Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Limitations On Government: A Comparative Constitutional Analysis Of American And Iraqi Efforts To Preserve Liberty And To Protect Against Arbitrariness, Hemin Ibrahim Qadir

Law Student Scholarship

This dissertation is a comparative study in constitutionalism, the historical process of limiting government powers to enable the people to be well served and protected in important aspects of their human dignity. The two constitutional systems explored here are those of the United States and Iraq.

People have to be guaranteed protection and the Constitution must restrict the government from being too powerful to enact whatever laws or acts they want. The United States of America passed through many stages from the colonial period until present day to limit government powers, to protect human rights, fundamental rights, natural rights, and …

Excavating Constitutional Antecedents In Asia: An Essay On The Potential And Perils, Arun K. Thiruvengadam

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This essay seeks to endorse Tom Ginsburg's call for studies that expand the relatively limited range of historically informed scholarship on constitutional law in Asia. Such a trend will no doubt also broaden the focus of the discipline of contemporary constitutional scholarship, which remains unjustifiably narrow and excludes many regions of the globe. While appreciating the virtues of Ginsburg's broader analysis, the essay also seeks to draw attention to the potential pitfalls of such historically-oriented inquiry. I emphasize the fact that in many Asian societies, contemporary constitutional practice marks radical departures from pre-existing traditions of law and constitutionalism. Drawing upon …

Horizontal Rights And Chinese Constitutionalism: Judicialization Through Labor Disputes, Ernest Caldwell

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Western academics who criticize Chinese constitutionalism often focus on the inability of the Supreme People's Court to effectively enforce the rights of Chinese citizens enshrined within the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. Such criticism, I argue, is the result of analytical methods too invested in Anglo-American constitutional discourse. These approaches tend to focus only on those Chinese political issues that impede the institution of western-style judicial review mechanisms, and often construe a 'right' as merely having vertical effect (i.e., as individual rights held against the State). Drawing on recent scholarship that studies Chinese constitutionalism using its own categories …

Constitutionalism And The Rule Of Law: Considering The Case For Antecedents, Rogers M. Smith

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Tom Ginsburg credibly establishes that East Asian legal traditions include elements that can be considered antecedents for perhaps the strongest form of the rule of law, constitutional restraints that apply even to sovereigns. Treating these precedents chiefly as anticipations of Western-style constitutionalism, however, may be historically misleading and may inhibit reflection on the desirability of practices that represent alternatives to Western conceptions of the rule of law.

Beyond The Courts, Beyond The State: Reflections On Caldwell's "Horizontal Rights And Chinese Constitutionalism", Victor V. Ramraj

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article provides a critical response to Ernest Caldwell's article, Horizontal Rights and Chinese Constitutionalism: Judicialization through Labor Disputes. According to Caldwell, those looking for an emerging constitutional culture in China should be looking not in the higher courts (as the American paradigm of constitutional law suggests), but in the lower courts that settle day-to-day disputes. Moreover, the constitutional discourse in those lower courts is not about limiting state power, but about the need for "horizontal" protections of citizens—specifically laborers—from their powerful employers in furtherance of constitutional values. This article offers three responses to Caldwell's thesis. First, while acknowledging and …

From Constitutional Listening To Moral Listening, Roy Tseng

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In order to provide comments on Michael Dowdle's account of "Constitutional Listening," this paper aims to establish three counter-arguments. First of all, in contrast to Dowdle's particularly narrow understanding of liberalism, I argue that to evaluate the moral import of liberalism properly, we need to draw attention to the diversities of liberalism. According to what I will call "historicist liberalism," for example, in understanding other cultures we should try to show sensitivities toward alien political systems and moral values. Second of all, although I appreciate Dowdle's effort to avoid the misinterpretation of non-Western constitutional discourse, I do not agree with …

From Constitutional Listening To Constitutional Learning, Leigh Jenco

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In this article, I point out some limitations of Michael Dowdle's "listening" model, particularly its basis in the "principle of charity." I try to show that listening, as well as the principle of charity, are inadvertently passive and one-sided exercises that seem to have little similarity to the deeply self-transformative "learning" Dowdle urges us to undertake. I go on to suggest other ways of accomplishing the goals Dowdle sets for this project. Specifically, I develop the "self-reflexive approach" to think about how we might change ourselves—our conversations, our terms, our concerns—in addition to, and in the process of, learning from …

