Do your professional new year resolutions include writing and engaging with other FCIL research enthusiasts? Consider contributing in 2023 to DipLawMatic Dialogues! The blog offers an informal venue to share your expertise with your colleagues – and one that also requires only a limited time commitment! A few series for which we welcome either periodic (ex. quarterly) or guest columnists include the:

• Teaching FCIL Research Series: Share your perspectives on teaching FCIL-related research topics – whether in single sessions or for-credit courses, whether you are teaching FCIL research for the first time, or are an experienced instructor teaching in new ways, and whether you teach JD students or other audiences;
• New FCIL Librarian Series: The SIS loves to hear from new FCIL librarians – whether you are new to the profession, or an experienced librarian serving in an FCIL-focused role for the first time (irrespective of job title!)
• From the Reference Desk Series: Were you recently asked an interesting FCIL reference question? Share your findings and approach with your colleagues!
• Conference Recaps: Though we periodically send calls for bloggers to recap sessions at particular annual meetings and conferences (ex. AALL and IALL annual meetings), we welcome contributions concerning any professional meetings, programs, and webinars that you feel might be of interest to the SIS!

Other topics for which we welcome contributions include (but are not limited to!):

• Notable FCIL collection development initiatives;
• Book reviews (professional, academic, or leisure reading titles);
• Promoting the professional accomplishments of yourself, your colleagues, or your committees

To volunteer, simply email FCIL Publicity Committee Co-Chairs Meredith Capps (meredith.a.capps@vanderbilt.edu) and/or Jessica Pierucci (jpierucci@law.uci.edu).

By Jonathan Pratter

A classic (no pun intended) bibliography of ancient Greek law is found in the Introduction Bibliographique à l’Histoire du Droit et à l’Ethnologie Juridique, a multi-volume bibliography of legal history published between 1963 and 1988 under the editorship of J. Gilissen by the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Because of its fine-grained organization by subject, this bibliography doubles as a research guide. For example, the section on private law is divided into sub-sections on general works, slavery, family law, property law, obligations, commercial law, and private international law. The reader can learn a lot about the structure of ancient Greek law just by consulting this bibliography. Alas, the section on ancient Greek law in the Introduction Bibliographique was last updated in 1967.

What more current bibliographies of ancient Greek law do we find today? There are some; two of them are online. NOMOI, hosted by Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, describes itself as “a bibliographical web site for the study of ancient Greek law.” The home page points out that the website covers Archaic and Classical Greek law, as well as Hellenistic law. The bibliography is comprehensive, multilingual, and up-to-date. It has a dual structure. The first part is purely alphabetical by the last name of the author, but the second part is structured by general subject heading, though it lacks the granularity of the Introduction Bibliographique. The other online bibliography is Greek Law in the Oxford Bibliographies Online. It is more selective than NOMOI. It is structured by general subject category. In print, there is A New Working Bibliography of Ancient Greek Law (2011).

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law (2005) is a scholarly yet accessible collection of essays. It covers such issues as the unity of Greek law, early Greek law, the law of procedure in Athens, substantive law in Athens, the law outside Athens, and other approaches to Greek law, including Greek tragedy and law. This book is an excellent introduction to the field.

The Law of Ancient Athens (2013) is a collection of translated primary sources arranged by subject. Sources include extracts from inscriptions, extracts from speeches by orators, and extracts from plays, among others. Trials from Classical Athens (1997) is a selection of translated speeches by the orators in 17 cases arranged by subject. The Law in Classical Athens (1978) is an introduction written for the newcomer to ancient Greek law. A more advanced overview is The Shape of Athenian Law (1993).

An annual journal devoted to ancient Greek law is DIKE: Rivista di Storia del Diritto Greco ed Ellenistico from the University of Milan. The journal publishes articles in Italian, English, French, and German. Symposion is a biannual collection of essays that publishes the work of the Gesellschaft für griechische und hellenistische Rechtsgeschichte of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Symposion publishes articles in German, English, and French.

An overarching issue is the question of the unity of ancient Greek law. Unlike Rome, ancient Greece was not politically unified. It was a collection of independent city-states. Continental European scholars of ancient Greek law have pointed to common basic concepts, as well as noting that the ancient Greeks themselves recognized a common cultural background for their laws in their language, religion, and customs. Several Anglo-American scholars differ from this view. They point out the fundamental differences between, for example, marriage and marital property law in classical Athens (5th century BCE) and Gortyn, another city-state (on Crete) for which there is evidence in an inscription known as the Gortyn Code, also from the 5th century BCE. In Athens, a woman received a dowry, but could not inherit property. She had no right to control property and depended on a guardian to defend her legal and financial interests. In Gortyn, there is no evidence of a dowry or a guardian. Women inherited property directly, in their own right, just as men did. Women controlled their property themselves and passed it on to their children or relatives just like men. Whichever way you come out on this debate, ancient Greek law is a fascinating field of legal history. I hope that the sources mentioned here will provide a good way into the subject.

The Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Special Interest Section (FCIL-SIS) of AALL needs your leadership and vision! 

The Nominations Committee hereby welcomes submissions for Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect and Secretary/Treasurer of the SIS for 2023. 

• The position of Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect requires a three-year commitment, as Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect, Chair, and Immediate Past Chair, and will be expected to attend the AALL annual meeting the first two years.  
• The position of Secretary/Treasurer requires a two-year commitment, and the holder of this office is expected to attend the AALL Annual Meeting both years. More information is available in the FCIL-SIS Bylaws.

Please consider nominating yourself or one of our outstanding colleagues for these important positions. (If nominating someone other than yourself, please communicate first with that person to ensure their interest in serving.)

Nominations will be accepted through December 16th, 2022. Results will be announced in the Spring newsletter.

Please submit your nominations and any questions to:

Laura Cadra, Chair, FCIL-SIS Nominating Committee
Adam Mackie, Member, FCIL-SIS Nominating Committee
Traci Emerson Spackey, Member, FCIL-SIS Nominating Committee

We look forward to hearing from you!

By Paul J. Moorman

IALL 2022 was chockablock with wonderful programs and one of the best was saved for the last day with a program on “Business & Human Rights” by Stanford Law School Lecturer Jamie O’Connell.  O’Connell’s program described the origins, development, and status of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (“Guiding Principles”). The Guiding Principles are the most authoritative human rights standards businesses are expected to follow. And while they are not binding, they have been shown to have significant and increasing normative force and practical effect on the behavior of businesses.

The first attempt to identify the human rights obligations of businesses began in the early 2000s with a group of experts, largely from academia, who drafted a set of binding rules.  These rules included, most controversially, a guarantee that businesses were not only responsible for following human rights obligations but also must guarantee compliance from their suppliers and contractors. The pushback from businesses was fierce and, after some intense lobbying, the initiative was quickly quashed.

However, despite this initial failure, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recognized the need for guidance on what human rights obligations businesses do have. In 2005 he appointed Harvard Professor John Ruggie as Special Representative of the Secretary-General on human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. Ruggie’s first task was to investigate what obligations businesses had regarding human rights. After three years of talking to business leaders and other stakeholders, Ruggie presented his Protect, Respect and Remedy (“PRR”) framework, which became the foundation for the Guiding Principles.

O’Connell then went on to describe Ruggie’s PRR framework. First, governments are the primary agents responsible for protecting human rights and governments have an obligation to regulate businesses to protect human rights. This principle is generally considered uncontroversial. Second, all businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights, but businesses are only responsible for themselves and no one else, including their suppliers or contractors. O’Connell credits this principle as key for getting businesses on board with the project. Finally, when there is a violation of a human right, there needs to be a remedy available to compensate victims.

