Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Public Interest Lawyering In Japan Under Globalization, Shinichi Sugiyama

UC Law SF International Law Review

Globalization came to the Japanese legal community as a form of legal reform early in the millennium. The reform has impacted not only business lawyering, but also public interest lawyering, which aims at access to justice (see Parts I and II). The growing national budget has improved legal services for the underrepresented (see Part III). The increasing number of Japanese lawyers has brought improvement in access to justice to thinly populated areas. More attorneys seek careers as in-house lawyers in business or public interest organizations such as the United Nations (see Parts IV, V). The negative effects of public interest …

Fifty Years Of Space Law: Basic Decisions And Future Challenges, Marcus Schladebach

UC Law SF International Law Review

Space Law is often described as a collection of more or less amusing and unrealistic rules. For society, outer space is more of an imaginary sphere than a concrete space of Public International Law. That is why it is an ambitious project to explain that the international community of States has created a legal order for exploring and using outer space by concluding a binding international treaty. With a duration of 50 years, the Outer Space Treaty is in an advanced age. This special anniversary represents good reason to evaluate basic decisions and to predict future challenges of this modern …

The Origin And Role Of The Penitentiary In Brazil, Scandanavia, And The United States, Nitin Sapra

UC Law SF International Law Review

Modern penitentiaries offer valuable insight on the core of society’s sensibilities, perceptions, and values. They shed light on the relation between the State and the citizenry, particularly the lower classes. Beyond its explicit reformative goals to the criminal justice system, the penitentiary functions to affect social policy through norms of decency and respect for human rights. From the unique architectural choices to the minute logistical details, a government makes choices that intimately speak on how it views its most vulnerable groups of individuals. The origins of the penitentiary offer insight into the circumstances that interweave to organize the social fabric …

Three Arguments Of The “Right To Secession” In The Civil War: International Perspectives, Han Liu

UC Law SF International Law Review

Secession becomes a source of controversies again both within and outside the United States. In both political discourse and public imagination, the image of secession of the South in the mid-nineteenth century, as well as the Civil War it triggered, occupies an important position. Conducted in blood, the end of the Civil War is usually thought to establish a constitutional rule that no state shall secede from the Union. Challenging the conventional understanding, recent legal scholarship has shown that the legality/constitutionality of secession did not receive a definitive, legal answer at Appomattox. But the question remains: Why so? Explaining the …

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540: An Exemplary Model For A Framework To Safeguard Dangerous Dams Against Sabotage By Nonstate Actors, Ian Andrew Barber

UC Law SF International Law Review

The purpose of this research is to explore how an international framework could be developed in order to safeguard large dams against sabotage by nonstate actors, such as terrorist organizations or hostile civilians. The necessity of an international security agreement to manage dams as a global security threat will be clearly substantiated via an analysis of three determinants: the possible magnitude of dam failure, the inadequacies of international law to regulate asymmetric warfare, and the evolving threat of dam sabotage in the developing world. Subsequently, various legal components and regulatory mechanisms from an existing international agreement will be considered with …

Globalization Of Japanese Lawyers: Achievements,Challenges, And Expectations Of American Law Schools, Setsuo Miyazawa

UC Law SF International Law Review

The topic of the 2016 symposium was “Globalization of Japanese Lawyers: Achievements, Challenges, and Expectations of American Law Schools.” The symposium was held on November 18, 2016. This symposium commemorated the signing of the cooperation and the exchange agreement between UC Hastings and Niben. The 2016 symposium was organized to explore the following inquiries: how Japanese lawyers have been coping with a globalizing legal market; how much and in what way have Japanese lawyers become globalized; achievements of Japanese lawyers; challenges of Japanese lawyers; and finally what they expect from American law schools in their effort of globalization. We were …

Review Of South Sudan: A Slow Liberation, Laura Nyantung Beny

Reviews

This is a remarkable book. It offers a complex and nuanced analysis of South Sudan's prolonged and troubled march to political liberation—first from Anglo‐Egyptian colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, then from hegemonic Arab rule in post‐independence Sudan [1956‐2011], and now from South Sudan's internal political and economic contradictions.

Targeting The Targeted Killings Case - International Lawmaking In Domestic Contexts, Yahli Shereshevsky

Michigan Journal of International Law

The targeting of non-state armed groups members is perhaps the most debated legal issue in the law of contemporary armed conflicts between states and non-state actors. The 2006 Targeted Killings case of the Israeli Supreme Court (ISC) is a key reference point in this debate. Recently, without much scholarly or public attention, the government of Israel, in its report on the summer 2014 conflict in Gaza (the 2014 Gaza Conflict Report), dramatically diverged from the Targeted Killings case’s definition of legitimate targets in asymmetric conflicts. The Targeted Killings case held a conduct or functional membership-based approach to targeting. This approach …

¿Debemos Exigirle Seguridad Jurídica A Una Cláusula Antielusiva General? Reflexiones Sobre Las Líneas Discursivas Contrarias A La Cag, Fernando Loayza Jordán