Constitutionalism: East Asian Antecedents, Tom Ginsburg

Chicago-Kent Law Review

To what degree can traditional Asian political and legal institutions be seen as embodying constitutionalist values? This question has risen to the fore in recent decades as part of a new attention to constitutionalism around the world, as well as the decline in orientalist perceptions of Asia as a region of oppressive legal traditions. This article juxtaposes East Asian analogues or antecedents of constitutionalism with a particular set of recent theoretical understandings of the concept of constitutionalism. After conducting a historical review of political and legal institutions in China, Japan and Korea, the article argues that we can indeed speak …

Constitutional Listening, Michael W. Dowdle

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article explores a particular methodology of comparative constitutional analysis that it calls "constitutional listening." Derived from the interpretive "principle of charity," constitutional listening involves interpreting constitutional discourse of other polities in their best light. This includes not simply polities whose constitutional structures and values resemble our own, but perhaps even more importantly, polities and constitutional systems whose values and structures seem alien to us. The value of this methodology, it is argued, lies in its ability to expand our understanding of the diversity of experiences that have gone into the human project of constitutionalism, and in the diversity of …

The Unity Of Constitutional Values: A Comment On Ernest Caldwell's "Horizontal Rights And Chinese Constitutionalism: Judicialization Through Labor Disputes", Arif A. Jamal

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Ernest Caldwell wants to defend Chinese constitutionalism from criticism, mainly from Western constitutional scholars or scholars who hold up Western constitutional patterns as an ideal. Caldwell makes both a 'comparative' claim and a 'value' claim. The comparative claim is that Chinese constitutional law must be understood on its own terms and that on these terms it does protect rights, even if it does not do so in the same way as Western constitutional law. The value claim is that the procedures in China's legal system satisfy value concerns captured in the term 'constitutionalism' because they show how that system respects …

Reconstituting Constitutions—Institutions And Culture: The Mexican Constitution And Nafta: Human Rights Vis-À-Vis Commerce, Imer Flores

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The aim of this Essay is threefold. First, this Essay will focus on the main characteristics of both the great transformation, experienced in the Mexican institutional economic framework during the last thirty-five years, in general, and within the past twenty years, in particular, that were made through constitutional reforms. In addition, the greater expectation that such structural reforms generated in the process of re-enacting the constitution in the political context, should be along the lines of human rights and separation of powers. Second, this Essay will attempt to bring into play the role of treaties in this transformational process, by …

The Basel Iii Liquidity Coverage Ratio And Financial Stability, Andrew W. Hartlage

Michigan Law Review

Banks and other financial institutions may increase the amount of credit available in the financial system by borrowing for short terms and lending for long terms. Though this "maturity transformation" is a useful and productive function of banks, it gives rise to the possibility that even prudently managed banks could fail due to a lack of liquid assets. The financial crisis of 2007-2008 revealed the extent to which the U.S. financial system is exposed to the risk of a system-wide failure from insufficient liquidity. Financial regulators from economies around the world have responded to the crisis by proposing new, internationally …

Legal Framework For Soviet Privatization, Olga Floroff, Susan Tiefenbrun

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

American Parent Bank Liability For Foreign Branch Deposits: Which Party Bears Sovereign Risk?, Adam Telanoff

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Contraception Mandate, Caroline Mala Corbin

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Regulatory Conflicts: International Tender And Exchange Offers In The 1990s, John C. Maguire

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Real Challenge To The Polish Revolution: Cleaning The Polish Environment Through Privatization And Preventive Market-Based Incentives, G. Nelson Smith Iii

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Subsidiarity In The Tradition Of Catholic Social Doctrine, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Working Paper Series

This chapter is an invited contribution to the first English-language comparative study of subsidiarity, M. Evans and A. Zimmerman (eds.), Subsidiarity in Comparative Perspective (forthcoming Springer, 2013). The concept of subsidiarity does work in many and varied legal contexts today, but the concept originated in Catholic social doctrine. The Catholic understanding of subsidiarity (or subsidiary function) is the subject of this chapter. Subsidiarity is often described as a norm calling for the devolution of power or for performing social functions at the lowest possible level. In Catholic social doctrine, it is neither. Subsidiarity is the fixed and immovable ontological principle …

"There's No Place Like Home" Doma Deportation: The Forced Expatriation Of Bi-National Same-Sex Couples From The United States To Canada, Anh "Annie" Nguyen

