Agustin Parise to Give the 44th Tucker Lecture in Civil Law

 

Louisiana Law Review Symposium on the Future of the Civil Law

Louisiana—as the lone civil law jurisdiction in the United States—has been instrumental
in developing and maintaining one of the major legal traditions in the world, the civil law, in the English language. Indeed, having as its source Roman and Canon law, with Spanish and French influences dating back centuries, the civil law has developed over time to best suit the needs of the citizenry at the relevant time period. The development of this venerated legal tradition in English, particularly in Louisiana, has contributed to its influence and accessibility around the globe.
The continued viability of the civil law in Louisiana is possible because of the hard work of scholars throughout the state, and particularly the work of the great legal minds of the LSU Law Center. One such legal scholar is our very own Alain Levasseur, who has worked diligently to ensure that the civil law is accessible in English in Louisiana and abroad. This accessibility enables legal scholars from around the globe to share experiences and ideas regarding the history and future of the civil law tradition.
Please join the Louisiana Law Review, the  Center of Civil Law Studies, and the Paul M. Hebert Law Center as we celebrate the development of the civil law in Louisiana, the accomplishments of Professor Levasseur, and the future of the civil law around the world.
For more information and to register,

go to: http://www.law.lsu.edu/symposium/ Registration is required

Venue: Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Schedule of Events
Opening Remarks
8:00 AM - 8:15 AM

Panel 1: The Law of Obligations in Louisiana and Abroad
8:15 AM - 10:00 AM

Break 10:00 AM - 10:15 AM

Commentator: Civil Code Drafting Styles and Conflicts of Law
10:15 AM - 11:00 AM

Lunch 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Panel 2: Translation of the Civil Law
12:00 PM – 1:15 PM

Commentator: Challenges and Rewards of Teaching Comparative Law in the Commonwealth Caribbean
1:15 PM - 2:00 PM

Break 2:00 PM – 2:15 PM

Commentator: U.S. Discovery and Foreign Blocking Statutes
2:15 PM - 3:00 PM

Presentations

Opening RemarksMelissa Lonegrass: Professor, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University

Panel 1: The Law of Obligations in Louisiana and AbroadParticipants will discuss the development of the law of Obligations in Louisiana and in France.
Ronald Scalise: A.D. Freeman Professor of Civil Law, Tulane Law School
David Gruning: Professor, Loyola University College of Law
Michel Séjean: Professor, Université de Bretagne-Sud, France
Mustapha Mekki: Professor, Université Paris 13

Commentator: Civil Code Drafting Styles and Conflicts of LawProfessor Symeonides will discuss the extent to which judges may deviate from the text of a statute by examining recent statutes in which the legislature itself authorizes such a deviation.
Symeon Symeonides: Professor, Willamette University College of Law

Panel 2: Translating the Civil LawParticipants will discuss how the civil law was translated using French and Spanish sources and how the law has been translated contemporarily.

Agustín Parise: Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Randy Trahan: Professor, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University

Commentator: Challenges and Rewards of Teaching Comparative Law in the Commonwealth CaribbeanProfessor Ostroukh will discuss the challenges she has faced in teaching comparative law at a university in the West Indies, and will focus on how certain characteristics of the region have shaped her experience of teaching comparative law.
Asya Ostroukh: Senior Lecturer, Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies in Barbados

Commentator: U.S. Discovery and Foreign Blocking StatutesProfessor Curran will discuss the relationship between U.S. discovery practices and
blocking statutes in France and Germany that have for decades impeded discovery efforts by U.S. entities.
Vivian Grosswald Curran: Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Also featured in Volume 76, Issue IV of the Louisiana Law Review, Liber Amicorum: Professor Alain A. Levasseur, without presentation:
Nicholas Kasirer: Justice of the Court of Appeal for Québec
Jean-Louis Baudouin: Counsel, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP

Il Codice Civile, The First Translation of Napoleon's Code Civil

Sara V. Pic, Reference Librarian at the Law Library of Louisiana (400 Royal Street, New Orleans), assembled a unique exhibition on the Italian translation of the Napoleonic Code. TheIl Codice Civile exhibition can also be visited online.

Dictionary of the Civil Code

CONFERENCE: Sales Law in the Region of the Caucasus and Central Asia

Institute of East European Law of the University of Kiel and Al-Farabi Kazakh National University have announced the conference Sales Law in the Region of the Caucasus and Central Asia: between Divergence and Harmonization in Almaty, Kazakhstan 23-24 May 2014.

Target group: legal researchers and practitioners, governmental officials, who deal with international and national regulation of international trade (private law aspects) in the region of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Conference language: English and Russian with simultaneous translation.

