It is the end of the year (how fast time has passed!) and I would like to start a new routine on this blog: periodic literature review. For now, I am planning to do this on a quarterly basis and to start with the American Journal of Comparative Law. Later on, I may decide to review more publications more frequently. If you have any particular request or ideas, feel free to communicate them in the comments section.
Volume 62, issue 3 of the American Journal of Comparative Law (AJCL) was published in December 2014. The first part of the issue represents a write-up of contributions to a symposium with the title “Comparative Constitutional Change: New Perspectives on Formal and Informal Amendment”, held at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) in New York early this year. It contains articles by Carlos Bernal, James E. Fleming, Ran Hirschl, Samuel Issacharoff, Stephen Gardbaum, and Richard Albert. Comparative constitutional law is a fascinating discipline at the interface between national constitutional law and international democratization. The focus of the symposium and the ensuing articles are the apparent and not so apparent ways of constitutional change from a comparative perspective.
Besides the symposium part, the current issue of the AJCL contains three major articles in the areas of contract law, freedom of expression/Islamic law, and constitutional/Asian law. The first article, The Political Economy of Regulating Contract by Aditi Bagchi, focuses on the macroeconomic factors that influence contract regulation, in particular whether a legislator decides to act preemptively by issuing mandatory rules of contract or opts for posthoc action through default rules. The second article, Blasphemy, Holocaust Denial and the Control of Profoundly Unacceptable Speech by Neville Cox, examines the recently stirred-up divide between largely unregulated freedom of speech in the West (most notably the United States) and strictly regulated statements on religion in Islamic countries. The third article, Survival of the Fittest(2): The Endurance of the ROC Constitution and the Constitution of Japan by Chien-Chih Lin, compares the different factors that led to the longevity of the constitutions of Japan and the Republic of China.
The current AJCL issue concludes by several book reviews. You can access the website of the current issue of the AJCL here. I hope this quick overview was helpful.
Happy New Year!
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