Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Taking Stock: China's First Decade Of Free Trade, Jun Zhao, Timothy Webster

Faculty Publications

China has established itself as a global economic presence in the past ten years. This article explains one important but overlooked aspect of this rise, China’s newfound interest in free trade agreements (FTAs). This paper situates the FTA boom within a framework of international political economy and China’s recent regional rise. This paper probes the question of how China selects its FTA partners, referencing US trade practice and policy as a framework by which to analyze China’s own preferences. This paper then explores the main features of China’s FTAs, finding that it has adopted a flexible FTA strategy that attends …

Ambivalence & Activism: Employment Discrimination In China, Timothy Webster

Faculty Publications

Chinese courts do not vigorously enforce many human rights, but a recent string of employment discrimination lawsuits suggests that, given the appropriate conditions, advocacy strategies, signals from above, and rights at issue, courts can help victims vindicate their constitutional and statutory rights to equality. Since 28, carriers of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) have used the Employment Promotion Law to challenge hiring discrimination. Their high success rate suggests official support for making one potent form of discrimination illegal. Central to these lawsuits is a broad network of lawyers, activists and scholars who have advocated for protecting the rights of HBV …

Currency Of Love: Customary International Law And The Battle For Same-Sex Marriage In The United States, 14 U. Pa. J.L. & Soc. Change 53 (2011), Sonia Bychkov Green

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

How Leadership In International Criminal Law Is Shifting From The United States To Europe And Asia: An Analysis Of Spending On And Contributions To International Criminal Courts, 55 St. Louis U. L.J. 953 (2011), Stuart K. Ford

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Letting The Arbitrator Decide Unconscionability Challenges, 26 Ohio St. J. On Disp. Resol. 1 (2011), Karen H. Cross

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This article examines how courts are allocating jurisdictional questions relating to unconscionability to the arbitrator, and assesses the approach of U.S. courts to this issue from a historical and comparative perspective. The U.S. allocation rule is evolving toward one of deference to the arbitrator, allowing the arbitrator to make an initial determination of whether there is an enforceable agreement to arbitrate. As a matter of timing, the U.S. approach is becoming more similar to that of France. Such an approach, especially in the commercial sphere, has the potential to be relatively efficient and consistent. But in the context of mandatory …

Consumer Protection Initiatives In The Eu Mortgage Market: A Behavioral Economics Based Critique And Proposal, 25 Temp. Int'l & Comp. L.J. 1 (2011), Debra Pogrund Stark, Jessica M. Choplin

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Wto-Compliant Protection Of Fundamental Rights: Lessons From The Eu Privacy Directive, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Nation states often create legislative schemes regulating services industries in order to protect fundamental rights such as human life, economic security, or human security. World Trade Organization members are constrained in their creation of such regulatory schemes by their obligations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (‘GATS’). WTO members raised concerns about such constraints even before the creation of GATS. As a result, GATS contains clauses specifically designed to allow members enough regulatory latitude to protect important domestic social interests, such as fundamental rights, while simultaneously liberalising trade in services. WTO jurisprudence interpreting these clauses, however, has called …

The Need For Originality: Music Infringement In India, 11 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 169 (2011), Harini Ganesh

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

For decades, the Indian film industry has copied tunes from Western copyrighted works and created unauthorized derivatives. As the music and motion picture industries in the United States started taking notice of this copyright infringement, so too did Indian music directors as domestic infringers profited from copying. Despite the existence of an enacted copyright statute in India, and the nation’s membership with various international intellectual property treaties and conventions, enforcement continues to be poor. This lack of protection allows high-profile music directors in the Indian film industry to get away with copyright infringement. This comment proposes that India must improve …

International Arbitration Of Patent Disputes, 10 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 384 (2011), Wei-Hua Wu

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

This paper discusses the concept of using international arbitration as a method of resolving patent disputes. First, this paper examines the arbitrability of patent validity disputes from a public policy viewpoint. The question is whether, or to what extent, the subject matter of patent validity disputes may be settled by international commercial arbitration. Second, this paper provides suggestions on strategies for organizational decision-makers to consider whether it is proper to choose arbitration as a more favorable tool when confronted with a patent dispute. Finally, this paper discusses how to choose the seat of arbitral institution and the applicable law.

