Justice of the United States, compares that office with the office of President of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. The article concludes that, while the American Chief Justice possesses more authority in most formal respects, the President of the German Court has on occasion exercised an informal public or private influence that goes well beyond anything of the sort that has been attempted (recently at least) by the American Chief Justice.

"The Most Extraordinarily Powerful Court Of Law The World Has Ever Known"? - Judicial Review In The United States And Germany, Peter E. Quint

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Our Law, Their Law, History, And The Citation Of Foreign Law, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

The objection to citation of foreign law in U.S. Supreme Court decisions is bad history and bad law. First, let me briefly review how the objection has come to prominence recently. On June 26, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Lawrence v. Texas, striking down a same-sex sodomy statute. Justice Antonin Scalia, in the course of his dissenting opinion, wrote that the majority's citation of foreign law was "meaningless dicta," "[d]angerous dicta."' He added that the majority's opinion was "the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda."

Innovation Through Intimidation: An Empirical Account Of Defamation Litigation In China, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Consider two recent defamation cases in Chinese courts. In 2004, Zhang Xide, a former county-level Communist Party boss, sued the authors of a best selling book, An Investigation into China's Peasants. The book exposed official malfeasance on Zhang's watch and the resultant peasant hardships. Zhang demanded an apology from the book's authors and publisher, excision of the offending chapter, 200,000 yuan (approximately U.S.$25,000) for emotional damages, and a share of profits from sales of the book. Zhang sued in a local court on which, not coincidentally, his son sat as a judge.

In 2000, Song Dianwen, a peasant, sued …

The Regulation Of Labor And The Relevance Of Legal Origin, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Arguably the most important social science research of the past decade has centered on comparative law and economics. In a celebrated series of articles, the economists Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and intermittent collaborators have explored empirically how a country's legal origin – English common law, French civil law, Germanic code, Scandinavian law, or Soviet socialist law – affects its subsequent institutional and economic development. The common law emerges as the hero of this analysis: Compared with other countries and especially with civil law countries, common law bearers have, ceteris paribus, better legal protection of shareholders and …

Inducers And Authorisers: A Comparison Of The Us Supreme Court's Grokster Decision And The Australian Federal Court's Kazaa Ruling, Jane C. Ginsburg, Sam Ricketson

Faculty Scholarship

On June 27, 2005, the US Supreme Court announced its much-awaited decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster Ltd. A few months after this, the Federal Court of Australia handed down its decision at first instance in relation to parallel litigation in that country concerning the KaZaa file sharing system. Both decisions repay careful consideration of the way in which the respective courts have addressed the relationship between the protection of authors' rights and the advent of new technologies, particularly in relation to peer-to-peer networks.

In the Grokster case, songwriters, record producers and motion picture producers alleged that two popular …

'Une Chose Publique'? The Author's Domain And The Public Domain In Early British, French And Us Copyright Law, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Much contemporary copyright rhetoric casts copyright as a derogation from a primordial public domain. Placing the public domain in the initial position buttresses attempts to contain a perceived over-expansion of copyright. I do not take issue with the normative role these endeavors assign to the public domain. The public domain is today and should remain copyright's constraining counterpart. But normative arguments that also claim the support of history may be fundamentally anachronistic. The ensuing examination of the respective domains of author and public at copyright's inception, in 18th-19th century Britain, France and America, reveals more ambiguity than today's critiques generally …

International Insolvency Case Venue In The European Union: The Parmalat And Daisytek Controversies, Samuel Bufford

Faculty Scholarship

The European Union Insolvency Regulation (the EU Regulation) is a giant step forward in promoting international cooperation among EU countries for cross-border insolvency proceedings. It adopts a modified universalist solution to cross-border proceedings insofar as they are located within the EU. However, experience has shown that it needs improvement to work effectively. A venue battle now rages between courts of several European countries over which country's courts will administer particular cross-border proceedings and how the center of main interest is to be determined for this purpose.

This Article begins with a detailed examination of the two principal cases where conflicts …

Europe's Thirteenth Directive And U.S. Takeover Regulation: Regulatory Means And Political Economic Ends, Marco Ventoruzzo

Faculty Scholarship

Cross-border acquisitions, especially through hostile takeovers, represent one of the most dramatic consequences of the growing integration, both within Europe, and when considering the economic balance of power between the US and the European industries. This Article focuses on the single most important piece of legislation on European takeover law, the Thirteenth Directive of the European Union on Takeover Regulation, which was approved on April, 21 2004 and must be implemented by Member States before the end of 2006.