O’Connell then moves on to discuss Ruggie’s efforts to build trust with business leaders by using language and concepts that they would understand such as due diligence and by emphasizing that it was in their interest to abide by human rights obligations. At the same time, Ruggie developed a somewhat antagonistic relationship with many in the human rights community who were often critical of his effort and widely denounced him as a sellout for caving into business interests at the expense of human rights. O’Connell believes that Ruggie was strategically encouraging the antagonism to assist him with his effort to build relationships with business leaders because Ruggie recognized that without business buy-in, his effort was doomed to failure.

Six years after his appointment as Special Representative, Ruggie published the Guiding Principles. O’Connell concludes with a discussion of what they include and their impact. First, the Guiding Principles are non-binding soft law. This hands-off approach was important to gain business support. The Guiding Principles also say that businesses have an obligation of due diligence to abide by all human rights obligations and require a formal commitment to respect human rights approved by the highest officers of the corporation. Ruggie knew that if those in charge were involved, employees would take the effort seriously. Finally, within Ruggie’s due diligence language, the Guiding Principles identify an obligation by businesses to avoid contracting with suppliers and corporations that are known violators of human rights. It was this principle that led to the defeat of the earlier effort, so O’Connell credits the trust that Ruggie had built up with business leaders for its survival. Once the Guiding Principles were released, many governments and businesses began treating the principles favorably and they quickly gained wide support. Since being introduced, the Guiding Principles have come full circle and have moved from being soft law to binding law in many jurisdictions. O’Connell credits Ruggie’s skillful diplomacy and savvy relationship-building for saving what, at one time, seemed like a project doomed to failure. Thanks to his efforts, the world now has an important tool to hold businesses accountable for protecting human rights.   

By Lucie Olejnikova

GlobaLex September/October 2022 issue is live featuring eight updates: Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bolivian Legal Framework, Côte d’Ivoire in English and in French, Dominican Republic, Turkmenistan, and the International Commercial Arbitration. Webmasters and content managers, please update your pages. We thank all our wonderful authors, new and established, for their excellent contributions and commitment to open access authorship!

UPDATE: A Guide to the Republic of Azerbaijan Law Research by Ramil Iskandarli at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Azerbaijan1.html.

Ramil Iskandarli is a Chairman of Board of the Legal Analysis and Research Public Union in Azerbaijan. He holds an LL.M. in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt Oder, Germany. Ramil is teaching in the Social Sciences faculty at Baku State University. He is an alumnus of the leadership program in Executive Education at the Harvard Kennedy School (2017), Chevening Fellowship Program on Human Rights Law at the University of Nottingham (2008), John Smith Fellowship Program (2005) in the UK, and a participant of the International Youth Leaders Visitors Program of the US State Department (2005).

UPDATE: Research Guide to Belgian Law by Christoph Malliet and François Desseilles at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Belgium1.html.

Christoph Malliet has a degree in Philosophy (1983). He has been a librarian at the Law Library of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium since 1988, where he takes care of the paper and electronic collection, as well as the website of the library. He published five editions of a print bibliography on Belgian law (Elementaire Bibliografie Belgisch recht, Mys & Breesch, last ed. 1999). Publications on the Internet include rechtslinks.be, a former list of Belgian legal websites, now abolished, a list of Belgian legal journal abbreviations, and the online version of the mentioned printed bibliography. More recently, he mounted the project Rechtsreeks.be, an open access platform for pre-2000 Belgian legal journals and books. He published some articles on the Belgian legal publishing industry.

François Desseilles has been specializing in Cultural Heritage Law (University Paris-Sud XI, 2011) after obtaining a Master’s Degree in Law (2009) and a Bachelor’s in History (2010) at the University of Liège (ULg, Belgium). He practiced for several years as a scientific officer, as law and criminology librarian at the Law, Economics, Management, Social sciences Léon Graulich Library of the University of Liege (Belgium), where he is still scientific fellow researcher at the Faculty of Law, Political Science & Criminology. He is now administrator at the Court of Justice of the European Union Library Directorate (Luxembourg) and advisor attached to the Library Director.

UPDATE: The Bolivian Legal Framework by Gonzalo Dávila Maceda at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Bolivian_Legal_Framework1.html.

Gonzalo Dávila Maceda is the director of a Legal Counselling Office based in La Paz, Plurinational State of Bolivia. Gonzalo is an independent and private legal practitioner with postgraduate studies in Business Administration, Oil & Gas Law, and Environmental Education & Sustainable Educational Projects. After completing a French High School in Bolivia, he obtained his law degree at the Bolivian Catholic University’s Law School in 1997 and his Diploma in Petroleum Law in 2000 as a Chevening scholar by the British Government at the Centre for Energy Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP) at the University of Dundee in Scotland. For over 25 years he has focused his experience in Civil Law, Commercial Law, Labor Law, Competition Law, Regulatory Law, Administrative Law, Environmental Law, Petroleum Law, Electricity Law, Telecommunications Law, and Mining Law, having acquired that experience working for almost 9 years as senior legal advisor for the Bolivian Hydrocarbons Regulator and from his later experience in the private counseling field for 16 years. He worked as intern at the Swiss Competition Commission in Bern-Switzerland in 2005. He has participated in the drafting of legislation in the oil and gas sector. He is member of the La Paz Bar Association since 1997. He is a lecturer of Petroleum Law, Competition Law, and Environmental Law at several universities in La Paz. He speaks Spanish, English and French.

UPDATE: The Legal System in Côte d’Ivoire by Armel Olivier Yapi and Yao Mamoudou Ouattara at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Cote_dIvoire1.html.

MISE à Jour: Le Système Juridique De La Côte D’Ivoire par Armel Olivier Yapi and Yao Mamoudou Ouattara at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Cote_dIvoire1_FR.html

Armel Olivier Yapi is a jurist with a background in private law and international human rights law. He is currently working with Indigo Cote d’Ivoire as a project manager and senior research analyst on peacebuilding issues. With almost 10 years of professional experience in several organisations including Amnesty International, the National Institute for Democracy (NDI) and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Armel Olivier has developed multidisciplinary skills, particularly in political analysis, election observation and international protection of refugees and internally displaced persons. For him, humanitarian and development work is the greatest gift a person can give to a person in a vulnerable situation.

Yao Mamoudou Ouattara is a jurist specialist in human rights. Project Assistant and Researcher-Facilitator on peacebuilding matters, he has worked in transitional justice as Supervisor with the National Commission for Reconciliation and Compensation of Victims of the Ivorian crises. Furthermore, he has worked in child protection and promotion of children’s rights as an instructor in the Ivorian civil society for the care of children in family difficulties. Permanent consultant member of the scientific committee of Common Action for Sustainable development Côte d’Ivoire (CASD-CI) and National Vice-President of the African Youth Network for the Fight against Money Laundering (RE-J-ABA), Yao Mamoudou Ouattara is convinced that it’s everyone’s effort that can contribute to a sustainable peace in Côte d’Ivoire and continues to provide his skills to the service of his country.

UPDATE: Legal Research in the Dominican Republic by Marisol Florén Romero at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Dominican_Republic1.html.

Marisol Florén Romero is the Assistant Director for Library Services and Foreign & International Law Librarian at Florida International University (FIU) College of Law. Marisol Florén-Romero manages FIU Law Library legal reference. She oversees the acquisition and development of FIU Law Library’s foreign and international collection and is the Special Collections librarian. Dr. Florén-Romero received her B.A. in History summa cum laude from the University of Navarra, in Pamplona, Spain; a M.L.S. with a minor in Latin American Librarianship from the University of Texas at Austin; and a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

UPDATE: Researching the Turkmenistan Legal System by Dovran Orazgylyjov at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Turkmenistan1.html.

