Siemslegal

What’s wrong with the QS world ranking of law schools (part 1: the perception data)

2012-02-11T15:04:00.001Z

The QS World University Rankings havebeen around for a couple of years but in 2011 it was the first time that QSprovided a separate ranking for law, available here.

The top 10 – (1) Harvard, (2) Oxford,(3) Cambridge, (4) Yale, (5) Stanford, (6) Berkeley, (7) LSE, (8) Columbia,(9) Melbourne,(10) NYU – may sound plausible, at least for the English-speaking word, butthere are a number of problems with this global law school ranking. The rankingis based on both perception and performance data. In thispost I deal with the first type of data, a criticism of the second one willfollow in the next post. For the perception data QS asked bothacademics and employers to nominate up to thirty universities.

A first problemis, however, that the nominators have been fairly unevenly distributed aroundthe world. For example, with respects to the academics (see here) there have beenfive times as many academic responses from the US as from Indiaand ten times as many from the USas from China.And with respect to the employer data (see here), there have been three times as many responses from China as from India,and as many from Germany as from Hong Kong.

Second, it is already very doubtfulhow much academics or employers in general know about all universities of theworld in order to make an even remotely reliable comparison. With respect tolaw, this problem is even more pronounced due to the national character oflegal research and legal practice. For example, even in Europe most lawyersfrom one country, say England,would have no clue how good legal education is a particular French or German,or even Slovenian or Latvian, university.

Third, asking academics and employerscan be interesting because it shows which stereotypes people have about thequality of certain universities: for instance, one can expect that old andlarge universities with well-sounding names affiliated with well-known citiesbenefit. But quality is something quite different. Thus, the first part of theQS study should really be called “University Perception Index” (eg like theCorruption Perception Index, here).To measure quality, we need performance data, as will be discussed inthe post next week.

What interested me in January

2012-02-05T19:54:00.002Z

Predicting the REF 2014 results for law!

2012-01-29T17:44:00.001Z

Thispost should be of interest for legal academics in the UK but pleasedon’t take it too seriously…

Myfirst idea was that there is a time trend in the performance of law schools inthe previous four RAEs which is likely to continue in the REF 2014. Thus, Itook the RAE ranks from 1992, 1996, 2001 and 2008 (available here; here; here, alreadyranked here;and here,already ranked here),calculated the linear time trends for six more years (ie I regressed the timetrend on the ranks), and added them to the 2008 ranks. The predicted resultwould be: (1) Kent, (2) Durham, (3) LSE, (4) UCL, (5) Oxford,(6) Reading, (7) Cardiff,(8) Ulster, (9) Nottingham,(10) Queen’s Belfast, (11) Cambridge! Thus, in such a ranking, lawschools which did not perform well in the earlier RAEs but then rose in 2008 (notably,Kent, Reading, Ulster)are expected to further improve significantly. But, honestly, the extent seemsto me a bit too far-fetched.

Theopposite approach would take the view that the quality of institutions isfairly stable and that differences between the four RAEs are just ‘random’.Thus, such a view would simply calculate the mean of the RAE ranks from 1992,1996, 2001 and 2008. The predicted result would be: (1) Cambridge,(2) Oxford, (3) LSE, (4) UCL, (5) King’sCollege, (6) Queen Mary, (7) Southampton, (8) Cardiff,(9) Keele, (10) Edinburgh, (11) Durham! But, again, thisdoes not seem realistic since it is not plausible to assume that the RAEs from1990s have a predictive power as good as the 2008 data.

Thus,finally, my compromise: first, I calculated the weighted mean rank, weighingthe RAE 1992 rank 0.1, the 1996 rank 0.2, the 2001 rank 0.3 and the 2008 rank0.4). Second, I added the time trend for six more years (see above). Now, mypredicted result is (in brackets how this compares to the 2008 rank, with '+' meaning an improvement): (1) LSE (+/-0),(2) Durham (+2), (3) UCL (-1), (4) Oxford (-1), (5) Cardiff (+3), (6) Cambridge(+1), (7) Queen Mary (+4), (8) Kent (-2), (9) Queen’s Belfast (+/-0), (10)Nottingham (-5), (11) Birmingham (+4), (12) Edinburgh (-2), (13) Glasgow (+4), (14)Reading (-2), (15) Keele (+10), (16) Leeds (+2), (17) Bristol (-1), (18) King’sCollege (+1), (19) Southampton (+7), (20) Ulster (-6).

Howconfident am I about this? Not sure … let’s check in 2015!

Comparative Company Law: A Case-Based Approach

2012-01-22T21:51:00.000Z

Ok, I had the ambition to post something substantial today... but I haven't had the time and energy for it. So, to keep my plan to write at least one blog post per week, just a quick and very early promotional announcement: David Cabrelli and I are about to finish editing and co-writing a book on Comparative Company Law. I saw today that the book is already advertised on the publishers website - perhaps of interest to some readers of this blog

Is this Twitter thing still around? My experience from the last seven days

2012-01-14T22:24:00.000Z

Usually,when I join a technology, it starts being in decline (e.g., that happened withSecond Life a few years ago). Well, apparently, Twitter survived me, and it maywell be around for another year or two. So I thought I may as well summarise myexperience so far (and if you want to follow me click here):

I can see that it helps networking: I started following a few UK basedacademics who I did not know in person but from their blogs, writings etc, andsome of them started following me as well and send me welcome messages:so, that was good.
The reciprocity of following and being followed is also interestingpsychologically – as well as the counting of “followers” - actually, there ispresumably no denying that some (many?) treat Twitter as a vanity project.
Admittedly, three of my tweets linked to this blog – and Ichecked immediately to see whether my view count went up (which it did!); so, Imay not be entirely immune from this. And it may also show more generally thatblogging and tweeting may be complements not substitutes.
I also tried more interactive features such as following the Twitter discussionon BBC’s Any Questions and re-tweeting; actually, this may be fun; andit’s interesting to see how via Twitter information flows into differentdirections.
And to mention a rather obvious final point: Twitter is definitely a usefuldistraction to avoid doing what you’re supposed to do (in my case: writing mybook, preparing the REF)… so I may well stay around for a bit ...

Twitter is so useless...

2012-01-08T11:27:00.000Z

Ok,granted, if you want to start a revolution in a Middle Eastern dictatorship, itmay be helpful. But, that’s nothing I’m planning to do, at the moment at least…Apart from that, I don’t really see the point: I’m not interested in followingthe life of / gossip about celebrities. And why this odd restriction to 140characters? You can blog about everything you would be tweeting about but havethe advantage of not being restricted by some arbitrary word limit. Also, Ireally don’t have time to tweet …

So,to sum it up, I just wanted to know the readers of this blog know that eventuallyI joined Twitter: I’m https://twitter.com/#!/siemslegal

The places my books have been…

2012-01-05T13:35:00.000Z

Thispost should not really be of interest for anyone … but, well, since I did thechart I thought I may post it as well. Background: since I have lived in a couple of places in the last 10-15 years, a frequent problem hasbeen whether to take my books with me, as far as possible, or leave them atfriends, relatives and self-storage facilities (in the chart MunichI, Hamburg II & III). Now, at least everything is consolidated in England whichfeels good. And opening the boxes with my books that arrived in Durham I was wonderingabout the journeys they have already made ….

What interested me in December

2012-01-01T12:41:00.000Z

Happynew year!

Leiden Global University Ranking

2011-12-21T19:33:00.000Z

Thereare four well-known global university rankings around already (linked here) but my, not unbiased(more later…), view would be that the new Leiden Ranking (available here) seems to bepreferable. The two main differences are: (a) the Leiden ranking uses only objective data, suchas impact of research – not dubious reputation ranks which only tend to confirmstereotypes about good/not-so-good universities. (b) in the default option therank normalises for university size, thus giving medium-sized, small or evenvery specialised universities a fair chance.
.

So,how does the Leidenranking compare with the other rankings? First, of all, similar to the latter,the US is dominant in thetop 30: here 27 universities are from the USplus two from Switzerlandand one from Israel.The top UK universities are Cambridge (31), London School of Hygiene and TropicalMedicine (33), Oxford (36), Durham(42), Imperial (54), UCL (59), Edinburgh (66),St Andrews (71), Bristol (73), Dundee (78), East Anglia (80) and York (97).
.
This does not look too wrong to me(noting that my current university, Durham,performs quite well, as do my previous ones, Edinburgh and East Anglia).In particular, as mentioned earlier, I find it positive that top specialisedinstitutions such as the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and topsmaller but general universities such as Durhamor St Andrews are rewarded, i.e. ranked betterthan big but medium-quality universities.

Counting words in US Supreme Court decisions

2011-12-18T18:30:00.002Z

Thereis an interesting new tool available, called Legal Language Explorer. It issimilar to the Google Books Ngram Viewer (see previouspost), but here the results show the number of hits in the US Supreme Courtdecisions between 1800 and 2005. In my own research I have done somethingsimilar, though based on a hand count, for the highest German and Englishcourts (papers here and here).
.
Istarted playing a bit with the Legal Language Explorer - always using the“normalize” option, ie the results show the “average count per case”:

(1)blue: English law - orange: House of Lords

Note:as expected, more important in early 19^th century but recentlyEnglish law a bit up (why?).

(2)blue: efficiency - orange: fairness

Note:both fairly modern terms in judicial language; perhaps a bit unexpected that“efficiency” has become slightly less popular in last few decades

(3)blue: economic - orange: social – brown: moral

Note:a different way of presenting the data. Initially “moral” more popular; since1930s “economic” and “social” on the rise.

(4)blue: economics - orange: philosophy

Note:just 20th century since 19th century data seem fairly unreliable; today "economics" more popular than "philosophy".

(5)blue: rights - orange: duties

Note:again, only 20th century; “rights-talk” increasing, which presumably makessense.

Why are the British so Eurosceptic?

2011-12-12T19:10:00.000Z

I have been wondering about this question for a while - and given the so-called"veto" to the European Fiscal Union now again. Of course, as a caveatit is worth indicating that the "Brussels bureaucracy" is not popularin other EU Member States either, and that here too national identities seem tobe stronger than the EU one (see only the French and Dutch rejections of the EUconstitution). Still, even listening to mainstream media such as the BBC onecannot help noticing that there is something special about the aversion againstthe EU in

Britain

.So, really, "what's wrong with them" (no offence)?

To get a proper answer, one may use country-level survey data such as Eurobarometer as dependentvariable, and then contemplate a number of explanatory variables relating to acountry’s geography, history, culture, politics etc in order to explain anti-EUfeelings, for instance:

geography(e.g., dummy for island; distance from centre of EU)
age of country; stability of domestic form of government (or last dictatorialgovernment)
colonial power (e.g., maximum extent of former colonial empire)
death rate in Second World War (or both world wars)
cultural attitudes (e.g., mean difference from other EU countries)
socio-economic attitudes (ditto)
distinctiveness of legal tradition (ditto)
proportion of Eurosceptic media (but reverse causality?)
language skills (e.g., mean number languages spoken); perhaps also ethnicdiversity
relatives in other EU countries (or proportion to relatives in non-EUcountries)
prevalence of EU institutions in country
nettransfer payments from/to EU
corruption score ofdomestic political institutions (or other data on popularity of domestic politicians etc)
political variables such as voting system (encouraging small parties), partyfunding etc.
general variables such as GDP per capita or population (relative to EUmean)

In political science there are a few studies on similarquestions (e.g., here,here, here), butnot exactly what I'm interested in. One problem may be that the number ofobservations is fairly small (27 countries), whereas all of these reasons (andmore?) may really have a cumulative and interdependent effect. In any case,assuming that these factors are relevant, the most interesting question ispresumably another one, namely, whether in the UK one would expect thesefactors to become weaker, or even stronger,... seehere.

REF 2014: what did the law sub-panel members submit in 2001?

2011-12-05T09:16:00.001Z

Aweek ago I posted on the publications that the REF 2014 members of the law sub-panelsubmitted for the RAE 2008 (posthere). I talked to a friend about it and he suggested that the REF-panelmembers are “old professors who already made it” and therefore do not feel thepressure to publish in the top journals any more. Well, this can be tested bygoing back further in time. Thus, below the data from the RAE 2001 (from here) and how theycompare with the 2008 data of the REF law sub-panel members. We have 54 pieces(for 2008 it was 55):

2001:46% journal articles with 52% of these in general journals (including thesocio-legal ones) and 48% in specialised journals. Most “hits”: six for theModern Law Review and two each for Journal of Law and Society and Socio &Legal Studies (no hits for LQR, LS and CLJ; one for OJLS). - 2008:55% journal articles with 77% of these articles in specialised journals, and23% in general ones. Overall, no journal had more than two “hits” (these wereModern Law Review, Legal Studies, and Journal of Law and Society; no hits forLQR, OJLS and CLJ).
2001:26% book chapters with 36% of these in OUP, CUP and Hart books (2 OUP, 1 CUP, 2Hart). - 2008:25% book chapters with 88% of these in OUP, CUP and Hart books (8 OUP, 2 CUP, 2Hart).
2001:24% books with 23% of these OUP books (no Hart or CUP books). - 2008:16% books with 55% of these OUP, CUP and Hart books (2 OUP, 2 Hart, 1 CUP).
2001and 2008: 4% government reports (ie 2 pieces).

