Academic

Ruminations XXXII: Knowledge Governance, the Governance of Knowledge and the Politics of Information as a Behavior Management Technique

Posted on October 13, 2010
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OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises ? What every international lawyer needs to know about possible upcoming changes

Posted on October 09, 2010
I recently wrote about the International Bar Association Corporate Social Responsibility Section's excellent program: Corporate Social Responsibility at the International Bar Association Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.John Sherman and Craig Phillips, Co-Chairs of the International Bar Association corporate Social Responsibility Committee organized the panel, OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises ? what every international lawyer needs to know about possible upcoming changes, on which I participated...

The Governance Effects of Counting Race and Ethnicity--a Snapshot From the United States

Posted on September 30, 2010
Kevin Brown has recently provided a window on the substantive governance effects of reporting in a recent posting to colleagues (reproduced with permission):. Are you aware of the new federal Department of Education guidelines for the classification of race and ethnicity (Guidance) that went into effect for this fall's incoming class of law students?  These regulations apply to all educational institutions, including law schools...

Cuba Responds to Globalizationand Reorganizes its Political Economy: Revolution, Retrenchment or Small Steps Towards Market Engagement Within a Marxist Framework Under the Leadership of a Vanguard Party Apparatus

Posted on September 24, 2010
For years now the writing has been on the wall. Over the last decade two great factions within the Cuban governing elite have been debating the future course of Cuban economic development.  On the one side stood the governing apparatus of traditionalists tied to the old Soviet model of development...

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Corporate Social Responsibility at the International Bar Association Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada

Posted on September 23, 2010
John Sherman and Craig Phillips, Co-Chairs of the International Bar Association corporate Social Responsibility Committee will be organizing two exciting panels for the annual meeting next month in Vancouver, Canada.  OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises ? what every international lawyer needs to know about possible upcoming changesTuesday 5 October, 1500?1800, Room 207, Level 1Session ChairJohn ShermanAre the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises still relevant to today?s global economy? Do they provide adequate guidance to companies? Does their complaint process work? What are the proposals for their reform? This session will attempt to answer these and other questions...

Conflating Economics and Politics, Security and Prosperity--President Obama Addresses the United Nations

Posted on September 23, 2010
It was once commonly understood that Marxist-Leninists and their progeny tended to conflate politics and economics, using law as an instrument of the necessary politics of the vanguard forces those control and leadership of the state would produce movement toward  the establishment of a proper Marxist state...

The University and the Panopticon: Naturalizing "New" Governance Forms for Behavior Control Beyond Law

Posted on September 17, 2010
How do institutions with governance authority respond to  behaviors considered a problem, or a threat to the stable social order or social goals to be encouraged among its populations?  Traditionally, the responses of governance bodies would rely heavily on the conventional tools of government:  command and sanction...

National People of Color Conference Concludes

Posted on September 14, 2010
The Third National People of Color Conference, Our Country Our World in a "Post-Racial" Era,  has just concluded.  Hosted superbly by Seton Hall Law School and organized by Professor Solangel Maldonado and the National Steering Committee, the conference brought together over five hundred law and law related academics...

Japanese Approaches to Corporate Social Responsibility (????????) and Global Human Rights--Between the Law-State and Corporate Culture

Posted on September 14, 2010
Currently, much important work is being undertaken at the international level that seeks to structure the parameters of behavior of economic enterprises in their relation to human rights.  Among the most important is the work of John Ruggie as the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Business and Human Rights, undertaken pursuant to a mandate of the U...

On the Third Japan-China High Level Economic Dialogue

Posted on September 06, 2010
It is sometimes useful to compare how two trading partners exploit news of and the results of symbolically important meetings. To that end, the insights from Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon (???) might prove useful.  The film depicts the rape of a woman and the murder of her samurai husband, through the widely differing accounts of four witnesses, including the bandit/rapist, the wife, the dead man speaking through a medium (Fumiko Honma), and lastly the narrator, the one witness that seems the most objective and least biased...

Institutionalizing China's Go Global (?????) Policy: A Recap of China's Outbound Investment Rules

Posted on September 05, 2010
Like other developed states, the People's Republic of China encourages both inbound and outbound investment.  Unlike the oldest developed states, China can still exploit the propaganda of "development" to mask the extent to which it has achieved its status as a member of this exclusive group of nations occupying the first tier of power and influence...

From Theory to Practice: Scientific Development (?????) As Applied Within China

Posted on August 29, 2010
Recently I have been exploring the development of the fundamental principle of scientific development (?????) as a constitutional and normative concept within Chinese law and political organization.  The initial consideration focused on the nature of the concept...

Italo Calvino's City of Clarice: On the Mummification of Law, Peoples, Cultures and Time

Posted on August 27, 2010
Almost a generation ago Italo Calvino wrote  Invisible Cities (William Weaver, trans., New York: Mariner Books; 1978, First Harvest/HBJ Printing edition (May 3, 1978) ISBN-13: 978-0156453806).  It has been described as a "strange, fantastic book, Invisible Cities describes dialogues between Marco Polo, the Venetian traveler, and Kublai Khan, the oriental emperor...

The American Bar Association is Considering Accrediting Foreign Law Schools: Globalization, Harmonization, Communication, Satisfaction of Market Needs, Advancing Legal Knowledge, or Neo-Colonial Project?

Posted on August 24, 2010
Elites for some time have amused themselves by disparaging both the coherence and relevance of American law. Yet American law and legal education continues its march across the globe, triumphantly displacing indigenous forms of approaches to law and legal education in the most unlikely of places...

