Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Explanation Interpretation In Functionalist Comparative Law — A Response To Julie De Coninck, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Response to Julie de Coninck, The Functional Method of Comparative Law: Quo Vadis?, 74 Rabels Zeitschrift für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht 318–350 (2010) in which De Coninck criticizes existing functionalist comparative law for what she perceives as lack of interest in empirical foundations.

The Rule Of Law Unplugged, Daniel B. Rodriguez, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Barry R. Weingast

Faculty Scholarship

The "Rule of Law" is a venerable concept, but, on closer inspection, it is a complex admixture of positive assumptions, inchoate political and legal theory, and occasionally wishful thinking. Although enormous investments have been made in rule of law reformism throughout the world, advocates of transplanting American-style legal and political institutions to developed and developing countries are often unclear about what they are transplanting and why they are doing so. The concept of rule of law has become unplugged from theories of law. Scholars clearly have more work to do in understanding the rule of law and designing institutions to …

Enforcing International Corrupt Practices Law, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay strives to advance the current international movement to
deter the transnational corrupt practices that have long burdened the global economy and weakened governments, especially in “developing” nations. Laws made in the last decade to address this longstanding global problem have not been effectively enforced. Described here are the moderately successful efforts in the United States since 1862 to reward private citizens serving as enforcers of laws prohibiting corrupt practices. It is suggested that this American experience might be adapted by international organizations to enhance enforcement of the new public international laws.

Value Of Intersectional Comparative Analysis To The Post-Racial Future Of Critical Race Theory: A Brazil-U.S. Comparative Case Study, The Commentary: Critical Race Theory: A Commemoration: Response, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

This Commentary Article aims to illustrate the value of comparative law to the jurisprudence of Critical Race Theory (CRT), particularly with reference to the CRT project of deconstructing the mystique of "postracialism. " The central thesis of the Article is that the dangerous seductions of a U.S. ideology of "post-racialism" are more clearly identified when subject to the comparative law lens. In particular, a comparison to the Brazilian racial democracy version of "post-racialism"is an instructive platform from which to assess the advisability of promoting post-racial analyses of U.S. racial inequality. In Part I the Article introduces the value of comparative …

'Fruits Of The Poisonous Tree' In Comparative Law, Stephen C. Thaman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article gives a brief review of the types of exclusionary rules articulated in modern codes, constitutions, and jurisprudence, and explores how these rules are interpreted when excluding the derivative “fruits” of constitutional violations of the right to silence and human dignity during police interrogations and the right to privacy in one’s home and confidential communications. It shows, whether a country begins with a seemingly airtight categorical exclusionary rule for serious constitutional violations, or allows judges great discretion in deciding whether to use fruits of unconstitutional police behavior, the search for truth has largely triumphed over constitutional rights. As a …

Individualized Service Provision In The New Welfare State: Lessons From Special Education In Finland, Charles F. Sabel, Annalee Saxenian, Reijo Miettinen, Peer Hull Kristensen, Jarkko Hautamäki

Faculty Scholarship

The essay is four parts. Part 2 sets out the theoretical frame of the argument. It explains briefly why social solidarity increasingly depends on the provision of capacitating or enabling circumstances; why those services must increasingly be adapted to individual needs to be effective; and what is organizationally problematic (from the point of view of current theories of organization) about the success of countries such as Finland, Denmark and the US in delivering these services. It sketches two paths — a Nordic way, building on traditional professions, and a roundabout, US way, re-building broken bureaucracies originally intended as substitutes for …

International Agreements, Internal Heterogeneity, And Climate Change: The "Two Chinas" Problem, Daniel Abebe, Jonathan S. Masur

Faculty Scholarship

Every quantitative forecast of Chinese emissions – save for two important exceptions – uses only national-level data, a methodological weakness that can wash out distinctions between East and West. Of the two studies that employ sub-national data, one projects higher emissions than any of the national-level studies; the other projects much higher emissions than any other study. We read this as suggesting that Chinese carbon emissions over the forthcoming several decades may be significantly greater than the standard models have anticipated, with correspondingly higher costs to China from any agreement to curb carbon emissions. In light of the importance of …

Changing Media, Changing Courts, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines court-media relations in China and argues that such relations are increasingly a two-way street. Media coverage is forcing the courts to act more carefully — and perhaps fairly. But pressure from the courts is also resulting in greater attention to factual reporting and professional standards in the media. This interactive relationship reflects the position of the courts and media as institutions competing for authority within the Chinese political system. It also suggests that there is significant room for ground-up development of both media and the courts.

The first section discusses the growth of media coverage of legal …

Pluralism In Marbury And Van Gend, Daniel Halberstam

Book Chapters

‘Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law’, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, famously remarked in his first Supreme Court dissent. For Holmes, ‘great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment’. On this account neither Marbury v Madison70 nor Van Gend en Loos would qualify. Van Gend was a case of great principle without greatly interesting facts. And Marbury was a great political battle that nevertheless produced a case of great principle.

International Capital Taxation., Rachel Griffith, James R. Hines Jr., Peter Birch Sørensen

Book Chapters

Globalization carries profound implications for tax systems, yet most tax systems, including that of the UK, still retain many features more suited to closed economies. The purpose of this chapter is to assess how tax policy should reflect the changing international economic environment. Institutional barriers to the movement of goods, services, capital, and (to a lesser extent) labour have fallen dramatically since the Meade Report (Meade, 1978) was published. So have the costs of moving both real activity and taxable profits between tax jurisdictions. These changes mean that capital and taxable profits in particular are more mobile between jurisdictions than …

Judicial Independence And Company Law In The Shanghai People's Courts, 1992-2008, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

This chapter draws on a detailed study of corporate law adjudication in Shanghai from 1992 to 2008. The purpose of the study was to better understand the demonstrated technical competence, institutional autonomy, and political independence of one court system in the People's Republic of China ("PRC") in a sector outside of the criminal law. The study consisted of a detailed examination and comparison of full-length corporate law opinions for more than 200 reported cases, a 2003 Shanghai High Court opinion on the 1994 Company Law (describing a decade of corporate case outcomes), a 2007 report on cases implementing the Company …

The Development Of Modern Corporate Governance In China And India, Nicholas C. Howson, Vikramaditya S. Khanna

Book Chapters

Corporate governance reform has become a topic of considerable debate both in the US and in many emerging markets. Indeed, the discussion is important because these reforms may have potentially long-standing effects upon the global allocation of capital, and in understanding the ways in which governance norms are communicated across markets and nations in an ever-globalizing world. In this chapter we examine the corporate governance reform efforts of the world's two biggest and fastest growing emerging markets, the People's Republic of China (PRC or China) and India. In the process we find that our understanding of how and why corporate …

Rethinking Treaty Shopping: Lessons For The European Union, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, C. H. Panayi

Book Chapters

Whilst treaty shopping is not a new phenomenon, it remains as controversial as ever. It would seem that the more countries try to deal with it, the wider the disagreements as to what is improper treaty shopping and what is legitimate tax planning. In this paper, we reassess the traditional quasi-definitions of treaty shopping in an attempt to delineate the contours of such practices. We examine the various theoretical arguments advanced to justify the campaign against treaty shopping. We also consider the current trends in treaty shopping and the anti-treaty shopping policies under the OECD Model and the US Model. …