03 April 2010

NOTICE: Centre for the Study of Migration (Queen Mary University)

The Centre for the Study of Migration (Queen Mary University of London) has announced:


  • The  London the Promised Land Revisited conference in celebration of 15 years of the Centre to be held on 15 May 2010. For registration and further information, contact louise.mead@qmul.ac.uk.
  • The launch of Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture at a conference on 1-2 July 2010. The conference explore the points of nexus between migration and culture from theoretical and interdisciplinary angles as well as from artistic and pragmatic ones.
For these and other events, see the Centre’s website.

02 April 2010

NOTICE: Stigall and Picker on Comparative and International Law

Dan Stigall and Colin Picker, both bloggers here, are also guest blogging on the Comparative Law Blog. Each has begun a discussion, from different positions, on the relationship between comparative and international law. You might have a look-in.

NOTICE: SSRN's Indigenous Nations & Peoples Law e-Journal

The latest SSRN Indigenous Nations & Peoples Law e-Journal includes the following:
  • The Substantial Burden Mountain: Implications of the United States Supreme Court’s Denial of Certiorari in Navajo Nation v. United States Forest Service- Kristine Pham, affiliation not provided to SSRN
  • Indigenizing Intellectual Property Law: Customary Law, Legal Pluralism, and the Protection of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Identity, and Resources - Danielle M. Conway, University of Hawaii at Manoa - William S. Richardson School of Law, Institute of Asian-Pacific Business Law at William S. Richardson Law School
  • Formal and Informal Justice in Palestine: Dealing with the Legacy of Tribal Law - Asem Khalil, Birzeit University, NYU - School of Law
  • Legal Subversion of the Criminal Justice Process? Judicial, Prosecutorial and Police Discretion in R. v. Edmondson, Kindrat and Brown - Lucinda Vandervort, University of Saskatchewan
Don't forget that you can sign up for automatic updates for this e-Journal. See SSRN for details.

01 April 2010

Asian Journal of Comparative Law

Berkeley Electronic Press announced the following articles recently published in Asian Journal of Comparative Law.
Articles
. The Same Difference: Protecting Same-Sex Couples under the Domestic Violence Ordinance (Puja Kapai)
. Schisms in Humanitarianism -- The Khmer Rouge Tribunal's First Hearing (Mahdev Mohan)
The Transformation of Land Law in Indonesia: The Persistence of Pluralism (Daryono)
Book Reviews
. Review of Emergencies and the Limits of Legality (Michael Dowdle)
. Review of Corporate Governance in the 21st Century -- Japan's Gradual Transformation (Colin P. A. Jones)
Featured Article
. Changing Mindsets: How China's Abnormal Sex Ratio Is Turning Its Government into a Champion of Gender Equality (Liang Ying Tan)

The Asian Journal of Comparative Law is a definitive new peer-reviewed journal for Asian perspectives on the law and legal perspectives on Asia. An initiative of the Asian Law Institute, an association of thirteen leading law schools in Asia, the journal's editors and authors come from top institutions across the Asian-Pacific region and South Asia. The journal publishes articles from scholars with intimate knowledge of local practices that offer unique insight into how legal solutions are tailored to local culture and circumstance. Recent topics include Korean corporate governance, the political culture of blogging in Malaysia, and Asian discourses on legal education. One of the few English-language law journals based in Asia, and the only pan-Asian one, Asian Journal of Comparative Law is an invaluable resource for scholars of comparative and international law as well as scholars of Asian area studies.

Source: http://www.bepress.com/asjcl/announce/20100331/

FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS: Mediterranean Symposium (Malta 11-12 June 2010)

A symposium on ‘Mediterranean Legal Hybridity: Mixtures and Movements’, the relationship between the legal and normative traditions of the region, will take place on 11-12 June 2010 in Malta. The deadline for proposals is the end of the day, Monday, 5 April 2010.