Topics: The Conference will deal on a comparative basis with the sales law in the region of the Caucasus and Central Asia, with particular accent on regulation of international sales contracts. Sales law of all countries besides Georgia base on the CIS Model Civil Code. In the recent 20 years the sales laws of the countries of the region were amended many times. The reforms were strongly influenced by international legal frameworks and foreign, in particular German, legislation. But these reforms were not harmonized between each other. Today we have quite different legal framework for the sales law. As the result the countries of the region approaching step-by-step to the international trends, are drifting more and more from each other. The Conference is targeting to shed light to this interesting development and compare it to the developments in the EU, in particular to establishment of the Common European Sales law. The Conference focuses on several aspects: the structure of the Sales Law, its development and the role of international organizations and foreign technical aid organizations, not individually negotiated terms, conflict of laws rules of the countries of the region applicable to the international sales contracts, transport contracts and contracts on sales of hydrocarbons, which are very important for the countries of the region.

Details, registration and program here http://www.uni-kiel.de/keel/index.php/konferenz-in-almaty-info/

ARTICLE: Michaels on Law Beyond the State

The Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies has published an interesting article of Ralf Michaels, 'The True Lex Mercatoria: Law Beyond the State'.

Abstract

Is there an anational lex mercatoria, a “global law without a state?” The debate seemsinfinite. Some argue that the rules, institutions, and procedures of international arbitration have now achieved a sufficient degree both of autonomy from the state and of legal character that they represent such an anational law. Others respond that whatever law merchant may exist is really state law—dependent on national norms and the freedom of contract they provide, and on the enforceability of arbitral awards by national courts.This paper suggests that the dichotomy of anational law and state law is false. Al- though an anational law merchant would be theoretically possible, the true lex merca- toria we are currently observing is not such an anational law. Rather, it is an emerging global commercial law that freely combines elements from national and non-nationallaw. This transnational law presents a far more radical challenge to traditional state-based conceptions of law than the idea of an anational law. It makes the distinction between anational law and state law that permeates the debate over law merchant simplyirrelevant by transcending it. The true lex mercatoria marks the shift in global law from segmentary differentiation in different national laws to a functional differentiation. It is a law beyond, not without, the state.

The paper is avaliable on academia.edu.

BOOK: Mitchell's Contract Law and Contract Practice

Hart Publishing has published a new title 'Contract Law and Contract Practice. Bridging the Gap Between Legal Reasoning and Commercial Expectation' by Catherine Mitchell.

Abstract

An oft-repeated assertion within contract law scholarship and cases is that a good contract law (or a good commercial contract law) will meet the needs and expectations of commercial contractors. Despite the prevalence of this statement, relatively little attention has been paid to why this should be the aim of contract law, how these 'commercial expectations' are identified and given substance, and what precise legal techniques might be adopted by courts to support the practices and expectations of business people. This book explores these neglected issues within contract law. It examines the idea of commercial expectation, identifying what expectations commercial contractors may have about the law and their business relationships (using empirical studies of contracting behaviour), and assesses the extent to which current contract law reflects these expectations. It considers whether supporting commercial expectations is a justifiable aim of the law according to three well-established theoretical approaches to contractual obligations: rights-based explanations, efficiency-based (or economic) explanations and the relational contract critique of the classical law. It explores the specific challenges presented to contract law by modern commercial relationships and the ways in which the general rules of contract law could be designed and applied in order to meet these challenges. Ultimately the book seeks to move contract law beyond a simple dichotomy between contextualist and formalist legal reasoning, to a more nuanced and responsive legal approach to the regulation of commercial agreements.

Information on the book is here.

ARTICLE: Babie's The Spatial: A Forgotten Dimension of Property

San Diego Law Review (Vol. 50, No. 323, 2013) just published interesting paper of Paul T. Babie 'The Spatial: A Forgotten Dimension of Property'.

Abstract

This article employs urban sociologist and planning theorist Edward W Soja’s spatial scaffolding found in the ontological "trialectic" to look at property anew, with its obvious, but oft-forgotten spatial dimension brought to the foreground. The article uses Soja’s ontological trialectic to reassemble what we already know about property, demonstrating that theorizing about property implicitly recognizes the importance of spatiality. Recognizing the interwoven complexity to and inseparability and interdependence of historicality, sociality and spatiality — Soja’s three ontological elements — of property allows space an explicit role in defining what property is, when it exists, and how it is central to and affected by human life. But more importantly, it reveals how property is the cause of spatial injustice, which opens the possibility of using property as a vehicle both to seek and to achieve spatial justice. The article concludes by reflecting upon the emerging definition of spatial injustice, how property is one source of such injustice, and how recognizing the spatial dimension may allow us to see and to remedy instances of it.

Full text of the article is available here.