Comparative Politics Commons^™

A Reader’S Guide To Legal Orientalism, Teemu Ruskola

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My book Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law (Harvard University Press 2013) was published in translation in China in 2016. This essay analyzes the Chinese reception of this book. Originally addressed to a North American readership, Legal Orientalism examines critically the asymmetric relationship in which Euro-American law and Chinese law stand to one another, the former regarding itself as an embodiment of universal values while viewing the latter’s as culturally particular ones. The essay explores what happens when a “Western” work of self-criticism is transmitted to an “Eastern” audience. In this context, it analyzes the politics of …

Lost In Transplantation: Modern Principles Of Secured Transactions Law As Legal Transplants, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

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This manuscript will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming edited volume published by Hart Publishing, Secured Transactions Law in Asia: Principles, Perspectives and Reform (Louise Gullifer & Dora Neo eds., forthcoming 2020). It focuses on a set of principles (Modern Principles) that secured transactions law for personal property should follow. These Modern Principles are based on UCC Article 9 and its many progeny, including the UNCITRAL Model Law on Secured Transactions. The chapter situates the Modern principles in the context of the transplantation of law from one legal system to another. It draws in particular on Alan Watson’s pathbreaking …

Dismantling “Dilemmas Of Difference” In The Workplace, Rangita De Silva De Alwis, Sarah Heberlig, Lindsay Holcomb

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Over the course of six months, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s class “Women, Law, and Leadership” interviewed 55 women between the ages of 25 and 85, all leaders in their respective fields. Nearly half of the women interviewed were women of color, and 10 of the women lived and worked in countries other than the U.S., spanning across Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Threading together the common themes touched upon in these conversations, we gleaned a number of novel insights, distinguishing the leadership trajectories pursued by women who have risen to the heights of their professions. Through thousands …

Conclusion: Law As Scapegoat, Cary Coglianese

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Populist nationalist movements have been on the rise around the world in recent years. These movements have tapped into, and fueled, a deep anger among many members of the public. Especially in the face of stagnant or declining economic prospects—as well as expanding inequality—much anger has been directed at minorities and migrants. Politicians with authoritarian tendencies have sought to leverage such public anger by reinforcing tendencies to scapegoat others for their society’s problems. In this paper, I show that laws and regulations—like migrants—can be framed as “the other” too and made into scapegoats. With reference to developments in Brazil, the …

Regulating E-Cigarettes: Why Policies Diverge, Eric A. Feldman

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This paper, part of a festschrift in honor of Professor Malcolm Feeley, explores the landscape of e-cigarette policy globally by looking at three jurisdictions that have taken starkly different approaches to regulating e-cigarettes—the US, Japan, and China. Each of those countries has a robust tobacco industry, government agencies entrusted with protecting public health, an active and sophisticated scientific and medical community, and a regulatory structure for managing new pharmaceutical, tobacco, and consumer products. All three are signatories of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, all are signatories of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, …

Planning For Excellence: Insights From An International Review Of Regulators' Strategic Plans, Adam M. Finkel, Daniel Walters, Angus Corbett

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What constitutes regulatory excellence? Answering this question is an indispensable first step for any public regulatory agency that is measuring, striving towards, and, ultimately, achieving excellence. One useful way to answer this question would be to draw on the broader literature on regulatory design, enforcement, and management. But, perhaps a more authentic way would be to look at how regulators themselves define excellence. However, we actually know remarkably little about how the regulatory officials who are immersed in the task of regulation conceive of their own success.

In this Article, we investigate regulators’ definitions of regulatory excellence by drawing on …

Getting To Rights: Treaty Ratification, Constitutional Convergence, And Human Rights Practice, Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg, Beth A. Simmons

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This Article examines the adoption of rights in national constitutions in the post-World War II period in light of claims of global convergence. Using a comprehensive database on the contents of the world’s constitutions, we observe a qualified convergence on the content of rights. Nearly every single right has increased in prevalence since its introduction, but very few are close to universal. We show that international rights documents, starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, have shaped the rights menu of national constitutions in powerful ways. These covenants appear to coordinate the behavior of domestic drafters, whether or not …

Comparative Antitrust Federalism: Review Of Cengiz, Antitrust Federalism In The Eu And The Us, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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This brief essay reviews Firat Cengiz’s book Antitrust Federalism in the EU and the US (2012), which compares the role of federalism in the competition law of the European Union and the United States. Both of these systems are “federal,” of course, because both have individual nation-states (Europe) or states (US) with their own individual competition provisions, but also an overarching competition law that applies to the entire group. This requires a certain amount of cooperation with respect to both territorial reach and substantive coverage.

Cengiz distinguishes among “markets,” “hierarchies,” and “networks” as forms of federalism. Markets are the least …

International Idealism Meets Domestic-Criminal-Procedure Realism, Stephanos Bibas, William W. Burke-White

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Though international criminal justice has developed into a flourishing judicial system over the last two decades, scholars have neglected institutional design and procedure questions. International criminal-procedure scholarship has developed in isolation from its domestic counterpart but could learn much realism from it. Given its current focus on atrocities like genocide, international criminal law’s main purpose should be not only to inflict retribution, but also to restore wounded communities by bringing the truth to light. The international justice system needs more ideological balance, more stable career paths, and civil-service expertise. It also needs to draw on the domestic experience of federalism …

Law Across Borders: What Can The United States Learn From Japan?, Eric Feldman

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No abstract provided.

The Conceptual Jurisprudence Of The German Constitution, William Ewald

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No abstract provided.

Foreign Investment: Foreign Economic Contract Law, Jacques Delisle

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No abstract provided.