Academic

Cuba and the Development of Odious Debt Doctrine

Posted on August 07, 2008
It was my pleasure to present the following paper at the recently concluded 18th Annual meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) held August 5-7 in Miami, Florida. My thanks to the organizers and the conference participants for their comments and observations...

Institutionalizing Politics: Neutrality and Choice in the Construction of Public and Private International Legal Regimes.

Posted on August 02, 2008
The current debate over the relationship of ?politics? and international law hearkens back to the more fundamental question posed by Marxian theory and investigated by critical legal theory about the extent to which legal systems organized around particular political interests can come to transcend their limitations for the benefit of the wider polis...

Merlin's Prophesy: Egypt's Copts

Posted on July 31, 2008
Merlin's ProphesyThe harvest shall flourish in wintry weatherWhen two virginities meet together:The King & the Priest must be tied in a tetherBefore two virgins can meet together.William Blake, "Merlin's Prophesy," from Poems from the Rosetti MS, in William Blake, The Works of William Blake: Selected Poetry and Prose 61 (Roslyn, New York: Black's Readers Service Company 1953)...

Paraguay's New President and Ex-Bishop: Reform, Religion, and Constitution

Posted on July 30, 2008
It was reported today that the Holy See has "concedeu a redução ao estado laical ao presidente eleito do Paraguai, o ex-bispo Fernando Lugo, anunciou nesta quarta-feira (30) em Assunção, o núncio apostólico, Orlando Antonini." Santa Sé concede estado laical ao presidente eleito do Paraguai, O Globo July 30, 2008 (the Papal Nuncio Orlando Antonini announced today in Asunción that the Holy See has agreed to reduce to lay status Paraguay's President elect, the former Bishop Fernando Lugo)...

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Emerging Trends in the Convergence of Public and Private Law

Posted on July 30, 2008
Emerging Trends in the Convergence of Public and Private Law: Sovereign Wealth Funds, the Regulation of Sovereign Golden Shares, and the Regulation of Multinational CorporationsNotes of Address Given at the Istanbul Chamber of Industry Istanbul, TurkeyJune 24, 2008Special thanks to my hosts for the event at the Istanbul Chamber of Industry: Mete Meleksoy, its Genel Sekreter, the law firm of Çaga & Çaga (and especially Av...

On the Convergence of State and Corporation in a Post Marxist-Leninist World: The Russian State Corporation

Posted on July 30, 2008
My colleague William E. Butler has produced an excellent short examination of what he describes as a "remarkable step taken by the Russian Federation of endowing an individual state corporation with various powers in treaty making, including the right to conclude treaties with foreign states or their departments...

Theocratic Constitutionalism Part IV: Religious Constitutions, Theocratic Constitutionalism, an Application of Theory to Reality

Posted on July 24, 2008
Coming soon. . . stay tuned.

Theocratic Constitutionalism Part III: Towards a Theocratic Constitutonalism

Posted on July 23, 2008
Stayed tuned. . . coming soon.

Theocratic Constitutionalism Part II: From Constitution to Constitutionalism

Posted on July 22, 2008
Will be posted soon, stay tuned!

Theocratic Constitutionalism: Part I, An Introduction

Posted on July 20, 2008
I have been exploring the nature and character of theocratic constitutionalism. A fuller examination will appear in published form as Larry Catá Backer, Theocratic Constitutionalism: An Introduction to a New Legal Global Order, 16:1 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies ? (forthcoming 2009)...

Creeping Toward Theocracy Without Constitutionalism in Indonesia: Using the State to Suppress Competitor Religions

Posted on July 07, 2008
Once upon a time, the state had, among its many duties, the suppression of heretical sects and the policing of the good behavior of tolerated religions. In 1500 Europe, for example , monarchs were expected to serve as the secular enforcers of the religious orthodoxy of the one true and only version of Christianity...

Happy Birthday: A Reverie on the Road from the American to the Kosovo Declaration of Independence

Posted on July 04, 2008
As is customary on July 4th, Americans dutifully pay lip service to their Declaration of Independence (Declaration of Independence (The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America) (July 4, 1776)), a document crafted by the lawyers of colonial bourgeois elites and served on their betters in London...

Democracy Part XI: Mass Democracy and the Dynamics of the Market for Corporate Control

Posted on June 30, 2008
Individuals as political participants are really only good for one thing, that is they serve one purpose extremely well--voting. That is their principle connection with the mechanics of state organization. Groups, on the other hand, are good for governance...

Democracy Part XIII: Anwar Ibrahim Flees Malaysia's Democracy

Posted on June 29, 2008
Democracy is flourishing in Malaysia lately. After returning in triumph following a vindication on the charges of sexual corruption, Anwar Ibrahim and his political allies appeared poised to become a potent force in Malaysia--perhaps even strong enough to overturn the politics of preference and strong arming that had marked Malaysia throughout the term of his predecessor and former mentor Mahatir Muhamed...

Democracry Part XII: On Sham Democracies

Posted on June 27, 2008
The issue of democratic legitimacy has been much on people's minds over the last century. Once again, the global governance community--that is, those elements of public and civil society given legitimacy by media coverage in the press, television and the internet by institutional news organs--s worried about the proliferation of "sham" democracies and the preservation of legitimate democracy...

