Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Withdrawing From International Custom: Terrible Food, Small Portions, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Curtis A. Bradley and Mitu Gulati’s Withdrawing from International Custom brings to mind the old joke recounted by Woody Allen in Annie Hall: “Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ’em says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.’” Similarly, while Bradley and Gulati attack international law’s current prohibition of unilateral withdrawal from custom, they propose an alternative that differs only modestly from it (small portions). At the same time, the doctrinal change they propose would take customary international law in the …

The Supreme Constitutional Court Of Egypt: The Limits Of Liberal Political Science And Cls Analysis Of Law Elsewhere, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On January 25th 2011, following a popular uprising, president Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was forced to relinquish power after thirty years of continuous rule. The popular uprising came to be known as the Egyptian revolution of January 25th marking the first time in the modern history of Egypt an authoritarian ruler is forced out of power through the mobilization of Egyptian masses. The popular mobilization came at the heels of several years of “wildcat” workers' strikes affecting various sectors of the economy, public and private, as well as recurring demonstrations spearheaded by the youth of the Egyptian middle class demanding …

The Malaysian Legal System: A Tale Of Two Courts, Yvonne Tew

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Federal Constitution of Malaysia was crafted during the birth pangs of the nation in 1957 and provides the framework for Malaysia’s modern legal system. The Federation of Malaya emerged from British colonialism to achieve independence on 31 August 1957 and was joined six years later by the Borneo states – Sabah and Sarawak – and Singapore to form the new nation of Malaysia. Singapore left Malaysia in 1965 to become its own sovereign nation, and the current Federation of Malaysia comprises the Peninsula, Sabah, and Sarawak. Malaysia was born in a climate of multicultural compromise as a constitutional monarchy …

Overcoming Babel’S Curse: Adapting The Doctrine Of Foreign Equivalents, Jonathan Skinner

Publications

No abstract provided.

Domestic Violence And State Intervention In The American West And Australia, 1860-1930, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article calls into question stereotypical assumptions about the presumed lack of state intervention in the family and the patriarchal violence of Anglo-American frontier societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By analyzing previously unexamined cases of domestic assault and homicide in the American West and Australia, Professor Ramsey reveals a sustained (but largely ineffectual) effort to civilize men by punishing violence against women. Husbands in both the American West and Australia were routinely arrested or summoned to court for beating their wives in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Judges, police officers, journalists, and others expressed dismay …

Towards An International Dialogue On The Institutional Side Of Antitrust, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

The antitrust world is now globalized and interconnected, requiring ever-increasing awareness as to how different agencies operate. The need to promote convergence on substantive doctrines has received, and will continue to receive, considerable attention. What is less appreciated is the need to focus on institutional design and practice, particularly as to the promotion of transparency and procedural fairness in the conduct of antitrust investigations. This Essay makes the case for such a focus, explaining how one of the healthy aspects of a multijurisdictional world is that sister agencies can challenge one another and model means of improving our institutional practices. …

How Can The Rural Energy Poor Obtain Appropriate Sustainable Energy Technologies?, Michael Waggoner

Publications

Solutions to a current serious problem for the rural energy poor might best be found at least in part in older practices.

The problem comes from cooking over open fires, impairing the health of the cook and of others in her family, using fuel so inefficiently as to threaten forests, and releasing soot that contributes to global warming. Small, cheap, reliable cooking stoves could address these issues, improving health by reducing smoke and exhausting it through a chimney and thus away from the cook, using fuel more efficiently so that less needs to be gathered, and more completely burning the …

Inclusive Constitutional Comparison: Reflections On India's Sodomy Decision, Madhav Khosla

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have witnessed an outpouring of literature evaluating whether judges should refer to foreign law in resolving domestic legal disputes. A range of theories now posit constitutional comparison, outlining its benefits and highlighting its promise. Yet the support for such a practice is deeply qualified; comparative scholars narrowly limit the nations that should be considered while performing comparative study. This essay in comparative law theory reflects upon India's recent sodomy decision, Naz Foundation v. Government of NCT of Delhi, to evaluate which countries should be part of the comparative law project. In Naz, the Delhi High Court …

Student-Edited Law Reviews And Their Role In U.S. Legal Education, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

>p>For well over a centur y student-edited law reviews have been a major vehicle for publication of scholarship on law in the United States. At those law reviews, students bear responsibility for nearly all aspects of the publication process, including the vitally important task of selecting what works will be published. Criticisms have been raised over various aspects of this system, but they have not stemmed the rise of student-edited law reviews. Today, such law reviews are firmly entrenched as a central feature of the U.S. legal system; and, facilitat­ ed by advances in technology, the number of student-edited …

Internationalization And Integration Of Doctrine, Skills And Ethics In Legal Education: The Contrasting Situations Of The United States And Japan, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