Scholarly Articles

Las CAG generan tensiones entre la certidumbre que desean los contribuyentes y la flexibilidad que requiere su naturaleza. Esta tensión se refleja en las líneas discursivas críticas contra la Norma XVI. Hemos resumido estas en tres ideas fuerza: (i) “una CAG vulnera el principio de seguridad jurídica”, (ii) “una CAG solo podría ser aceptable si se enuncia con un lenguaje muy preciso y definido” y (iii) “una CAG interrumpiría la dinámica regular de los negocios y detendría la inversión”. A partir de la experiencia comparada y el análisis de la función de las CAG y la naturaleza del fenómeno de …

U.S. War Powers And The Potential Benefits Of Comparativism, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

There is no issue of foreign relations law more important than the allocation of authority over the use of military force. This issue is especially important for the United States given the frequency with which it is involved in military activities abroad. Yet there is significant uncertainty and debate in the United States over this issue — in particular, over whether and to what extent military actions must be authorized by Congress. Because U.S. courts in the modern era have generally declined to review the legality of military actions, disputes over this issue have had to be resolved, as a …

Treaty Exit And Intra-Branch Conflict At The Interface Of International And Domestic Law, Laurence R.. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter, forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law, considers two important and unresolved issues raised by unilateral withdrawal from or denunciation of treaties. The first issue concerns whether treaty obligations end in both international and domestic law after a state leaves a treaty. Exit often produces the same effects in both legal systems, but some withdrawals bifurcate a treaty’s status, ending its obligations in domestic law but continuing to bind the state internationally, or vice versa. The second issue concerns denunciations initiated by different branches of government. The decision to withdraw from a treaty is usually …

How Asian Should Asian Law Be? – An Outsider’S View, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Is there an Asian identity of Asian law, comparable to European identity and therefore similarly useful as a justification for unification projects? If so, what does it look like? And if so, does this make Asia more like Europe, or less so? Or is this question itself already a mere European projection?

This chapter tries to address such questions. In particular, I look at a concrete project of Asian law unification—the Principles of Asian Comparative Law—and connect discussions about its Asian identity with four concepts of Asia. The first such concept is a European idea of Asia and Asian law, …

Martin, Ghana, And Global Legal Studies, H. Timothy Lovelace Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This brief essay uses global legal studies to reconsider Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s activism after Gayle v. Browder. During this undertheorized portion of King's career, the civil rights leader traveled the world and gained a greater appreciation for comparative legal and political analysis. This essay explores King's first trip abroad and demonstrates how King's close study of Kwame Nkrumah's approaches to law reform helped to lay the foundation for watershed moments in King's own life.

In To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr., renowned civil rights scholar and author, Adam …

Exclusionary Megacities, Wendell Pritchett, Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

Human beings should live in places where they are most productive, and megacities, where information, innovation, and opportunities congregate, would be the optimal choice. Yet megacities in both China and the United States are excluding people by limiting the housing supply. Why, despite their many differences, is the same type of exclusion happening in both Chinese and U.S. megacities? Urban law and policy scholars argue that Not-In-My-Back-Yard (“NIMBY”) homeowners are taking over megacities in the U.S. and hindering housing development. They pin their hopes on an efficient growth machine that makes sure “above all, nothing gets in the way of …

Rights-Weakening Federalism, Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines whether federalism protects land rights in China from two dimensions. I first compare national law with local institutions of eminent domain, revealing that local governments take much more land than the national government approves, frequently violating, tweaking, and challenging national law. I next examine the impact of interjurisdictional competition on the development of local land institutions, demonstrating that local governments are weakening individual land rights for the benefits of mobile capital. Overall, Chinese federalism weakens rather than strengthens individual land rights and should be called rights-weakening federalism.

This China case also has general theoretical implications. Leading property …

The Rise And Fall Of Fear Of Abuse In Consumer Bankruptcy: Most Recent Comparative Evidence From Europe And Beyond, 96 Tex. L. Rev. 1327 (2018), Jason Kilborn

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Prepared for a symposium celebrating the groundbreaking career of Jay Westbrook, this Article examines recent evidence of fear of abuse of the benefits of consumer bankruptcy and the gradual abatement of that fear in modern consumer insolvency law reform. It marshals evidence of a recent and accelerating retreat in both the judicial discretion that Westbrook attributed to lawmakers' fear of abuse and other more direct techniques to avoid abusive recourse to consumer discharge. Fear of abuse appears to be diminishing with accumulated experience as indicated by recent liberalizing reforms in Denmark, Slovakia, Poland, Austria, Russia, and Romania. At the same …

Are Two Clauses Really Better Than One? Rethinking The Religion Clause(S), 80 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1 (2018), Donald L. Beschle

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

The First Amendment begins with two references to the relationship between government and religion. The prohibition on establishment of religion and the guarantee of free exercise of religion, despite their obvious interaction, are generally regarded as separate clauses, and analyzed under tests developed under one or the other. The current state of Establishment Clause doctrine and Free Exercise doctrine is sharply contested and by no means clear. Supreme Court justices will usually classify a religious freedom case as either presenting non-establishment or free exercise issues. Having done so, they will apply the test framed for that clause. But does that …

