Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Political Asylum In The Federal Republic Of Germany And The Republic Of France: Lessons For The United States, T. Alexander Aleinikoff

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The recent flood of asylum claims, and the concerns it engenders, are not peculiar to the United States. Western European nations have witnessed similar increases in asylum applications over the past decade, .and institutions charged with adjudicating claims have become severely overburdened. This Article will describe the experience of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of France in coping with the explosion of asylum claims. A comparative analysis may provide perspective on the American situation and perhaps suggest - or rule out - proposals for change currently under consideration in the United States. To appreciate the saliency of …

The Political Offense Exception As Applied In French Cases Dealing With The Extradition Of Terrorists, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article does not attempt to deal with all of the multifarious aspects of contemporary terrorism; its ambition is much more modest in scope, centering upon traditional legal mechanisms and doctrines that can be adapted to deal with terrorism. Using the decisional law of France as an illustrative model, this article analyzes the transnational and political character of terrorist acts and seeks to establish the implications of those characteristics for litigation dealing with the extradition of terrorist offenders. Several assumptions underlie the analysis. First, the effort to repress international crime is seen as a laudable objective of the international legal …

Iii. Recent French Extradition Cases, Michigan Journal Of International Law

Michigan Journal of International Law

This section of the appendix contains the first published collection of recent French extradition cases dealing with the application of the political offense exception to terrorists. Because of the selective fashion in which French decisional law is reported, many French extradition cases are never reproduced in any French case reporter. The purpose of this appendix is to provide an English speaking audience with the substance of opinions which are otherwise nearly impossible to obtain. The editors hope that this collection will aid comparative research and contribute to an informed debate on the political offense exception.

The Political Offense Exception As Applied In French Cases Dealing With The Extradition Of Terrorists, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

There is no doubt that terrorism is a dangerous, costly and complex problem. Commentators have speculated extensively about its ideological character and other analysts have studied its sociological roots and psychological origins. Despite all this attention, there is a lack of consensus in the international community about whether terrorism is no more than a sensational form of criminality or a legitimate mode of political expression.

This article does not attempt to deal with all of the multifarious aspects of contemporary terrorism; its ambition is much more modest in scope, centering upon traditional legal mechanisms and doctrines that can be adapted …

Political Crime In Europe: A Comparative Study Of France, Germany, And England, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Political Crime in Europe: A Comparative Study of France, Germany, and England by Barton Ingraham

Professional Independence And The Associate In A Law Firm: A French Case Study, Tang Thi Thanh Trai Le

Journal Articles

In June 1977, as a result of a case brought before the Tribunal de la Seine, a "mini-revolution" erupted in French legal circles. A young woman associate of a law firm was discharged at mid-month and paid half (F. 1250) her monthly salary. Mme X considered her dismissal improper and filed a complaint with the Bdtonnier (President) of the Paris Bar. After a hearing, the Conseil de l'Ordre (Executive Committee of the Bar) advised the firm to pay Mme X an additional F. 1250 in settlement. Not satisfied, Mine X took her case to the Tribunal de la Seine requesting …

Linguistic Legislation And Transnational Commercial Activity: France & Belgium, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

For French and francophonic people, the continued vitality of their linguistic heritage is an integral part of their sense of national identity and cultural cohesiveness. The truth of this statement has been corroborated recently by legislative enactments in France and in Belgium which prescribe and/or recommend the use of French in certain private commercial and governmental activity taking place within these countries. This legislation represents an attempt to provide a partial remedy to what has been perceived generally as the syntactical and lexical "contamination" of the French language resulting from the dominance of English or, more precisely, American English, in …

The Reform Of The French Procedural Law On Arbitration: An Analytical Commentary On The Decree Of May 14, 1980, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

Prior to May 1980, the French domestic law on arbitration had not been subject to any substantial legislative reform since the early nineteenth century. The procedural part of that law, which contained practically all of the French legislative provisions applying to arbitration, was out of date and in need of reconsideration.

Despite the considerable French procedural law reforms enacted in 1975, articles 1005 through 1028 of the Nouveau Code de procédure civile had not been revised to any significant extent since the enactment of the Code de procédure civile in 1806.

