Go, 'Grrl! Bennoune to California-Davis

Delighted to announce that IntLawGrrl Karima Bennoune (left) is joining my former faculty, the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther, Jr. King Hall).
Karima will become a Professor of Law at Cal-Davis following, in her words, "ten rewarding years" at Rutgers School of Law in Newark, New Jersey, where she's held the title of Professor of Law and Arthur L. Dickson Scholar. During that time she was honored with Rutgers' Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award and with the Derrick Bell Award given by the Association of American Law Schools Section on Minority Groups.
As readers of her IntLawGrrls posts well know, Karima is a noted expert in many fields of international law. She's now completing a book entitled Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, about people of Muslim heritage challenging fundamentalism. Her published scholarship includes "Terror/Torture," Berkeley Journal of International Law (2008), on which she posted here, and which Oxford University Press named among that year's Top Ten Global Justice Law Review Articles. Karima also wrote eyewitness accounts of events during the Arab Spring, for Britain's Guardian as well as for IntLawGrrls. Two of the United Nations' special rapporteurs – on protecting human rights while countering terrorism, and on violence against women – have cited her work.
Karima earned her juris doctor degree from the University of Michigan Law School, as well as a master's degree in Middle Eastern and North African Studies and a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies from Michigan. She went on to serve as a legal adviser for Amnesty International. Her human rights field missions have included Afghanistan, Egypt, Niger, Pakistan, Southern Thailand and Tunisia.  Karima serves on the board of the Network of Women Living Under Muslim Laws.
At Cal-Davis, Karima will contribute to the work of the California International Law Center founded by yours truly and now headed by our colleague Anupam Chander. And she'll be joining a faculty that includes a number of IntLawGrrls contributors: Afra Afsharipour, Andrea Bjorklund, and Lisa R. Pruitt.
Heartfelt congratulations!

Go On! IntLawGrrls at AALS

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

The Association of American Law Schools will be holding its 2011 annual meeting in San Francisco from January 5-8th. This year's theme is: Core Educational Values: Guideposts for the Pursuit of Excellence in Challenging Times.

If you are attending, be sure to check out IntLawGrrls and IntLawGrrl guests/alumnae in action. As detailed in the annual meeting program, they are:

Wednesday, Jan 5th

► At 2:00 pm, Afra Afsharipour will be speaking at the Law and South Asian Studies Section's panel: Lawyers as Social Change Agents in South Asia.

► Also at 2:00, Michele Bratcher Goodwin will speak on the Biolaw Section's panel: Synthetic Biology Meets the Law, and Penelope Andrews will moderate the Africa Section's panel: U.S. Africa Policy at the Midpoint of President Obama's First Term.

Thursday, Jan. 6th

► At 9:00 am, Stephanie Farrior, Hari M. Osofsky, Christiana Ochoa, Annecoos Wiersema, Leila Nadya Sadat, and Cindy Galway Buys will be participating in the International Law Section's panel: International Law Year in Review.

► At 2:00, Penelope Andrews will be speaking on the Constitutional Law Section's panel: American Constitutionalism in Comparative Perspective.

► At 2:30 pm, Lisa R. Pruitt will take part in a panel on Class, Socio-Economics, and Critical Analysis.

Friday, Jan. 7th

► At 8:30 am, Caroline Bettinger-López and Alexandra Huneeus will present at the
New Voices in Human Rights panel of the Section on International Human Rights.

► At 10:30 am, yours truly, Rebecca M. Bratspies, and Hari M. Osofsky will be participating in the Hot Topics panel: The BP Blowout Oil Spill and Its Implications.

► Also at 10:30, Laurel S. Terry will be speaking on the Education Law Section's panel: Immigration and Higher Education.

► At 4:00, Michelle Oberman will be speaking on the Law, Medicine and Health Care Section's panel: Women's Choices, Women's Voices: Legal Regimes and Women's Health.

Saturday, Jan. 8th is an action-packed IntLawGrrls day:

► At 7:00 in the morning, Laurel S. Terry will be speaking at the AALS Workshop and Continental Breakfast for 2010 and 2011 Section Officers.

► At 8:30 am, yours truly, Rebecca M. Bratspies, will be speaking on the Animal Law Section's panel: Treatment and Impact of Farmed Animals.

► At 1:30 pm, Elizabeth L. Hillman will be speaking on the National Security Section's panel: The Relationship Between Military Justice, Civil/Military Relations and National Security Law.

► Also at 1:30 pm, Jenia Iontcheva Turner will be speaking on the Comparative Law Section's panel: Beyond the State: Comparative Approaches to Group Political Identity in the Age of the Transnational.

► At 3:30 pm, Christiana Ochoa, will be moderating the International Law Section's panel: Was Medellin Wrongly Decided?