Theinterpretation has to take into account that not only the publication choicesof the REF members may have changed but, what I would regard as crucial, alsothe book and journal market. To explain:

Booksand book-chapters: the overall share (about 50%) is relatively unchanged, yet,in 2008 more OUP-CUP-Hart books. This is likely to reflect that CUP only gotmore involved in law publishing in the last ten years. Moreover, in 2001 it mayhave been more common to submit teaching or practical books, whereas now theclear preference is for academic publications.
Journal articles: thereduced share of the general journals can best be explained by the emergence ofmany new specialised journals in the last ten years (e.g, in my field all majorjournals are fairly new: JCLS, EBOR, ECFR, CMLJ, LFMR). Overall, thesubmissions are also fairly dispersed in both years (with the only exception theMLR in 2001 but not in 2008), thus there does not seem to be a preference for asmall number of selected journals – which may be most interesting point for everyone involvedin the REF 2014.

What interested me in November (and late October)

2011-11-30T00:40:00.001Z

REF 2014: what did the law sub-panel members submit in 2008?

2011-11-26T22:42:00.001Z

TheResearch Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 will use various tools in order toassess the research quality of

universities. The most important one is that expert panels will assess fourpieces of research output submitted by each

academic. This leads to thequestion whether the panel members will prefer certain types of research outputas well as certain publishers or journals. In some disciplines, there are clearpreferences (e.g., in economics quality-rankings of journals are widely seen asrelevant). Law is a complicated case since academics disagree on the role ofproxies, such as the alleged quality of certain publishers and journals.

Now,the composition of the REF law-subpanel is of course known (here): thus, I quicklyexamined which four pieces the panel members had submitted for the previousexercise (the RAE 2008, data here). The 55pieces are:

55%journal-articles with 77% of these articles in specialised journals, and 23% ingeneral ones. Overall, no journal had more than two “hits” (these were ModernLaw Review, Legal Studies, and Journal of Law and Society; no hits for LQR,OJLS and CLJ).
25%book chapters with 88% of these in OUP, CUP and Hart books (8 OUP, 2 CUP, 2Hart).
16%books with 55% of these OUP, CUP and Hart books (2 OUP, 2 Hart, 1 CUP).
4%government reports (ie 2 pieces).

Thisshows a couple of interesting points:

Occasionally,book chapters are seen with scepticism since they are not peer-reviewed. Yet25% is a good share of the submission - though the strong preference for thetop-publishers may indicate some hesitation.
Withrespect to books, there is also a preference for the top publishers, yet, herebooks by other publishers (Ashgate, Palgrave, Cavendish etc) are also notinfrequently submitted.
Then, law journals, which is often the most controversial point with some favouringarticles in a small number of general journals. Yet, in the REF-panel members submissions there is a lot of diversity with specialised journals dominating the field.

Finally,to say the obvious, the motivation of this post is influenced by the assumptionthat one may expect that the assessments of the panel members are influenced bytheir own publication choices. I think that’s not unrealistic to make, thoughof course one would not expect a perfect correlation.

Presentation of networks with NeighborNet (example: shareholder protection in 25 countries)

2011-11-19T22:14:00.001Z

I recently came across aninteresting form of presenting similarities and differences between languagesin a network (see here at the bottom), being based on the option "NeighborNet" of the program Splitstree. Such a network uses datawhich indicates how different pairs of languages (or other “nodes”) are: e.g., forsomething like on a scale of 0 (identical) to 1 (completely different) Germanand Dutch may get a score of 0.3.

In my own research I havedone something quite similar: the paper "The Web of Creditor and ShareholderProtection in 25 Countries" (available here)is based on data on the legal differences between each pair of these 25countries. In the paper, I present the data as a fairly simple network (usingthe program Ucinet), withbold lines presenting very similar countries, normal line somehow similarcountries, and no-lines fairly different countries; also: close countrieswere shifted close together:

Now, I applied theSplitstree-NeighborNet program to the same data. It looks as follows:

Since the data are thesame, it is no surprise that in both figures the same countries are close toeach other (e.g., see US andCanada, or more surprisinglyPakistan and

Mexico

).But which one is preferable? My original one may be easier to understand, giventhe fact that the lines present similarities/dissimilarities, whereasNeighborNet is based on a more complex form of presentation (to simplify, it’san extension of drawing up trees of relationships). But, admittedly, theNeighborNet picture looks a bit cleaner and perhaps sexier… so I may be usingit for my future research a well.

OWS and The Crisis: Who are “the bad guys”?

2011-11-14T00:38:00.001Z

I just had a quick look atthe Harlem News, one of the free newspapers lying around at subway stations inNYC. A bit surprisingly, there was an interesting article on how, allegedly, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement harms the cause of freedom. I also found the text at thewebsite of the Future ofFreedom Foundation. To quote from it:

After many weeks, OccupyWall Street and its kindred demonstrations around the country are still asource of headline controversy (…). Unfortunately, the loudest voices call formore government management of the economy, when it is precisely that which gotus into the mess we have yet to dig out from.(...) Contrary to popularmisconception, this was no case of rampant deregulation, but rather one oframpant regulatory privilege. (…) Everydevice to protect banks from their own folly — from deposit insurance toimplicit guarantees to the Fed’s promise of emergency cash injections — hascontributed to the misery that sent the protesters into the street. (…) The problems here arethat regulatory agencies invariably end up serving the regulated industries (…)Demanding more power for government is equivalent to demanding more privilegesfor Wall Street (…) [being] a creature ofthe corporate-state partnership that has characterized the American economyfor generations.

Thus, it is claimed that notbusiness/market failure but too much government/regulation was the cause ofthe crisis. The two main examples (above in italics) are the “moral hazardargument” (government guarantees etc) and the corporate capture of USlaw-makers. Is this a sound argument? As such, the two examples may show somegovernment failure; however, these examples are really about how theinterplay between firms and law-makers can lead to problems. Thus, they showthat a plain binary thinking in terms bad/good business v bad/good government neitherhelps us understanding the crisis, nor provides the best way forward. Forfurther reading see also the Varieties ofLiberalism project.

The Law and Finance of Share Repurchases in Europe

2011-11-06T21:33:00.000Z

Ihad a busy week, presenting an empirical paper on share repurchases(co-authored with Amedeo De Cesari) at events in New Yorkand Chicago(links here).Actually, it is likely to be not one but two papers, one addressed to a law andone to a finance audience. The ‘law paper’ is about to be finished. Itsabstract reads as follows:

Recentyears have seen a growing interest in research on law and finance but this paperis the first one to analyse the impact of the EU market abuse law on share repurchases.We find that the Member States’ previous rules differed considerably, and thereforeit can be said that the Regulation on share repurchases has provided clarity asto the availability of an EU-wide safe harbour for share repurchases. Thepicture, however, gets more puzzling if we consider our findings on the actualeffect of the law. Our results do not confirm a “simple law and finance story”according to which market participants would have just reacted as expected bythe plain legal rules. Rather, it seems to be the case that problems of lawenforcement, the value of legal certainty, and the positive signal of commonlegal rules have also had an impact on the propensity to repurchase own stock.

Thepaper is not yet publicly available; so please email me if you’re interested in it.

Notable last lines in law journal articles?

2011-10-27T22:46:00.002+01:00

Acouple of months ago I posted on memorable first sentence in novels and,possibly, law journals (here).The obvious extension is to look at the last lines. With respect tonovels, there are a couple of lists (e.g., hereand here),with the Great Gatsby’s final line (“So we beat on, boats against the current,borne back ceaselessly into the past”), being often the favourite.
Now,law journals: of course, I could only look at a sample; so, I chose the 2009-11articles published in the European Business Organization Law Review. Here are afew of them with my comments:

Further research is neededto provide a more accurate picture of firms and corporate actors and the valuesthey initiate. (Nicklisch 2009) [comment: one of the classics!]
It remains to be seen howfar the outcome of the legislative process now set in motion will resemble theCommittee’s proposal. (Hansen 2009) [comment: and a second one!]
Andit is functionality that should guide our efforts. (Arrunada 2009) [comment:quite catchy, without knowing the context of the statement]
Thecurrent formalistic and a-functional legal culture, coupled with a politicalculture that deems it to be perfectly normal for governments to meddle withcorporate control contests and even to vet friendly deals over control, isclearly harmful to the country’s competitive position in the internationalmarket for equity capital. (Enriques 2009) [comment: I like this one too, endingwith a strong statement]
We will need to wait andsee how the field develops in the next few years. In the meantime, theopportunities for those wishing to break new ground in scholarship areconsiderable. (Foster 2010) [comment: a combined version of the classics].
If SE incorporations keep theirpace, we will be able to study this and other important issues in anot-too-distant future. (Eidenmueller et al 2010) [comment: noting thatEidenmueller et al did indeed conduct further research on the SE]
The author also believesthat this should be the basic orientation of the country’s financial regulatoryreform both at present and in the foreseeable future. (Liao 2011) [comment: Ilike the “foreseeable”, ie not considering unknown unknowns]
Time will tell, but theline may have been drawn too far on the side of further operationalcentralisation. (Moloney 2011) [comment: good, making a recommendation whilealso adding a caveat]
In matters as complex asthese it seems improbable that the EU lawmakers – or anyone else – will get itright the first time. (Sjoberg 2011) [comment: similar, considering that “oranyone else” may be anyone, even the author…]

My personal favourite?perhaps Arrunada 2009

What interested me in October

2011-10-22T19:28:00.000+01:00

Well,preliminary and very early since I’ll be away from my main laptop (where I readblogs via Feedreader) for a while:

The next four events ….

2011-10-13T17:11:00.000+01:00

I’mjust at a conference on RegulatoryCompetition in Contract Law and Dispute Resolution in Munich; next week, abook launch conference on DoesLaw Matter: On Law and Economic Growth in Amsterdam; then, to the US,giving a talk in the CorporateGovernance Lecture Series at Fordham, and presenting a paper in Chicago atthe Conferenceon Empirical Legal Studies a week later. Details to follow (well, timepermitting…)

Who are you writing for?

2011-10-05T20:38:00.002+01:00

WhenI start a particular paper, I initially just tend to follow my ideas (not tosay, inspiration) and only later on I wonder what to do with the paper. This maynot always be the best approach since any author needs to reflect on his/herpotential audience:

Thetwo dimensions of the Figure relate to the spatial scope of the audience on theone hand (e.g., do you write for

academics or for academics allaround the world), and the level of generalisation on the other (e.g., do youwrite for legal academics, all academics or the general public). I haveillustrated the scope of three real-life academics (Chomsky, Posner, Davies)with the three circles. To clarify, I would not say that it is better/worse totarget a particular audience. Yet, for instance, if we compared Davies with theMr X circle, Mr X can be seen as less successful since his circle is fullywithin Davies’ one.

Then,to illustrate another point, I have added a Mr Y who publishes for twodifferent audiences which may also be not uncommon in academia. Morespecifically, it may often be the case that one researches on a particulartopic and then this research leads to various research outputs addressed todifferent audiences (say, your own community of domestic academics in yourfield; a broader academic community; and a more pop-science piece). In thisrespect, then, actually, my “just start with it-approach” mentioned earlier maynot be entirely inappropriate.

What interested me in September

2011-09-30T19:32:00.001+01:00

AlmostOctober and 30 degrees Celsius in London… time to do the “what interested me in September” list:

Changingface of legal education (John Flood)

Symposium on ScamLaw(Conglomerate)

Highcorporate governance standards, low ethical performance: the Newscorp case(Corporate governance)

Kabulupdate: constitutional confusion (Comparative Constitutions)

Pleainto research into Europeanisation of private law (Mepli)

Nirvanafallacy etc (Becker Posner)

PierreSchlag’s new blog (Bainbridge)

Theoryversus practice [cartoon!] (Mankiw)

Journalrankings for philosophy (Brooks)

Cambridge, Sydney, Hamburg – a few words on the last three weeks

2011-09-25T16:05:00.000+01:00

Asmentioned earlier on this blog, I have been at academic conference in Cambridge, Sydney and Hamburg in the lastthree weeks. Back home just two quick comments on each of the events (onesubstantive one, and one off-topic observation).