This article addresses two trends in legal education: internationalization and integration of doctrine, skills and legal ethics. In the United States, international and comparative law, skills training, and legal ethics all have deep historical roots in legal education, and the past few decades have seen further major increases in each of those areas. A particularly noteworthy recent development is the rise in efforts to integrate skills training and attention to ethical issues with doctrinal analysis, rather than just teaching each of those elements separately, Notably, Harvard Law School, which continues to influence educational patterns at other law schools within the …

Legal Education For The Future: Global Perspectives, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

This is a report on "FutureEd 2: Making Global Lawyers for the 21st Century," a conference on legal education held at Harvard Law School (HLS) on October 15-16, 2010, In which this author had the opportunity to participate. The conference was the second In a series of three conferences jointly organized by HLS and New York Law School (NYLS). The first conference was held at NYLS in April 2010; the third and final conference was held at NYLS, in April 2011．The goals of the conferences were to stimulate thinking and research about the future of legal education; to promote concrete …

Toward A Unified Theory Of Exclusionary Vertical Restraints, Daniel A. Crane, Graciela Miralles

Articles

The law of exclusionary vertical restraints-contractual or other business relationships between vertically related firms-is deeply confused and inconsistent in both the United States and the European Union. A variety of vertical practices, including predatory pricing, tying, exclusive dealing, price discrimination, and bundling, are treated very differently based on formalistic distinctions that bear no relationship to the practices' exclusionary potential. We propose a comprehensive, unified test for all exclusionary vertical restraints that centers on two factors: foreclosure and substantiality. We then assign economic content to these factors. A restraint forecloses if it denies equally efficient rivals a reasonable opportunity to make …

Universal Exceptionalism In International Law, Anu Bradford, Eric A. Posner

Faculty Scholarship

A trope of international law scholarship is that the United States is an "exceptionalist" nation, one that takes a distinctive (frequently hostile, unilateralist, or hypocritical) stance toward international law. However, all major powers are similarly "exceptionalist," in the sense that they take distinctive approaches to international law that reflect their values and interests. We illustrate these arguments with discussions of China, the European Union, and the United States. Charges of international-law exceptionalism betray an undefended assumption that one particular view of international law (for scholars, usually the European view) is universally valid.

Ability To Pay, John A. E. Pottow

Articles

The landmark Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 ("Dodd-Frank") transforms the regulation of consumer credit in the United States. Many of its changes have been high-profile, attracting considerable media and scholarly attention, most notably the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"). Even specific consumer reforms, such as a so-called "plain vanilla" proposal, drew hot debate and lobbying firepower. But when the dust settled, one profoundly transformative innovation that did not garner the same outrage as plain vanilla or the CFPB did get into the law: imposing upon lenders a duty to assure a borrower's ability to repay. Ensuring a borrower's …

Buried Treasure Or Buried Hope? The Status Of Mexico-U.S. Transboundary Aquifers Under International Law, Gabriel E. Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Transboundary aquifers found along the 2,000 mile-long border between Mexico and the United States are not governed by any treaty. Yet, these aquifers are the primary source of water for many of the twelve million people who live in this parched region. The region’s groundwater, however, is being over-exploited and contaminated, which is threatening the very life that it currently sustains. As populations continue to expand and current rates of haphazard development persist, the absence of an agreement for the management and allocation of this critical resource could lead to bi-national economic, social and environmental tragedies. This study reviews groundwater …

The Flaws Of Foreign Affairs Legalism, Daniel Abebe, Eric A. Posner

Faculty Scholarship

Foreign affairs legalism, the dominant approach in academic scholarship on foreign relations law, holds that courts should abandon their traditional deference to the executive in foreign relations, and that courts and Congress should take a more activist ole in foreign relations than they have in the past. Foreign affairs legalists believe that greater judicial involvement in foreign relations would curb executive abuses and promote adherence to international law. This Article argues that foreign affairs legalism rests on implausible assumptions about the incentives and capacities of courts. In U.S. history, the executive has given more support to international law than the …

A Populist Threat To China's Courts?, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Is the Chinese party-state too responsive to public opinion? In the case of the courts, this may be the case. Western literature has devoted extensive attention to the problems in the Chinese legal system, in particular in the courts, describing a system that continues to be undermined by a range of problems, from corruption to lack of competence to continued Communist Party intervention. Likewise, existing literature describes a legal system that often is unresponsive to individual demands for justice. In this chapter, I examine another possibility: that one impediment to the development of courts that are able to protect individual …

Comparative Law: Problems And Prospects, George A. Bermann, Patrick Glenn, Kim Lane Scheppele, Amr Shalakany, David V. Snyder, Elizabeth Zoller

Faculty Scholarship

The following is an edited transcript of the closing plenary session of the XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law. The session took place on Saturday, July 31, 2010, in Washington, D.C., at the conclusion of the week-long congress, which is held quadrennially by the International Academy of Comparative Law (Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé). The remarks were given in a mix of French and English, but for ease of reading the transcript below is almost entirely in English.

