28 December 2013

OPPORTUNITY: Deputy Director, British and Irish Legal Information Institute


JURISPRUDENCE: The Russian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights




27 December 2013

INDIGENOUS LAW: American Federal Recognition Process (Indian Law)


LAW & RELIGION: Law and Religion Stories Around the Web this Week


MAP: Upside Down World Map


CONFERENCE: 11th Annual BIICL Merger Conference


The British Institute of International and Comparative Law has announced 11th Annual Merger Conference.
This year's speakers are:
  • Giulio Federico, European Commission
  • Clara Ingen-Housz, Linklaters Hong Kong
  • Nelson Jung, Office of Fair Trading
  • Edyth Kyegombe, Shell
  • Andrea Lofaro, RBB Economics
  •  Johannes Luebking, European Commission
  • Adrian Majumdar, RBB Economics
  • Philip Marsden, British Institute of International and Comparative Law
  •  Simon Pritchard, Linklaters
  • Emily Roche, Rio Tinto
  •  Gregory Werden, US Department of Justice (Antitrust Division)
This conference will include the following Panels:
  • Panel 1: Screens and Inferences in Mergers
  • Panel 2: Efficiencies and Pro-competitive Remedies
  • Panel 3: Hot Topics (Minority Stakes, Procedural Simplification, the Rise of MOFCOM)

Location: Fondation Universitaire, rue d'Egmont 11, 1000 Bruxelles, Tuesday 21 January 2014 09:00 to 16:00.

Click here to download the Draft Programme and here to register.

ARTICLE: Law & Literature (As an Approach to Criminal Law)


Simon Stern’s ‘Law & Literature (As an Approach to Criminal Law)’ is forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law, Markus Dubber & Tatjana Hörnle, eds.  (Oxford UP 2014).

Abstract
'This book chapter discusses the use of literary material as a means of studying criminal law. The chapter provides an overview on various methods of combining legal and literary materials (law in literature, literature in law, law as literature, legal aesthetics) and offers two case studies (Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers" and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) to show how literature can open up questions both about substantive criminal law doctrines and also about the grounds on which those doctrines are applied. Along the way, the discussion shows how various scholars of criminal law, such as Nicola Lacey and Anne Coughlin, have raised questions that have also provoked the interest of literary scholars such as Dorrit Cohn and Blakey Vermeule.

The chapter also serves as a bibliography for scholars seeking further resources that examine criminal law through the lens of literature. These resources include bibliographies of primary texts (such as crime-based fiction, "dying confessions" circulated at executions, and movies), secondary texts (discussing law and criminal behavior in relation to fiction, drama, and poetry), and web-based resources (such as the Old Bailey Sessions Papers Online). In that spirit, the chapter also discusses some research that is often overlooked in discussions of criminal law and literature – such as Todd Herzog’s research on Weimar-era true-crime narratives that were created from actual case files; Jonathan Eburne’s research on crime in the work of the French surrealists; Lorna Hutson’s research on civic plots of detection in renaissance drama and their relation to the development of evidence law; and Lisa Rodensky’s work on narrative modes in Victorian fiction and their relation to the treatment of mens rea in contemporaneous legal thought.

The chapter closes with some brief reflections on the potential for current work in cognitive literary studies to change the way we think about literature's relation to law, and, in particular, the way we impose narrative templates on the events we experience.'

Full text of the article is available here.

ARTICLE: Berman on Legal Pluralism


11 International Journal of Constitutional Law 801-808 (2013)  has published Paul Schiff Berman’s, ‘How Legal Pluralism Is and Is Not Distinct from Liberalism: A Response to Dennis Patterson and Alexis Galán’.

Abstract
Alexis Galan and Dennis Patterson largely accept the descriptive account of plural authority described in my book, Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence of Law Beyond Borders. However, they are concerned that my normative argument for procedural mechanisms, institutional designs, and discursive practices for managing pluralism is simply liberalism in another guise and not pluralist enough. Given that pluralists are usually criticized from the opposite side for an approach that results in too much fragmentation and destabilization, I am in some sense happy to welcome this new critique. After all, a position cannot easily be simultaneously too radical and not radical enough. Nevertheless, while there is clearly a liberal bias at its core, I don't think it's true that the pluralist vision I espouse is solely liberalism in disguise. Accordingly, in this brief response, I sketch out ways in which the proceduralist pluralism I advocate, while it is not necessarily incompatible with liberalism, at least shifts the emphasis to a set of values that are not always fully captured in the design of liberal procedures and institutions.

The article is available here.




26 December 2013

MAP: Areas of the World that Were Once Part of the British Empire


LAW & RELIGION: Constructing Muslims in France


25 December 2013

NEWSLETTER: European Law Institute Newsletter




MAP: The 22 Countries Britain Hasn't Invaded


24 December 2013

JOURNAL: 'Global Jurist' On-Line

A new issue of 'Global JuristVolume 13, Issue 1 (Jan 2013) is now available online from De Gruyter Online with a new article 'Incorporating Cultural Dynamism into International Human Rights Law: A Solution from Anthropology' by Sean Goggin.

Abstract
Culture remains one of international human rights law’s most vexing subjects. While the right of minority groups to protect culture has existed for nearly four decades, fundamental questions still prevail in the jurisprudence in the area. To add to the unresolved debate, the essay argues for the incorporation of a new dynamic approach to culture, borrowed from the cultural insights of anthropology.
Full text is avaliable here.




BOOK: International Criminal Procedure

Edward Elgar Publishing has published a new book 'International Criminal Procedure. The Interface of Civil Law and Common Law Legal Systems'.

Edited by Linda Carter, Professor of Law and Co-Director, Global Center for Business and Development, University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, Sacramento, California, US and Fausto Pocar, Professor Emeritus of International Law, University of Milan, Italy, Appeals Judge and past President ICTY, The Hague, The Netherlands.

‘International Criminal Procedure, edited by two insiders to international criminal proceedings, Professor Linda Carter and Professor Fausto Pocar, a judge at the ICTY and a former President of this Tribunal, is a coherently organized, well-researched, very informative and not the least elegantly-written contribution to a young and rapidly developing legal sub-discipline. The book provides its reader with a highly accessible and up-to date introduction into key elements of international criminal procedure as well as with critical commentary and rich inspiration for improvements of current practices.’

– Claus Kreß LL.M. (Cantab.), University of Cologne, Germany and Institute for International Peace and Security Law.

‘This book addresses compelling issues that have come before international criminal tribunals. They include the self-representation of accused persons, plea bargaining and victim participation. It usefully approaches all of the issues and problems from a comparative law perspective. This excellent and accessible work is essential reading for practitioners, faculty and students of international criminal law.’

– Richard Goldstone, Retired Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda

The emergence of international criminal courts, beginning with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and including the International Criminal Court, has also brought an evolving international criminal procedure. In this book, the authors examine selected issues that reflect a blending of, or choice between, civil law and common law models of procedure. The topics include background on civil law and common law legal systems; plea bargaining; witness proofing; written and oral evidence; self-representation and the use of assigned, standby, and amicus counsel; the role of victims; and the right to appeal.

International Criminal Procedure will appeal to academics, students, researchers, lawyers and judges
working in the field of international criminal law.

2013 272pp. Hardback 978 0 85793 9579 Regular price £ 80 Web price £ 72 ebook 978 0 85793 958 6

Click here for full text download of this title for subscribing institutions only

For full contents - www.e-elgar.com



23 December 2013

SPD: Best Wishes



Best wishes from me (and my

traditions) to you and yours!