San Diego International Law Journal

This comment will focus on bi-national same-sex couples who are forced to expatriate from the united states to canada because of DOMA’s detrimental effects on their relationship. more specifically, part I focuses on DOMA’s constitutionality, effects on bi-national same-sex couples, and current legal challenges. Part II provides a historical analysis of the united states’ attitude towards same-sex unions before describing current legislation regarding same-sex couples. Part III describes canada’s recognition of same-sex marriage and support of immigration equality, comparing and contrasting the canadian approach with the united states’ approach. Part IV explains the current legal and financial issues that bi-national …

Alternative Energy In A Spaghetti Western: Clint Eastwood Confronts State Renewable Energy Policy, Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

The legal structure in a given country affects the mechanisms through which that country can promote renewable power technologies. Federalist forms of government denote a system in which political sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central federal authority and constituent states or provinces. Such federalist forms of government describe several large and established countries, such as the United States, Germany, India, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Switzerland. Renewable energy policy at the state level, in countries with a federalist form of government, can be complex and varied.

The importance of the electric sector in the modern industrial economy …

Energy Ratings Hit Commercial Real Estate - California Lights The Way, Jonathan Cahill

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

The Energy Star Program has been extremely successful for consumer appliances and electronics, but can this success translate to commercial real estate? In the United States, commercial buildings account for nearly nineteen percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Consequently, energy rating of buildings has become an increasingly attractive way to combat pollution and lower energy consumption. Despite this, the United States does not yet have a federal policy requiring energy usage disclosure for buildings. This has left state and local governments to lead the way in innovative and effective reporting regimes. California's response to this regulatory vacuum is Assembly Bill …

Thoughts On The German Constitutional Court Decision On The Esm, Richard Stith

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Nuclear Arms Control: Challenges And Opportunities In 2013, Steven Pifer

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

U.S. nuclear arms control policy must address numerous factors, including our strategic relationships with Russia and China, the potential for future nuclear weapons reductions--including non-strategic nuclear weapons, and the offense-defense relationship, given concerns that missile defense developments could in the future affect the nuclear balance. Washington DC must also consider its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, how to dissuade new countries from joining the nuclear weapons ranks, and what to do about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the United States has signed but not ratified. This presentation will explore challenges and opportunities facing Washington DC in the aftermath of …

"They Are Destroying Our Futures": Sexual Violence Against Girls In Zambia's Schools, Women And Law In Southern Africa Trust-Zambia, Cornell Law School. Avon Global Center For Women And Justice, Cornell Law School. International Human Rights Clinic

Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence

This report examines the problem of sexual violence against girls in Zambian schools. In Zambia, many girls are raped, sexually abused, harassed, and assaulted by teachers and male classmates. They are also subjected to sexual harassment and attack while travelling to and from school. Such abuse is a devastating and often overlooked manifestation of the gender-based violence that occurs in numerous settings in Zambia and other countries throughout the world.

This report explores these issues from an international human rights perspective, drawing upon extensive desk research and interviews with 105 schoolgirls and many other stakeholders in Zambia’s Lusaka Province. The …

The Law Of Social Quotas: An Examination Of Brazil’S Efforts For Greater Diversity In The Classroom, Benjamin Williams

In the Balance

No abstract provided.

Democracy And Sustainability In Reconstructing Haiti: A Possibility Or A Mirage?, Irwin P. Stotzky, Brian Concannon Jr.

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Haiti: A Failed State? Democratic Process And Oas Intervention, Annabelle L. Torgman

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why Copyright Falls Behind The Requirement For Protecting Graphic User Interfaces: Case Studies On Limitations Of Copyright Protection For Guis In China, Ling Jin, Yihong Ying

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Ip Protection Of Fashion Design: To Be Or Not To Be, That Is The Question, Xinbo Li

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Multiculturalist Liberalism And Harms To Women: Lookin Through The Issue Of "The Veil", Anissa Helie, Marie Ashe

Publications and Research

Hélie & Ashe law review writing raises and responds to a reformulated and broadened version of Susan Okin’s 1999 inquiry, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? It identifies social and political developments, as well as legal and theoretical developments, that have occurred in the 21^st century and that demand that reformulation.

Not limiting itself (as did Okin’s question) to interrogating the relationship between women’s equality interests and interests in “religious freedom” advanced by minority-religious groups, Hélie & Ashe is the broader inquiry, critical for liberal theory of the 21^st century which has been greatly affected by the “ethos …