Changing Governance Models By Applying Blockchain Computing, Steve Young

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Setbacks In Regulatory Data Protection Confront Innovative Drug Developers In The Russian Federation, Bruce Mcdonald, Vladislav Ugryumov, Denis Kolesnikov

The International Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Talking Foreign Policy: Jesner V. Arab Bank, Milena Sterio, Thomas Buergenthal, Carsten Stahn, Avidan Cover, Timothy Webster, Michael P. Scharf

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Talking Foreign Policy is a one-hour radio program, hosted by Case Western Reserve University School of Law Co-Dean Michael Scharf, in which experts discuss the salient foreign policy issues of the day. Dean Scharf created Talking Foreign Policy to break down complex foreign policy topics that are prominent in the day-to-day news cycles yet difficult to understand.

This broadcast featured:

• Judge Thomas Buergenthal, the youngest survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, who went on to become the Dean of American University Law School, to serve for twelve years as a judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and then …

Trials By Peers: The Ebb And Flow Of The Criminal Jury In France And Belgium, Claire M. Germain

UF Law Faculty Publications

The participation of lay jurors in criminal courts has known much ebb and flow both in France and in Belgium. These two countries belong to the civil law tradition, where juries are the exception rather than the rule in criminal trials, and they only exist in criminal cases, not civil cases. In spite of some similarities, there are substantial differences between the two countries, and their systems will be examined in turn.

In France, the Cour d’assises itself was inherited from the French Revolution. Since a law of 1941, it is a mixed jury system, meaning that lay citizens sit …

A Comparative Study Of The Law Of Dismissal In The U.S. And China, Zhenxing Ke

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The Labor Law in China, enacted in 1994, was the first statute in China to stipulate dismissal protections. The Employment Contract Law, a more recent law that went into effect in January 2008, strengthened Chinese dismissal protections. For example, in the summary termination about the misconduct, this law only allows six instances for termination, and if a misconduct committed by an employee is not covered in these six instances, it is hard for an employer to discharge this employee legally.

In contrast, America has a more flexible employment law. In America, the doctrine of dismissal is dominated by the …

Local Human Rights Lawyering, Lauren Bartlett

All Faculty Scholarship

International human rights offer a powerful set of norms that have helped domestic advocates to successfully secure additional civil, political, economic and social rights for those living in poverty in the U.S. Legal aid attorneys, public defenders, and other public interest advocates have recognized human rights as an additional advocacy tool and are increasingly using human rights arguments in U.S. courts. This article examines three cases in which legal aid attorneys and public defenders successfully used human rights arguments in U.S. courts, and discusses emerging best practices for using human rights in litigation in the U.S.

Mr. Trump's Contribution To Women's Human Rights, Barbara Stark

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Trump’s presidency is for those who support women’s human rights what Roe v. Wade was for abortion opponents, a “target,” as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg characterized Roe, an event that has focused and united people who did not realize how much they had in common. Just as Roe did for the radical right, this presidency has not only unified those concerned with women’s human rights, but galvanized them.

This Article focuses on three major areas of women’s human rights: civil and political rights; the right to be free from sexual harassment; and the right to health. The range of these …

La Méthode Comparative En Droit Public, Elisabeth Zoller

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

A Taxonomy Of Striker Replacements, James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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.

The Reform Of The Russian Legal Profession: Three Varying Perspectives, Susan Carle, Delphine Nougayrède

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article was co-authored by Susan Carle (American University Washington College of Law), Gayane Davidyan (Moscow State University), Thomas McDonald and Delphine Nougayrède. In the Article the four authors debate various approaches to reforming the legal profession in Russia. They start out with a historical introduction followed by a presentation and discussion of the status at present. A large number of legal practitioners, including the international law firms, are currently unregulated and practice within what is sometimes referred to as the "free sector". The Russian government has for a number of years attempted to introduce reforms that would require these …

Legal Activism In The Face Of Political Challenges: The Nigerian Case, Jayanth K. Krishnan, Kunle Ajagbe

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Countries that move from authoritarianism to democracy often see increased rights-based, social justice lawyering after the transition. Given the new freedoms and opportunities present, this outcome is hardly surprising. However, relying on a literature and theoretical frame developed over the past two decades, this study argues that, in fact, such lawyering can have its historical roots in the legal activism that occurred during previous authoritarian periods. Consider Africa’s most populous country – Nigeria. Since gaining independence in 1960, Nigeria has witnessed, in total, nearly 30 years of military dictatorship. In 1999, the country adopted a democratic system of government, which …

Federalism And Gender Equality, Susan H. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Despite the enormous literature on federalism in constitutional design, and the growing attention to gender equality in constitutional design, there has been remarkably little attention paid to the interaction between the two. This article seeks to provide a summary of the existing literature on this intersection, to apply the insights of that literature to the case of Myanmar, and to offer a contribution concerning the theoretical connections between federalism and gender equality. The analysis generates four primary conclusions. First, federalism is inherently neither good nor bad for gender equality: it all depends on the details of the federal system and …