Ruminations XXXI: The Human Capacity for Self-Debasement Through Theory

Posted on August 22, 2010
Jonathan Yardley ends his recent review  of  Lucy Worsley, The Courtiers:  Splendor and Intrigue in the Georgian Court at Kensington Palace (Walker & Co, 2010;  402 pp, ISBN-13: 978-0802719874) with a well known but under-appreciated observation...

Course Syllabus for "Actors, Institutions, and Legal Frameworks in International Affairs"

Posted on August 20, 2010
I will be teaching a course this semester as part of the core curriculum of the Penn State School of International Affairs: Actors, Institutions, and Legal Frameworks in International Affairs This course introduces students to the various levels of international interaction and exchange (supranational, state-to-state, state-to-private, private-to-private); the sources and limitations of law and regulation at each level; and the variety of actors and institutions characteristic of each level...

The Shape of the Chinese Communist Party in 2009 -- From Workers and Peasants to Structural Post-Revolutionary Leadership

Posted on August 18, 2010
The People's Daily recently reported on demographic information of Communist Party membership in China. China's CPC Members near 78 m, People's Daily (Aug. 2010). The roughly 78 million members includes the addition of 2.065 additional members over 2008...

Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights and Corporate Catastrophe--The BP Oil Spill and Human Rights Due Diligence

Posted on August 16, 2010
In 2005, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission requested the UN Secretary-General to appoint a Special Representative (SRSG) with a mandate to do the following: (a) To identify and clarify standards of corporate responsibility and accountability for transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights;(b) To elaborate on the role of States in effectively regulating and adjudicating the role of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights, including through international cooperation;(c) To research and clarify the implications for transnational corporations and other business enterprises of concepts such as ?complicity? and ?sphere of influence?;(d) To develop materials and methodologies for undertaking human rights impact assessments of the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises;(e) To compile a compendium of best practices of States and transnational corporations and other business enterprises...

Developing a New Course--"Elements of Law"

Posted on August 16, 2010
Last year the law faculty at Penn State approved the creation of a new concept course, to be named "Elements of Law".  Its description was  meant to be general, to provide faculty with some space to develop concepts and ideas for a course on "meta-principles" either of the applied or theoretical kind...

On the Cultural Ideology of Progress in Developing States--Of Mobile Phones and Ceiling Fans

Posted on August 09, 2010
It is a common place to hail progress in developing states through the ideologically infused lenses of technological choices.  This is understood as leapfrogging.  Leapfrogging suggests that once an actor has undergone the sometimes long and expensive process of change that produces technological or other goods deemed useful, that other actors might avoid the same process and leap toward the good produced...

Robert E. Raines On State Power Over the Authority to Solemnize Marriage

Posted on August 07, 2010
The ability to control, or better put to manage, human fertility has been one of the great prizes of institutions seeking power.  There are few societies where this power is not a great object of struggles for dominance among competing governance institutions...

Courting Africa--21st Century China Africa Investment and Cooperation Forum

Posted on August 07, 2010
Over the last decade, Chinese officials have been very good at staging public events designed to spotlight their growing presence in Africa, assure African leaders of their good intentions, and remind their African hosts and global competitors of the strength of their position in Africa...

Inter-Systemic Harmonization and its Challenges for the Law-State

Posted on August 05, 2010
The forward looking Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL) "is an international research institute, located in The Hague, the Netherlands, which initiates, facilitates and funds top-level research in the field of the internationalisation of law...

The State of the Cuban Economy: Divergent Views of Economists From Inside Cuba

Posted on August 03, 2010
At thew recently concluded 20th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, Joaquín Pujol reported  on the state of the Cuban Economy as seen by economists from within Cuba.  Joaquín Pujol, ?Cuba at the Crossroads in the 21st...

On the Effects of Protracted War on Soldiers and the State: The Voices of the Cuban Veterans of the Angolan War

Posted on August 01, 2010
It is widely understood that protracted warfare has a substantial effect on the military personnel of the combatants.  The focus has usually been on the standard list of big state actors--most recently the United States in Viet-Nam  and Afghanistan-Iraq,  and the Russians in Afghanistan and the like...

The 18th International Congress of Comparative Law--Workshop on Private Law Theory

Posted on July 27, 2010
This week individuals from all over the world participated in the 18th International Congress of Comparative Law. The program agenda is rich and varied. Equally interesting are the general and national reports produced for the Congress. These reports are available for download and are worth reading...

Corporate Social Responsibility and Charity--An American Law/Policy Connection Worth Reconsidering

Posted on July 22, 2010
A recent opinion piece published by the Washington Post reminds us that, for some important political-legal cultures, the connection between corporate social responsibility and charity is quite strong. Chrystia Freeland, What's BP's Social Responsibility?, The Washington Post, July 18, 2010...

Estado de SATS: Creating a Space for the Confluence of Art and Thought in Cuba

Posted on July 20, 2010
Cuba continues to play a disproportionally large role in the development of arts and ideas.  Much of it remains confined to the Island.  But some of it is reaching out.  One such recent effort worth substantial consideration are the efforts of the Estado de SATS...

And Speaking of Labor Markets: Labor Market Equity for the Disabled in Hing Kong, Report of the Community Development Initiative

Posted on July 20, 2010
While free movement of capital tends to mark the approach to capital and capital markets within the emerging global economic architecture, the same does not hold true for labor markets.  Labor markets  have tended to remain mired in protectionism, paternalism, and management by a host of actors...

Hearings on U.S. Cuba Policy: Testimony of Michael Kelly on Property Claims and More on Labor and Human Rights

Posted on July 18, 2010
Yesterday I posted my conference paper on Cuba's engagement with global trade, and the repercussions in the context of business and human rights.  The focus was on one of the practices of Cuba's commercial activities--barter transactions in which the Cuban state trades labor for services or cash--and its potential incompatibility with global human rights norms...

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