Dan Stigall and Colin Picker, both bloggers here, are also guest blogging on the Comparative Law Blog. Each has begun a discussion, from different positions, on the relationship between comparative and international law. You might have a look-in.
Indigenizing Intellectual Property Law: Customary Law, Legal Pluralism, and the Protection of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Identity, and Resources - Danielle M. Conway, University of Hawaii at Manoa - William S. Richardson School of Law, Institute of Asian-Pacific Business Law at William S. Richardson Law SchoolBerkeley Electronic Press announced the following articles recently published in Asian Journal of Comparative Law.
Articles
. The Same Difference: Protecting Same-Sex Couples under the Domestic Violence Ordinance (Puja Kapai)
. Schisms in Humanitarianism -- The Khmer Rouge Tribunal's First Hearing (Mahdev Mohan)
The Transformation of Land Law in Indonesia: The Persistence of Pluralism (Daryono)
Book Reviews
. Review of Emergencies and the Limits of Legality (Michael Dowdle)
. Review of Corporate Governance in the 21st Century -- Japan's Gradual Transformation (Colin P. A. Jones)
Featured Article
. Changing Mindsets: How China's Abnormal Sex Ratio Is Turning Its Government into a Champion of Gender Equality (Liang Ying Tan)
The Asian Journal of Comparative Law is a definitive new peer-reviewed journal for Asian perspectives on the law and legal perspectives on Asia. An initiative of the Asian Law Institute, an association of thirteen leading law schools in Asia, the journal's editors and authors come from top institutions across the Asian-Pacific region and South Asia. The journal publishes articles from scholars with intimate knowledge of local practices that offer unique insight into how legal solutions are tailored to local culture and circumstance. Recent topics include Korean corporate governance, the political culture of blogging in Malaysia, and Asian discourses on legal education. One of the few English-language law journals based in Asia, and the only pan-Asian one, Asian Journal of Comparative Law is an invaluable resource for scholars of comparative and international law as well as scholars of Asian area studies.
Source: http://www.bepress.com/asjcl/announce/20100331/
Our primary theme is the legal and normative diversity of the region. We will, however, consider any proposals on the mixtures and movements of state laws and other norms. A secondary theme is the establishment of dialogue between comparative lawyers and other disciplines. Anthropologists, geographers, historians, and sociologists, among others, are encouraged to participate.
Expressions of interest are requested for a collaborative and comparative project in legal theory. Both participants and a web/blog manager are sought.
Cultures live and cultures die. Cultures live by the transmission of law, knowledge, land, and resources from one generation to the next. Cultures die, in large measure, because of exploitation of peoples and the knowledge they possess. In reality, cultures are constantly under attack from politically-oriented societies bent on exterminating, exploiting, or commercializing any culture that is different. Commercialization or commodification of culture is akin to collecting culture for purposes of exploitation, observation, voyeurism, and objectification. The western approach to globalization is keen to recognize culture as an object rather than as a living, evolving organ to be shielded from exploitation. To respond to western commodification of culture, this article proposes that legal pluralism is necessary, in the interim, to protect culture from those who would, without authority or justification, exploit it and reduce it to a short term and short-lived commodity. The proposal to indigenize intellectual property law is for sure only an interim measure to protect Indigenous resources up to and until Indigenous Peoples has fully realized self-determination. In addition, the interim nature of this proposal reflects the legacy of colonization, with its complex extra- and intra-Indigenous power-oppression relationships. Because Indigenous Peoples are rarely in a position to exercise rights from a position of power, there is always risk in proposing legal rules or models for protection that may not fully account for the complex legacy of colonization. With this in mind, this article proposes that legal pluralism is one workable interim means to indigenize western intellectual property law in order to provide essential protections against the ongoing obliteration of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, identity, and resources.
This article reports on our analysis of 120 refugee cases from Australia, Canada, and Britain where an actual or threatened forced marriage was part of the claim for protection. We found that forced marriage was rarely considered by refugee decision makers to be a harm in and of itself. This finding contributes to understanding how gender and sexuality are analysed within refugee law, because the harm of forced marriage is experienced differently by lesbians, gay men and heterosexual women. We contrast our findings in the refugee case law with domestic initiatives in Europe aimed at protecting nationals from forced marriages both within Europe and elsewhere. We pay particular attention to British initiatives because they are in many ways the most far-reaching and innovative, and thus the contrast with the response of British refugee law is all the more stark. 
This book deals with the rendezvous of European legal cultures that results from and spurs forward the ongoing harmonization of European law. It neither thoroughly presents nor analyses legal culture in a changing Europe. Rather, the book is an introduction to this vast topic, aimed at present and future lawyers in need of a crack and a chisel to make a hole in the Berlin Wall dividing the old legal Europe, dominated by national legal cultures with stable boundaries, from the new legal Europe, where these national legal cultures are being harmonised and subordinated under a new European legal culture.