Dovran Orazgylyjov, Ph.D., is a private lawyer in Turkmenistan. He is the founder and Chief Editor of Atavatan Turkmenistan Magazine. Dovran received his Ph.D. in Law authoring a thesis titled Production Sharing Agreement Under the Turkmenistan and Turkish Law, as well as an LL.M. and bachelor’s degree from Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey. He also received the Rumsfeld Fellowship from Johns Hopkins University SAIS in 2010. He is a writer of International Direct Investment and Joint venture (Turkey, Izmir, 2005) and a co-writer of a book titled Entrepreneurship (Turkmenistan Ashgabat 2013).

UPDATE: International Commercial Arbitration by Charles Bjork at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/International_Commercial_Arbitration1.html.

Charles Bjork is an International and Foreign Law Reference Librarian at the Georgetown University Law Library in Washington, D.C. He has a B.A. from the University of Illinois and a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law. Prior to entering the field of law librarianship, he spent nearly two decades in private law practice in Chicago. After obtaining his M.S.L.I.S. from the University of Illinois in 2013, he began his career as a librarian specializing in foreign, comparative, and international law research at Georgetown in 2014. He also serves as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown Law Center, where he co-teaches the for-credit course Research Skills in International and Comparative Law.

For more articles, visit https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/index.html.

By Joan Policastri

Finding tribal law is hard. Professor Elizabeth Reese’s talk to IALL annual course attendees outlined the difficulties, the reasons those exist, and proposed ways in which she feels the problems should be addressed.

The first problem is understanding the difference between Federal Indian Law and Tribal Law. Federal Indian Law is law made by the Federal Government in relation to Indian nations and is relatively easy to find in standard sources of case law, legislation, and regulations. Tribal Law is the law made by sovereign tribal governments for their own citizens. There are currently 574 federally recognized tribes and finding their laws is not easy; there is no Westlaw or Lexis that brings them all together in a nice neat searchable database as there is for State laws. And Tribal law is rarely taught in law school, so the demand for it is limited.

In order to demonstrate the challenges facing researchers of tribal law, Reese asked the attendees to find the Constitution of Santa Clara Pueblo and its tribal code, and to consider the date on which the material they find was published, and whether that the most current? She then asked attendees to find the Constitution of the Navajo Nation; there is not one, and the Navajo Nation’s tribal code is over 1,000 pages, with all changes incorporated into one PDF document. (For fun, try these searches yourself…and keep track of all the broken links that you encounter.)

As Reese’s students regularly do this research, she is working with a Stanford Law Librarian to keep a spreadsheet of resources, but she feels that there has to be a better way! Tribal Law needs to be made as available as state laws and needs an infrastructure to sustainably support it. Right now the best resources for tribal law are non-profits (NILL/NARF, or LLMC’s Indigenous Law Portal), or university programs (Oklahoma, Arizona), but these are dependent on funding or individual interest, and are understaffed and underfunded.

Reese identified several problems related to building a sustainable tribal law infrastructure that also respects tribal sovereignty.  The laws belong to the tribes, who may not have the funds to devote to maintaining records of tribal law and tribal court decisions. Primarily thanks to colonialism, Tribes are constrained in the ways in which they can raise money. They do not own their own land (the Federal government does) so property taxes are not an option. Most tribes are not wealthy and the tax base is small.  While many tribes have developed Tribal businesses, from gambling to Tribal beer, developing documentation systems is lower on the priority lists than funding the Tribal Courts or the Tribal Police. Federal grants are a major source of tribal revenue.

Another issue is that the tribes may not want to share their laws and make them publicly available. Many tribes have had bad experiences with publishers and academics. Data sovereignty is a priority for tribes whether dealing with a private publisher or the Federal government. Everyone doing the work, whether Tribal governments or researchers, is keeping their own records, for their own purposes. A central repository with adequate funding and staff is needed to maintain the information.

While the efforts of non-profits and universities is appreciated, Reese believes that a bigger solution would be to create demand and start breaking down the paywalls at the major vendors. Access to Tribal Law needs to be normalized as equivalent to State laws. It should not be an exception or an add-on or part of a larger package. Indian Tribes are the third sovereign of US law and should not be packaged and made too expensive to access. It is a foundational question. Major publishers need to provide access.  

Currently the best solution for researchers is to call the tribe. Be polite and be clear about the type of materials you are requesting. Many Tribal Court decisions are not online and each Tribe keeps records in the best way that they can. It is up to each Tribe to decide what to make accessible. Criminal law materials are generally the most accessible as Federal laws such as VAWA (the Violence Against Women Act) contain certain requirements for preservation.

Reese’s dream is to be able to go to same sources for Tribal Law as for other legal materials. She, and all researchers, want to know the material is up-to-date, and that the resource is reliable. She would like to see the Codes put online in an annotated format. (Why was this law passed? What was involved in the decision?) Some tribal law is quite unique and the context for its development is important. While the knowledge exists, it is being lost as the people who made the decisions leave office or retire. Interestingly, Facebook has a lot of this information as that is where discussions are preserved.

During the Q&A, audience participant Sherri Thomas (Tiwa-Taos Pueblo) of the University of New Mexico noted that the Native Peoples Law Caucus (AALL) has a grant to compile laws. She sees training the tribal librarians and courts to keep records as an important step. She also pointed out that local governments have the same issues as tribes. The talk ended with an audience comment about the Bluebook’s neglect of tribal law – it needs expanded recognition of Federal Tribes and how to cite Tribal materials.  Professor Reese warmly and emphatically endorsed these comments!

By Michael McArthur

The final talk of the International Law Libraries Annual Course was another sobering perspective on the U.S. administration, most notably the absence of judicial review under the guise of national security. Stanford’s Professor Shirin Sinnar gave the presentation, titled “National Security and Accountability in the Courts.”

She began with the story of Professor Xiaoxing Xi, whose home was raided by the FBI in 2015 on account of an accusation that he was sharing private scientific technology with China. The news made the headlines and his life was turned upside-down, only to have the charges dropped a few months later. In an attempt to clear his name, he sued the FBI agents and the FBI for malicious prosecution based on his Chinese background. His claim was dismissed, unable to get past the threshold of Bivens action that protects federal agents for constitutional violations. The court went on to say that there was no comparable alternative remedy. Professor Xi was out of luck.

In the years since the September 11^th attack in 2001 many case arose out of the sprawling war on terror. Early on, courts pushed back on the broad expansion of power, but in the last decade, national security deference has strengthened. Professor Sinnar provided examples of this trend through four SCOTUS cases. The first was the 2013 Clapper v. Amnesty case, the court denied standing to a journalist who was the target of U.S. government surveillance. This has created an lack of oversight by the courts to monitor the activities of the NSA, FBI, and other security bodies.

Next, in the 2018 Trump v. Hawaii case, the court focused on the facial words of the law rather than the obviously bias language of the President. The glaring issue provoked references to the infamous Korematsu case in Sotomayor’s dissent. The third case was this year’s U.S v. Husayn, which dealt with torture by the U.S. government in Poland. The fact that it happened in Poland was not at issue, as the Polish government had verified the fact and it had been reported in various media outlets, however the court still ruled that allowing formal testimony of that fact would go against national security and state secrets. The final case was Egbert v Boule (2022), which confirmed broad deference to the Border Patrol, even for actions on private land.