The basic intention of the new legislative text is …

Terrorist Acts – Crimes Or Political Infractions? An Appraisal Of Recent French Extradition Cases, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the progression of French jurisprudence on the extradition of transnational terrorists, focusing upon the issue of whether terrorist acts can be considered legally to be political offenses and hence exempt from extradition. The analysis of this issue integrates French judicial decisions into the general context of international practice – beginning with an assessment of extradition procedures and proceeding to a discussion of the special problems raised by the application of the political offense exception. A survey of international extradition decisional law reveals that the tribunals of various countries have elaborated a series of tests by which to …

What Causes Fundamental Legal Ideas? Marital Property In England And France In The Thirteenth Century, Charles Donahue Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Categorizing broadly, the marital property systems of the Western nations today are divided into two types: those in which husband and wife own all property separately except those items that they have expressly agreed to hold jointly (in a nontechnical sense) and those in which husband and wife own a substantial portion or even all of their property jointly unless they have expressly agreed to hold it separately. The system of separate property is the "common law" system, in force in most jurisdictions where the Anglo-American common law is in force. The system of joint property is the community property …

The French Exequatur Proceeding: The Exorbitant Jurisdictional Rules Of Articles 14 And 15 (Code Civil) As Obstacles To The Enforcement Of Foreign Judgments In France, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the jurisdictional problems that might arise when a plaintiff attempts to enforce a foreign judgment in France against a French national or domicilary. The statement of a hypothetical case is followed by a description and analysis of the substantive French Law, as well as the recently enacted EEC Convention on the Enforcement of Judgments. The application of these legal principles to the facts of the hypothetical case demonstrates unequivocally the unbending nationalistic orientation of the jurisprudence: French courts have construed the relevant Code provisions to grant them exclusive jurisdiction to hear matters involving French nationals or domicilaries. …

Developments In The Control Of Foreign Investment In France, Charles Torem, William Laurence Craig

Michigan Law Review

This Article will first review the legal provisions for the control of foreign investment in France and then will analyze them in light of France's position in the Common Market and its other international obligations. Finally, it will attempt to describe the developing guidelines established by the government for foreign investment and will illustrate the application of these guidelines by a survey of recent investment cases.

The Right To One's Own Likeness In French Law, Wencelas J. Wagner

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Procedural Due Process In Administrative Law: Some Thoughts From The French Experience, Richard L. Herrmann

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

As administrative law has grown so have the suggestions for change and reform. During the last thirty years a recurrent proposal has been that Congress create a federal administrative court. The first such bill was introduced in 1933 by Senator George Norris. In the same year the American Bar Association also championed the creation of such a court. Bills advocating an administrative court were again introduced in the Seventy-Fourth, Seventy-Fifth, and Seventy-Sixth Congress. The most recent proposal came in 1949. None were ever passed.

Control Of Foreign Investment In France, Charles Torem, William Laurence Craig

Michigan Law Review

The principle of freedom of investment by foreigners in France has, with few statutory exceptions, long been recognized in French law. In practice, however, exchange controls, requiring French government authorization for all foreign exchange transactions within France, have supplied the legal foundation for governmental control of foreign investment. Initiated in 1939 as a wartime measure to stem the outflow of the nation's currency to safer havens,1 exchange controls were continued in the postwar era to protect a weak currency and were elaborated, in piecemeal fashion, to suit diverse and changing governmental policies. The complex and pervasive regulations provided an instrument …

Comparative Conflict Resolution Procedures In Taxation: An Analytic Comparative Study, L. Hart Wright, Jean Van Houtte, Pierre Kerlan, Helmut Debatin, James Arthur Johnstone, H. Schuttevaer, Elizabeth G. Brown

Michigan Legal Studies Series

Tax administrators in well developed countries rarely have either occasion or opportunity to compare experiences or exchange opinions regarding procedures and practices utilized in administering complicated tax laws. Moreover, there is little comparative literature on the subject. Even the tax institutes which are internationally oriented usually focus on substantive tax principles, not procedures and practices. Hopefully, therefore, administrators in highly developed countries will find useful this analytic comparison of practices and procedures through which six of their number resolve disputable income tax questions -administratively and judicially.

Concern for tax administrators in well developed countries, however, was not the prime motivation …

Group Defamation In France, Jean Peytel

Cleveland State Law Review

It cannot be said that there is any French legislation which specifically protects citizens of any particular ethnic origin or creed. For instance, there is no law that shelters members of a particular religious faith from group defamation. The absence of legislative texts in this connection is explicable by the tradition rooted in the French psyche, born out of the French Revolution, that frowns upon racial discrimination and religious intolerance.

The Constitutional And Judicial Organization Of France And Germany And Some Comparisons Of The Civil Law And Common Law Systems, Joseph Dainow

Indiana Law Journal

This article is based on lectures delivered at the International Faculty of Comparative Law in Luxembourg, August 1960

The Approach To French Law, Frederick H. Lawson

Indiana Law Journal

This article is from the lecture series, Problems in Comparative Law, delivered at the Indiana University School of Law in March and April, as the 1959 Addison C. Harris Memorial Lectures.