Cambridge were presentations at the annualseminar of the British Association of Comparative Law (BACL) and the comparativelaw stream of the 2011 conference of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS). Comments:(a) interesting to see that most comparative law papers were about substance,not method - but that actually confirms my decision that for the book I’mworking on there is a need to focus on the method of comparative law. (b) whythe hell is the SLS conference so overpriced? It’s a normal academic conference(not aimed at wealthy practitioners) with fairly small panels in a normaluniversity environment. I’m sorry to say but it will be low on my list ofconferences in the years to come …
Sydney were a number of events atthe UNSW, in particular a workshop on bankingsystems in crisis and varieties of liberalism. Comments: (c) the more Ilisten to presentations saying that with the 2008-11 financial crisis we haveto re-think everything, the more sceptical I get. For instance, in terms ofcorporate governance/company law, changes have been fairly marginal, and in 20-30years time I don’t think that people will regard the current crisis as a momentof paradigm shifts. (d) Sydneyis a great city but the flight, well, very, very long. The solution: it would begreat to have something like ‘induced hibernation’ as in the movie 2001 … anybusiness entrepreneurs out there?
Hamburg was the 2011 conference of the European Associationin Law & Economics (ELEA). Comments: (e) my first ELEAconference: I enjoyed it but kept wondering about the law & economicscontext since the majority of the papers could also have been presented atother events (some were almost entirely about law, others predominantlyeconomic/empirical with law only playing a minor role). Law & econ has beenaround for a long time now but at least in Europeit seems still fairly unclear what it is really about. (f) In one of the presentationsit was mentioned that law and economics is often regarded as politicallyconservative. Well, the irony that did not seem to be noticed was that theconference venue was the building of the (former)HWP which tends to be fairly Marxist (e.g., there is even a quote by Karl Marxin the entrance hall, though this was partly covered by the catering personnel…)

9/11: what did I do ten years ago?

2011-09-11T08:31:00.000+01:00

Asso often in the last ten years, I was between flats: having left Edinburgh (where I had studied) but not yet properlyarrived in Berlin (where I started working as alawyer), I stayed with my parents in Munichfor a few weeks. Since it was fairly hot, I spent the early afternoon in my oldbedroom watching some silly TV show, which was interrupted saying that a smallplane hit a skyscraper in NYC. First, I was annoyed that my show wasinterrupted and I did something else. But then I switched on the TV again andrealised what was happening. I told my parents and we kept watching.

Anythingelse? Well, I just checked my old emails. Since I attended a summer course in Paris in July/August 2011 with many students from the US, on 12September letter-of-sympathy emails were circulated. But other emails show thatnormal life continued. I see that I sent a draft article to one of myco-authors in the evening of 11 September – so apparently I did not spent allthe time watching TV. There are also a number of emails on finding a flat in Berlin and chatting with former classmates from Edinburgh and Munichin the following days.

So,can I say that 9/11 had an impact on my life? Of course, it shocked me but Iwould not say that it changed the way I think about, say, freedom and differentcultures. Practically, it may impact me in terms of airport security but I didnot manage to identify any connection to where I live and work. Yet, there isone very practical consequence relevant for me now: in 2001 the US Fed reducedthe interest rates even further to stimulate the economy, following the attacks,which contributed to the housing bubble and then to the 2008-11 financialcrisis – the latter being the topic of the conferencein Sydney I’m heading off today…. a fairly minor point of course and indeedit’s good to see that the attacks have not succeeded in changing our ways oflife.

Talks and conferences: two done, two more to go

2011-09-06T08:55:00.000+01:00

I just return from Cambridge where I gave papers at the annual seminar of the British Association of Comparative Law (BACL) and at the 2011 conference of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS). The next two ones will be a bit more demanding in terms of travelling: first, in Sydney a paper related to the Varieties of Liberalism project, and then the 2011 conference of the European Association in Law & Economics in Hamburg. Not sure how much time I’ll have for blogging in the next two weeks …

What interested me in August

2011-08-31T10:45:00.000+01:00

The US “inside-the-law-school-scam” blog: a quick comparison with the UK

2011-08-28T17:46:00.002+01:00

Three weeks ago a US law professor started a blog called “Inside the Law School Scam” (here). This has caused a lot of attention (summarised with links here), not least since the professor initially decided to stay anonymously. In substance he makes the point, raised earlier in blogs by law graduates, that tuition fees for JD degrees are increasingly excessive while job prospects get worse, i.e. the “scam” is that students pay a lot for something not very useful. In addition, and contentiously, he accuses his own profession: to quote from his first post (here) “law professors are scamming their students”, and in the second one (here) “they are paid absurdly large salaries for doing almost no real work”, in particular in terms of teaching which is allegedly often done "with zero preparation".It’s interesting reading the posts, comments etc, and it made me wonder whether there is anything remotely similar in the UK (assuming, for the moment, there is some truth to it for the US). My answer would be “no”, given the following differences:

Costs of higher education: considerably lower in the UK. Ok, they will go up, but still. Moreover, in this respect, it’s an advantage that here law is an undergraduate degree: thus, you only pay for three years, not six ones.
Job prospects: of course, not great at the moment. And in the UK, law graduates who want to become solicitors have to get a training contract which can be tough. But again the undergraduate nature makes a difference: the question is not about the value of an additional degree (as the JD in the US) but whether an LLB leads to better job prospects than a BA in philosophy, history etc: in this respect, I would say that it doesn’t look too bad.
Misleading marketing: that’s done by administrative staff not academics. There are also official comparisons (e.g., here) on job prospects etc.
Teaching without preparation. OK, some topics take more and some less preparation, and presumably most academics prefer research to teaching. Still, in general, my experience is that one should not underestimate teaching preparation (as a student I thought that some profs just came in and started talking about what they knew; but now I know that that’s what requires most preparation). A difference from the US is that in addition to the core programme (JD in US; LLB in UK), UK law schools have more extensive special programmes for LLM students plus some training for PhD students which tend to require more extensive preparations.
Professors with “absurdly large salaries”: unfortunately no…. as far as I’m aware...

Company law – quo vadis?

2011-08-19T22:28:00.003+01:00

This is a broad illustration how “traditional company law” has been changing. The partly interconnected (see small arrows) causes are: the EU and international dimension of company law (EU Directives, ECJ case law, OECD Guidelines, international accounting law etc); interdisciplinary and non-legal research (e.g. in business schools as corporate governance; law and finance); the growing relevance of special rules for listed companies (i.e., securities regulation, capital market law); more and more legislation (see only the CA 2006 in the UK but also other acts).

In law journal articles and research monographs these changes can clearly be seen (it should be possible to show this empirically). Yet, many of the UK company law textbooks have changed little from the traditional company law paradigm: thus, there seem to be path-dependencies at force: some of the books being updated versions of books originally published decades ago; but also presumably that many textbook authors write in a style how they remember to have learned company law years/decades ago, thus also explaining the time lag.

John Burke’s “One”: the strong case for uniformity

2011-08-13T21:55:00.000+01:00

Should law be uniform? In practice there may be a trend in this direction but most academics are sceptical, emphasising cultural differences, benefits of regulatory competition, practical and political problems etc. Thus, it is nice to read a clear statement that makes exactly this strong case for uniformity. It’s by John Burke, one of my former colleagues from Riga, now in Kazakhstan (full text here):

“There are too many languages. In the European Union alone, there are 23 official languages, requiring all documents drafted in English or French to be translated into such esoteric languages such as Gaelic, Estonian, and Slovak. The beneficiaries of this declaratory statement of a language being ‘official’ are the translation services organized to produce versions of texts into these obscure, unimportant, languages. (…) Member States of the United Nations comprise 196, out of an approximate number of 203 Sovereign States in the world. (…) Who needs all these countries? I cannot figure it out, as I regard myself as person without a Nation. I neither want nor need a Nation. Passports, of course, are another matter: the more the better.

Languages and Sovereign States are not the focal point of my article: it is the law. (…) In a world of cross-border transactions, the rise of multi-national companies, and the nature of law (…), there is nothing more absurd than a breach of the concept of ‘One’. (…) ‘One’ must dominant. The differences in legal systems are full employment acts for lawyers, particularly at the company level. Do we really need different rules about M&A between Italy and Kazakhstan? No, we do not. Do we need substantially different prospectus requirements for listing stocks at the LSE and NYSE? Clearly not is the reply. The same may be said of most disciplines of law: contract, tort, property, IP, anti-trust, and company law, including banking law. No legal system should contain a contrarian rule unless otherwise cogently rationalized. Say the word and you will be free: the word is ‘One’”.

What’s my take on these issues? I like the point about Nations, tend to cautiously agree about languages, but am not sure about the claims about uniform law.

Memorable first sentences in law journals?

2011-08-06T20:50:00.005+01:00

From “Call me Ishmael...” (Herman Melville) to "It was a dark and stormy night..." (Edward Bulwer-Lytton): there are a number of websites that wonder about the most memorable (best/worst) opening sentences in books (e.g., here, here, here)

Has there been anything like this for law journal articles? Not as far as I’m aware of. Thus, I just had a look at the opening lines of the articles published in the Journal of Corporate Law Studies between 2009 and 2011. Here are a number of good lines and a few comments:

The global financial crisis reached its peak with the catastrophic events of September and October 2008 … (Emilios Avgouleas 2009) [well, sorry, that was a bit optimistic …]

The financial tsunami currently sweeping the global markets is claiming bigger and bigger victims, starting with residential home owners, then working its way through investors and banks, before reaching nation states … (Christoph Kumpan 2009) [same issue but more open; also good how the scope of crisis is explained in few words]

Clarifying when investors can sue, who they can bring their claim against and what they have to prove in order to succeed in their claim is an important function of securities laws … (Eilis Ferran 2009) [I like the three “w’s”]

The economic position of passive capital has, in disparate ways, significantly influenced the development of corporate law … (Robert Flannigan 2009) [the “in disparate ways” makes it interesting]

Social choice theory provides an important, yet hitherto neglected, perspective on the question of whether to exclude reference to the interests of non-shareholder stakeholders within the regulatory framework governing takeovers … (Liza Rybak 2010) [good showing immediately the originality of the article in a few words]

Reform of company and/or corporations law is moribund … (David Wishart 2010) [very catchy if there weren’t the “and/or”]

The current economic crisis has been a wake-up call … (Lady Justice Arden 2010) [catchy too, though references to the crisis are now something like "it was a dark and stormy night" ...]

In corporate and financial environments the notion of risk taking is a double-edged sword … (Marc Moore 2010) [good: opens the discussion]

Investor protection is one of the major subjects in the legal and economic literature on corporate governance … (Alessio Pacces 2011) [yes, catchy but this may work for half of all articles on company law; actually, it’s possible that I’ve used similar sentences as well ...]

The pre-packaged administration is a process that has provoked numerous media attacks, commentaries and reports - not to mention a new statement of professional practice and a number of judicial interventions … (Vanessa Finch 2011) [I like the “not to mention” structure]

In terms of the magnitude of losses as well as the speed and breadth of its expansion, the current financial turmoil deserves a unique place in economic chronicles and in the history of financial markets … (Panagiotis Staikouras 2011) [There we go again, but presumably it’s correct that any crisis is “unique”]

So, what’s my favourite? Not sure, perhaps Kumpan 2009 or Finch 2011.

What interested me in July

2011-08-01T13:03:00.001+01:00

The "Sutton 13" Revisited (or the top 13 UK universities 2012)

2011-07-29T15:13:00.008+01:00

University league tables: many hate them, but they are reality. There are also discussions about elite groups of UK universities, such as, Oxbridge, Golden Triangle, the Russell Group, the 1994 group etc. A popular ranking-based elite list is the “Sutton 13”. These are the top 13 universities as identified by the Sutton Trust in 2000, based on an average of the UK universities rankings at that time. They used to be (in alphabetical order; see here and here):

University of Birmingham, University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, Durham University, University of Edinburgh, Imperial College, London School of Economics, University of Nottingham, University of Oxford, University of St Andrews, University College London, University of Warwick, University of York

To the best of my knowledge, this list has not been updated. Thus, I looked at the three current rankings (i.e. the 2012 ones) of the Times, Guardian and Independent (also here) and quickly calculated the combined rank: Now, the top 13 are (in alphabetical order with the actual rank in brackets):

University of Bath (10), University of Cambridge (1), Durham University (7), University of Edinburgh (13), Imperial College (5), University of Lancaster (9), London School of Economics (3), University of Exeter (10), University of Oxford (2), University of St Andrews (4), University College London (5), University of Warwick (8), University of York (12)

What has changed? Birmingham, Bristol and Nottingham are out, and Bath, Exeter and Lancaster are in. Interestingly, the first three are part of the Russell Group (the biggish research active universities), whereas the latter three are part of the 1994 Group (the smaller research active universities).

Finally, as always, needless to say that doing such kind of combined ranking is a nice thing to do on a rainy Friday afternoon but it has its obvious shortcomings.

The Corporate Governance of the Murdoch Empire – All Secrets Exposed!

