JURIS DIVERSITAS ANNOUNCEMENT: New Web Editor for the Juris Diversitas Blog

The Executive of Juris Diversitas is pleased to announce that Antonio Zuccaro has agreed to act as Web Editor for Juris Diversitas:

Antonio Zuccaro has a Masters Degree from the University of Catania (with a thesis in comparative private law) He is a PhD candidate in European Comparative Legal Studies at the University of Trento (Italy). His main fields of research include Comparative Constitutional law, BioLaw, Bioethics, and European Union Law and Citizenship Rights. He is on the Editorial Board of the BioLaw Journal, edited by the University of Trento, and Web Editor for the PRIN (Program of Research of Relevant National Interest) Jurisdictions and Pluralism and for Trento’s Laboratorio di Innovazione Istituzionale per l’Autonomia Integrale.

Antonio will serve as the primary contact person for the Juris Diversitas Blog and Facebook pages. He will also be working to make both more accessible and participatory. He can be contacted at Antonio.Zuccaro@unitn.it.

JURIS DIVERSITAS ANNOUNCEMENT: New Series Editor for the Juris Diversitas Book Series

The Executive of Juris Diversitas is pleased to announce that Julian Sidoli del Ceno has agreed to act with Seán Patrick Donlan as Series Editors of our Juris Diversitas Book Series with Ashgate Publishing:

Julian is a barrister and a Reader in Property Law and Dispute Resolution at Birmingham City University. Having originally studied Philosophy and Greek at University College London, Julian is particularly keen on theoretical and jurisprudential aspects of law and alternative forms of justice. His research interests include property law, particularly landlord and tenant and alternative dispute resolution. He has authored work on mediation, adjudication, social participation and housing rights among other topics. He is currently working on a monograph on the Jurisprudence of Mediation and papers based around bottom-up or horizontal forms of justice. Julian is Co-chair of the European Network of Housing Research Housing Law Working Party. Julian has won numerous awards including Best Paper at the 2013 RICS COBRA conference in New Delhi, Peer Reviewer of the Year 2013 for Emerald Publishing Group's International Journal of the Law of the Built Environment, and the "Extra Mile" Teaching Prize. He ‎has twice been nominated for national mediation awards.

Julian will serve as the primary contact person for the series. He is keen to hear from potential authors and editors and would be happy to engage in a creative dialogue with them over the publication of future volumes. He can be contacted at Julian.Sidolidelceno@bcu.ac.uk. 

ARTICLE: Who shouldn't be in law school?

ABA  Journal just published an interesting article 'Who shouldn't be in law school?'

As ABA Journal noted, this week, George Mason University law professor Michael Krauss laid out plainly which students he thinks belong in law school—and which do not.

Students interested in "pursuing justice," in helping those who can't afford legal help, and "in soberly attempting to understand and solve the incredibly difficult, and incredibly interesting, intellectual problems that underlie so many of today’s legal disputes" are sorely needed, Krauss wrote.

And those in law school because they didn't know what else to do after finishing undergrad and only really have a goal of making a lot of money "chose the wrong generation to go to law school," Krauss wrote.

So this week, ABA asked: Who are the students that the legal profession needs, and can succeed with a law degree? And who should get the idea out of their heads as soon as possible?

Page of the article and comments here.

CONFERENCE: Settlement of International Trade Disputes in the Caucasus and Central Asia

Kiel Center of Eurasian Economic Law at the Institute of East European Law of the University of Kiel has announced an international conference 'Settlement of International Trade Disputes in the Region of the Caucasus and Central Asia: Public and Private Issues'.

Target group: legal researchers and practitioners, governmental officials, who deal with settlement of public and private disputes in the area of international trade in the region of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Conference language: English and Russian with simultaneous translation.

Topics: The Conference will deal with the mechanisms of settlement of public and private disputes in the area of international trade in the region of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Efficient and reliable dispute settlement mechanisms are substantial for international trade, which is an important vehicle of every modern economy. During the last decades, the countries of the region under consideration have adopted a lot of national rules (e.g. laws on international commercial arbitration) and joined a number of treaties (i.e. some of the countries are the members of the WTO; there are specific treaties within the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States and Eurasian Economic Community; a new Treaty on Eurasian Economic Union has been signed recently) which are related to dispute settlement in trade matters. This Conference will focus on settlement of trade disputes under public international law and private trade disputes with an international link.

Speakers: The Conference will offer an opportunity for discussions with high-level representatives from the countries of the region, EU Member States and institutions, international organizations as well as academics and practitioners with extensive experience in the field of international dispute settlement. The list of the speakers will be available soon.

