HEINONLINE: Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law Publications

HEINONLINE: Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law Publications

HeinOnline has recently released the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law Pulications. 
Released this past July, HeinOnline's Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law Publications is a collection of prestigious publications from the Parker School at Columbia University. Featuring the work of Charles Szladits, among others, this collection covers more than 200 years of foreign law in a fully-searchable digital format.

Notable publications include:

Szladits’ Bibliography on Foreign and Comparative Law: Books and Articles in English
by Charles Szladits

An Introduction to the Legal System of the United States
by E. Allan Farnsworth


by John N. Hazard & Morris L. Weisberg

Civil Law and the Anglo-American Lawyer: A Case-Illustrated Introduction to Civil Law Institutions
and Methods
by Henry P. De Vries

European Legal Systems: Selected Readings
by Charles Szladits

Foreign Law: A Guide to Pleading and Proof
by Otto C. Sommerich & Benjamin Busch

French Legal System: An Introduction to Civil Law Systems
by Rene David & Henry P. De Vries

JOURNAL: Transnational Legal Theory

Juris Diversitas is very pleased to let you know that Transnational Legal Theory, Hart Publishing, Oxford,  Volume 4, Issue 2 is now published.

About the Jorunal:

The objective of Transnational Legal Theory is to publish high-quality theoretical scholarship that addresses transnational dimensions of law and legal dimensions of transnational fields and activity.

Central to Transnational Legal Theory's mandate is publication of work that explores whether and how transnational contexts, forces and ideations affect debates within existing traditions or schools of legal thought. Similarly, the journal aspires to encourage scholars debating general theories about law to consider the relevance of transnational contexts and dimensions for their work. With respect to particular jurisprudence, the journal welcomes not only submissions that involve theoretical explorations of fields commonly constructed as transnational in nature (such as commercial law, maritime law, or cyberlaw) but also explorations of transnational aspects of fields less commonly understood in this way (for example, criminal law, family law, company law, tort law, evidence law, and so on). Submissions of work exploring process-oriented approaches to law as transnational (from transjurisdictional litigation to delocalized arbitration to multi-level governance) are also encouraged.

PRESIDENT'S LETTER: Upcoming Elections!!!

Members,

I hope this finds each of you well.

ELECTIONS

I’m writing to announce, in line with our recently-amended Constitution, upcoming elections to our Executive Committee. Article 7 of the Constitution notes, among other things, that ‘[t]he executive business of the Association is conducted by its Executive Committee. The officers of the Executive Committee include a President, a Vice President (Projects), a Vice-President (Events), a General Secretary, a Treasurer, and up to two other officers.’ All of these named offices (in bold) will be open to election. Their duties are detailed in Article 8.

ARTICLE: Janke and Licari on Applying Foreign Punitive Damage Laws

Benjamin West Janke and François-Xavier Licari's 'Les Conflits De Lois En Matière De Dommages-Intérêts Punitifs: L' Expérience De La Louisiane/Applying Foreign Punitive Damage Laws in Louisiana: The Experience of a Mixed Jurisdiction', to be published in (2013) 85 Revue Lamy Droit des Affaires 132, is now on SSRN:

The abstract reads: 

La Louisiane est fondamentalement réfractaire aux dommages-intérêts punitifs. Cette position s’illustre évidemment par son droit substantiel, mais n’est pas sans répercussion sur son système de conflits de lois. Si le législateur louisianais n’est pas allé jusqu’à adopter une clause d’ordre public, il a inséré dans le Code civil de Louisiane une disposition visant à restreindre les cas où le juge louisianais pourra allouer des dommages-intérêts punitifs. Au-delà de la présentation de cette norme originale, l’article permet une réflexion sur les intérêts en présence lorsque surgit un conflit de lois en matière de dommages-intérêts punitifs. 

There is perhaps no better laboratory to scrutinize punitive damages than Louisiana. As a civil law island surrounded by common law jurisdictions, it shares some compensation principles that are decidedly civilian, and others that are clearly influenced by its American neighbors. Likewise, Louisiana’s geography has given rise to a sophisticated, and well-exercised, system for addressing conflicts of laws. Here, the intersection of divergent principles of compensation provokes an inquiry into the validity of the “full compensation” theory. The conflicts analysis in the context of delicts and quasi-delicts, and especially in the context of punitive damages, is complex and involves a plurality of norms of the Louisiana Civil Code (La. Civ. Code). The general inquiry under Louisiana’s conflicts analysis is the determination of the state whose policies would be most seriously impaired if its law were not applied to that issue. The central provision is La. Civ. Code art. 3515, which states: 

Except as otherwise provided in this Book, an issue in a case having contacts with other states is governed by the law of the state whose policies would be most seriously impaired if its law were not applied to that issue. That state is determined by evaluating the strength and pertinence of the relevant policies of all involved states in the light of: (1) the relationship of each state to the parties and the dispute; and (2) the policies and needs of the interstate and international systems, including the policies of upholding the justified expectations of parties and of minimizing the adverse consequences that might follow from subjecting a party to the law of more than one state. 

ARTICLE: Schucha on The (Un)Availability of Tribal Law

Bonnie J Schucha’s ‘“Whatever Tribal Precedent There May Be”: The (Un)Availability of Tribal Law’, has been published on SSRN:

This article explores the costs and benefits of publishing tribal law. Part I analyzes why tribal law is not more widely available; part II illustrates the benefits of making tribal law more accessible, and part III describes publication options for tribes. An appendix lists currently available tribal law collections. 

ARTICLE: Fuglinszky on Civil Liability in a Mixed Jurisdiction

Ádám Fuglinszky's article on "Civil Liability in a Mixed Jurisdiction: Quebec and the Network of Ratio Communis" has been published in (2013) 28 Tulane European & Civil Law Forum.