To sum up, Professor Sinnar explained that there are a few reasons why government discretion should be kept in check. First, the effects of national securing deference falls hardest on minority communities that are most likely to be seen as security threats. Race has always been an issue for the people the nation should be protecting. And secondly, court application can be both expansive and selective at the same time. Expansive in the broad immunity law enforcement enjoys, but selective when it comes to particular topics such as targeting national security issues while limiting other policies such as those addressing climate change.

The Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Special Interest Section (FCIL-SIS) of AALL needs your leadership and vision! 

The Nominations Committee hereby welcomes submissions for Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect and Secretary/Treasurer of the SIS for 2023. 

• The position of Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect requires a three-year commitment, as Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect, Chair, and Immediate Past Chair, and will be expected to attend the AALL annual meeting the first two years.  
• The position of Secretary/Treasurer requires a two-year commitment, and the holder of this office is expected to attend the AALL Annual Meeting both years. More information is available in the FCIL-SIS Bylaws.

Please consider nominating yourself or one of our outstanding colleagues for these important positions. (If nominating someone other than yourself, please communicate first with that person to ensure their interest in serving.)

Nominations will be accepted through December 16th, 2022. Results will be announced in the Spring newsletter.

Please submit your nominations and any questions to:

Laura Cadra, Chair, FCIL-SIS Nominating Committee
Adam Mackie, Member, FCIL-SIS Nominating Committee
Traci Emerson Spackey, Member, FCIL-SIS Nominating Committee

We look forward to hearing from you!

By Michael McArthur

The final day of the 2022 IALL Annual Course opened with an eye-opening review of U.S. immigration law and policy, presented by the founding director of Stanford’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, Jayashri Srikantiah. The presentation was titled, “Immigration Litigation and Advocacy in the Post-Trump Years,” but reflected a more open-ended outline of U.S. immigration law generally up until 2016, and then the impact of the Trump Administration and attempted reversals by the Biden Administration, through the lens of a few case studies.

Beginning with a general introduction, Professor Srikantiah used the analogy of a dinner table to describe questions related to immigration. Who do we want to invite to the dinner party? How long will they stay? What are their obligations, if any? And when do you expect them to leave? This visual was followed by a description of the broad categories that those seeking to enter the country fall within and how the federal law governs the process and enforcement. She noted that Congress normally would guide the executive in this process, but as they have been inactive in this area since the 1990s, recent administrations have played an outsized role in the process, and states have also weighed in significantly through the use of litigation.

Professor Srikantiah broke down the Trump Administration’s actions into three general categories: 1) interior enforcement of those already within the country, 2) humanitarian enforcement against asylum seekers, and 3) regulating access through travel bans. One of the major actions was to rescind all prosecutorial guidelines so every violation of federal law would be treated equally, granting broad power and discretion to local officers. Metering and turn-backs, “remain in Mexico,” and Title 42 were some other administrative policies that were discussed.

In response, the Biden administration promised to undo all of the prior administration’s actions. In practice, however, this has been significantly hampered through state litigation, getting back to the title of the lecture. The Attorneys General of Texas, along with other states, have used favorable courts to put nationwide injunctions in place to prevent these decisions. Professor Srikantiah used a few deep dive examples to illustrate further. For the prosecutorial discretion policies, which are pending before the U.S. Supreme Court this term, she walked through the history of the practice. The government had guidelines discouraging actions against parents of minors that are U.S. citizens, for example. Biden’s attempts to reinstate the guidance has been subject to extensive delay, essentially wins for the Texas and Louisiana plaintiffs. Another dive drew on the “remain in Mexico” policy, where asylum seekers are required to make their complicated petitions in a very limited timeframe, often virtually. She provided the startling figures that in 2020, a little over 500 claims were approved out of more than 42,000 applications. This time Texas sued the government saying that there needs to be a formal process for retracting these policies. These delaying tactics are likely to continue working until Congress takes up their lawmaking role again and clarifying the process formally.

During the short question-and-answer period, the audience posed international questions about how a current Canadian Supreme Court case could impact the situation or if there was a mobilization on the Mexican side. One question pondered if there was also a silver lining in the rapid fire mobilization of lawyers from around the country that stepped up at the beginning of the Trump era. In response, Professor Srikantiah expressed encouragement by the increase in communication between big cities and providing more representation for those in deportation hearings, but less hopeful that Congress could work together to get legislation passed, especially considering the recent inability to reach any type of resolution on DACA and other related immigration policy.

By David Isom

Dan Edelstein, Professor of French at Stanford University, gave a presentation titled “Copy-Paste: Comparative Constitutionalism as Intellectual History” on October 12, 2022—the final day of IALL’s 2022 Annual Course at Stanford. As the title of the session suggests, he discussed the spread of ideas demonstrated by constitutions which paraphrased or directly copied language from other constitutions and declarations of rights, with a focus on the 19^th century. Told from the perspective of an academic who works in French language, history, political science, and digital humanities—but not law—Edelstein offered a refreshing perspective on comparative constitutionalism.

At the outset of his presentation, Edelstein stated that it is precisely the multiplicity of sometimes-ephemeral constitutions (e.g. the French Constitution of 1793, which was ratified on August 10 but suspended on October 10^th) that makes them interesting to him. He also noted the challenges to this approach to studying constitutions. First, digital versions of historic constitutions are not always readily available. The open-access Constitute Project, for example, includes only France’s current constitution, and only in Arabic, English, and Spanish—not the original French. By comparison, World Constitutions Illustrated includes a rich set of French constitutions and related documents in both the original language and in translation, beginning with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), but is only available by subscription. To be sure, the original texts of many constitutions are available somewhere online, but access can be surprisingly challenging. The second issue is that searching and comparing the texts of a multilingual corpora like historic constitutions from around the world is not easy—neither Constitute nor World Constitutions Illustrated, for instance, allows multilingual searches, and Constitute’s “Compare” view does nothing more than allow the texts of multiple constitutions to be viewed side-by-side (World Constitutions Illustrated lacks even this capability).

Edelstein provided numerous examples of the “copy-paste” phenomenon: the Bolivian Constitution of 1826 mimicked language from the Norwegian Constitution of 1816 regarding the kinds of rights that were deemed worthy of inclusion; the Venezuelan Constitution of 1811 closely followed numerous sections of the 1789 Declaration, as did the Argentine Constitution of 1819; the Constitution of Cádiz of 1812, though written in defiance of French occupation, nonetheless borrows language from the 1789 Declaration; and the Portuguese Constitution of 1822 begins with a declaration of rights that closely follows the 1789 Declaration.

Edelstein believes that historians should be excited by this phenomenon because constitutions show how widely these rights were accepted at particular times, thus giving evidence of their universality—but he also noted that constitutions often go beyond the mere “copy-paste” approach to create new rights. Constitutions themselves do not, of course, tell the whole story about rights—as Edelstein pointed out, the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. of 1936 afforded many more rights than other constitutions, but did not prevail in establishing them as legal practices.

During the Q&A that followed the presentation, a commenter remarked that while the presentation had focused on “copy-paste” in Europe, the French influence also extended to the Japanese Meiji Constitution (1889). Edelstein agreed that the phenomenon is by no means limited to Europe, adding as an example that the Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence can be seen as “trolling” France (“Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow-citizens.” (para. 4, Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, September 2, 1945).

