The IntLawGrrls Blog recently posted the following notice:
The MultiRIghts program at the University of Oslo in Norway
hosted a conference on Transnational
Judicial Dialogue which included participants from law, political
science, and philosophy. Papers addressed to what extent judges cite
foreign and/or international case law and norms in their own decisions.
Courts from Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Canada were examined.
The idea of transnational judicial dialogue was portrayed as a
cosmopolitan project, but concerns were raised about hierarchical tendencies
and the impact of culture, language, power, or other factors impacting citation
tendencies. There was a panel of national judges, including Lord Carnwath
of the UK Supreme Court (who explained how he faced appeals from different
corners of the earth involving Maori law or the Napoleonic code), Andreas
Paulus of the Bundesverfassungsgerecht (who noted that in a case involving the
right of refugee children to education, there was no international
authoritative guidance available so the court had to set the standard itself),
and Rafaele Sabato of the Court of Cassation of Italy (who explained how
contradictory positions among the different national courts rendered
application of European standards impossible). There was examination of
the evolution of same-sex family law in Europe through vertical and horizontal
dialogue, concern was raised that LBGT NGOs were more interested in the
legislative process than the judicial path, complicating matters.
Finally, there was a panel with three judges from the European Court of
Human Rights, Luis Lopez Guerra, Erik Møse, and Angelika Nussberger who gave
insight as to the potential influence of other regimes, including international
criminal law. Beth Simmons of Harvard University reminded the
participants that it is important to keep in mind the importance of identifying
the intended audience of the judicial output- are judges seeking legitimacy
among each other, are they seeking to convince the executive or the
legislature, are they addressing the parties, or are they concerned with the
view of the public at large? Most striking to me was a paper by Azizat
Amoloye-Adebayo who described limitations to the potential of transnational
judicial dialogue due to ideological barriers in Islamic jurisdictions, leading
one to consider whether the phenomenon is indeed most relevant to the
Anglo-European legal community. Lord Carnwath pointed out that judges are
seeking to solve problems, and some are simply harder than others, leading one
to seek assistance in identifying solutions beyond borders, hence there may not
necessarily be a grand theory behind it all.
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