Details here.

CONFERENCE: Legal Research Methods and Methodologies

University of Bristol hosts the Conference 2014 Legal Research Methods and Methodologies “Celebrating Diversity, Sharing Insights” 16 Sept, Bristol.

Program of the Conference includes:

· a detailed description of the primary method (or combination of methods) used to address a particular project;

· the journey embarked on in reaching the project’s research design and why certain methods and methodologies were chosen to be used in that particular project;

· the practical experience of using that method or methods, to include how any problems or limitations were addressed; and

· comment more generally on the rationale of using specific methods and their place in advancing our understanding of particular issues in the legal environment.

Detailed program here.

Please email rm2014bristol@gmail.com to register to attend the conference.

eJOURNAL:New Journal of European Criminal Law

New Journal of European Criminal Law
Volume 5  / 2014 / 02

EDITORIAL
Gary Becker and the Economics of Traffi cking in Human Beings
PAUL DE HERT AND JULIA MURASZKIEWICZ

ARTICLES

Suicide in Detention in the Light of the Human Rights Convention
EVELINE THOONEN AND WILMA DUIJST

Inquisitorial and Adversarial Expert Examinations in the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights
TOM DECAIGNY

The Principle of Proportionality under the European Arrest Warrant – with an Excursus on Poland
TOMASZ OSTROPOLSKI

Enforcing the Market Abuse Regime: Towards an Integrated Model of Criminal and Administrative Law Enforcement in the European Union?
MICHIEL LUCHTMAN AND JOHN VERVAELE

Civil Asset Forfeiture and the Presumption of Innocence under Article 6(2) ECHR
JOHAN BOUCHT

A Short Note on the Development of the Criminal Justice System after the Accession of Crimea and Sevastopol to the Russian Federation
ELENA A. KREMYANSKAYA

ARTICLE: Privileging (Some Forms of) Interdisciplinarity and Interpretation: Methods in Comparative Law

A new articlefrom SSRN:

Privileging (Some Forms of) Interdisciplinarity and Interpretation: Methods in Comparative Law

By Suryapratim Roy 

University of Groningen - Faculty of Law
Abstract:      

How should comparative law scholars engage with other disciplines? Which social sciences are relevant for the purpose of comparison? Such questions are important for the process of comparison, as disciplinary self-regulation (and interaction between disciplines) is not a neutral and objective process, and is always informed by embedded political, ideological, ethical preferences. Or, the act of selecting ways of reading, thinking and writing in the service of any task requires the explicit or implicit endorsement of epistemic and hermeneutic authority.

In this essay, I review three recent volumes on comparative law – a companion volume, a book of practice-oriented reflections by scholars who engage in comparative legal scholarship, and a region-specific contribution on Comparative Constitutionalism in South Asia. The approaches adopted in the volumes – concentrating on the science of comparative law, finding a middle way between too much complexity and too little, concentrating on region-specific complexities – do not address the issue of negotiating epistemic and hermeneutic authority posed above. Such negotiation may be facilitated by concentrating on what I suggest is the organising principle of the discipline of comparative law: identifying the construction, perpetuation and functionality of the internal authority of law.

Click here to download the article.

eJOURNAL: German Law Journal - Special Issue on: EU Citizenship: Twenty Years On

Patricia Mindus of Uppsala University has assembled a special issue on European Citizenship - marking the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the concept in the Maastricht Treaty - that treats the question in all its complexity.  Prof. Mindus explains that "Much has happened in and across the EU since Union citizenship was first introduced. Though many question its value, few advocate its irrelevance. This special issue takes stock of how EU citizenship has evolved over the last two decades and what ideas it conveys into the future."

Click here to view this issue.

BOOK:An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research

A new book from Oxford University Press, as follows the main features of this publication:

A concise, accessible introduction to understanding, conducting, and evaluating empirical research in a legal context ts the foundations of statistical modelling and analysis in a language accessible to lawyers with no background in mathematics or formal social science methods. Presents the foundations of statistical modelling and analysis in a language accessible to lawyers with no background in mathematics or formal social science methods Supported by an extensive companion website that includes detailed case studies and sample data sets, introductions to statistical software, guides to best practice, and extensive references for further reading

Click here for further information.