By Meredith Capps

On Wednesday, October 12^th, Paul Goldstein, the Stella W. and Ira S. Lillick Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and of counsel at Morrison & Foerster LLP, spoke at the International Association of Law Libraries Annual Course about legal approaches in the U.S. and abroad to copyright law governing “orphan works” (copyrightable works for which a rights-holder cannot be identified).  He began his talk by describing an instance in which he advised a non-profit entity hoping to digitize photographs taken of antiquities and make those photographs available online, when a diligent search to establish the origin of the works would be expensive, and potentially fruitless.  Though he advised the organization to take an intermediate approach, conducting a reasonable search but relying on the fair use doctrine to provide legal protection should an unknown rights holder raise a claim, the group ultimately decided not to pursue the project due to concern regarding legal risk.  Goldstein called the volume of orphan works “indescribable,” with potentially hundreds of millions of such works in circulation; one estimate suggests that as many as 90% of works in British museums have no identifiable rights holder.

Goldstein then described five legal approaches to usage of orphan works, several of which ask users of a work to conduct some type of search and pay a form of compensation, either directly to a later-found owner or to a rights management entity (“search and pay” systems).

1. The approach provided in European Union Directive 2012/28/EU, which requires users who are non-profit institutions to conduct a diligent search for the work’s rights holder, to document that search, and to compensate the owner should they come forward.
2. The approach taken in Canada and the United Kingdom, wherein interested users of a work must seek permission from a central authority to use the work, who if it approves the request will assess a fee intended to compensate rights holders should they come forward within a designated time period.
3. A draft U.S. proposal considered that would limit remedies available to those later asserting rights in orphan works to “reasonable compensation” if the user conducted a diligent search, and exempting non-profit institutions from that compensation requirement (see discussion in the Copyright Office’s Report on Orphan Works). 
4. Extended collective licensing systems, utilized by some Nordic countries and Germany, wherein a local reproduction rights organizations (RROs) grants licenses to utilize non-licensed works.
5. Approaches that do not require search or payment, and instead rely on protection from doctrines such as fair use.

Goldstein typically advises, as illustrated in his initial anecdote, that users in the U.S. conduct a diligent search for potential owners of orphan works, because although a diligent search is not an element of fair use analysis, that analysis does consider whether users are acting in good faith, and a diligent search can establish good faith.  However, Goldstein acknowledged uncertainty surrounding application of the fair use doctrine, particularly the element concerning the transformative nature of a work, and he believes that the U.S. Supreme Court might soon limit this element and thus certain fair use defenses.  His preferred policy approach is the extended collective licensing model, in part because such a system provides a database of works, with his second preferred policy being the U.S. proposal which would limit compensation requirements for those who conducted a diligent search.  Goldstein then discussed another mechanism that might provide users some protection, and that is already utilized to some degree in the entertainment industry – error and omissions insurance.  “I don’t like arguments; I like systems that work,” he stated in concluding his discussion of his preferred approaches to the problem of orphan works.

By Devan Orr

As discussed in the last blog, for my second year of law librarianship, I’ve been focusing on professional development. In legal practice, professional development is easy to incorporate. CLEs are required by basically every state bar, and serving your clients requires constant education on the new laws in your area. However, in other professions, while there are many professional development opportunities, it can sometimes be difficult to find the motivation and time to attend them when they are not mandatory. One professional goal I set for myself this year was to get more involved in some of the extracurricular aspects of law librarianship. I want to push myself to do more outside of the research and teaching expected of us, and really get to know the library and our patrons in a different way. With that in mind, I jumped at the opportunity to join my library’s Social Media Committee.

Part of why I love this profession is the interaction reference and public services librarians have with patrons. I get to sit at our desk and chat with students every day. I talk to them about their notes and papers, guide them through resources for summer internships, and teach fundamental and advanced research skills that students would otherwise have to learn on the fly in their jobs. But I want to be doing more to connect with patrons in active and passive ways. I see social media as a tool that can harness passive engagement and education through awareness and cool graphics.

My library has been active on Facebook and Twitter for years, but there wasn’t a uniform policy on how and when to use it, and who to target when we do. At my first meeting, I was immediately welcomed onto the team, and we began to collaborate and brainstorm ideas that may guide users to our library. This past year we expanded to Instagram to reach more of our students and take advantage of the graphic nature of our job. We focused on the different audiences for each platform: the public on Facebook, the students on Instagram, and the professors on Twitter. We talked about what information is and is not useful to put out there, and what may get us more people coming through the building. Also, I saw this as an opportunity to highlight the FCIL-specific resources we have and open the patrons’ eyes to the breadth of law available.

Will it increase engagement? Will we get more users to buy in and check-out materials? Can we raise more awareness about what we do and how we educate others? Only time will tell. For now, our Instagram has allowed us to interact with other libraries and databases who have a social media presence across the country. We can cheer on colleagues from afar, and cross-post resources when applicable. Our Facebook has reached more community members and former faculty and staff who still follow what we do. And our Twitter has pushed stories from current faculty and staff and added to the academic discourse happening around book preservation and legal history. For me, it hit a couple of my big goals for the year. First, an opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in a new and creative way. Second, the time and space to learn and develop leadership skills and a greater understanding of the work our library does. Third, the inside track to pushing more international and foreign law content and resources out to the masses – my subset of librarianship is cool, so I want to show other people just how cool it is!

If you’re worried about tackling something new, don’t be! And if you don’t have your library on social media yet, I highly recommend it. At the very least, it gives you an opportunity show off all those cool covers to the new treatises you get in every month. And if you’re curious, go ahead and follow us @wolflawlib on Instagram, The Wolf Law Library on Facebook, and @wolflawlibrary on Twitter. You can also follow the blog on Twitter @DipLawMat. Thanks for following along, and I can’t wait to share what I tackle next in my Year of Professional Development.

By Marcelo Rodríguez

During this academic semester, I have told my students several times, whatever situations, phenomena or topics you choose for your research and countries/jurisdictions or institutions for your comparative legal research, please always keep in mind that they are not frozen in time. Perhaps for the purpose of your research, you might have chosen a particular period of time as a very specific boundary for your research project. However, I’d argue that current developments within a jurisdiction may have some major impact in delineated historical or previous events in terms of our understanding and analysis of those same events and phenomena. This does not mean we shouldn’t strive for specific time frames in research. It just means that a good grasp of current events related to the research topic, institutions and jurisdictions of your choice is crucial no matter the time frame you have selected for your research.

In this post, I will feature five current situations in several flashpoints around the world over the month of August 2022. As in previous posts, these summaries aim to be descriptive, introductory, and to provide a stepping stone for further research. Each summary also includes at least three important secondary sources. The jurisdictions I have chosen for this post are Guatemala, Western Sahara, Kenya, Taiwan and Marshall Islands.

• Corruption and Impunity in Guatemala Post-CICIG

• Once Again Western Sahara and Morocco Meet the International Community

• Despite Close Results, Kenya Has a New President

• Taiwan’s Woes After Pelosi’s Two-Day Visit

• The Marshall Islands Are No Longer COVID-free

By Lucie Olejnikova

GlobaLex July/August 2022 issue is live featuring two new articles titled Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights: Four Realms of Discussion, Research, and Annotated Bibliography and Taxation of Real Estate Transactions: A Comparative Study of Selected Mediterranean Jurisdictions; and six updates: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iran Legal Research, South Pacific Law, International Human Rights Framework on Capital Punishment, Religious Legal Systems in Comparative Law, and A Research Guide to Cases and Materials on Terrorism. Webmasters and content managers, please update your pages. We thank all our wonderful authors, new and established, for their excellent contributions and commitment to open access authorship!

Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights: Four Realms of Discussion, Research, and Annotated Bibliography by Jootaek Lee at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Artificial_Intelligence_Human_Rights.html.

