Volume 7, Issue 2

Continuities between the law and development movement of the 1960s and current rule of law efforts, some forty years later, indicate that past mistakes might be repeated. Committing to a new course of action first requires examining our original perspective. Normative blindness, false comparisons, legal orientalism, self-serving definitions of what other legal cultures ``lack," imposition versus voluntary receptions of law, and disparities in the developed world create a credibility problem that endangers contemporary efforts.Examples of collisions between state law and non-state law in Zambia, Sardinia, Afghanistan, Iraq, New Guinea, and Paraguay discussed in this article illustrate how the expansion of Euro-American law affects populations in ways that belie ``rule-of-law" rhetoric. Examining the purpose of law, development, and equity projects—i.e., whether they support plunder or redistribution, compensation or punishment, or condone economic development by invasion—should motivate further inquiry into the very premises of western law and its uses in colonialization and globalization. Fuller consideration of the framework within which development efforts operate can lead to more effective policies based on deeds rather than words—that is, policies based on the twenty-first rather than the eighteenth century.

This paper provides an overview of the debate on the democratic peace theory and a non-ruled oriented introduction to its reception in international legal scholarship related to the purported emergence of a right to democratic governance in international law. It focuses next on the work of Fernando Tesón, the self-appointed father of "the Kantian theory of international law" and champion of a post-Rawlsian liberal cosmopolitan approach to international intra-state democratisation. This author's influential proposals of lege ferenda will be, eventually, depicted as an avant-garde blueprint for a neo-conservative international legal order.

This article explores the kind of detachment needed to conduct comparative law scholarship and teaching, as well as implement its application to practical problems. The full and fair comparison of the law requires a cosmopolitan view which embodies some degree of detachment from adherence to the laws of one's ``home". The Enlightenment efforts to build a science of comparative law to achieve this detachment failed. Modern inheritors of the Enlightenment approach have similarly failed. In a series of articles, I argue that we must return to the ancient effort to achieve a new ``objectivity" through Hellenic deliberation, Hellenistic detachment, Roman rhetoric, Christian dialectic and the canonics of the empire's codification process. This article focuses upon the Hellenistic contributions to achievement of cosmopolitan detachment. The Cynic, Skeptic Stoic and Epicurean doctrines and ethical education offer an alternative route to the detachment necessary for a comparative law.

Let me state it quite clearly at the outset. ``Judicial Deliberations" is an important book, a piece of work that conclusively demonstrates why comparative law should occupy in the United States a much higher academic position than it actually does. In this short piece I will try to show the important cultural role that, I believe, ``Judicial Deliberations" should play if its important message will be fully appreciated. I argue that the book contains an important paradigm shift in the mentalite' of U.S. scholarship, which potentially impacts not only U.S. comparativists but also many domestic U.S. lawyers that in these last few years of ``legal globalization" are looking beyond the boarders of U.S. law. ``Judicial Deliberations" contains the seed of humbleness.

This article is an effort to bring to light (through one American's story) the need for continued human rights reform in China's criminal justice system. Jude Shao is an American businessman who is currently incarcerated in a Chinese prison after exhausting all of his appeals. By examining and critiquing Shao's arrest, prosecution, conviction and appeals, against the backdrop of China's criminal procedural law, this article illustrates that, while some progress has been made in China, there is more work to be done if meaningful human rights reform is the overall goal. This topic is particularly timely because of China's recent election to the newly formed U.N. Human Rights Council and the upcoming 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The international spotlight will certainly be trained upon China as the world community seeks to ensure that China itself complies with global human rights standards.

The purpose of this paper is to make a significant contribution towards an academic and intellectual debate on the extent of the state's liability caused by law enforcement agencies when failing to exercise due care and diligence in carrying out their mandate. This will be examined against the background of the Carmichele matter and lessons that could be learnt from the case in question in order to address the current weaknesses in and improve the effectiveness of our criminal justice system. In conclusion, recommendations will be made on how to reduce these malpractices within our system and on how to work towards the establishment of an effective human rights orientated criminal justice system.