SSRN PAPER: Mobilizing Law for Justice in Asia: A Comparative Approach

FRANK W. MUNGER, New York Law School
Email: fmunger@nyls.edu
SCOTT L. CUMMINGS, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law
Email: cummings@law.ucla.edu
LOUISE G. TRUBEK, University of Wisconsin Law School
Email: lgtrubek@facstaff.wisc.edu

This article offers a comparative framework for studying why and how law is mobilized to advance justice claims by marginalized groups in Asia. In it, we build upon a series of collaborative exchanges between practitioners and scholars on the role of social justice lawyers in eleven Asian countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Based on lessons from this collaboration, we suggest that one way to understand variation in the type and scope of legal mobilization for the politically weak is in relation to two important domestic factors: political openness and autonomy of law. We use these factors to explore the institutions that shape legal mobilization across the region, focusing attention on how they influence sites and strategies for advancing justice in specific countries. We then consider how political openness and autonomy of law interact with global factors to influence the availability and type of funding for social justice work. Our main goal is to show how comparative analysis illuminates context-specific reasons for differences in social justice practice, while providing a framework to guide deeper investigation of the role of law in Asian development. A central finding from our research is that Asian lawyers who mobilize law for social justice, though marginal in numbers and status, often help to open new paths for change.

BOOK: Legal Thought And Philosophy

Another new publication from Edward Elgar Publishing:

Legal Thought And Philosophy


What Legal Scholarship is About
Bert van Roermund, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
‘This book proves to be an excellent guide through the labyrinth of law. Its crucial point is legal order viewed from the perspective of a situated “We”. Jurisprudence appears as an implicit sort of thinking, embedded in moral, political, epistemological, and linguistic contexts. Numerous example cases lead us from everyday issues to the abysses of violence. Anyone who practises or studies law will highly profit from reading this book. One sees how law functions by being more than mere law.’
– Bernhard Waldenfels, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

Legal Thought and Philosophy clarifies background questions in legal research projects, such as the relationship between law and justice, law and politics, law and knowledge, facts and norms, normativity and validity, constituent and constitutional power, and rule and context. It provides advanced students in law and philosophy with an account of legal thinking that combines analytical and phenomenological insights.

From a conception of justice as principled political self-restraint, the book explains why there are moral reasons to separate law from morality conceptually and in what sense a legal order is positive – that is, set by authority and bound up with history. The book explores the conditions under which law may become an object of knowledge and theorising, before finally discussing how these features come together in law as rule-following by citizens, officials, judges, and legislators alike.

Addressing advanced students in law and philosophy, this key book:

• bridges separate traditions in legal philosophy (in particular analytical philosophy and phenomenology)
• develops a view of law as an institution of authority from a conception of justice in the socio-political relationship between ‘we’ and ‘the others’
• presents a systematic account of normativity and validity
• explains in what sense law is ‘doing things with rules’.

BOOK: Classics in Comparative law

A new book from Edward Elgar Publishing has been Released:

Edited by Tom Ginsburg, Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, University of Chicago, US, Pier Giuseppe Monateri, Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law of New York, US and Professor of Law, University of Turin, Italy and Francesco Parisi, Oppenheimer Wolff and Donnelly Professor of Law, University of Minnesota, US and Professor of Economics, University of Bologna, Italy

Comparative law is a field with a rich history, and one to which scholars from many disciplines have contributed. This four-volume set includes an original introduction by the editors, who trace the major developments in the field, covering both private and public law, as well as legal institutions and methodological debates. Encompassing more than a century of scholarship, the collection includes a number of the most enduring articles from several disciplinary perspectives and will be an essential resource for the study of comparative law.

JOURNAL:Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law - Special Issue: The Constitutional Adulthood of Multi-Level Governance

A special issue of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law has been published, as follows the table of contents:

GUEST EDITORIAL

The Guest Editors’ Introduction

Patricia Popelier and Werner Vandenbruwaene

ARTICLES

Multi-Level Governance through a Constitutional Prism
Werner Vandenbruwaene

The European Union as a ‘3-D’ Constitutional Space
Andrea Simoncini

The Regions within Multi-Level Governance: Enhanced Opportunities for Improved Accountability?
Adam Cygan

Asymmetry and Complex Adaptive (Legal) Systems: the Case of the European Union
Giuseppe Martinico 

‘Europe Clauses’ and Constitutional Strategies in the Face of Multi-Level Governance
Patricia Popelier

Coupling National Identity with Subsidiarity Concerns in National Parliaments’ Reasoned Opinions
Barbara Guastaferro

EU Directives and Multi-Level Governance – Can Lessons Be Drawn from Cooperative Federalism?
Thomas Vandamme

Helping Loose Ends Meet? Th e Judicial Acknowledgement of Soft Law as a Tool of Multi-Level Governance
Oana Ştefan

Click here for the Journal's home page