2011-07-20T23:57:00.001+01:00

That’s the kind of pop-science article I would like to write, if I had the time, and, well, the information available …

Having watched with great interest the Rupert & James M committee hearing earlier this week (transcript here), things look a bit shaky. Here are a couple of things worth exploring (any potential PhD students anywhere?):

Structure: What is the precise structure of the Murdoch empire: parent companies, subsidiaries, ownership structures etc? Why is it structured this way: path-dependencies, economic convenience, company law, tax law, etc.? Which legal systems are applicable; are there overlaps or conflicts of law? Should media companies be structured and run differently from normal companies? Or should laws oblige them to do so?
Shares: who are the shareholders? Is this known, or does it depend on the specific ownership disclosure rule of the applicable legal systems? How does the dual-share structure operate? When and how was it introduced? Is this bad corporate governance, and if yes does this case show that it should such a structure be prohibited by law?
Management: how much does it matter that Rupert is both chairman and CEO of the parent company? Who are the board members, which of them count as independent, under which definition, and does all of this matter? Likewise: how are things in the other companies of the Murdoch group? How far are there personal overlaps?
Liability: if it could be shown that the Murdochs “knew something” how would they be liable? Civil or criminal, applicable law etc? Even if they didn’t know anything, can it be argued that there was “wilful blindness? Would it be relevant under UK or US law? Is it a valid counter-argument to say that you delegated responsibility to persons who you trusted? Or that nobody told you? How much does all of this depend on the size of the company and the amount of money involved? Can the board members be liable as well?
Family company: does the scandal demonstrate the problem of family companies? Is “the old guy” the problem who doesn’t want to go? Or the young ones who just got their jobs due to family relations? General: how is age rated to good corporate governance? Who is really running the group: Rupert, his wife (advice: don’t get into a fight with her), James or someone else? Practically: how can a family company be transformed into a fully publicly owned company? Would a shareholder revolt be possible? Is there evidence that the family structure of the Murdoch group is the main problem – or is it part of their success story? Is the way the Murdoch family group is run different from family companies in other parts of the world (Italy, South Korea, Saudi Arabia etc.), and if yes does this matter?

-------------------------------------------------
Postscript: on the family structure see also http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/james57/English

Do Journal Rankings work? (2) – A comment on market-based rankings

2011-07-17T22:24:00.000+01:00

Now, the second part of most post on journal rankings, following up from my comment on expert rankings (available here). Here I’m interested in “market based” rankings; I’m mainly thinking about two methods: a citation statistic (as the W&L ranking) or the number of submissions (i.e., the rejection rate). How would this address the two problems that I identified for expert rankings?

The first problem was that the top journal editors may abuse their power by favouring friends and family. To some extent, this may be possible here as well. Yet, if it goes beyond minor favours, this would negatively impact on the number of submissions, and presumably also the citations. Thus, the market approach may be a way to induce publishers and editors to keep up a high-quality of review process.
The second problem was that specialised journals and non-mainstream approaches would be disadvantaged. Here, the same problem would arise because, naturally, the more general and the more mainstream a journal is, the more citations and submissions it gets. That makes such rankings doubtful since they would not actually indicate quality. And, as a matter of policy, it may also hinder innovation.

So, as a result, again my overall assessment is sceptical. Of course, a way out of the second problem may be to focus on sub-rankings only, i.e. rankings limited to a particular are of research (as available in the W&L ranking) and a particular type of research. Yet, then the ranking could not be used for an extensive comparison any more, though this is exactly what a ranking should do.

New affiliation: Durham!

2011-07-08T13:21:00.004+01:00

A quick personal update - my new university webpage is here.

What interested me in June

2011-06-30T20:20:00.000+01:00

Do Journal Rankings work? (1) – A comment on expert rankings

2011-06-23T22:41:00.002+01:00

I have blogged about journal rankings a couple of times (e.g., here, here and here) but I have not really been explicit about my own view; thus, this post. The main distinction is between rankings by experts (such as the Australian Research Council ranking) and market-based solutions (e.g. a citation based ranking, such as the Washington & Lee one) [similar in an article not limited to law here]. This post comments on expert rankings, a comment on market-based rankings will follow later on.

A frequent criticism of expert rankings is that it is impossible to determine whether a particular journal is really "better" than another one. This point can, however, be challenged as follows: assume that all journals are of equal quality, and that an expert committee (e.g., a research council) randomly picks 10% of the journals and calls them A* journals, and that financial rewards are provided for publications in these journals (by the research council, or by universities e.g. promotions). Then, what happens? These A* get more submissions; thus, they can be more selective, and the quality of pieces published in A* journals will be better than articles of other journals. As a result, the ranking itself would create a more competitive market for publications, and useful signals, which may be regarded as positive.

But, in the real world, there are two problems with this model:

First, given the human nature, it is not unrealistic to assume that these A* journals do not only decide on merit but that cronyism plays a role as well. Sure, if you only accepted pieces of friends and family, the number of submissions would go down and the expert committee would downgrade you. But in practice things are often more mixed: e.g., you may give half of the slots to your cronies, and let the other half remain competitive. There may also be network effects in place since academics of the same few institutions may be the editors of the A* journals, its authors, and the members of the expert committee.
Second, one needs to consider that there are different types of journals; in particular we can distinguish between general and specialised journals, and between mainstream and non-mainstream journals. If the expert committee decides on the basis of majority voting, only mainstream general journals will become A* journals. Of course, that may be harmful to innovation since these journals may regard advanced research on particular issues or new approaches as “too exotic”. Thus, to do it properly, the expert committee would need to apply a quota system, giving A*s to a certain proportion of specialist and non-mainstream journals as well. In practice, that may however be quite unlikely (e.g., imagine a committee with ten members, and only one of them supports of a new and controversial method, whereas the others think that it is just nonsense).

So, as a result, I’ve my doubts about expert based journal rankings. I also feel that the two problems outlined here are apparent in the ARC ranking (in the law list almost all of the A* journals are mainstream general journal often affiliated with a small number of institutions).

How practical (or impractical) are bibliometric measures in law? A self-test of Harzing’s PoP

2011-06-17T12:06:00.002+01:00

It’s a matter of debate of whether scholarship can or should be assessed by way of citation counts or other quantitative measures (for a recent contribution see van Gestel & Vranken). In any case, I would think that any academic should be interested in how the scientific community responds to his or her research. A problem in law is of course how to find where your research is cited since not all law journals and books are easily electronically available.

Thus, occasionally, I search the relevant databases (Westlaw, Beck-Online, Google Scholar, Google Books etc.) for references to my research. To be sure, this is a quite burdensome task. I was therefore interested to learn that Harzing’s software “Publish or Perish”, freely available here (!), provides an easy way of showing your citation counts, being based on Google Scholar. In this post I compare my own “hand-count” with the Harzing count, of course always excluding self-citations. I have searched my English-language articles, omitting the very recent and very short ones; in total, this lead to 32 pieces. They compare as follows, see the Harzing count, and in brackets my “hand count”:

58 (45), 37 (35), 31 (27), 30 (15), 25 (19), 21 (19), 20 (20), 15 (13), 14 (13), 12 (6), 10 (13), 8 (12), 11 (2), 8 (9), 4 (2), 7 (24), 7 (6), 2 (13), 1 (3), 4 (4), 4 (5), 2 (6), 5 (3), 4 (4), 1 (4), 4 (6), 3 (4), 3 (10), 2 (0), 0 (1), 1 (2), 0 (0) = total 354 Harzing (345 “hand count”) and correlation between Harzing and “hand count”: 0.89

A surprise? Yes, I would have expected that the Harzing count would be less, not more, than my own one since my count has not relied on Google Scholar only. Thus, I had a look at the Harzing result list to see whether the Harzing numbers are too high or my ones too low. Though there are a few sources which I have indeed missed, my hand-count seems to me more reliable because the Harzing list double-counts some of my articles (if they have been cited by someone in a working paper and then in the identical final journal article) and there may also be a few more false positives. Further, it is interesting to compare the individual figures because there are also a few instances where the hand count is actually higher (in bold above). These are mainly articles and books in traditional law journals which have been cited in books and articles not included Google Scholar. Finally, my top three articles are the first Leximetric one, the legal origins one, and the one on numerical comparative law (available here, here and here).

Now, overall, what shall we think of Harzing? Actually, its number of the total cites seems to be a decent guess, and the correlation coefficient is pretty high as well (see above). So, despite my scepticism, perhaps Harzing may even be somehow practical in legal research.

--------------------------
Postscript: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=416647&c=1

True and perceived quality of universities: a model

2011-06-13T09:18:00.002+01:00

I have been thinking about this for a while. First the figure:

What’s the background? Having been at different universities, I was often wondering what people think about my current, or past, affiliations. This not only depends on the university in question but also on how much someone knows about universities in this jurisdiction. If you talk to someone, say your landlord, who knows close to nothing about universities, it just does not matter; for him, the name of a top university is as impressive as an average one; in the figure above see the three straight lines at low values of x. Conversely, someone with close to perfect knowledge will correctly assess whether you are at a top, good or average university; see figure above at x4.

Most interesting, or most “dangerous”, are however the views of persons who have partial knowledge of universities. For instance, someone who just knows the names of two UK universities (guess which ones) may think that everyone at these two universities is really great, and everyone else is a bit of a loser: see figure above at x1. Then, if someone knows the names of the top ten universities, he/she may over-appreciate anyone at these ten universities but think that everyone else hasn’t made it yet: see figure above at x2. And, then, only if we assume fairly good knowledge, average universities would benefit as well: see figure above at x3.

So, is this just about vanity, i.e., what landlords, or people who meet at dinner parties etc., think about you? Of course not: student and staff recruitment crucially depends on a university’s image. Thus, a top university may be content – and actually it may benefit – if people have just limited knowledge about the university landscape, whereas an average university should be keener on marketing its quality. Moreover, universities should consider where and how they want to market their degrees since, naturally, persons who live close to a particular university may have a fairly good knowledge about it (i.e. they may be at x3), whereas potential applicants from the other side of the world may be fairly ignorant (i.e. they may be at x1).

PS: I did not assume perfect knowledge but rationality. Thus, I do not consider that an academic at a top university with good knowledge (e.g., x3 or x4) may well be arrogant in claiming that every other institution is inferior (i.e., despite his knowledge, he is actually holding the view of x1).

The New College of the Humanities – what’s the strategy?

2011-06-06T16:56:00.003+01:00

The announcement that a new private university college is to be established has caused a lot of attention. See here for the website of this New College of the Humanities and, e.g., here and here for the discussions in the Times Higher and the Guardian.

I blogged about private universities a while ago. To quote from my post on “Private universities as gap-fillers” (here):

(…) I was wondering why some private universities have laxer and others have higher admission and examination standards than public universities.
The best starting point may be that private universities typically charge higher fees than public ones (though there are exceptions; e.g., private universities mainly funded by altruistic donors). Why are students willing to pay higher fees? Private universities themselves may usually say that they provide a 'better product', such as more student-oriented teaching, better infrastructure etc. To some extent this may be the case. However, this is not the entire story, given the fact that many academics (which includes me) teach at private and public universities - and, usually, they would do it in a similar way.
So, there has to be a second reason. Here, we get to the distinction between different types of private universities. In some countries public universities have relatively tough admission and examination standards. Thus, private universities fill the gap for applicants who fall below these standards. In other countries, however, public universities accept almost everyone. Here, private universities typically have tougher standards; thus, they deliberately target students who benefit from the university's elite branding and are therefore willing to pay higher fees. (…)

I would think that New College of the Humanities would be fall under the first category mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Further comment: I’m slightly puzzled by the name. The New College will offer courses in Law, Economics, History, English Literature and Philosophy. Usually, however, economics and possibly law would be regarded as belonging to social sciences, not humanities.

"Journal-Ranking System Goes Down Under Weight of Controversy"

2011-05-31T22:50:00.004+01:00

A wonderful title and a seriously interesting topic. To quote from here:

The Australian government abandoned its journal-ranking system yesterday, amid complaints that haphazard ranks (...) were affecting research financing and the careers of academics. The system was part of an overall initiative called Excellence in Research for Australia, which helps the government decide how much money goes to a given research unit at a university. Aspects of the journal rankings had been considered for possible adoption in the United States and Europe.

Also discussed in The Australian here and here, and on the official website of the ARC here. Of course, I have blogged about such rankings a couple of times, most recently here and here.

What interested me in May

2011-05-31T22:14:00.007+01:00

The European Private Company (SPE) – hope?

2011-05-30T18:26:00.002+01:00

Well, I was hopefully a few hours ago, reading the blogpost “Will the European Private Company See Daylight After All?”(here) about today’s meeting of the EU Competitive Council – just to be disappointed a few hours later since agreement has not been reached and the decision has been postponed until June (see here; in German). Anyway, still a good occasion to refer to my two articles on this issue here and here.

Reflections on Satoshi Kanazawa, academic freedom and blogging

2011-05-21T18:50:00.000+01:00

For anyone, who hasn't followed it: Satoshi Kanzawa is an evolutionary psychologist at the LSE (homepage here) who likes to be provocative, and a few days ago stirred a new debate by blogging on alleged racial differences in attractiveness (the original post has been removed but it can be accessed here). I have no interest and expertise to comment on the substance of his ideas, but I was wondering about Kanazawa's views on science and political correctness more generally. A few years he wrote in the Times Higher (here):

When scientists begin to worry about things other than the truth and to ask "might this conclusion or finding offend someone?", self-censorship sets in. They become tempted to shade the truth. What if a scientific conclusion is offensive and true? What is a scientist to do then? Many scientific truths are highly offensive, but scientists must pursue them at any cost.

This sounds very idealistic and brave - but would I follow the same approach? Of course, in general, he does have a point: to illustrate, if the earth revolves around the sun, scientists should say so, even if the Pope disagrees. However, the present controversy is about one of Kanazawa's blog posts. Blogging is great but really just “the world according to me” and not science (not being peer-reviewed etc.). This does not mean that you can't raise provocative ideas, but in exchange you may care about not being offensive, racist etc.

