Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Globalization, presents a challenge to the conceptual foundation of international law as premised on state action and state responsibility. Powerful non-state actors operate pose significant theoretical and practical difficulties for international law. This paper offers an account of evolving trends in efforts to ensure compliance of multinationals with international human rights norms. Specifically, the paper advances a more expansive vision of the subjects and sources of international law in an effort to conceptualize the conduct of private transnational commercial actors as law making by tracking the trajectory of recent corporate social responsibility initiatives such as the U.N. Global Compact and the U.N. Norms on Business and Human Rights. The paper urges international lawyers to remain open to the possibility that private non-state actors may “make” law where law making is understood to be a process of communication creating authoritative norms for a given community of actors. Finally, the paper posits that the perceived governance gaps and democratic deficits which accompany certain aspects of globalization may be overcome by a critical appreciation for the ways in which non-state actors are engaged in functional law making through the recent proliferation of pledges by private corporate actors to embrace international development priorities and human rights principles when pushed by segments of civil society.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Virtually all Arab and Islamic countries reserve a role for Sharia or Islamic Law in their legal systems. The relationship between national regulation and Sharia is a tense one for it involves two kinds of regulation which are different in their nature. Sharia is a normative system which regards itself as a god given and god-inspired all-encompassing regulation. Because its rules are to be observed by individuals and the community wherever they are to be found, and because subjects do indeed turn to Islamic Law to regulate some aspects of their lives and as a means to conflict resolution, Sharia defies national legal systems both in countries where Muslims are a minority and in Muslim countries. The challenge arises from the fact that national legal systems which operate within the territorial space of a state and whose norms are produced by the state’s institutions share the regulatory function with a legal system which purports to be universal, whose sources are divine and whose rules are thought to be eternal. The Rule of Law ideal relates to the possibility of evaluating the adequacy of legal orders and establishing whether legal orders comply with certain requirements. It is thought that the Rule of Law requires that the legal rules be open, clear, adaptable, and that legal institutions be effective. This presentation examines the difficulties for legal orders in which Sharia maintains an important place to comply with the criteria of the Rule of Law ideal that is conceived in this manner.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper compares the incorporation of Islamic law into Arab and other legal systems to the incorporation of canon law in the West, particularly with regard to the effect on women?s rights and the prospects for democracy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Practicing attorneys, the judiciary, and political policy-makers increasingly encounter expert testimony from diverse fields in litigation and decision-making contexts. They face additional challenges as rapid advances in science and technology demand a broader range of skills and knowledge. The recent influence of science and technology brings with it a new constellation of concepts and issues that must be addressed at numerous levels, many of which will find their way into the courtroom or the halls of legislatures.
How have law school professors adapted in this area to the changing needs of their students? What factors are related to whether or not law professors disseminate innovations in litigation practice to their students? This paper reports results from a national survey of 225 law professors, who provided information about the sources of information upon which they rely to keep abreast of current developments in evidence issues related to scientific evidence and other expert testimony. They obtained information for their students from a wide variety of credible dissemination sources. Among the findings to be discussed are the relationship between the Carnegie classification of the school and the number of dissemination sources used by professors, the relationship between publication of articles/treatises and the type of course taught by the professor, the relationship between type of course taught by the professor and the utilization of professional development support funds, and professors’ use of their own treatises/articles as dissemination sources. Implications of these findings for the incorporation of science education in law school will be discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Continental European law in the Roman-Germanic tradition is heavily influenced by the sharp distinction between private law and public law. In this tradition, private law is fundamentally different from and opposed to public law – in fact, public law and especially constitutional law is justified by its restrictive and controlling function in safeguarding the private against intrusion from the public. In this sense, private rights are characteristically defensive, and private ownership of land provides the quintessential metaphor not only for all property rights, but for all private rights, which are portrayed as fences or barriers much in the way that private land is fenced in against unwanted intrusion and external threat. In this Hobbesian picture, private law protects the private against private threats, while public law protects it against state intrusions.
The constitutional protection of private interests undermines this neat division, as it simultaneously safeguards private interests and establishes the constitutional justification for legitimately eroding or even abolishing them. In this process the notion of right as barriers is placed in question, especially in the context of property rights, and a paradoxical notion emerges (as pointed out by Joseph Singer, Gregory Alexander and Robert Gordon) of property that includes defensive elements of privacy and autonomy, but also public elements of propriety, responsibility, duty, and limits.
In my paper I will analyze the notion of civil law as an alternative trope that undermines the oversimplified disjunction of private law vs public law, much as constitutional property undermines the disjunction between ownership and possession or between private property and state action. In the analysis, I will focus on the characteristic of civil law as post-constitutional law which renders the recognition and protective function of private law possible, but then only within the context of a constitutional order that extends beyond the boundaries of the purely private.