The United States Supreme Court: An Introduction, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court of the United States has always occupied a center place in the comparative study of judicial institutional design and the role of courts. In this roundtable discussion, National Taiwan University College of Law is honored to have Professor Bert I. Huang from Columbia Law School, United States, who had served as the law clerk of Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, to unveil the ways that the U.S. Supreme Court functions by introducing the certiorari process and the system of law clerks. Based on his own experience, Professor Huang provides his insight on the institution of law …

Financial Literacy Or Financial Castigation?, John A. E. Pottow

Articles

This year, the Canadians- through their government-convened Task Force on Financial Literacy - have proudly produced, "Canadians and their Money: Building a Brighter Financial Future." Armed with 30 recommendations, its most dramatic innovation is to recommend the creation of a Financial Literacy Leader. I have been asked to provide an American perspective on this report specifically and the broader agenda of "financial literacy" more generally as a consumer welfare intervention. Let me start by acknowledging the critiques of the Canadian Task Force. For example, my Canadian colleague, Saul Schwartz, has already drafted a compelling analysis of the political economy behind …

Harvesting Intellectual Property: Inspired Beginnings And 'Work-Makes-Work,' Two Stages In The Creative Processes Of Artists And Innovators, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is part of a larger empirical study based on face-to-face interviews with artists, scientists, engineers, their lawyers, agents, and business partners. The book-length project involves the collecting and analysis of stories from artists, scientists, and engineers about how and why they create and innovate. It also collects stories from their employers, business partners, managers, and lawyers about their role in facilitating the process of creating and innovating. The book’s aim is to make sense of the intersection between intellectual property law and creative and innovative activity, specifically to discern how intellectual property intervenes in the careers of the …

American Antitrust Jurisprudence Applied To European Commission V. Intel, Paul Jones

Brigham Young University International Law & Management Review

No abstract provided.

Sharia Law Poses No Threat To American Courts, Nathan B. Oman

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Transfer Pricing, Business Restructurings, And Intangibles: Case Studies From The U.K. And The U.S., Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Andrew Shact

Faculty Scholarship

United Parcel Service of America, the largest motor carrier in the US, and DSG Retail the largest retailer of electrical goods in the UK, restructured operations and established captive insurance companies in offshore tax havens. In both instances, these restructurings removed sizeable amounts of income from the domestic tax base.

The IRS and HMRC opened transfer pricing audits. The UPS case involved tax year 1984 and was settled in 2003; DSG Retail involved 1997 through 2005 and was settled in 2009. Both settlements came on the heels of government-favorable court decisions, and prior to the addition of Chapter IX to …

The Amicus Curiae: Friends No More?, S. Chandra Mohan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

A term commonly used in both common law and civil law jurisdictions and in domestic and international tribunals is the Latin term amicus curiae or a 'friend of the court'. Who is this friend of the court and what is his role in legal proceedings? Largely because of the remarkable manner in which this ancient institution has developed in different legal systems and been used differently even in countries sharing a common legal tradition, such as the United States and the Commonwealth countries, the important question is whether the amicus curiae can still be considered a 'friend' of any tribunal …

The Ombudsman As A Monitor Of Human Rights In Canadian Federal Corrections, Howard Sapers, Ivan Zinger

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Attracting The Best And The Brightest: A Critique Of The Current U.S. Immigration System, Chris Gafner, Stephen W. Yale-Loehr

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The United States has long benefited as a leader in attracting the "best and brightest" immigrants. However, the world has changed since the U.S. immigration system's last major modification in 1990. The United States is no longer the primary destination for many talented immigrants. Many other nations have enacted immigration systems meant to attract the best and brightest immigrants. These immigration systems are often point- based and allow potential immigrants to quickly determine eligibility. By comparison, the U.S. immigration system is slow and complicated. Many now question the United States' ability to attract talented immigrants. This Article first examines how …

Protecting Indigenous Identity And Culture In The Modern Nation-State: A Case Study Of The Sami In Norway, Claire Lockerby

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The plight of indigenous peoples around the world is a serious one, and without significant international action, many valuable cultural and linguistic traditions are in grave danger of disappearing altogether. Many of these indigenous groups have experienced detrimental consequences from the history of slavery, colonialism and imperialism, and the emergence of nation-states that stripped them of their autonomy and greatly threatened their way of life. Today, there are some positive examples of international and national efforts to protect indigenous peoples, but unfortunately, most indigenous populations remain dispossessed and underrepresented. Although the international community has established principles of unalienable human rights, …

International & Comparative Law Perspectives: Fall 2010, Int'l & Comp. Law Program

International & Comparative Law Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Governance Of Health Research Involving Humans In Developing Countries: The Nigerian Example, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe

PhD Dissertations

An intense debate has occurred regarding research involving humans in developing countries in recent years. Research in this area has focused mainly on examining the ways in which the economic inequalities in healthcare between developing countries and developed countries have affected the types of research conducted in developing countries by external sponsors. Research has also focused on how these inequalities, and the difficulties in applying the international ethical guidelines, give rise to ethical concerns and controversies. Recent literature has therefore examined several ethical concerns in health research in developing countries. What is missing in the literature on research oversight in …