-----------------------
Postscript: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=417449&c=1

Eurovision Song Contest – AV Recount (or: giving 12 Points to the Lib Dems?)

2011-05-16T08:35:00.002+01:00

The winner of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest has been Azerbaijan (1), followed by Italy (2), Sweden (3), Ukraine (4) and Denmark (5) (results here). The competition was based on a positional voting system, i.e. each country assigning points from 0 to 12. I was wondering whether and how the results would change if this were replaced by an alternative vote system (AV), i.e. a system where voters rank candidates in order of preference, and then the candidates which the fewest votes are gradually eliminated and their votes redistributed to the other candidates. For this purpose, I recalculated the rank of the best five countries, assuming that the other twenty countries have already been eliminated. The results are:

Round with all five countries: Italy 25.58%, Azerbaijan 20.93%, Ukraine 20.93%, Sweden 18.60%, Denmark 13.95% à Denmark’s votes redistributed
Round with four countries: Italy 30.23%, Azerbaijan 25.58%, Ukraine 23.26%, Sweden 20.93% à Sweden’s votes redistributed
Round with three countries: Azerbaijan 41.46%, Italy 31.71%, Ukraine 25.83% à Ukraine’s votes redistribute
Round with two countries: Azerbaijan 53.85%, Italy 46.15% à Overall, therefore Azerbaijan (1), followed by Italy (2), Ukraine (3), Sweden (4) and Denmark (5), being almost identical to the result of the positional voting system.

Implications for UK politics? Well, of course, the alternative vote referendum, suggested by the Lib Dems, has not been successful and it seems unlikely that the same question will be asked to the public again. So, as a plan B, the Lib Dems may now suggest the positional voting system (knowing that its results are actually quite similar to AV) – though it may take some efforts to convince the British public of the seriousness of anything related to the Eurovision Song Contest …

If presidential elections were like the Eurovision Song contest ...

2011-05-12T20:59:00.000+01:00

- for instance, thinking about a political system such as France, Russia or the US -, then (see here) (a) there would be two rounds, with more than half of the candidates (ie not only the top two) making it to the second round, (b) whereby the candidates (or their parties) would have to pay a fee to take part in the elections and the candidates who voluntarily pay a higher fee are automatically qualified for the second round, (c) whereby the first-round elections of the other candidates are divided into two random groups, (d) whereby the elections are based on a positional voting system (i.e., assigning points), (e) whereby each region would have the same number votes, regardless of its population, and (f) whereby the votes per region would be a 50/50 combination of the people's vote and a vote by a special unelected committee of 'experts' .

Would any of this be acceptable? (a) perhaps, (d) may be an interesting alternative to the, allegedly too complicated, alternative vote system (indeed there is some research on this issue), but (b),(c),(e) and (f) are out of question (though the latter two sound a bit like the EU Council and the House of Lords). So, one is wondering what type of signal Europe sends to the world about its best democratic practises ... still, one should watch it (or at least the best/worst entries online)

What interested me in April

2011-05-02T21:00:00.002+01:00

ISCL 2011 in Dublin

2011-04-28T08:39:00.005+01:00

I am heading to the Annual Conference of the Irish Society of Comparative Law (ISCL) tomorrow. If I have internet access, I may do some live-blogging on Saturday.

Annex: ok, it's Saturday 3.45pm, I am at the conference and to keep my live-blogging promise:

First of all, internet connection via Eduroam at University College Dublin (UCD) a bit shaky but it's good that they have it; yesterday I was at Trinity College Dublin and no Eduroam....
To respond to Twining, does the conference show that the "country & Western" perspective of comparative law is still predominant?
Well, yes, in general most papers are "Western" in focusing on the developed countries; exception: a good presentation by James Gallen (TCD)
The country-perspective is weakened: most papers have some EU and international law dimension (which is to be appreciated)
Something else: I just introduced myself to H. Patrick Glenn and his first comment was: "you published in the McGill Law Journal, didn't you?" It's good to be appreciated and it seems to show that even in the age of SSRN the branding of law journals can be quite useful (btw: the SSRN version of my McGill article is here).
Which leads to Glenn's presentation which was on Comparative Law and the Multi-Value Turn - quite interesting, based on ideas by Gabbay and Woods on The Many Valued and Nonmonotonic Turn in Logic.

Why are the French so rude? – or, how not to link law with culture

2011-04-22T11:41:00.007+01:00

I have been reading an interview with Hernando de Soto, the famous (or infamous) supporter of rule of law projects in Latin America (available here). For instance, De Soto explains the relationship between legal rules, productivity and culture as follows:

If you look at an average American (…) you find that they are people constantly looking for productivity. By contrast, Latin Americans are mostly concerned with public relations. We’re much smoother than they are. We get appointed the Secretary General of the United Nations without any problems. We’re very kind and courteous and wordy in and outside of the airport: cómo está usted, qué gusto, cómo le va, bien gracias, cómo está usted su merced. We’re much more polite than they are because we need public relations. Most Americans, or Swiss, or Germans are just dedicated to their productivity. They aren’t as nice as we are because they focus on production. This phenomenon forces Latin America to preserve medieval habits: pre-industrial revolution habits, which are concerned with the cultivation of public relations, instead of following rules. As a result, both our formal sector and our informal sector are much poorer that those of the developed countries like the US.

So, apparently, it’s bad for a country if everyone is very friendly because it shows that people don’t follow the law and, as a result, the economy is struggling. There, I come to the title of this post. In a recent Guardian Poll (here) 5,000 people from five European countries were asked what they think about the other four countries. One of the results is that the Spanish are regarded as the friendliest people, then the Polish, Germans and British, and the least friendly people are the French (a surprise?). Thus, De Soto may say that this is presumably because the French have a good and well enforced legal system; so you don’t need to rely on personal relationships and friendliness to get what you want.

Is this just nonsense? Well, De Soto is right in that in principle law and customs can be substitutes, but that’s hardly the whole story. People may be friendly or unfriendly for all kinds of reasons not related to the law. Moreover, I would assume that there is an omitted variable that influences both law and friendliness: in a well-functioning and wealthy country laws may be better and people may actually be friendlier then elsewhere, thus, there would be a positive not a negative correlation.

The Civil Law fights back … but is this useful?

2011-04-17T11:21:00.003+01:00

Financial economists (notably La Porta et al) and the World Bank (notably its Doing Business Report) take the firm view that Common Law legal systems are superior to the Civil Law ones since empirical evidence (allegedly) shows that the former is more supportive to economic development than the latter one (for critical comments see e.g. here, here, and here).

Naturally, some Civil Law countries have not been happy with this claim. In France the Association Henri Capitant des Amis de La Culture Juridique Française (here) and a group on the Attractivité Economique du Droit (here) challenged these findings. And in Germany the associations of lawyers, judges and notaries have set up a website in order to promote German law (here) – apparently in reaction to an initiative by the Law Society of England and Wales on English law as the international law of choice (here).

Now a number of French and German associations, sponsored by their governments, have joined forces and produced a report on “Continental law: global • predictable • flexible • cost-effective” (French/English version here; German/English version here). This report contains a number of broad statements outlining the (alleged) superiority of the Civil Law over the Common Law:

Continental law is characterized by statutes and codification (…) Because of such codification, continental law is accessible (…) In common law countries, the search for the applicable law often requires consulting a long series of court decisions in order to find an appropriate precedent – if one even exists. (p. 4)

Continental law countries are characterized by the existence of a civil code that serves as the general framework for contract law. (…) Contrary to common law countries, the parties do not have to create their own rules for each contract; the contract only needs to stipulate clauses on issues on which the parties wish to exclude or supplement the rules of the Code. (p. 6)

[U]nder both French law and German law, the obligor can be required to perform a promised service and is not discharged simply by paying a sum of money. Common law, on the other hand, enshrines the opposite principle, providing that, as a general rule, a contractual breach is sanctioned solely by an award of damages. (p. 9)

The costs of proceedings before a German civil court (…) are not only significantly lower than in the common law system, but the fee schedule enables the parties to calculate the risk involved in litigation from the outset. In France, access to the courts is not subject to fees and the parties pay only the specific expenses and fees of the legal professionals who assist them. The cost of these professionals is much lower than that of their common law counterparts (pp. 19-20)

The courts in continental law countries are also required to explain the reasons for their decisions. In contrast, in common law countries, when jury trials are used, juries do not have to give the reasons for their decision. Continental legal systems have adopted a simplified and streamlined law of evidence, which, among other advantages, obviates the slow and costly pre-trial exchanges of evidence conducted under pre-trial discovery. (p. 22)

Specialized courts and lawyers, who are often also qualified in the relevant scientific or engineering field, guarantee effective protection of intellectual property rights (…).The costs of proceedings before the specialized German and French courts are much lower than those in common law countries. (p. 25)

Does this make any sense? Well, it appears to me that now the Civil Law is repeating the mistakes of the La Porta/World Bank research (i.e., two wrongs don’t make a right): many choices that legal systems can make have advantages and disadvantages (e.g., codification can provide legal certainty but it may also be inflexible; low costs of legal proceedings can guarantee effective enforcement but may also encourage frivolous litigation etc, etc.). So, eventually, it is often a matter of preferences whether a legal system favours one solution or the other one, making statements about “better-ness” fairly dubious.

The Protection of Creditors of a European Private Company (SPE)

2011-04-08T15:05:00.002+01:00

A new joined paper with Leif Herzog and Erik Rosenhager, published in EBOR 2011 and the SSRN version is available here. The abstract reads:

Soon we can expect a new type of company: the European Private Company (Societas Privata Europaea – SPE) aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises in the EU. In this article, we analyse how creditors of future SPEs will be protected. In the first part, we identify on a general level how creditors can be protected. Then, we turn to the tools used in the different draft versions of an SPE statute (Commission Draft, EP Draft, Presidency Compromise). As these do not cover all aspects of creditor protection, the next part examines how these gaps ought to be filled. Subsequently, we discuss whether, from a normative perspective, creditor protection in the EU should be further harmonised. Overall, we conclude that what emerges is a mixed picture between various levels of European and national rules. This may not be ideal but it may be the price worth paying in order to reach political agreement on SPE law.

What interested me in March

2011-03-31T21:25:00.000+01:00

Refinement of law journal ranking?

2011-03-27T14:24:00.004+01:00

About a week ago I posted a new law journal ranking (available here) which combines the rankings of the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the US citations statistics by Washington & Lee University (W&L). The overall result does not look too bad but a couple of refinements could be made:

First, the ARC ranking gives perhaps too much prominence to Australian (and New Zealand) journals. Thus, with respect to these journals, it may be more reliable just to use the W&L data.
Second, as explained in my previous post, with respect the W&L data, I distinguish between the US ranking and the non US one. However, the non-US data may favour the Canadian journals, since in the US academics may feel more inclined to look to Canada than to legal journals from other continents. Thus, with respect to the Canadian journals, it may be more reliable just to use the ARC data.
Third, it seems likely that both rankings underrate the EU law journals since Australian and US scholars may not have enough interest in topics of EU law. Thus, one could make the case for shifting the EU law journals (ie not all European journals but the ones with a core interest in EU law, e.g., ELR, ELJ, EBOR, ECFR, EBLR) up one rank.

So shall I make these refinements? Comments are welcome but I can already see the counterargument that such changes may be a bit too subjective.

Siemslegal World Law Journal Ranking 2011

2011-03-19T11:46:00.004Z

This ranking covers English-language law journals only. It is based on the data of the ARC and Washington & Lee rankings. The precise method is explained below the ranking. The categories used are A*, A, A-, B, C, and D. I’m open to suggestions how this ranking may be improved (for some of my own ideas see already here).