Specific Performance In France And Germany, John P. Dawson

Michigan Law Review

Edgar Durfee studied long and closely the subject of specific performance. He taught it for many years, wrote about it and planned to ·write more. He conceived it broadly, as he did every subject that ever had his attention, but he had a lively interest in details, including very technical details. Long before others and much more than most, he saw the importance of our remedial system both in shaping law and as a reflection of its larger purposes. All those who learned from him will remember as long as memory lasts the insight he gave and the hidden meanings …

Restraints On Alienation Of Legal Interests In Michigan Property: I, William F. Fratcher

Michigan Law Review

During the century and a half which followed the Norman Conquest, the owner of land who attempted to transfer it might meet with opposition from three interested parties, his feudal overlord, his heir apparent and his tenant. His feudal overlord might object to a transfer by way of substitution, that is, one under the terms of which the transferor did not retain a reversion; because the proposed transferee was not a suitable person to perform the feudal services due for the land. As these services were frequently of a personal or military nature such an objection was not necessarily captious. …

Foreign Exchange Restrictions And Public Policy In The Conflict Of Laws: Part Ii, Evsey S. Rashba

Michigan Law Review

Political Laws have been the subject of a much disputed doctrine. It has been stated by Dicey, and by other authoritative writers in various countries, that a court has no jurisdiction to entertain an action for the enforcement of a "political law" of a foreign state. The term "political law" is not limited to the field of public law. It is, of course, only exceptionally that rules governing the relations between a state and its citizens are given extraterritorial effect. The doctrine goes further. It holds that rules which are technically a part of private law, but which are designed …

Legal Techniques And Political Ideologies: A Comparative Study, Alexander H. Pekelis

Michigan Law Review

The problem with which we are going to deal is one of comparative law, a discipline probably even more illusory than legal science itself. A body of laws represents in itself neither a social reality nor a social ideal. One of the difficulties that every historian faces in trying to reconstruct a period of the past with the help of legal monuments is due to the great variety of relations existing between legal rules and social reality. So, e.g., legal monuments generally contain in an inextricable confusion at least two contradictory types of rules: rules which are a simple restatement …

Review Of Administrative Acts : A Comparative Study Of The Doctrine Of The Separation Of Powers And Judicial Review In France And The United States, Armin Uhler

Michigan Legal Studies Series

The present study was originally inspired by the widespread interest in the doctrine of the separation of powers stimulated by current discussions of vital problems of administrative law. Frequent reference to this doctrine occurs especially in recent legal literature concerned with the relation between the administrative and judicial departments of government. Particular mention may be made of the attention which has been given the doctrine by the Special Committee on Administrative Law of the American Bar Association. However, the allusions to the doctrine in these discussions to prevalent separation of powers in the organization of government have not always been …

The Premises Of The Judgment As Res Judicata In Continental And Anglo-American Law, Robert Wyness Millar

Michigan Law Review

That every judicial judgment, whatever its character, consists of premises and conclusion is a fact sufficiently obvious. In our system, especially, expression of the premises must very often be sought outside the actual judgment-order and collected from other parts of the judicial record or even from evidence aliunde of what took place at the hearing. But the legal nature of the relation between premises and conclusion is independent of the particular structure of the record and the mode of ascertaining what those premises were. Given satisfaction of the requirements of the law with respect to identity of parties, it is …

The Investigating Magistrate (Juge D'Instruction) In European Criminal Procedure, Morris Ploscowe

Michigan Law Review

For nearly five centuries the distinctive figure in the preliminary stages of European criminal proceedings has been the investigating magistrate, known in France as the juge d'instruction. Although temporarily eclipsed by the revolutionary reforms in France in 1791, he was soon re-established. In other European countries the juge d'instruction continued to be the central figure in the preliminary procedure through all the reforms achieved by the liberal movements of the nineteenth century. The investigating magistrate has remained a purely Continental institution. In theory and in practice he embodies the essential difference between Continental and Anglo-American criminal procedure preliminary to trial.

Conflict Of Laws - Statute Of Limitations - Applicability

Michigan Law Review

Goods, shipped from France on a vessel of the French line, were damaged by seawater. The bills of lading were issued in France, containing a clause that litigation or disputes arising from their interpretation or execution should be judged according to French law. When the holders of the bills libeled the French line, they were met with the defense that the French Code allowed suit on such claims only if within one year after the ship arrived, which period had passed. Section 433 of the French Commercial Code, to the effect that such claims were barred by a one-year prescription …

Acquisition Of Foreign Domicil And The Doctrine Of Renvoi

Michigan Law Review

A recent English decision has virtually overruled the leading case of In re Johnson, and revived interest in problems raised by application of the much discussed doctrine of renvoi.

Book Reviews

Michigan Law Review

A collection of book reviews by multiple authors.

The Unrecognized Government Or State In English And American Law, Edwin D. Dickinson

Michigan Law Review

Two years ago an American citizen who had been a resident of Mexico for many years died intestate in Mexico City. The widow was appointed administratrix by one of the Mexican civil courts. Finding among the papers a number of notes executed by an American corporation payable to the deceased, the administratrix began an action in New York to have whatever was due upon the notes paid to the estate. The corporation's attorneys moved for judgment on the pleadings, contending that an administratrix appointed by a Mexican court can maintain no action in courts of the United States so long …