► Also at 3:30 pm, Jennifer Kreder will speaker on the Section on Law and Anthropology panel entitled The Role of Cultural Property Across Cultures and Legal Regimes.

As always, I am struck by the wide range of interests that our fearless leader Diane Marie Amann has brought together under the IntLawGrrls umbrella.

FYI: Because the Hilton is embroiled in a labor dispute with UNITE HERE, Local 2 (the hotel's workers have been working without a contract for over a year), registration and most of the AALS events have been moved to other nearby hotels. There may be other last-minute changes, so be sure to go by the locations in the schedule you receive at check-in rather than the brochure that circulated last month. See you in San Francisco.

(credit for 2010 poster of San Francisco by Kevin Dart)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

Comparative sideglances can sometimes aid us in deciding not only what we should do, but what we should not do. A notable example: In the 'Steel Seizure Case' decided by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1952, Justice Jackson, in his separate opinion, pointed to features of the Weimar Constitution in Germany that allowed Adolf Hitler to assume dictatorial powers. Even in wartime, Jackson concluded, the U.S. President could not seize private property (in that case, the steel mills). Such a measure, in good times and bad, the Court held, required congressional authorization.
At the time Justice Jackson cast a comparative sideglance at Weimar Germany, the United States itself was a source of 'negative authority' abroad. The Attorney General pressed that point in an amicus brief for the United States filed in Brown v. Board of Education, the public schools desegregation case decided in 1954. Urging the Court to put an end to the 'separate but equal doctrine,' the Attorney General wrote:
'The existence of discrimination against minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination . . . raises doubts even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our devotion to the democratic faith.'

-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on "The Value of a Comparative Perspective in Constitutional Adjudication," in what SCOTUSblog's Lyle Denniston termed "a rare commentary by a member of the Supreme Court on Senate hearings for a potential colleague." He refers, of course, to the broadsides that some Senators aimed at nominee Elena Kagan (prior post). Ginsburg's comments were part of a speech she delivered yesterday at the XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law, about which IntLawGrrl Afra Afsharipour posted earlier this week. (hat tip: Jess Bravin) (The role of foreign context in the school desegregation litigation is, incidentally, a key aspect of the scholarship of IntLawGrrl guest/alumna Mary Dudziak.)

An interesting added note in Ginsburg's full speech, available here: her reference to judges' consultation of "any number of legal blogs." Hmmm....

Report from the XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law in Washington

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Afra Afsharipour, who contributes this guest post)

I am here in Washington, D.C., at the XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law (logo at left).

The congress is taking place all of this week, presented by the International Academy of Comparative Law and the American Society of Comparative Law, and hosted by three local law schools, American University Washington College of Law, George Washington University Law School, and Georgetown University Law Center. It is a pleasure to be among such a diverse group of jurists, lawyers, and scholars from around the world. The Academy, which is composed of academics and jurists from around the world, organizes every 4 years in different parts of the world an international congress of comparative law. From my understanding, this is the first time that an international congress has been held in the United States.
The conference got off to a great start today with an opening plenary addressing the "Role of Comparative Law in Courts and International Tribunals." The panel was chaired by the Secretary-General of the International Academy of Comparative Law and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, Dr. Jürgen Basedow. Representing views from both domestic and international courts, as well as a viewpoint from practice, the distinguished panelists discussed the role of both international and comparative law in their own courts:

► Judge Rosemary Barkett (right), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (for whom I had the privilege of clerking), began by remarking that to some extent comparing laws has some role in all jurisdictions. She presented a historical perspective from the United States to demonstrate that the practice of considering foreign sources is rooted in the legal history and tradition of the United States, citing to the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federalist papers, as well as to numerous opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court. One of Judge Barkett’s most important points was that, as international and comparative scholars, we need to address the definitional problems in comparative law. For example, many jurisdictions espouse allegiance to the rule of law, but what exactly does rule of law entail?

► Justice Sabino Cassese (left), of the Constitutional Court of Italy, next provided three distinct examples of courts looking beyond their own nation’s borders for insights. He emphasized that recourse to comparison by high courts is widespread, and that increasingly supreme courts are acting as comparatists. Justice Cassese emphasized two tasks for comparative lawyers and scholars: one, to examine and evaluate how judges and courts use foreign law; and two, to develop methods and procedures for comparison.
► The presentations of Judge Barkett and Justice Cassese were followed by the practitioner’s perspective, Carolyn Lamm (right), a partner at White & Case in Washington and President of the American Bar Association. She emphasized the importance of looking to other systems for persuasive, not precedential, value. Lamm reminded us of the speech from former U.S. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, in a 1989 talk titled "Constitutional Courts -- Comparative Remarks," in which he remarked:

For nearly a century and a half, courts in the United States exercising the power of judicial review had no precedents to look to save their own, because our courts alone exercised this sort of authority. . . . But now that constitutional law is solidly grounded in so many countries, it is time that the United States courts begin looking to the decisions of other constitutional courts to aid in their own deliberative process.