Our primary theme is the legal and normative diversity of the region. We will, however, consider any proposals on the mixtures and movements of state laws and other norms. A secondary theme is the establishment of dialogue between comparative lawyers and other disciplines. Anthropologists, geographers, historians, and sociologists, among others, are encouraged to participate.

All events will take place in the vicinity of Valletta, Malta’s capital. The symposium begins on the afternoon of Friday, 11 June 2010, but most papers will be presented on Saturday, 12 June 2010. An excursion into Valletta or Mdina is also being planned for Sunday, 13 June 2010.

The symposium will also launch an international and interdisciplinary project on legal and normative diversity in the Mediterranean. Scholars from Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States have already committed themselves to the project. Individuals and institutions interested in the project should contact me (sean.donlan@ul.ie).

Those interested in making a presentation (twenty minutes long) should email me with a short (250 word) proposal. The conference fee is €100; transportation and accommodation are not included.

The symposium is being hosted by the Department of Civil Law of the Faculty of Law and the Mediterranean Institute, both of the University of Malta. It is organised in conjunction with Juris Diversitas.

NOTICE: Legal theory - a comparative study?

Expressions of interest are requested for a collaborative and comparative project in legal theory. Both participants and a web/blog manager are sought.

The project managers are Seán Patrick Donlan (Limerick), Margaret Martin (Western Ontario), and Alessio Lo Giudice (Catania). Please email sean.donlan@ul.ie for additional information.

NOTICE: SSRN's Law & Culture e-Journal

The latest SSRN Law & Culture e-Journal includes the following:
  • Danielle Conway, 'Indigenizing Intellectual Property Law: Customary Law, Legal Pluralism, and the Protection of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Identity, and Resources'
Cultures live and cultures die. Cultures live by the transmission of law, knowledge, land, and resources from one generation to the next. Cultures die, in large measure, because of exploitation of peoples and the knowledge they possess. In reality, cultures are constantly under attack from politically-oriented societies bent on exterminating, exploiting, or commercializing any culture that is different. Commercialization or commodification of culture is akin to collecting culture for purposes of exploitation, observation, voyeurism, and objectification. The western approach to globalization is keen to recognize culture as an object rather than as a living, evolving organ to be shielded from exploitation. To respond to western commodification of culture, this article proposes that legal pluralism is necessary, in the interim, to protect culture from those who would, without authority or justification, exploit it and reduce it to a short term and short-lived commodity. The proposal to indigenize intellectual property law is for sure only an interim measure to protect Indigenous resources up to and until Indigenous Peoples has fully realized self-determination. In addition, the interim nature of this proposal reflects the legacy of colonization, with its complex extra- and intra-Indigenous power-oppression relationships. Because Indigenous Peoples are rarely in a position to exercise rights from a position of power, there is always risk in proposing legal rules or models for protection that may not fully account for the complex legacy of colonization. With this in mind, this article proposes that legal pluralism is one workable interim means to indigenize western intellectual property law in order to provide essential protections against the ongoing obliteration of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, identity, and resources.

Don't forget that you can sign up for automatic updates for this e-Journal. See SSRN for details.

31 March 2010

NOTICE: SSRN's Law, Norms & Informal Orders abstracts

The latest SSRN Law, Norms & Informal Orders abstracts includes the following:

  • Catherine Dauvergne and Jenni Millbank, 'Forced Marriage as a Harm in Domestic and International Law'

