Comparative Law as a Bridge Between the Nation-State and the Global Economy: An Essay for Herbert Bernstein

Professor Richard M. Buxbaum delivered the Fourth Annual Herbert L. Bernstein Memorial Lecture in Comparative Law in 2005 and this article is based on his remarks. The article is included in the inaugural volume of CICLOPs that collects the first six Bernstein lectures. In this paper, Richard Buxbaum is primarily concerned with the potential of comparative law as a method to bridge the disparities between the laws of nation-states and the needs of the globalized economy. Buxbaum investigates three separate roles for comparative law in closing this gap: First, he discusses the potential uses of comparative law with regard to the current primacy of national law over the increasingly transnational economic order. Second, he looks into the concern surrounding the growing need for national economic laws to move up a step; here, Buxbaum pays special attention to the problems and benefits created by federalism within both the American and the European systems. Thirdly, and finally, he tackles the elusiveness of what he calls “the slippery issue of ‘economic law’”. In dealing with each of these strands of thought, Buxbaum focuses predominantly on the European Union system and how comparative law can aid in its struggle not only to unify law, but also in efforts to coordinate law between national, sovereign entities. Due to the high degree of difference in the centralization of authority in the American system over the European Union, Buxbaum is able to cast into high relief the need for comparative law within Europe in the absence of a strong legislative body. Buxbaum uses comparative law to bridge the importance of national law in a transnational order with the challenges of achieving a unified economic law between nations, despite the inherent tension between the two concepts

Boycotts and Restrictive Marketing Arrangements

It is currently a common if still relatively unheralded practice for a fired dealer to bring an antitrust action against his former manufacturer-supplier (and perhaps other dealers), alleging that his termination was the result of a boycott. Boycotts-collective efforts to obtain the exclusion of a party from a market-are illegal per se under section 1 of the Sherman Act. Thus, questions concerning the justification for the boycott or the significance of the offender\u27s market position do not arise

International Enforcement of Family Maintenance and Support Obligations

Dr. Bauxbaum is the Jackson H. Ralston Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, where from 1993-1999 he served as Dean of International and Area Studies. He received his A.B. and LL.B. from Cornell; the LL.M. from the University of California at Berkeley; the Dr.iur.h.c. from the University of Osnabriick and Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest; and was appointed Honorary Professor of Law by Peking University in 1998 . He practiced law in Rochester, New York and the U.S. Army before joining the Boalt faculty in 1961. He has published a casebook on corporation law and co-authored two books on federalism in corporation law. He is editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Comparative Law. Professor Buxbaum has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Michigan, Cologne, Frankfurt, and Sydney, and was awarded a 1992- 93 Humboldt Research Prize for Humanities and Arts by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany

Stein: Harmonizing of European Company

A Review of Harmonization of European Company Laws by Eric Stei