(Reprinted in Germany and Its Basic Law: Past, Present and Future, A German-American Symposium 411, 412 (Paul Kirchhof & Donald P. Kommers eds., 1993). Lamm also cited to the “Obama-Clinton Doctrine” speech that State Department Legal Adviser Harold Hongju Koh delivered to the American Society of International Law annual meeting. (prior IntLawGrrls post) The speech is definitely worth a read.

► Judge Diego García Sayán (right), President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, spoke of the role of his regional court with respect to national courts in the Americas. He explained that most Latin American national courts openly and explicitly use judgments of the Inter-American court in their decisions, and that the Inter-American court also has used local and national criteria used by national courts. Judge García Sayán also remarked on the use of international law by the Inter-American court, particularly noting the influence of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. While this influence used to be primarily a one-way street, recently the European Court of Human Rights has also looked to the jurisprudence of the Inter-American court for persuasive value.
► Judge Bruno Simma (left) followed by describing his experience on the International Court of Justice and his use of comparative law in an early opinion on the Oil Platforms dispute between Iran and the United States. Judge Simma warned both of the dangers that could befall a comparatist and of comparative law accidents.
The presentations were followed by a dynamic discussion among the panelists on a variety of issues, including the weight to be given to comparative law in judicial opinions and the relationship between international and comparative law.
The opening plenary was followed the rest of the day with various breakout sessions, including the delivery and discussion of general and national reports prepared for the conference. For those of you interested in comparative surveys of various legal issues, the reports should not be missed.
The conference got off to a great start yesterday. Today’s program, which will be held at the George Washington University Law School, promises to be as dynamic as this first day.

Go On! "The Asian Century?"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) Next Friday, February 26, the University of California, Davis Law Review will host "The Asian Century?," a conference exploring how the rise of Asia might bolster or hamper efforts to expand human capabilities. Experts will consider economic and human rights issues through the lens of their diverse areas of expertise, including multinational corporations, intellectual property, human rights, gay rights, the status of rural persons, national security law, and constitutional law. Cosponsoring the event is the California International Law Center, where I serve as Fellow.
Session topics include "Human Rights Under Stress," "The Concept of Asia in International Law," "Lost in Translation?." The symposium features a keynote address by Chicago Law Professor Martha Nussbaum (left); among those presenting papers will be 2 of IntLawGrrls' guests/alumnae, Afra Afsharipour and Lisa R. Pruitt.
The event is all day and free; details here.

Guest Blogger: Afra Afsharipour

It's a great pleasure to welcome my colleague, Afra Afsharipour (left), as today's guest blogger.

An Acting Professor of Law here at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, Afra's scholarship and teaching focus on the areas of comparative corporate law, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, mergers and acquisitions, and securities regulation. She posted on these issues here, during a recent guest stint at The Conglomerate Blog: Business, Law, Economics & Society. In her IntLawGrrls guest post below, Afra discusses her forthcoming article on the role of law in encouraging the expansion of Indian multinationals and their acquisition of companies in developed countries.
Before entering academia, she was an associate in the corporate department of Davis Polk & Wardwell, advising clients on domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, public and private securities offerings, and corporate governance and compliance. She also served as a law clerk to Judge Rosemary Barkett, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Afra earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was an articles editor of the Columbia Law Review and a submissions editor of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, and her her B.A. degree magna cum laude from Cornell University, where she studied government, international relations and women's studies. She was a Board Member for the Iranian Women's Studies Foundation from 2000 to 2008.

At California-Davis, Afra serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Comparative Law, as a member of the Faculty Council of our California International Law Center at King Hall, and as advisor the March 2010 Business Law Journal symposium on "Technology Transactions in a Post-Economic Crisis Economy."

Dedicating her post to Myra Bradwell (below right), Afra writes:

I became interested in her when I was a student at Columbia Law. The Columbia Law Women's Association held an annual dinner (which continues to this day) in honor of Myra Bradwell. There are many books and articles about Bradwell's courageous activism and fight to be admitted to the Illinois bar. Her struggle to win the right to be a lawyer, as well as her activism on behalf of women's rights generally, helped lay the foundation for 20th century women's rights activists. Personally, the Myra Bradwell dinner that I attended really inspired me during my first year of law school, so much so that I became heavily involved with both the Columbia Law Women's Association (serving as President in my second year) as well as the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law.