Jootaek Lee is an assistant professor and librarian at Rutgers Law School (Newark). Professor Lee is also an adjunct professor and an affiliated faculty for the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE) at the Northeastern University School of Law and a Massachusetts attorney. Professor Lee, a prolific scholar and author, has been published in prestigious journals, including Georgetown Environmental Law Review, Northwestern Journal of Human Rights, Emory International Law Review, Law Library Journal, International Journal of Legal Information, Legal Reference Services Quarterly, Korea University Law Review, and Globalex by New York University Law School. His research focuses on human rights to land, water, and education; Asian practice of international law, especially human rights and international criminal law; legal informatics; Korean law and legal education; and pedagogy in law. He made numerous presentations at national and international conferences. He is active with the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the American Society of International Law (ASIL), having served on AALL’s Diversity Committee, CONELL Committee, and Awards Committee. He is the former Co-Chair of International Legal Research Interest Group of the ASIL (2012-2015) and the former president of Asian American Law Librarians Caucus of AALL (2013-2014).

Taxation of Real Estate Transactions: A Comparative Study of Selected Mediterranean Jurisdictions by Marin Ljubić at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Comparative_Taxation_Real_Estate_Transactions.html.

Marin Ljubić is Candidate of Postgraduate Doctoral Study of the Fiscal System and the Fiscal Policy, the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, in Croatia. He holds a master’s degree in Business Economics, Department of Finance from the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb. His areas of interest include residence and citizenship related questions, immigration law, and real estate law. He focuses on monitoring the property taxation environment in the Mediterranean region and aims to settle title to ownership disputes in this region, through the “Mediterra Squares” project, run by LJUBIC Law Firm and several partners. He is also a founder of non-profit community titled “Wells of Hope,” a project committed to drilling water wells in third-world countries.

UPDATE: Legal Research in Bosnia and Herzegovina by Mirela Rožajac-Zulčić at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Bosnia_Herzegovina.html.

Mirela Rožajac-Zulčić graduated in comparative literature and library science from the University of Sarajevo, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Comparative Literature and Library Science in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina). She obtained MA degree on Gender Studies at the Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies at the University of Sarajevo in 2008. She is head of the Library of the University of Sarajevo – Law Faculty in Sarajevo. She edited and co-edited five bibliographies. Since 2009 she is a member of the Southeast European Association of Law and Related Libraries and since 2021 she is a member of the Committee for library and information system of the University of Sarajevo. In 2006, the International Association of Law Libraries awarded her a professional development bursary to attend the 25th Annual Course in International Law Librarianship, which was held in St. Petersburg.

UPDATE: An Overview of the Iranian Legal System by Mohammad Soltani and Nafise Shooshinasab at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Iran_Legal_System_Research1.html.

Mohammad Soltani is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Law and Economic Law, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.

Nafise Shooshinasab is a Ph.D. student at the Common Law Section of the University of Ottawa and holds a Ph.D. in Private & Islamic Law at the University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

UPDATE: Introduction to Researching South Pacific Law by Peter Murgatroyd at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/South_Pacific_Law1.html.

Peter Murgatroyd is the Library and Knowledge Services Manager at Counties Manukau Heath in Auckland, New Zealand. Formerly, he was the Law Librarian of the University of the South Pacific and Campus Librarian of the Emalus Campus of the University, located in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Peter also managed the Information Resource Centre Manager at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme [SPREP] and was the Coordinator of the Pacific Environment Information Network [PEIN]. Prior to working at the University of the South Pacific, Peter was a library manager at two leading corporate law firms in New Zealand. Peter has presented on Pacific legal research issues at Conferences in Australia, New Zealand, Vanuatu, and Great Britain. Peter Murgatroyd was a member of the working group that established the online Pacific Legal Information Institute [PacLII]. He has had articles on Pacific legal resources published in the ‘Australian Law Librarian,’ ‘Legal Information Management,’ and ‘The Journal of Academic Librarianship.’

UPDATE: A Review of the Progressive Development of International Human Rights Framework on Capital Punishment by Dr. Paul O. Ogendi at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Human_Rights_Capital_Punishment1.html.

Dr. Paul O. Ogendi is a Lecturer at the University of Nairobi, School of Law; an advocate of the High Court of Kenya; and an Honorary Research Fellow at University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa. He has assisted the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights Working Group on Death Penalty and Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Killings and Enforced Disappearances in Africa in the past.

UPDATE: Religious Legal Systems in Comparative Law – A Guide to Introductory Research by Marylin Johnson Raisch at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Religious_Legal_Systems1.html.

Marylin Johnson Raisch served as the Associate Director for Research and Collection Development at the Georgetown Law Center until her 2021 retirement, and previously as the head of the library’s international and foreign law department. She received her J.D. from Tulane University School of Law. She holds degrees in English literature from Smith College and St. Hugh’s College, Oxford. She received her M.L.S. degree from Columbia University School of Library Service. Marylin is the author, co-author, or editor of several articles, reviews, and web guides on international and foreign legal research, including the current ASIL European Union Research Guide; the annual book and web surveys for the Journal of International Economic Law; Code and Hypertext: The Intertextuality of International and Comparative Law, 35 Syracuse J. Int’l L. & Com. 309 (2008), and chapters on UK Legal Research and UK implementation of EU law (in Legal Research Handbook [D.T. MacEllven], Neil A. Campbell and John N. Davis, eds., 6th ed., LexisNexis Canada, 2013). Marylin has served as moderator or panelist in several continuing education programs at the annual meetings of the American Association of Law Libraries and is a past Chair of its Foreign, International, and Comparative Law Special Interest Section, and is currently a co-chair of the International Legal Research Interest Group of the American Society of International Law.

UPDATE: A Research Guide to Cases and Materials on Terrorism by Andrew Grossman at https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Terrorism1.html.

Andrew Grossman is a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer who served in Seoul, Abidjan, London, Tehran, Algiers, and Geneva. He holds the degrees of B.A. in Economics (Clark), LL.B. (Columbia), M.A. in L.I.S. (University College London) and of Licencié en droit européen et international, Maître & Docteur en droit (Louvain-la-Neuve) and is a member of the New York Bar. He lives in London, where he writes on private international law issues, especially in the fields of nationality and tax. Among his publications are Conflict of Laws in the Discharge of Debts in Bankruptcy, 5 Int’l Insolvency Rev. 1 996), Nationality and the Unrecognised State, 50 Int’l & Comp. L.Q. 849 (2001), Birthright citizenship as nationality of convenience, Proceedings, Council of Europe, Third Conference on Nationality, Strasbourg, Oct. 11-12, 2004; “Islamic land”: Group Rights, National Identity and Law, 3 UCLA J. Islamic & Near E.L. 53 (2004). His previous work in this series includes Finding the Law: the Micro-States and Small Jurisdictions of Europe and FATCA: Citizenship-Based Taxation, Foreign Asset Reporting Requirements and American Citizens Abroad.

For more articles, visit https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/index.htm

By Renu Urvashi Sagreiya

Once again this year, interested members of FCIL-SIS will meet to discuss a selected book!  The FCIL-SIS Annual Book Club was started by Dan Wade in 2014, and it is our wish to honor Dan’s memory by continuing to hold the book discussion at the annual conference each year.

This year’s book club will meet over Zoom on Friday, August 26, at 2pm Eastern Time; email Renu Sagreiya (rus7@scarletmail.rutgers.edu) to receive the meeting link!  The book this year is  American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War, by Duncan Ryuken Williams:

This groundbreaking history tells the little-known story of how, in one of our country’s darkest hours, Japanese Americans fought to defend their faith and preserve religious freedom.

The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is not only a tale of injustice; it is a moving story of faith. In this pathbreaking account, Duncan Ryūken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation’s history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American.