Grade	Journals
A*	Columbia Law Review Cornell Law Review Duke Law Journal Georgetown Law Journal Harvard International Law Journal Harvard Law Review International and Comparative Law Quarterly McGill Law Journal Melbourne University Law Review Michigan Journal of International Law New York University Law Review Northwestern University Law Review Osgoode Hall Law Journal Oxford Journal of Legal Studies Stanford Law Review The Modern Law Review The Sydney Law Review UCLA Law Review University of Chicago Law Review University of Pennsylvania Law Review University of Toronto Law Journal Vanderbilt Law Review Virginia Law Review Yale Law Journal
A	American Journal of Comparative Law American Journal of International Law Arizona State Law Journal Boston University Law Review Cambridge Law Journal Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence Common Market Law Review Current Legal Problems European Journal of International law Federal Law Review Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review Harvard Journal of Law and Technology Human Rights Law Review International Journal of Constitutional Law Journal of International Criminal Justice Journal of International Economic Law Journal of Law and Society Law and Contemporary Problems Law and Philosophy Law Quarterly Review Legal Studies Leiden Journal of International Law Michigan Law Review Minnesota Law Review New Zealand Law Review New Zealand Universities Law Review Notre Dame Law Review Queen's Law Journal Southern California Law Review Texas Law Review The British Journal of Criminology The Journal of Legal Studies Theoretical Inquiries in Law Yale Journal of International Law
A-	American Business Law Journal American Criminal Law Review Arbitration International Asian Journal of Comparative Law Berkeley Technology Law Journal Boston College Law Review Canadian Business Law Journal Canadian Journal of Family Law Civil Justice Quarterly Columbia Journal of Transnational Law Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy Criminal Law and Philosophy Dalhousie Law Journal Emory Law Journal European Business Organization Law Review European Law Journal European Law Review Fordham Law Review George Washington Law Review Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics German Law Journal Griffith Law Review Harvard Environmental Law Review Harvard Human Rights Journal Harvard Journal of Law and Gender Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy Harvard Negotiation Law Review Indigenous Law Journal Industrial Law Journal International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family International Journal of Refugee Law International Journal of Transitional Justice International Review of Law and Economics Iowa Law Review Journal of Competition Law and Economics Journal of Corporate Law Studies Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Journal of Empirical Legal Studies Journal of Environmental Law Journal of Law Economics and Organization Journal of Legal History Journal of Private International Law Journal of World Investment and Trade Law and Society Review Law, Culture and the Humanities Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly Medical Law Review New York University Journal of International Law and Politics Nordic Journal of International Law North Carolina Law Review Public Law Review Regulation and Governance Singapore Journal of Legal Studies Singapore Year Book of International Law Social and Legal Studies South African Journal on Human Rights The Supreme Court Review Theoretical Criminology: an international journal UC Davis Law Review University of British Columbia Law Review University of Illinois Law Review University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform University of New South Wales Law Journal Virginia Journal of International Law Washington Law Review William and Mary Law Review Wisconsin Law Review World Competition: Law and Economics Review Yale Journal on Regulation Yale Law and Policy Review
B	Alabama Law Review Alberta Law Review American Journal of Law and Medicine American University International Law Review American University Law Review Antitrust Law Journal Arizona Law Review Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology Australian Journal of Corporate Law Australian Journal of Family Law Australian Journal of Labour Law Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice Brigham Young University Law Review British Tax Review British Year Book of International Law Brooklyn Law Review Business Law International California Law Review Canadian Bar Review Canadian Criminal Law Review Canadian Journal of Law and Society Canadian Journal of Women and the Law Canadian Tax Journal Capital Markets Law Journal Cardozo Law Review Chicago-Kent Law Review Chicago Journal of International Law Child and Family Law Quarterly Chinese Journal of International Law Clinical Law Review Columbia Human Rights Law Review Columbia Journal of Environmental Law Common Law World Review Connecticut Law Review Constitutional Commentary Crime and Delinquency Criminal Law Forum Criminal Law Journal Criminal Law Review Delaware Journal of Corporate Law Ecology Law Quarterly Ethics: an international journal of social, political, and legal philosophy European Competition Law Review European Human Rights Law Review European Journal of Law and Economics Feminist Legal Studies Florida Law Review Georgetown Immigration Law Journal Georgetown Journal of International Law Georgia Law Review German Yearbook of International Law Hague Journal on the Rule of Law Harvard Journal on Legislation Hofstra Law Review Hong Kong Law Journal Houston Law Review Indiana Law Journal Intellectual Property Quarterly International Journal of Cultural Property International Journal of Evidence and Proof International Journal of Law in Context International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law International Journal of the Legal Profession International Review of the Red Cross Journal of Business Law Journal of Comparative Law Journal of Conflict Law and Security Journal of Contract Law Journal of Corporation Law Journal of Equity Journal of International Law and International Relations Jurimetrics Law and Critique Law and Policy Law and Social Inquiry Law, Probability and Risk Legal Ethics Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review Medicine and Law: an international journal Melbourne Journal of International Law Michigan Journal of Gender and Law Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review Monash University Law Review National Tax Journal Netherlands International Law Review Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights New Criminal Law Review Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly Ohio State Law Journal Otago Law Review Ottawa Law Review Pepperdine Law Review Public Law Ratio Juris South African Law Journal Southern Methodist University Law Review Stanford Environmental Law Journal Stanford Journal of International Law Stanford Law and Policy Review Statute Law Review Supreme Court Economic Review Tax Law Review Texas International Law Journal The Australian Feminist Law Journal The International Journal of Children's Rights The Journal of Law and Economics Tulane Law Review University of Chicago Legal Forum University of Cincinnati Law Review University of Colorado Law Review University of Ottawa Law and Technology Journal University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law Victoria University of Wellington Law Review Virginia Tax Review Washington and Lee Law Review Washington University Law Review William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics Yale Journal of Law and Feminism Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law
C	Adelaide Law Review Administrative Law Review African Journal of International and Comparative Law Air Force Law Review Alternative Law Journal American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review American Bankruptcy Law Journal American Journal of Criminal Law American Journal of Jurisprudence American Journal of Legal History American Law and Economics Review Annals of Air and Space Law Annals of Health Law Annual Review of Law and Social Science Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law Art, Antiquity, and Law Asian Journal of WTO & International Health Law and Policy Australian Business Law Review Australian Intellectual Property Journal Australian Journal of Asian Law Australian Journal of Human Rights Australian Law Journal Banking and Finance Law Review Baylor Law Review Behavioral Sciences and the Law Berkeley Business Law Journal Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law Berkeley Journal of International Law Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review Boston College International and Comparative Law Review Boston College Third World Law Journal Boston University International Law Journal Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal BYU Journal of Public Law Canadian Labour and Employment Law Journal Canadian Yearbook of International Law Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law Cato Supreme Court Review Climate and Carbon Law Review Columbia Business Law Review Columbia Journal of Asian Law Columbia Journal of Gender and Law Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts Columbia Science and Technology Law Review Company and Securities Law Journal Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal Computer Law and Security Report Conveyancer and Property Lawyer Cornell International Law Journal Crime, Law and Social Change Criminal Justice and Behavior Denver Journal of International Law and Policy Denver University Law Review DePaul Law Review Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy Emory International Law Review Environmental Law Reporter European Intellectual Property Review European Public Law European Review of Private Law Family Court Review Family Law Quarterly Federal Courts Law Review Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal Fordham International Law Journal Fordham Journal of Corporate and Financial Law George Mason Law Review George Washington International Law Review Georgetown International Environmental Law Review Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law Hastings Business Law Journal Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly Hastings International and Comparative Law Review Hastings Law Journal Hastings Women's Law Journal Health Economics, Policy and Law Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal Human Rights Quarterly Idea (Concord): the intellectual property law review IIC International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law Immigration and Nationality Law Review Indiana International and Comparative Law Review Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Intellectual Property Journal International Criminal Law Review International Journal for the Semiotics of Law International Journal of Law Crime and Justice International Journal of Law & Information Technology Israel Yearbook of Human Rights Jindal Global Law Review Journal of African Law Journal of Air Law and Commerce Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Journal of Consumer Policy Journal of Environmental Law & Practice Journal of Gender, Race and Justice Journal of Human Rights Journal of Intellectual Property Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law Journal of Law and Medicine Journal of Law and Policy Journal of Law and Politics (USA) Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics Journal of Legal Analysis Journal of Legal Education Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law Journal of National Security Law and Policy Journal of Tort Law Journal of World Trade Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law Jurist: Studies in Church Law and Ministry Justice Quarterly King's Law Journal Law & Ethics of Human Rights Law and History Review Law and Human Behavior Law and Inequality Law and Literature Law and Sexuality Law Text Culture Legal Information Management Legal Issues of Economic Integration Legal Theory Lewis & Clark Law Review Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law Maryland Law Review Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law McGill Journal of Law and Health Media and Arts Law Review Michigan Journal of Race and Law Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology Netherlands Yearbook of International Law New York Law School Law Review New York University Annual Survey of American Law New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law New Zealand Journal of Taxation Law and Policy New Zealand Law Journal North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology Northwestern Journal of International Law and Business Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution Oklahoma Law Review Oregon Law Review Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal Restitution Law Review Review of European Community and International Environmental Law Review of Law and Economics Review of Law and Social Change Rutgers Law Journal Rutgers Law Review Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal Saskatchewan Law Review Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal Stanford Journal of Law, Business and Finance Stanford Technology Law Review Studies in Law, Politics, and Society Sur - International Journal on Human Rights Temple Law Review Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal The American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law The Journal Jurisprudence The International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals The Journal of Law and Technology The Supreme Court Law Review Tort Law Review Torts Law Journal Tulane Maritime Law Journal UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy UMKC Law Review University of Miami Law Review University of New Brunswick Law Journal University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business and Employment Law University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law University of Pittsburgh Law Review University of Queensland Law Journal Utrecht Law Review Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law Villanova Law Review Virginia Environmental Law Journal Virginia Journal of Law and Technology Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law Wake Forest Law Review Washington University Journal of Law and Policy William and Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law Wisconsin International Law Journal World Trade Review Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities Yearbook of European Law Yearbook of International Environmental Law
D	All other journals

Explanations:

This ranking is a synthesis of the ranking by the Australian Research Council (in the following “ARC ranking”; available here; since it covers all disciplines, I have extracted the law journals here) and the ranking by Washington & Lee University School of Law (in the following “W&L ranking”; available here; I have used the combined rank 2010). The ARC ranking is based on expert assessments and the W&L ranking on journal citations. Neither of these two methods is perfect and there are a couple of strange results in both of these rankings. Yet, combining them one can get a grip of these obscurities and it seems to produce a plausible result.
Population. In general, all journals of the W&L ranking have been included since this ranking is the most comprehensive one (more than 1000+ journals). However, I have dropped the few journals not published in English.
Then, I started with the ARC rating and coded the A* journals as category 1, the A journals as category 2, the B journals as category 3, and the C and all other journals as category 4.
For the W&L ranking one needs to distinguish between US and non-US journals since this ranking is based on citations in US journals, and, here, naturally US journals are cited more frequently than non-US ones. Thus, to provide a non-arbitrary comparison between US and non-US journals I used the prevalence of US and non-US journals in the ARC rating to indicate how many US and non-US journals belong to the categories 1 to 3. In the ARC ranking, there are 31 US and 26 non-US journals in category 1, 74 US and 87 non-US journals in category 2, and 210 US and 114 non-US journals in category 3. Thus, with respect to the W&L ranking, I classified the first 31 US journals and the first 26 non-US journals of this ranking as 1 - and similarly, for the categories 2 and 3. All other journals are in category 4.
Finally, I could calculate the average of the two categories for each journal, and, then, I decided to call a journal A* if the average is 1, A if it is 1.5, A- if it is 2, B if it is 2.5, and C if it is 3. All other journals may be called D.

My most popular posts – and an idea

2011-03-12T19:04:00.001Z

Blogger has the interesting function showing your most popular blogposts. My top ten posts in terms of pageviews are:

Law Journal Rankings (507)
Citation Ranking of UK Universities (Law) (235)
(Law) Journal Ranking of Australian Research Council (213)
Times Good University Guide 2011 (197)
Guardian university league table 2011 (126)
Bologna and Highest Courts (109)
Cartesio: Daily Mail still good law! (95)
The Driest Part of the UK (80)
New Citation Ranking of UK Universities (Law) (67)
ISNIE 2010 (43)

The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that the ranking posts are very popular, in particular the ones on law journal rankings. Many legal academics are sceptical about such ranking attempts but presumably there is some demand for a form of assessment which goes beyond just saying that all depends on the quality of the individual piece. When I have time, I am planning to post my own journal ranking. This sounds bold but actually it would not be entirely new but merge and adjust the two least imperfect law journal rankings (the ARC and the W&L one)…. so watch this space but it may still take a while until I do it.

What interested me in February

2011-02-28T15:37:00.000Z

REF 2014 Panels published – a quick word cloud

2011-02-21T15:43:00.004Z

The Research Excellences Framework (REF) 2014 will use various tools in order to assess the research quality of UK universities. The most important one is that panels will assess four papers submitted by each UK academic. The composition of these panels has just been published (here). I extracted the affiliations of the panel members and put them into Wordle: see the picture above. The top five universities in terms of members are Cambridge, Manchester, Oxford, Edinburgh and UCL.

The East and the West

2011-02-16T11:00:00.003Z

I just returned from Fukuoka. On the plane I watched a couple of underwhelming movies plus an excellent Korean documentary on The East and the West. The documentary is based on simply experiments showing differences between Eastern and Western culture. Usually, I don’t like these generalisations but it is actually quite astonishing. I have not been able to find the documentary online but there is a description of the project here and a related youtube video here (it’s in Korean, I think, but one actually does get the point!).

Kyushu University: Conference on Collective Actions

2011-02-09T10:49:00.004Z

I'm heading to Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, tomorrow presenting my paper on derivative action. The conference website is available here.

What interested me in January

2011-01-31T17:41:00.001Z

The Financial Regulation of Energy and Environmental Markets

2011-01-29T19:18:00.002Z

By Ivan Diaz-Rainey and John Ashton with minor input by me. Available here . The abstract reads:

An often cited critique of financial regulation is that it is a patchwork of legislation addressing past crises. This paper provides a forward looking account as to the financial risks that European wholesale energy and environmental markets (EEM) may pose and to what extent current regulatory regimes and legislative developments address these risks. The first part of the paper discusses how the process of liberalisation of the energy sector, coupled with the use of market instruments to tackle environmental problems has resulted in the growth of EEM. This transition coupled with changes in capital markets has augmented or created associated financial and macroeconomic risks. Accordingly, we explore the nature of these risks within the context of past academic research on financial crises and financial regulation leading to a theoretical justification for the risk based financial regulation of EEM. The second part of the paper provides a legislative analysis of the evolving approach to the financial regulation of EEM. It draws mainly on ‘grey’ literatures in order to critically appraise the bewildering array of current policy initiatives and reviews that have the potential to affect the financial regulation and operation of EEM in Europe. We discuss some of the likely impacts of these reform initiatives and make some related policy recommendations, as well as suggestions for further research.