A Grotian Moment: Changes In The Legal Theory Of Statehood, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article examines the Grotian Moment theory and its practical application toward the legal theory of statehood. To that effect, this article describes, in Part II, the notion of a Grotian Moment. In Part III, it examines the legal theory of statehood in its traditional form. Part IV describes changes in the legal theory of statehood brought about by the forces of globalization in a Grotian Moment manner. These changes include a new notion of state sovereignty and the accompanying right to intervention, the emergence of human and minority rights that sometimes affect state territorial integrity, the existence of de …

Introduction, Robert Shawn Hogue

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Managing The Rule Of Law In The Americas: An Empirical Portrait Of The Effects Of 15 Years Of Wto, Mercosul, And Nafta Dispute Resolution On Civil Society In Latin America, Stephen Joseph Powell, Ludmilla Mendonça Lopes Ribeiro, Zachary D. Kaufman, Claudio Grossman, Patricia Camino

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Labor Rights And Environmental Protection Under Nafta And Other U.S. Free Trade Agreements, David A. Gantz, C. Ryan Reetz, Guillermo Aguilar-Alvarez, Jan Paulsson

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Nearshore Alternative: Latin America's Potential In The Offshore Legal Process Outsourcing Marketplace, Kara D. Romagnino

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ramirez-Peyro V. Holder: Protecting Mexican Informants From Themselves, David Seth Yohay

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Limited Case For Permitting Sme Procurement Preferences In The Wto Agreement On Government Procurement, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

This is a chapter in the book, Sue Arrowsmith & Robert D. Anderson, The WTO Regime on Government Procurement: Challenge and Reform (Cambridge University Press, 2011). The chapter puts under scrutiny public procurement policies designed to benefit SMEs per se, as small or medium sized enterprises, and to evaluate whether the GPA (and hence possibly other trade agreements liberalizing procurement markets) should be more accommodating to these policies, even though these policies might restrict international trade. The chapter also evaluates whether the GPA should be more accommodating to policies designed to benefit firms controlled by individuals who belong to historically …

China's Turn Against Law, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

Chinese authorities are reconsidering legal reforms they enacted in the 1980s and 1990s. These reforms had emphasized law, litigation, and courts as institutions for resolving civil grievances between citizens and administrative grievances against the state. But social stability concerns have led top leaders to question these earlier reforms. Central Party leaders now fault legal reforms for insufficiently responding to (or even generating) surging numbers of petitions and protests.

Chinese authorities have now drastically altered course. Substantively, they are de-emphasizing the role of formal law and court adjudication. They are attempting to revive pre-1978 Maoist-style court mediation practices. Procedurally, Chinese authorities …

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

Indiana Law Journal

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 …

Top-Down Or Bottom-Up? A Look At The Unification Of Private Law In Federal Systems, Daniel Halberstam, Mathias Reimann

Book Chapters

At its current stage, European private law is still more an aspiration than a reality. It is true that there is a substantial body of European private law on the Union level; and it is also true that there are private law principles and rules shared by many—often by most, and sometimes even by all—European legal systems. Still, in most areas, we do not at present have one body of positive private law for all of Europe, but rather a coexistence of more or less similar national laws. Thus, to the extent one considers a European private law desirable, one …

The French Jury At A Crossroads, Valerie P. Hans, Claire M. Germain

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article describes the contemporary landscape of the French jury. Putting the institution in its historical and political context, it begins with an overview of the rich history of the French jury. We describe the earliest form of community judgment in France, the introduction of a formal jury system following the French Revolution, and the political and legal influences that transformed it from an independent body of lay citizens to a mixed decision-making body of professional and lay judges. We next identify characteristic features of contemporary French jury trial procedure and the respective roles and responsibilities of professional and lay …