Nearly all Americans of Japanese descent were subject to bigotry and accusations of disloyalty, but Buddhists aroused particular suspicion. Government officials, from the White House to small-town mayors, believed that Buddhism was incompatible with American values. Intelligence agencies targeted the Buddhist community for surveillance, and Buddhist priests were deemed a threat to national security. On December 7, 1941, as the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, Attorney General Francis Biddle issued a warrant to “take into custody all Japanese” classified as potential national security threats. The first person detained was Bishop Gikyō Kuchiba, leader of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist sect in Hawai’i.

In the face of discrimination, dislocation, dispossession, and confinement, Japanese Americans turned to their faith to sustain them, whether they were behind barbed wire in camps or serving in one of the most decorated combat units in the European theater. Using newly translated sources and extensive interviews with survivors of the camps and veterans of the war, American Sutra reveals how the Japanese American community broadened our country’s conception of religious freedom and forged a new American Buddhism.

For more information about the book and its author, Prof. Duncan Ryuken Williams, check out this article and podcast episode from Tricycle magazine:
Thus Have I Heard: An American Sutra

Duncan Ryuken Williams: When Buddhists Were a “Security Threat”

By Devan Orr

Hi! I’m Devan Orr, this year’s New FCIL Librarian blogger. I’m excited to embark on this journey of librarianship with all of you reading and following along. Together we can get through any challenges the year may bring, which after 2020 I had thought would be less numerous… but somehow it is still unprecedented times in the world, and an understanding of international (and foreign and comparative) law and legal research is more important than ever. (But I don’t need to tell all of you that!)

You can check out this post for details, but as a recap I am the new-ish FCIL Librarian at William & Mary Law School. I have been in law librarianship since 2019, but this is my first full-time position. Having been in Williamsburg for a year, I’ve learned about adapting to a new place, new student body, and new position even beyond what I had initially prepared for. I’ve learned about teaching via Zoom, behind a mask, in and out of a classroom, and the challenge of remote services. And to echo past new member bloggers, I’ve also had to learn not only law librarianship, but FCIL librarianship with its own litany of resources and particulars. But it has been a year, and I’m feeling somewhat comfortable with at least part of the day-to-day, so what now?

Now is what I have dubbed the Year of Professional Development. I’m in a career I love, one I really want to grow in and evolve. I want to climb the mountain of law librarianship and learn more every day to assist my patrons and colleagues. This year I want to learn the ins and outs of FCIL librarianship including collection development, programming, teaching, and of course subject-specific resources. To aid my quest, I’m focusing on networking, making connections, participating in webinars and panels, and taking advantage of the incredible network AALL has to offer. And I was lucky to start with the most notable conference of them all – the AALL Annual Meeting.

I had heard a lot about the annual meeting before ever getting to step foot in one myself. Stories of giant exhibit halls stacked with vendors and swag. Tales of party hopping and letting loose for one week a year as you rub elbows with who’s who in the world of law librarianship. And most importantly, getting together with colleagues near and fall that you only see once a year. My only previous AALL experience was virtual. At the time my daughter was six months old, so I was attending talks during naps and with a heavy dose of sleep deprivation. In other words, let’s just say that first one didn’t count.

The Annual Meeting was everything I had imagined and more. The first thing that immediately struck me was the scale. I knew it would be big, but nothing quite prepared me for the fact that we were a profession large enough to make a dent in a convention center and take up what seemed like a whole hotel. The programming was tailored to the multi-faceted work we do as law librarians, and there was so much of it to choose from. Every panel was informative and helpful, and there were even several aimed at FCIL librarians and the work we do. You can check out recaps on the panels here and here, as well as some recordings on AALL’s website. There was so much to choose from, and I made some tough decisions when putting together my programming. However, this scale of things left me feeling intimidated. I started the week wondering if I would get along with people I hardly knew, and how accepted I would feel in this group of very smart and talented professionals.

Luckily, I also learned at the Annual Meeting just how kind and inclusive our profession is. Every day had opportunities for mixers, small group discussions, and events with vendors and colleagues. Panels and roundtables were a little intimidating to attend, as I felt I had more questions than answers. But not once did anyone ignore my input because I was new. Everyone is kind and caring and really worked hard to make me feel welcome. This is especially true for the FCIL-SIS. Our annual business meeting included member recognition and awards, and it was nice to see everyone applaud and recognize hard work. Marcelo also had new members who were present introduce themselves and take a picture. We then mingled at the reception and enjoyed the delicious spread while getting to know each other. And not once did I feel like an outsider; instead, I was welcomed into the fold and left with some new contacts and a sense of confidence.

To my new friends from Denver, my current and former colleagues who I got to see, and those of you following along here, I just want to thank you for sharing your time and wisdom with everyone. We are a tight-knight profession, and I can’t wait to take this year and dive into even more professional development and learning opportunities with all of you. I’m looking forward to implementing some of the things I learned at the Annual Meeting and working on this librarian thing. Stay tuned for updates on what the year of professional development brings! 

By Anahit Petrosyan

Working with LA Law library’s renowned FCIL collection, as a non-FCIL librarian, has encouraged me to develop my global law research skills, to complement my enduring interest of learning how diverse cultures operate and interact to resolve disputes. AALL 2022 Meeting’s FCIL-SIS panel on How to Research Brazilian Law and Government Information caught my attention, as I had not previously explored the Brazilian legal system. This program considerably broadened my awareness of valuable resources available to understand Brazil’s legal order and to locate Brazilian law.

Going in, though, I wondered why FCIL-SIS selected to spotlight Brazilian law at this year’s Meeting. True, Brazil is the 5^th largest economy, and in spite of its ongoing economic challenges, plays a key role in the international legal system. Still, apparently, this October is the bicentennial of Brazil’s independence from its former colonist Portugal. Official celebrations will be held in September, which is also when Brazil’s Citizens Constitution will be up for a referendum vote. In addition, Brazil’s presidential and legislative elections are set to be held in October 2022. No wonder 2022 is a momentous year to survey Brazilian law.

Remarkably, this one-hour AALL FCIL-SIS event skillfully packed a range and depth of knowledge that can take numerous hours to assimilate. Thanks and congratulations to the entire panel of speakers and their coordinators for seamlessly facilitating this extraordinary feat!

The array of information I gleaned from this FCIL-SIS program will enable me to research Brazilian law online and navigate, more effectively, the extensive print global law collection at LA Law library. Of the comprehensive resources on Brazilian law presented in this session, the following are most useful for researching the kind of FCIL queries LA Law Library receives: free resources such as Library of Congress’ Guide to Law Online: Brazil, GlobalLex: Brazil, Brazil on ICLG.com, NATLex: Brazil, FAOLex: Brazil, WIPOLex: Brazil, and Canada’s National Document Package on Brazil, besides the fee-based Foreign Law Guide (Brill). All of these digital collections provide insight and references vital for successfully locating primary and secondary sources on various legal topics, for Brazil or other countries. For example, ICLG.com features comparative legal guides written by attorneys, for various jurisdictions, on a range of business and commercial law subjects, with references to the relevant primary law, which further can be found in full-text in other online or print sources.