Bradwell joins other foremothers in IntLawGrrls' list just below our "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Law and Outbound M&A by Indian Multinationals

Many thanks to IntLawGrrls for inviting me to say a few words about my forthcoming article, Rising Multinationals: Law and the Evolution of Outbound Acquisitions by Indian Companies, in this guest post. I am working on this piece in connection with my participation in the U.C. Davis Law Review’s 2010 Symposium, entitled “The Asian Century?” As many of you know, in the past decade India has become one the fastest growing economies in the world. During this period, not only have Indian companies achieved significant domestic growth, but they also have launched multimillion and multibillion dollar deals to acquire companies around the globe. What often comes as a surprise is that many of the acquisition targets are companies in developed economies, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom. Just last year, Tata Motors, part of the giant Indian conglomerate The Tata Group, bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford in a $2.3 billion deal that received world-wide recognition. This acquisition is one of the many outbound acquisitions completed by the various Tata companies in the past few years (including the acquisition of marquee British brand Tetley Tea). While the mega-deals seen in the 2005-2007 period have certainly slowed down during the economic crisis, Indian companies are continuing to acquire companies in developed countries. In fact, just a few weeks ago, Reliance Industries, one of India’s largest companies, announced its intent to acquire a controlling stake in LyondellBasell, one of the world’s largest chemical companies.
Finance and business scholars have begun to explore outbound acquisitions by Indian multinationals, emphasizing the business and economic motivations underlying these transactions. However, there has been little analysis of the significant role of India’s legal norms and rules, including recent shifts in the country’s regulatory and legal regimes, in the rapid expansion of Indian multinationals. I believe that law plays a number of important roles in the emergence of Indian multinationals. First, legal reforms launched during the economic liberalization period spearheaded by Manmohan Singh, India’s current Prime Minister and former Finance Minister, set the stage for outbound acquisitions by Indian multinationals. Second, legal norms and legal history provide Indian multinationals with competitive advantages that are largely distinct from that of firms from other emerging economies. Third, legal constraints on mergers and acquisition activity by Indian firms impose substantial restrictions not only on the methods used by Indian multinationals in pursuing outbound acquisitions, but also on the future potential of Indian multinationals. An analysis of the role of law and legal norms not only presents a more complete picture of the environment that has both facilitated and constrained outbound acquisitions by Indian multinationals, but also explains in part why Indian multinationals have targeted firms in the west. My article presents this analysis, which I hope other scholars, as well as lawmakers, will find helpful.

On December 18

On this day in ...
... 1979 (30 years ago today), at U.N. headquarters in New York, by a vote of 130-0-10, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women at U.N. headquarters in New York City. The next summer, in Copenhagen, Denmark, 64 states signed and 2 ratified the Convention. On September 3, 1981, it entered into force, "faster than any previous human rights convention had done." It has 186 states parties, Qatar having joined in April "without any reservations." This, alas, has been less than common in the case of CEDAW, as this article indicates -- though Morocco withdrew its reservations last December. As for the United States, a nonparty state, a March 2009 Nation article by Betsy Reed framed the then-soon-expected debate on U.S. ratification of the Women's Convention:

Will the Obama administration, and Senate Democrats, bow to pressure from antiabortion Republicans and include ... conditions in this year's version, in a bid to ensure passage? Or will they push for a 'clean CEDAW,' as many feminists are urging? Senator Barbara Boxer, who heads the relevant Foreign Relations subcommittee, has pledged to begin hearings with a clean version of the treaty,
but pressure will quickly mount to muck it up.

(credit for Lisa Bennett photo of 2000 pro-CEDAW demonstration in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the National Organization for Women) Classes having ended for the semester, we at the California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law, will be marking the anniversary with a noon-hour event on Thursday, January 28: "The Women's Convention at 30." Featured will be Krishanti Dharmaraj (right) -- who successfully persuaded the Board of Supervisors to make San Francisco the 1st "city in the United States to pass legislation implementing an international human rights treaty," CEDAW -- as well as members of our CILC Faculty Council, like Afra Afsharipour, Lisa Ikemoto, IntLawGrrl guest/alumna Lisa R. Pruitt, and Madhavi Sunder.

(Prior December 18 posts are here and here.)

Go On! "International Dispute Resolution"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) Current challenges to global resolution of disagreements will be explored in an all-day conference this Friday at my home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Entitled Overhauling International Dispute Resolution: Challenges & Potential Solutions to International Dispute Resolution in the 21st Century, the symposium will examine the following panel topics:
► The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes Revisited: Evaluating the Effectiveness of the 2006 Amendments to ICSID Arbitration Rules;
► Alternative Dispute Resolution and Corporate America: The Evolution of the Use of ADR Among Fortune 1000 Companies; and
► Lessons from International and Domestic Conflict Resolution: The New Face of Arbitration.
Chief sponsor of the conference is the law school's Journal of International Law & Policy, an Affiliate of our new California International Law Center at King Hall. Advising JILP editors are my colleagues, Afra Afsharipour and Andrea K. Bjorklund, herself an IntLawGrrls guest/alumna.
Conference details and brochure available here.