The Male Female in Albania and Other Tales of Gender

Posted on June 23, 2008
Like many others, I have suggested that gender and sex are not the same thing. My focus has been on the ways in which attributes are gendered, and those gender divisions strictly maintained. More importantly, tose divisions not only serve to discipline the attributes or characteristics of biological sex, but serves to naturalize those gender attributions...

The EU Lifts Sanctions Against Cuba: Implicit Recognition for the Legitimacy of the Raúl Castro Regime; The US is Left Out in the Cold

Posted on June 20, 2008
The EU today announced that it was lifting sanctions against Cuba. While the practical effects may be enough to notice--the symbolic effects are far greater. The object is to bolster the regime of Raúl Castro while at the same time using this critical passage before the new regime becomes entrenched to flex what muscle the EU has...

Democracy Part X: In Which Vote Counting is Merely a Factor in the Production of Governance

Posted on June 18, 2008
I have written much recently about the foibles of democracy as expressed in its 21st century form. I have been impressed by the way in which, as Aristotle suggested millenia ago, republics can so easily transform into democracies that degenerate into something else--something less laudable...

MERCOSUR: It's Alive!

Posted on June 17, 2008
Regional trade associations are all the rage. Most states belong to at least one. They are meant to suggest an outward looking and progressive approach to trade in the current context of market oriented globalized economic activity. But appearances can be deceiving...

Politics and the Irish Vote on the Treaty of Lisbon: A Silly Politics to Bad Effect

Posted on June 13, 2008
So, the Irish have voted to approve the Lisbon Treaty, which essentially imposes the terms of the failed Constitutional Treaty of 2004 in the form of an intergovernmental agreement striped of the word "constitution." The vote was required by the Irish constitution, and necessary for the effectiveness of Treaty of Kisbon, which required approval by all Member States...

Blogging and Voluntary Codes: A View From the E.U.

Posted on June 10, 2008
There has been a certain uneasiness with blogs for a long time. Especially among governments increasingly used to asserting control over every facet of life, blogs appear a disorderly and there a potentially dangerous area of unregulated life. And the answer has to be regulation of some sort...

Ainu to be Granted Indigenous Status in Japan

Posted on June 08, 2008
The recently passed United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has contributed to a variety of activity since its passage in September. For some states, the Declaration has proven to be a means to reaffirm the indigenous character of the naitonla population,...

Sovereign Wealth Funds And Hungry States: Adjusting the Borders of Public and Sovereign Activity Across Borders

Posted on June 06, 2008
It is always refreshing to see what hunger, or the fear of hunger, does. Not only to people--the effect is well enough explained in thousands of years of literature; much more interesting is the consequences of a fear of recession within the company of rich, bloated developed states...

Constitutional Crisis in Turkey

Posted on June 05, 2008
The Turkish Constitutional Court has held that the law, passed by the governing religious party--the AK Party (the darling of the United States and the EU)--that would ease the ban on the wearing by women of Muslim head scarves violated the secular principles built into the Turkish constitution...

Theocratic Constitutionalism: Buddhist Constitutionalism in Sri Lanka

Posted on June 01, 2008
The 20th century has seen a fundamental shift in the ways in which constitutions are understood. Moving away from the idea that constitutions were merely internal expressions of social choices, however odious, by the middle of the 20th century there emerged the notion, articulated first successfully in the German and Japanese post War constitutions, that not all constitutions were legitimate, and that legitimate constitutions shared a number of common characteristics...

The KMT Returns to China

Posted on May 31, 2008
Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung has been visiting Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party has ensured that such a gesture be rewarded. Hu Jintao met with the KMT Chairman in a lavishly staged photo-op session. The CCP organ reported "Hu Jintao (R), General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, shakes hands with Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, on May 28, 2008...

State Subsidies and the Character of the Market Transactions of Sovereigns: The Case of EADS

Posted on May 29, 2008
The twin pillars of emerging European regulation of the participatory (rather than the regulatory) activities of state sovereigns in economic markets are the jurisprudence of free movement of capital provisions of the European Community Treaty (Art. 56 EC) and the regulation of state subsidies to business under the Competition provisions of the European Community Treat (Art...

Fiduciary Duty for Directors in Canada--From Shareholders to Debt and Equity Holders?

Posted on May 28, 2008
Traditionally, at least in common law countries, corporate boards of directors owed a single minded fiduciary duty to its shareholders. Actually, more like a triple duty of care, loyalty and (sometimes) disclosure. At times the courts phrased that duty as one owing to the corporation...

Human Dignity and Fundamental Value Systems in the International System, A Comment on Jan Smits, Human Dignity and Uniform Law

Posted on May 25, 2008
Michel Foucault, in explaining his notions of archeology famously described the framework of knowledge in two forms, as savoir (underlying knowledge) and as connaissance (formalized or formulated knowledge). In a society, different bodies of learning, philosophical ideas, everyday opinions, but also institutions, commercial practices and police activities, mores?all refer to a certain implicit knowledge (savoir) special to this society...

Brazil Builds a Sovereign Wealth Fund and Norway Flexes Its Muscles: Private Participation in the Market or Regulation by Other Means

Posted on May 24, 2008
There was a time when states minded their own business. They tended to act through formal lawmaking (regulatory) authority?either in the form of positive law or through the imposition of customary law through judicial systems designed for that very purpose...

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