Using Google Books Ngram Viewer for legal research?

2011-01-22T21:55:00.014Z

Well, at least fun to play with Google Books Ngram Viewer. This freely available tool works as follows: “When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the selected years” (of course, normalised per all books of this year). So, now a couple of examples somehow related to what (legal) scholars may be interested in:

(1) blue: "rights"; red: "duties"

(2) blue: "German law"; red: "French law"; green: "Chinese law"; yellow: "Indian law"

(3) blue: "corporate social responsibility"; red: "shareholder value"

(4) blue: "humanities"; red: "social sciences"; green: "natural sciences"

Limitations: what books are we exactly talking about? Is the word really mentioned in a meaningful way? Or were there alternative words in previous times? Thus, more generally, do these graphs show that concepts or the use of language or both have changed? And why did any of this happen? Thus, perhaps, the best way to think about these graphs is that they can show that something interesting is going on, leading to further research in particular topics.

What interested me in December

2011-01-17T09:24:00.001Z

with a slight delay …

Back! – and blogging preview

2011-01-14T21:55:00.002Z

Happy New Year! I just returned from Shanghai. It was great but my long absence also means that work has accumulated. Still, this year too, I will try to write at least one blog post per week. I already have a list of a few topics but I’m not sure whether I’ll really be able to really to write about all of them:

My China experience at SJTU (university motto “Think of its source while drinking water, love your country and do your university credit”, as translated here)
On how to get abstract from SSRN in RSS form, following a post by Distant Travel.
A few examples on how to use Google Books Ngram Viewer for legal research.
A mini-empirical analysis of my blog statistics for 2010.
The “What interested me in December” post, following in the next few days.

Shanghai and blogging break

2010-12-23T09:02:00.002Z

If things work well (Heathrow!), I'm going to fly to Shanghai tomorrow, visiting at the law school of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I'll therefore take three weeks off blogging and will be back in mid January.

Programme on Lord Bingham - and how Lord Falconer got it completely wrong

2010-12-22T22:12:00.009Z

I just listened to the BBC Radio 4 programme “” Unreliable Evidence” (see here) on the late Lord Bingham, described as one of the greatest judges of all time (here). It was very interesting to me, not least since I had been a visiting fellow at the BICCL in the last four months which has been closely associated with Lord Bingham. There was not a lot to disagree with the interviewees - until in the final seconds of the programme Lord Falconer said the following about the judiciary: "The way forward is the way how Tom [Bingham] demonstrates, which is to focus on the law: what judges do well is being judges (...)". This was said in the context of judges not being celebrities, which I agree they should not be, but, still, I find this statement clearly wrong. Lord Falconer seems to assume that the law is something independent to political, social and economic circumstances, the latter being things judges should apparently ignore. But such kind of positivism is really something that has been out-of-date for more than half a century. Of course, judges are not politicians but a good judge should clearly not only know the law but be aware of its socio-economic context.

Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law: a brief book review

2010-12-19T19:46:00.011Z

I am just reading more properly most of the chapters of the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (Reimann and Zimmermann eds, 2006). Overall, I find it very useful: Part II (approaches to comparative law) is very good; personally, I’m less interested in Part I (history of comparative law) and a couple of chapters of Part III (subject areas) may a bit old-fashioned.

Of course, all comments of the OUP Handbook have to reflect the – outrageous but entertaining – “criticisms of all criticisms” by Pierre Legrand, published in the Journal of Comparative Law and online available here . He writes:

"This book evidences pathologies not unfamiliar to the field of comparative legal studies: A compulsion for lists and an obsession with size. (...) But what (…) use reports devoting fully 32 pages to France (…) and 25 per cent less to the whole of ‘East Asia’? … What benefit a map of the world’s laws when 11 of the 15 mappers teach in Germany or the US with over 70 per cent of these US academics operating around the Great Lakes? (…) (C)contributions were thus entrusted to friends and to friends of friends — a chromophobia indulged by the publishers. What was needed was violence of thought. What is proposed is hegemonic, aparthood-like violence that is unable to engender thought.(…)"

Does Legrand have a point? I just did a mini-analysis of the 43 contributors: (1) Looking at their current affiliations 33% are from the US, 19% from Germany, 9% from the UK and from South Africa, 7% from Italy and France, 5% from the Netherlands and 2% (i.e. one author) from Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Canada, Japan and Lebanon. (2) Alternatively, one can look at the countries of origin of the authors: then, Germany tops the list with 30%, followed by the US with 28%, South Africa 9%, the UK and Italy 7%, France and the Netherlands 5%, and the Czech Republic, Canada, Japan and Lebanon 1%.

So, yes, the choice of contributors is skewed. The US and Germany are overrepresented and the UK, France and Italy underrepresented. Importantly, a number of major jurisdictions are not represented at all, e.g., Russia,China, India, and Brazil. There are also no contributors from Latin America, the Nordic countries and any African country with the exception of South Africa.

Is this a problem? I am divided: on the one hand, a country or continent quota of authors would be slightly odd. What matters is the quality of the contributions. So, using the UK REF terminology, I’m perfectly happy to read a 4* article by the 10th contributor of country A, ignoring the 1* contributions by the first author of country B. On the other hand, where we are from and where we are clearly influences the way we think and write about law. Thus, authors from other jurisdictions may have provided different ideas about comparative legal thinking reflecting the plurality of legal systems and methods around the world.

Networks, Dialogue or One-Way Traffic? An Empirical Analysis of Cross-Citations between Ten European Supreme Courts

2010-12-12T13:27:00.000Z

The second paper of the project with Martin Gelter, available here. Abstract:

Today, according to Anne Marie Slaugther, "judges see each other not only as servants and representatives of a particular polity, but also as fellow professionals in an endeavour that transcends national borders." Such interaction may take place in various forms. There is some direct transnational cooperation between supreme court judges, but in our project we focus on cross-citations as a form of influence. To be sure, the citation of a foreign court does not necessarily mean that foreign ideas were really a decisive consideration for the outcome of a case. Still, cross-citations can show to what extent courts use foreign law as a justification for a judicial decision.
In this short paper, which is part of a wider research project, we present and analyse some of our findings on cross-citations between ten European supreme courts. We managed to get access to the full text of almost all decisions of these ten courts for the period between 2000 and 2007. It total we considered 636,172 decisions and found 1,426 cross-citations. The paper is structured as follows: first, we summarise the data considered and the search methodology used. The next two parts present different ways to visualise these data: on the one hand three types of bar charts showing the citations per citing court, and on the other hand two network presentations of the cross-citations between the ten courts. Subsequently, we examine the relationship between incoming and outgoing citations, in particular whether some of the ten courts may be regarded as "the core" and others as "the periphery". Finally, we discuss possible policy implications, in particular in the context of the European Union.

Language, Legal Origins, and Culture Before Courts: Cross-Citations Between Supreme Courts in Europe

2010-12-06T21:51:00.002Z

A joined empirical paper with Martin Gelter (Fordham). The paper is available here, and the abstract reads:

Should courts consider cases from other jurisdictions? The use of foreign law precedent has sparked considerable debate in the United States, and this question is also controversially discussed in Europe. In this paper and within the larger research project from which it has developed, we study the dialogue between different European supreme courts quantitatively. Using legal databases in Austria, Belgium, England and Wales, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland, we have hand-collected a dataset of transnational citations between the highest courts of these countries, in total searching 636,172 decisions decided between 2000 and 2007.
In the present paper we show that citation of foreign law by supreme courts is not an isolated phenomenon in Europe, but happens on a regular basis. We found 1,426 instances in which these courts have cited the supreme courts of the other nine countries. The majority (1,077) of these citations have been made for purely comparative reasons. We also undertook regression analysis in order to understand the differences between the cross-citations. Whether such citations take place and in what quantity depends on the particular legal culture and its relationship to others. Austria and Ireland, which stand in an asymmetric relationship with Germany and England respectively, seem to be particularly receptive to foreign influence on their legal systems. But even controlling for these outliers, we have been able to identify that the population of the cited country and a low level of corruption, native languages and language skills, legal origins and families, and cultural and political factors all matter for which courts are likely to be cited. More specifically, knowledge of the language of the cited court appears to be a more important factor driving cross-citations than legal traditions, culture or politics. Thus, to facilitate a transnational market of legal ideas, it can be suggested that courts should strive to make their decisions available in languages that possible readers understand.

What interested me November

2010-12-02T11:20:00.001Z

Virus alert and updated blogroll

2010-11-28T18:36:00.000Z

I have not been blogging for a few days, mainly because my laptops and memory sticks have been “funny” for a few days. Well, it was a nasty virus located on (or at least triggered by) the autorun of one of the memory sticks. Now, everything should be back to normal, thanks to Panda USB Vaccine,…. hopefully… I have just reinstalled everything on my main laptop, including my blog reader. This also led me to my blogroll (right hand column of this site) where I fixed a couple of links and added a few more.

The relationship between judges and law professors is ...

2010-11-15T22:16:00.002Z

similar to the one between ...

masters and servants?
kings and queens?
birds and ornithologists?
construction workers and architects?
body and brain?
applied and theoretical physicists?
apples and oranges?

I guess my own view is that it should be 6 and 7, or perhaps 3 as well. 4 and 5 may be ok. I would oppose 1 or 2.

Research grant heaven

2010-11-11T22:01:00.003Z

Personal background of this post please see here

Becoming British?

2010-11-07T16:48:00.003Z

I slightly off-topic post again. Since I have been living in the UK for more than five years, I’m eligible to become a British citizen. I have also just learned that Germany changed its citizenship law two years ago, meaning that I could also keep my German passport. Such a dual nationality (and two passports) may be quite handy since I may travel to different countries of the Middle Eastern again and some of them don’t like it if you have a stamp of “their enemy” in your passport. So, then, shall I do it? Well, to become British I need to pass a Life in the UK Test, which actually looks like fun (it’s available here). Anything else: well, there is a fee of GBP 735... With all due respect to the difficult financial position the

is in, this seems to me slightly excessive for a simple administrative act. So, I guess, for the time being I will not become British and will continue cheering when Germany beats England in the World Cup...

What interested me in October

2010-10-31T19:56:00.001Z

New Paper on "Private Enforcement of Directors’ Duties: Derivative Actions as a Global Phenomenon"

2010-10-30T18:16:00.003+01:00

Presented this week at a UCL & Oxford Law & Finance workshop, and early next year at a conference on collective actions in Fukuoka, Japan. The paper is available here, and the abstract reads as follows:

When directors are in breach of their duties, it seems natural to give shareholders a claim for compensation. However, directors’ duties are owed to the company, not shareholders individually. This raises the question of whether individual shareholders can sue for compensation on behalf of the company. In some legal systems such derivative actions have been in place for a long time, but, recently, many other legal systems have also introduced or facilitated them. Still, there is considerable diversity around the world. In this paper I explore how the availability of derivative actions is related to other differences between countries, for instance, the common law/civil law divide, the ownership structure of firms, and other questions of shareholder protection and civil procedure. The main result is that today the common law/civil divide does not account for the differences and similarities in the law of derivative actions across countries. However, a quantitative analysis of 25 legal systems still confirmed a legal family effect in 1995 which could also be linked to differences in the ownership structure of firms. Other explanatory hypotheses could not be confirmed: cultural characteristics have not stopped countries such as Japan or China from incorporating rules on derivative actions into their company laws. It was also not found that legal systems use derivative actions as an ex-post substitute for other forms of shareholder protection; rather, different forms of shareholder protection can be regarded as complements.

Comments are very welcome.

A few steps too far: Quantifying the price of academics

2010-10-24T20:22:00.008+01:00

Friday’s article in the Wall Street Journal on “Putting a Price on Professors” has received considerable attention in the blogosphere. It discusses an attempt of some US universities to measure precisely whether professors are giving the taxpayers their money's worth. To quote:

A 265-page spreadsheet, released last month by the chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, amounted to a profit-and-loss statement for each faculty member, weighing annual salary against students taught, tuition generated, and research grants obtained.... One metric divides their salary by the number of students that they teach... The concept of a productivity spreadsheet came from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank .... Bill Peacock, a vice president at the foundation, acknowledges that this approach could mean a radical reshaping of academia, with far more emphasis on filling students with practical information and less on intellectual pursuits, especially in the liberal arts....