Passage of the Thirteenth Directive is no minor event. Earlier versions were embroiled in arresting political controversies that generated significant Member …

Agenda Control In The Bundestag, 1980-2002, William M. Chandler, Gary W. Cox, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

We find strong evidence of monopoly legislative agenda control by government parties in the Bundestag. First, the government parties have near-zero roll rates, while the opposition parties are often rolled over half the time. Second, only opposition parties’ (and not government parties’) roll rates increase with the distances of each party from the floor median. Third, almost all policy moves are towards the government coalition (the only exceptions occur during periods of divided government). Fourth, roll rates for government parties sky- rocket when they fall into the opposition and roll rates for opposition parties plummet when they enter government, while …

Kitzmiller And The "Is It Science?" Question, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

When Judge John E. Jones, III, a United States District Court judge appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled that the Dover school board's intelligent design (ID) policy violated the Establishment Clause, ID opponents were ecstatic. They had good reason to be. The opinion was a comprehensive and complete victory for ID opponents. The decision held that the policy was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion when viewed both from a reasonable Dover student's perspective as well as from the perspective of a reasonable adult in the Dover community. It also held that the policy was adopted for a religious purpose, …

Consolidating Pharmaceutical Regulation Down Under: Policy Options And Practical Realities, Frances H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

Pharmaceutical regulatory agencies struggle worldwide to maintain public trust these days. Drug safety issues proliferate,' the costs of lharmaceuticals take increasingly larger shares of most countries' health service spending, and conflicts of interest afflicting the drug approval and marketing processes capture more and more public attention. The Australian and New Zealand governments are keenly aware of these problems, and have been attempting to forge a regulatory alliance to combine their respective pharmaceutical regulatory agencies, Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and New Zealand's Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority (Medsafe), into the pending Trans Tasman Therapeutic Products Authority (ANZTPA, or TPA). …

Transnational Criminal Law And Procedure: An Introduction, Sadiq Reza

Faculty Scholarship

What is “transnational” criminal law? One possibility is foreign criminal law, meaning the scope and substance of what is deemed criminal behavior in other lands and the theories that ostensibly justify punishing for such behavior, indeed deeming it criminal in the first place. Another is foreign criminal procedure, the “how” of foreign criminal law’s “what” and “why”: the rules and practices of investigating crime, prosecuting suspected criminals, and adjudicating criminal cases in other lands or systems. More common meanings, judging from articles in U.S. law reviews, are comparative criminal law and comparative criminal procedure, though these might differ from their …

The Digital Vat (D-Vat), Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

The most sustained U.S. tax policy debate of the past 30 years concerns proposals to replace and/ or supplement the Federal Income Tax with a consumption tax. Public finance economists and legal tax policy scholars challenged and defended the current income tax system on grounds of fairness, efficiency, and simplicity.

This debate over revamping the national taxing scheme has not been argued purely in the academic forum. Concrete legislative proposals have been advanced for a national retail sales tax, a European-style Value Added Tax, as well as a whole host of what David Bradford calls "the two-tiered consumption taxes."

From …

Constitutional Lessons From Europe, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Given his range of interests, a tribute to Francis Jacobs could appropriately address just about any area of contemporary legal concern. But Francis Jacobs is one whose writings on and off the bench have, for an American, been especially illuminating, due to his unique capacity to translate fundamental issues of European constitutional law into terms that we can grasp. And so, notwithstanding the quantity of writing on the recent constitutional adventure of the European Union ("EU") that has already accumulated, I add yet one more set of reflections on this theme in Francis Jacobs' honor, this time on the possible …

Xinfang: An Alternative To Formal Chinese Legal Institutions, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

Formal legal institutions are almost entirely absent from the lives of most Chinese citizens. A range of petitioning institutions and practices operate as a dysfunctional proxy for formal legal channels. Deeply rooted in imperial Chinese history, these practices and institutions have survived into the present in the form of citizen petitioning efforts directed at numerous “letters and visits” (xinfang) bureaus distributed throughout Chinese government organs, including the courts.

This Article examines the historical origins and regulatory basis for the modern xinfang system. It outlines the characteristic tactics of Chinese petitioners who seek to use the system to resolve their grievances. …