This article reports on our analysis of 120 refugee cases from Australia, Canada, and Britain where an actual or threatened forced marriage was part of the claim for protection. We found that forced marriage was rarely considered by refugee decision makers to be a harm in and of itself. This finding contributes to understanding how gender and sexuality are analysed within refugee law, because the harm of forced marriage is experienced differently by lesbians, gay men and heterosexual women. We contrast our findings in the refugee case law with domestic initiatives in Europe aimed at protecting nationals from forced marriages both within Europe and elsewhere. We pay particular attention to British initiatives because they are in many ways the most far-reaching and innovative, and thus the contrast with the response of British refugee law is all the more stark.  
  • Darren Azman,'Don’t Tell Mom I Didn’t Pay My Taxes!: The Efficacy of State Shaming Campaigns on Taxpayer Compliance and Ideas for the Future' 
At least 25 states and regions across the country have engaged in some form of taxpayer shaming campaigns - the act of publicly shaming noncompliant taxpayers. Although these campaigns have, for the most part, proven successful, there is room for improvement. This Comment provides a brief overview of the state tax gap problem, first by defining the “tax gap,” and then looking at state-specific tax gap statistics. The Comment then unearths the taxpayer’s decision making process, introducing several factors that influence a taxpayer’s compliance decision. The concept of shaming campaigns is introduced, followed by the identification of the elements necessary for an effective shaming campaign and an examination of several state taxpayer shaming campaigns. The Comment concludes with recommendations for improving the efficacy of state shaming campaigns, primarily through the use of modern social media and inclusion of underreporters in state shaming campaigns.

Don't forget that you can sign up for automatic updates for this series. See SSRN for details.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Juris Diversitas Advisory Board


The Executive Committee of Juris Diversitas proudly announce the members of our Advisory Board: 
  • Marco Guadagni (Emeritus, Trieste)
  • Patrick Glenn (McGill)
  • Roderick Macdonald (McGill)
  • Werner Menski (SOAS, London)
  • Esin Örücü (Emeritus, Glasgow)
  • Vernon Valentine Palmer (Tulane)
  • Rodolfo Sacco (Emeritus, Turin)
  • Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Coimbra, Wisconsin, and Warwick)
  • William Twining (Emeritus, University College London and Miami)
  • Jacques Vanderlinden (Emeritus, Free University of Brussels and Moncton)
We thank each of them for accepting and look forward to working together.

Sunde and Skodvin on the Rendezvous of European Legal Cultures

This book deals with the rendezvous of European legal cultures that results from and spurs forward the ongoing harmonization of European law. It neither thoroughly presents nor analyses legal culture in a changing Europe. Rather, the book is an introduction to this vast topic, aimed at present and future lawyers in need of a crack and a chisel to make a hole in the Berlin Wall dividing the old legal Europe, dominated by national legal cultures with stable boundaries, from the new legal Europe, where these national legal cultures are being harmonised and subordinated under a new European legal culture.

The rendezvous of European cultures are dealt with from the perspective of an imagined periphery. Europe looks different from the imagined centres of London, Paris, Berlin and Rome than from the imagined peripheries of Moscow, Bucharest, Lisbon or Bergen. Too often the perspective of the imagined centres of Europe is adopted, when the continent is depicted. If these centres have ever been anything but images, the emerging new Europe is slowly doing away with them. In this process, the perspective of an imagined periphery is to bring balance into the picture, and that is a second aim of this book.

This book also has a third aim: To be fun and provide thought-provoking reading. Enjoy!

Posted by Dirk Heirbaut on 30 March 2010

29 March 2010

CONFERENCE: Independence and Decolonization

The following conference on 'Independence and Decolonization' will be held from 15-17 April 15-17 2010 at The University of Texas at Austin. It might be of interest:

Inspired by the upcoming bicentenary of Mexican independence, this conference will bring together scholars traveling from Europe, the U.S. and Canada, and Africa for this three-day meeting to critically reevaluate the varied ends to empire and colonialism around the globe.
Panels:

- Defining Decolonization
- Mapping the History of Revolution and Counter-revolution in Spanish America
- Decolonization and Difference in Northern Africa
- Three Waves of Decolonization on Russo-Turkic Shores
- Africa and the Contested Imaginaries of Decolonization

Speakers and commentators include: Frederick Cooper, Tony Hopkins, Alan Knight, Paul J. Kubicek, Philippa Levine, Roger Louis, Eric Van Young

The following link has the program and a link to the free registration: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/historicalstudies/conferences/listing.php.

Sponsored by the Institute for Historical Studies and the Department of History at The University of Texas at Austin

Organizers: Professors Susan Deans-Smith, Mark Metzler, and Ben Brower, Department of History