What do I think about this? Well, I need to start with the continental European “model”, where many professors are civil servants and can do whatever they like (unless they don’t kill someone etc ...), and therefore some (not all) of them are plainly lazy. So, there is certainly some need for measurement, incentives and competition. In this respect, I’m also not entirely (!) against the forthcoming changes to higher education funding in England: it seems fair enough to move away from the “one-size-fits-it-all fee” and let universities compete (meaning that the top-research universities will charge higher fees then the mere teaching-led ones). But, then, of course the Texas “model” goes many steps too far: it completely misses the “joy of knowledge for its own sake” (see Bainbridge with a nice link to Stephen Fry in Qi), and the problem of “quantifying the unquantifiable (see the equally wonderful Dilbert cartoons available here).

Paradoxically, Lord Browne: the impact of the Review of Higher Education Funding in England

2010-10-11T20:54:00.003+01:00

Until now UK universities face a cap in tuition fees to undergraduate students: Home and EU students can only be charged up to £3225 per year, whereas overseas students usually have to pay three times as much. This will all change now since (more or less) English universities will be free to charge whatever they like. What’s the likely impact of this liberalisation of tuition fees? Two consequences may appear likely but, possibly, the effect may be quite different:

First, a possible claim could be that Home/EU students will the losers of this reform since their tuition fees will rise. Well, that will be the case. However, at the moment the problem for Home/EU students is that they may not get into universities in the first place (or at least not the university they want to) since universities are keen on attracting higher-value overseas students. So, the likely effect is that it will actually become easier for Home/EU students to get into (top) universities to the detriment of overseas students.

Second, one could claim that now, since universities can charge higher tuition fees, they will focus more on teaching and less on research. I don’t think this is likely. Competition between universities will increase and the core distinguishing feature will be reputation based on the quality of research. As an illustration, just take US universities, which can charge whatever they like (I think): here, of course, any applicant would die to get into the topic research universities (Harvard, Yale etc), and if he/she does not succeed at least one of the tier one universities. So, as the US example shows, liberalised tuition fees do not make universities abandon research but, rather, the opposite: it makes research and its marketing more important.

What interested me in September

2010-10-02T10:42:00.001+01:00

THE World University Rankings

2010-09-26T13:39:00.006+01:00

Published a few days ago on its website. It seems to be less imperfect than the alternative rankings (here and here) but one is still wondering whether institutional differences across countries (to mention just a few: public or private structure of universities, sources of funding, types of academic positions and careers, forms of teaching) do not lead to a comparison between apples and oranges. Moreover, many universities have very focused ambitions, e.g., in terms of fields of research, though in this respect it may help that the THE will also publish separate subject-specific rankings in the following weeks (see its website).

Legrand (again) - did he really write and they really publish “that”

2010-09-19T11:37:00.007+01:00

It’s a couple of years old but I’m just reading Pierre Legrand, “Un the Unbearable Localness of Law: Academic Fallacies and Unseasonable Observations”, (2002) 1 European Review of Private Law 61 at p. 75, where he talks about his decision to leave the University of Tilburg:

Having been hired under false pretenses by Tilburg University in 1994 (...). I had rapidly become aware that academic life in the law faculty was distressingly stifling and “intellectual” life narrow almost beyond description. As a foreigner, I was also experiencing “collegial” life – characterised by its hierarchical and homogeneizing ethos – as demonstrably antipathetic. Having resolved to fight the acute sense of depression instilled by me by arid and conformist institutional agendas, I (...) eventually became determined to leave no matter where I would find a teaching post (...)

The obvious questions may be: what horrible had exactly happen to PL in Tilburg? Who are the persons behind this drama? What’s the most outraging element of his attack? (I would go for the two “”s) But then also: is it really useful to burn bridges? Does it really make you content to look back in anger? And, obviously, how could the European Review of Private Law publish such an entirely personal (though, admittedly, interesting) statement?

Paradoxically, Legrand ...

2010-09-12T21:11:00.001+01:00

What better to do on a Sunday afternoon than reading the infamous Pierre Legrand... I just managed the 85-page article on ‘Paradoxically, Derrida: For a Comparative Legal Studies’ (available here), the problem being that with the exception of the first 10 pages (a polemic against Hein Kötz) this article is absolutely incomprehensible. Well, perhaps I exaggerate very slightly because there is one good paragraph:

What is required in an age of globalization is not so much yet more technical knowledge about what a foreign law says on any given point at any given time, for one can relatively easily consult an encyclopedia or enlist the help of a foreign lawyer to ascertain such rudimentary data. Rather, there is an urgent need to understand how foreign legal communities think about the law, why they think about the law as they do, why they would find it difficult to think about the law in any other way, and how their thought differs from ours. It is this kind of fundamental information about alterity-in-the-law that comparatists are uniquely suited to provide and that they should be seeking to disseminate, leaving the technical updates to practitioners specializing in a given foreign law (id. p. 707)

Here, paradoxically, Legrand is absolutely right.

A Tory on the German Constitutional Court?

2010-09-05T22:09:00.005+01:00

I just return from a nice Alumni conference in Oxford (New College), organised by the DAAD. They had a number of great speakers, for instance Prof Di Fabio, one of the judges of the German constitutional court (BVerfG). Amongst other things, Di Fabio talked about the criticism of the 2009 Lisbon decision of the BVerfG: the court being accused of having a Eurosceptic attitude similar to the Tories in England – to which he added, that in his view "this is not the worst accusation".

What shall we think about this? On the one hand, this statement may not have been a surprise since Di Fabio is known to be one is known to be one of the politically most conservative judges of the BVerfG (given his Italian name, one may almost tempted to call him the ‘German Scalia’). On the other hand, I would not assume that English Supreme Court judges would make such open political confessions. Perhaps, the background lies in the different appointment procedures: in the German system the judges of the BVerfG are selected on recommendation by one of the political parties, with the comprise that overall half of the judges should be selected by the centre-left and the other half by the centre-right. Thus, it is usually known anyway which position a particular judge may have. In the case of Di Fabio it may also matter that he is actually a law professor, and therefore he may still feel the freedom of an academic to say whatever he thinks.

What interested me in August

2010-08-31T21:33:00.000+01:00

Comparative Law Methodology as a Football Match?

2010-08-29T18:40:00.003+01:00

Back to my comparative law project: I’ve been reading Sir Basil Markesinis and Jörg Fedtke, Engaging with Foreign Law (Oxford: Hart, 2009). Inter alia, they talk about different approaches to comparative legal research and then wonder …

“which academic school was gaining the upper hand: Hein Kötz, Ulrich Magnus, Walter van Gerven or Reinhard Zimmerman, one might argue, versus Duncan Kennedy, Ugo Mattei, Pierre Legrand or Annelise Riles? That is four on either side, so is it a draw?”

However, I’m really wondering whether there are just these eight comparative lawyers in the world? And, Sir Basil and his colleague would presumably count as well – so according to their logic the traditionalists (the first group) would beat the post-modernists (the second one). More generally, of course, I’m the view that this confrontational approach is not appropriate anyway. To restate a point I made earlier (see here):

“(This article) identifies four ways of ‘being original’ in legal research. (...) Despite the ambition of this article to identify ‘good research’ its attitude is one of tolerance. It does not try to promote a particular way or method of legal research. The four different approaches (and their various sub-cases) cover both traditional and contextual research. They also address both positive and normative aspect of legal research. Thus, this article advocates that legal academics have choice and that ranking of different methodologies should be avoided (…).”

Norwich and London

2010-08-20T16:45:00.004+01:00

For anyone interested in where I am.... As now reported in the news as well, the law school building of UEA, the 430-year old Earlham Hall, is currently closed for structural problems (reported here). Fortunately, I managed to get a nice desk in the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) where I’m currently a visiting fellow. It involves some commuting but it also enables me to focus on my current comparative project.

Do I have to follow every trend?

2010-08-11T19:40:00.007+01:00

Well, in general, I’m able to resist (e.g., I don’t have any of the iPhone/Pod/Pad things) but now I wanted to try the new London cycle hire scheme . It worked quite easily though I have to agree with the Guardian that you feel more like Miss Marple than Lance Armstrong. I’m also not sure about the name – so instead of Barclays (or even Boris) cycles, I’m going to import the French name ‘velib’.

How to decrease your google search hits .....

2010-08-02T22:28:00.002+01:00

Introduce a pay wall! As recently done by The London Times (chart based on Google trends searching for “The Times” [blue] and “Times Online” [red]).

What interested me in July

2010-07-31T11:10:00.001+01:00

A puzzling statement about law professors

2010-07-24T12:58:00.006+01:00

I’m just reading David S. Clark, ‘The Organization of Lawyers and Judges’ in the International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law (Vol. 16; Ch 3; 2002). He writes in para 56 that

“in Common Law countries (...) most full-time professors think of themselves mainly as teachers rather than scholars” (no references provided).

Well, it’s Saturday afternoon and I’m in the SOAS library in London doing research! Indeed, such a statement may have been valid 50 years ago but today it’s clearly outdated. And comparing the UK and Germany I would say that in the UK there is now a stronger focus on research (being the - positive - result of the frequent research assessment exercises), whereas German law professors have a considerably higher teaching load.

A nasty quote on law conferences

2010-07-20T08:46:00.000+01:00

“Like most international congresses, these are valuable primarily for the opportunities to meet people and see friends. What the organisers call the ‘scientific programme’ is almost always a debacle” (John Merryman as cited in Riles (ed.), Rethinking the Masters of Comparative Law, 2001, p. 120 note 101).

Well, I have been to this kind of conferences but I don’t think that this is an entirely fair statement any more. Actually, it may be a generational question. To explain, in law it used to be common that you just wrote a paper and then immediately submitted it to a journal for publication. That’s different in other social sciences where, before submitting it to journals, you present the paper at various conferences in order to get feedback (see only the first footnotes of journal articles in economics, finance etc). I would say that in the last few decades legal research – in particular when it has an interdisciplinary dimension – is moving into the same direction. So, gradually, academic conferences should become more meaningful ... though sometimes presentations can still be ‘a debacle’.

Jokes about law professors prohibited!

2010-07-14T15:30:00.002+01:00

As part of my new project on comparative law I'm reading (or re-reading) a couple of comparative law books. I'm planning to post a few quotes from these books in the following weeks. So here's the first one:

"The main compilation of Justinian was called the Digest or the Pandects (....). When it was finished, it was very finished. Justinian prohibited all further comment on it; (Fn) Justinian also solemnly prohibited making jokes about law professors who would come to teach it, though sanctions were not set out" (Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World, 2nd ed, pp. 130-1 with further references)

Sharp decline: "English law" in Harvard Law Review

2010-07-07T09:49:00.002+01:00

Following the previous post, the same exercise for "English law". As one would have expected, US law is becoming more and more independent of its English origins (PS: the 1890s data may be a bit misleading since the Harvard Law Review had presumably less issues/pages than in the 20th century).

Up and down: “German law” in Harvard Law Review

2010-07-06T15:37:00.015+01:00

Just a simple counting exercise. Does it mean anything? Well, in the first part of the 20^th century continental European legal ideas were highly influential in the

, which, interestingly, id not stop in the 1930s. In the 1940s to 60s the numbers remained relatively high, presumably due to the academics who had to leave

Germany

for the

in the late 1930s. Then, German law became less interesting with only a slight improvement in the noughties.

What interested me in June

2010-06-29T19:07:00.000+01:00

The virtual lack of virtual shareholder meetings (Conglomerate)

Culture and Corporate Governance: Recommendations from the Future of Banking Commission (Corporate Law and Governance)

British education budget to be slashed (Brooks)

Wake up fellow law professors (Balkinisation)

Do Law Schools golf (Money Law)

The Nineteenth Edition of Bluebook: Introductory thoughts on why legal scholars need a publication manual, not a citation manual (Conglomerate)

Maybe I’m just asocial but what’s the point of Facebook (Bainbridge)

Comparative Law project: looking for inspiration…

2010-06-22T11:06:00.000+01:00

A few months ago I signed a contract to write a book on Comparative Law for CUP’s Law in Context series. Now, I have really started with this project. The main idea is to provide a new contextual perspective on comparative law, distinguishing it from the present main textbooks. So, to anyone reading this blog, please let me know if you come across an interesting paper, website, conference etc. that could inspire me in my new project!

ISNIE 2010

2010-06-14T09:02:00.004+01:00

This week I’m going to the 14th Annual Conference of The International Society for New Institutional Economics (ISNIE) in Stirling. The papers of the conference are available here. I’m going to present “Language, Legal Origins, and Culture Before the Courts: Cross-Citations Between Supreme Courts in Europe”, jointly written with Martin Gelter and available here.

Guardian university league table 2011

2010-06-12T12:25:00.007+01:00

Following the rankings by the Independent and the Times (noted here and here) and my own citation ranking (available here – though completely unnoticed by the world...), the Guardian has just published its annual university league table (available here). There are some interesting differences both in the results and the methodology. The Guardian ranking is the only one of them that only aims to rank “teaching excellence”. To some extent, this may explain why some of the research-active universities are ranked poorly (e.g., Manchester just 51 out of 118). However, generally speaking, the Guardian ranking too ranks the research-active universities of the Russell Group and the 1994 Group ahead of the more teaching-focussed universities of the Million+ Group. A likely explanation is that some of the Guardian’s teaching variables actually proxy for research quality, for instance, entry standards and job prospects clearly do depend on what the public regards as “good universities” – and these are typically the research-active ones.