The American Journal of Comparative Law

From our latest issue

Volume 70, Issue 1, March 2022

Articles

• New Media and Freedom of Expression: Rethinking the Constitutional Foundations of the Public Sphere

  Shigenori Matsui

  Pages 222–226, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avac028

  With the significant increase of the role of online platforms in today’s world, it is natural that attention is often focused on the role of these platforms. 

• Mapping the Cosmopolitan Legal Imaginary: Recent Chinese Scholarship on Dispute Resolution

  Matthew S Erie

  Pages 210–221, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avac027

  In recent years, China has led a not-so-silent revolution in internationalizing its dispute resolution mechanisms, including its courts, arbitration commissions, and mediation bodies, in order to facilitate cross-border investment and trade.

• Searching for W.P.M. Kennedy: The Biography of an Enigma

  Adam M Dodek, B.A. (McGill), J.D. (Harvard), LL.M. (Toronto)

  Pages 205–209, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avac026

  Americans are obsessed with their history. References to the founders are frequently found in American constitutional and political discourse. This historical fixation continues to produce thick volumes not only of political biographies, but also of legal ones. In addition to the many biographies of U.S. Supreme Court justices, one can also find biographies of leading legal academics including Christopher Columbus Langdell,¹ Roscoe Pound,² and Karl Llewellyn.

• A Legal and Political Assessment of Challenges to Abortion Laws by Anti-choice Activists in Australia and the Progression of Abortion Law in Australia and the United States

  Anne O’Rourke

  Pages 162–204, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avac029

  Historically, in Australia the issue of abortion had not attracted the violent protests that are frequently part of the American political landscape. Nor had it featured prominently in parliamentary debates. This began to change in 2004 when the issue was put on the political agenda by a small but vocal group of conservative members of the Federal Parliament.

• The Turn to Confession Bargaining in German Criminal Procedure: Causes and Comparisons with American Plea Bargaining

  John H Langbein

  Pages 139–161, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avac025

  In recent decades German criminal procedure has developed a practice of confession bargaining, in which defense counsel negotiates with the trial judge for the defendant to confess the charged offense in exchange for a milder sentence than would result if the defendant were to contest the charge. The German practice resembles American plea bargaining in many respects. This Article probes the similarities and the differences between the two systems of negotiated criminal justice. The Article discusses the origins of the German practice, its tensions with historic principles of the procedure system, and the troubled efforts of the courts and the legislature to justify and to regulate the practice.

• Courts, Constitutionalism, and State Capacity: A Preliminary Inquiry

  Madhav Khosla, Mark Tushnet

  Pages 95–138, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avac009

  Modern constitutional theory deals almost exclusively with the mechanisms for controlling the exercise of public power. In particular, the focus of constitutional scholars lies in explaining and justifying how courts can effectively keep the exercise of public power within bounds.

• The Politicization of Corporate Governance: A Viable Alternative?

  Tamar Groswald Ozery

  Pages 43–94, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avac007

  It is now well-established that different markets may develop different growth-supporting institutions that can give rise to public firms and set capital markets in motion. Yet, the paradigm view still holds local alternatives as merely stepping stones, a transitional passage toward achieving a deeper and more advanced market, at which point conventional legal and market institutions—modeled on Anglo-American corporate capitalism—are still held necessary.

• Legal Pluralism and the Struggle for Customary Law in the Vietnamese Highlands

  John Gillespie, Hong Thi Quang Tran

  Volume 70, Issue 1, March 2022, Pages 1–42, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avac024

  For centuries, diverse groups of people living in the highlands of Southeast Asia have resisted lowland empires in China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. The interaction between lowlanders and highlanders has been described as “internal colonization”—a process involving the absorption or displacement of highland communities and customary law.