The article focuses on Ratio Communis, which accounts for a quality component of a rule that renders an efficient law, and it also discusses its impact on mixed jurisdictions in context to civil liability. If certain issues are common to distinct legal systems and are able to resolve fixes in an efficient manner then it is of no significance to manifest which legal system a resolution originated from. The author tries to identify as many Ratio Communis as possible in the field of civil liability and the law of damages in Quebec by a functional comparative approach, in order to verify that mixed legal systems are particularly successful in comparing and weighing of legal solutions of different origins.

Meanwhile, both the fundamental elements of liability and damages (proximity, fault, culpability, force majeure, contributory negligence, non-pecuniary damages and the cap, punitive damages, pure economic loss, relational losses) but also some more specific questions (occupiers’ liability, defamation, liability of managing directors, extra-contractual liability of auditors towards third parties, prenatal injuries) are evaluated in light of the mutual influences of common law and civil law. The results are finally compared with the solutions of European law approximation processes like PETL or DCFR.

JOURNAL: Chinese Journal of Comparative Law

The (2013) 1:2 Chinese Journal of Comparative Law is available. Articles include:

• Specific Performance in International Arbitration - Ewan McKendrick and Iain Maxwell
• Soft Law and the Principle of Fair and Equitable Decision Making in International Contract Arbitration - Larry A. DiMatteo
• Towards a Deposit Guarantee Insurance in China? A Law and Economics Perspective - Michael Faure and Jiye Hu
• Paternalistic Regulation in China’s Banking Sector - He Wei Ping
• The Judiciary in Economic and Political Transformation: Quo Vadis Chinese Courts? - Weixia Gu
• Analysing the Human Rights Issues Relating to the Transfer of Sentenced Persons between Hong Kong and Other Countries - Jamil Ddamulira Mujuzi

BOOKS: The Mind And Method Of The Legal Academic by Prof. Jan M. Smith

The Mind and Method Of The Legal Academic by Prof. Jan M. Smith, of The Netherlands and University of Helsinki, Finland

Description

"Prof. Jan Smits has long been one of the most interesting and original authors on European private law theory. Now he offers his views on legal scholarship, and they are as original as they are thought-provoking. His plea for a legal scholarship that maintains its identity vis-à-vis neighboring disciplines without collapsing into doctrinairism is bound to yield lively discussions – and hopefully will help re-establish a proper place for legal scholarship, in Europe and beyond."

– Ralf Michaels, Duke University, US

Contents

Contents: Preface Introduction: A Discipline in Crisis? 1. Legal Science: A Typology 2. The Homo Juridicus: Towards a Redefinition of Normative Legal Science 3. Methodology of Normative Legal Science 4. Organization of the Legal-academic Discourse. Synopsis. References. Index.

In a context of changing times and current debate, this highly topical book discusses the aims, methods and organization of legal scholarship.

Jan Smits assesses the recent turn away from doctrinal research towards a more empirical and theoretical way of legal investigation and offers a fresh perspective on what it is that legal academics should deal with and how they should do it. The book also considers the consequences which follow for the organization of the legal discipline by universities and uses this context to discuss the key questions of the internationalization of law schools, quality assessments, legal education and the research culture.

Being the first book to address the aim and goals of legal scholarship in an international context, this insightful study will appeal to academics, graduate students, researchers and policymakers in higher education.

ARTICLE: Dedek on European Legal Culture between Kultur and Civilization

"When Law Became Cultivated: 'European Legal Culture' between Kultur and Civilization", by Helge Dedek, is now available on SSRN.

Abstract: In this contribution, I invite the reader to approach the concept of ‘European legal culture’ from a historical perspective. Such an approach is helpful in two ways: first, it helps to attune one’s ear to the shades of meaning of ‘culture’ and to enhance awareness of the fact that ‘legal culture’ may have a different ring in different legal traditions. Second, as we shall see, it is the discourse on ‘legal culture’ itself, and especially the discourse on ‘European legal culture’, that seeks historical legitimacy by cultivating foundational narratives, invoking, in particular, the writings of the German Historical School and its most well-known proponent, Friedrich Carl von Savigny. I will present ‘snapshots’ of some of the foundational moments in the career of the concept of ‘legal culture’, and then, after a short comparison with contemporary English usage, set out to inquire which role ‘legal culture’ may be said to play in Savigny’s famous manifesto, Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft (Of the Vocation of our Age for Legislation and Legal Science, written in 1814). I want to suggest that re-reading Savigny’s text with the historical semantics of ‘culture’ between the French ‘civilisation’ and the German ‘Kultur’ in mind will help us to see more clearly some aspects of the text that are at times obscured in its ‘culturist’ readings that are too eager to find a romantic conception ‘Volksgeistlehre’ in Savigny’s work. These often neglected aspects might hint to an openness toward the possibility of thinking a legal culture beyond the nation state, and might give us, perhaps counterintuitively, some useful cues for a reflection on possible theoretical approaches to a ‘European legal culture’.

This chapter will appear in the forthcoming G Helleringer and K Purnhagen (eds), Towards a European Legal Culture

ARTICLE: English Law in Saudi Arabia

Anna Rogowska's 'English Law in Saudi Arabia,' for the (2013) Arab Law Quarterly, is now available on SSRN.

This article argues that it is important for Saudi lawyers to be familiar with certain aspects of English law (alongside Shari'ah and Saudi laws). Accordingly, it firstly discusses the importance of English law in international business practice and then briefly presents its current use in Saudi Arabia, and the Middle East in general. This study is mainly based on teaching and studying English law at Dar al-Hekma, a private college for women in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It examines how Dar al-Hekma students in particular can benefit in their future practice from studying English law.