Though, it was the last segment of this FCIL-SIS panel that I found most illuminating, as it unveiled Brazilian government websites, multi-source legal research platforms, and Brazilian law library digital collections which facilitate free access to full-text copies of Brazilian primary and/or secondary law sources. To access current Brazilian legislation online, I will now know to consult Planalto Legislation Portal and Brazilian Federal Legislation (Legislação Federal Brasileira) government websites, besides the Official Gazette of the Union (Diário Oficial da União – DOU). The former two websites are coherently organized, and provide user-friendly access to legislation.  For legislative history research, going back to the early 19^th century, the materials on National Congress (Congresso Nacional), Federal Senate (Senado Federal), and Chamber of Deputies (Câmara dos Deputados), utilized along with historical Brazilian law print sources, can yield better research results faster. Of the Judicial branch websites, the National Justice Council offers an innovative way to search dockets of the latest cases in various state and federal courts. Plus, extraordinarily, LexML Brasil, a Brazilian government multi-source legal research platform, enables access to primary law of different government branches all on one site. Lastly, of the Brazilian law library digital collections referenced in the program, the following three retain an enriching range of recent and archival materials on federal judicial and legislative branch Brazilian law:  Federal Supreme Court (STF) – Biblioteca Digital do STF, Federal Senate Library – Biblioteca Digital do Senado Federal, and Chamber of Deputies Library – Biblioteca Digital da Câmara dos Deputados.

Collectively, the impressive expertise the speakers shared at this year’s Brazilian law panel will save me much time and energy in determining how to conduct Brazilian legal research, and that of other, at least, Latin American countries, too. I look forward to attending more in-person and virtual AALL FCIL-SIS programs to expand my global law research skills

By Meredith Capps

On Monday, July 18^th during the AALL annual meeting, the FCIL-SIS held its first in-person roundtable discussion in several years (hip hip hooray!) to discuss teaching FCIL research.  Meredith Capps of Vanderbilt University Law School introduced the featured speaker, Janet Kearney of Fordham University Law School.  Janet spoke about her efforts to enhance her own FCIL resource course, which she described in brief in the February 2022 FCIL-SIS newsletter article, Work-in-Progress: A Research Framework in FCIL Teaching?, for which she received the SIS’s Newsletter Article of the Year award. 

Janet described the first iteration of her 2-credit course as “disparate.”  In considering how to better organize the course, she considered the four-step research process upon which she relies in her first-year legal research course: 1) research planning, 2) secondary sources, 3) statutes and regulations, and 4) cases.  To adapt this framework for FCIL research instruction, Janet opted to reframe steps 3 and 4 and collapse them into a single category of primary sources.   Approaching each week’s content with this framework, Janet encouraged students to first plan their research, then identify secondary sources that might answer their question, and then locate relevant primary authorities.  Janet asked students to consider which sources of law might govern their problem, which would be binding, and in what way they would be binding (or persuasive).  Her students responded positively to the new framework, and as of this writing Janet is drafting a longer article discussing her experience in designing the course – stay tuned!

Breather breather, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

            As is typical in a roundtable format, after discussing the initial topic of utilizing process frameworks in instruction, participants explored a number of other topics, questions, and concerns informally for the balance of the time, including:

• The needs of JD v. LLM students, and whether and when to teach separate JD and LLM research courses,
• How to better incorporate private international law problems into our courses, including utilizing trade and family law hypotheticals,
• How many sources to cover in a typical class, and how best to organize those sources for student reference,
• Encouraging students to first consider the subject before the jurisdiction,
• To what extent we utilize niche databases in our courses that students may not have access to in practice,
• Challenges associated with students’ variable knowledge of international law upon enrolling in an FCIL research course,
• Addressing student confusion in distinguishing between primary and secondary authorities…

…and more – it was a busy hour!

By Devan Orr

This presentation focused on a review of international climate change mechanisms, the role the United States has played (or not played) in their passage and implementation, and the overall politicization of climate change and environmental science. It was an American view of the proceedings, but still a very in-depth look at the international issues and treaties surrounding the bigger issue.

The first speaker, Marilyn Averill, gave an overview of the treaties and legal discourse surrounding the treaties, and focused most on the international aspects of climate change and environmental science. Averill has attended several COPs, and her portion of the panel was interspersed with personal anecdotes. She explained the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which established an international environmental treaty to combat climate change. She then discussed the Kyoto Protocol, created during COP3 in Kyoto in 1997, followed by the Paris Agreement from 2015. A discussion of the difference between COP (parties to the UNFCCC), CMP (parties to the Kyoto Protocol) and CMA (parties to the Paris Agreement) followed, and a note that the US is only party to the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, but not the Kyoto Protocol. This means that when the meetings are taking place, the US cannot vote on or discuss the Kyoto Protocol issues, and even requires a special nameplate to differentiate themselves (a fascinating tidbit from her personal experience!).

Both panelists discussed equity in climate change. Averill stated equity provision of the UNFCCC makes it as much about social justice and human rights as it is about science and economics, and numerous types of fairness, ethics, and justice are routinely addressed. She divided equity into four areas: international equity, intranational equity and responsibility within borders in relation to international discussions, intergenerational ethics and the critical decisions of the extent those alive today are beholden to the future, and interspecies equity or how responsible humanity is to preserving nature and the environment for other species without autonomy. The interaction between these areas combined with commitments and capabilities of each individual nation is what makes these decisions so complex. Equity in the Paris Agreement is, according to Averill, why the US signed on, because commitments were based on national circumstances. The individual nation makes their own decisions about contributions to mitigation and adaptation to climate change, and developed countries should support developing countries. Like other international agreements it lacks enforcement mechanisms or guidelines on how to achieve those goals.  

The second panelist, Alice Madden, focused on a discussion of domestic issues and politicization of climate change that led to current issues with United States climate change policy. Most telling was the definitive shift from early bipartisanship in the 1970s and 1980s to partisan politics in the mid-2000s. Madden highlighted how conservative think tanks cast doubt and skepticism on climate science, keep actors in political office, direct corporate funding, and insist that a debate exists regarding climate science with two sides. She then moved into defining equitable climate action as the developed world’s obligation to the least responsible countries assistance in building clean energy, dealing with climate change effects, and the mitigation of change that has already occurred. Her principles of equitable climate action include balanced power structures and responsibilities to communicate to developing countries; assisting the acquisition of electric vehicles, clean and efficient energy to those countries; and assuring equal access to new clean energy and technology.

Questions largely focused on the global south versus the global north, which both panelists felt was another indicator of developed versus developing as far as how to think about their role in climate change regimes. There was also some discussion of what may be happening globally under the Paris Agreement. This was largely speculative but continued to highlight portions of the presentation – namely that partisanship of climate science will continue in this political climate. The panel highlighted the intersection of law, politics, and environmental science well. As someone without a lot of background knowledge on the COP meetings or climate change agreements in general, this was a great introductory lesson.

By Marcelo Rodríguez

This monthly column aims to provide a brief summary as well as relevant secondary sources about a recent important event taking place in a foreign country. This series seeks to help those tracking and analyzing rapidly changing and scattered pieces of a geopolitical puzzle developing at times exclusively in languages other than English and with immense challenges such as misinformation, pace of published information, lack of links to larger trends and much more. As I have said before, the events I have chosen to feature in these series are representatives of different geographical regions as well as exhibiting what I’d consider, a great potential to become international headlines soon or have already recently. Given the Western European and Commonwealth focus of most “international” news here in the United States, I do give an intentional preference to news and events taking place in the Global South. 

In this post, I will briefly highlight and provide a few noteworthy sources on situations currently taking place in the following countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Chile, Libya, Uzbekistan and Japan.

• Criminalizing Same-Sex Intimacy is Unconstitutional in Antigua and Barbuda

• A New Constitution for Chile?

• Protests Erupt in Libya Amidst Political Deadlock and Inflation

• Karakalpak and Uzbekistan: An Uneasy Relationship from the Beginning

• Who Assassinated Japan’s Shinzo Abe?