Number 4

Often enough, laws respond to the serious needs and desires of a society. At other times, society will render the law essentially ineffective because it goes against the grain of society’s moral direction. Prohibition, as well as laws against abortion, fornication, and homosexual acts, all constitute other laws driven by society’s moral compass. “A law that fails to take into account the social ethos of the community it is supposed to guide risks being ignored and hence, remaining a dead letter, incapable of inducing change.” Beliefs about life and death, good luck and misfortune, prosperity and poverty—changes that normally occur as societies undergo periods of profound transformation—are often prompted top down by colonial hegemony, or nudged by missionary proselytizing. Beliefs [...]

In the world of international constitutional law, the use of foreign judicial decisions in domestic jurisprudence has long created controversy and confusion for both lawmakers and legal scholars.  This once seemed strictly an American problem because of America’s unique system of judicial review; however, with the tremendous growth in constitutional courts throughout the world, the debate has expanded greatly over the past few decades.  While some countries decry the practice or merely avoid it, others embrace its usefulness and specifically authorize justices to examine foreign law.  Perhaps the first point that must be reiterated on the use of foreign jurisprudence for domestic constitutional interpretation is that nothing in this article—or any other publication—implies that foreign jurisprudence should ever be considered [...]

Today, securities offerings and trading have become, to a remarkable extent, global in the same vein as other economic and business activities.  The globalization is taking place mainly through integration of national securities markets. The principal examples of such integrated markets are the European Union (EU) and the Multijurisdictional Disclosure System (MJDS) between Canada and the United States.  Recently, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) initiated an attempt to integrate securities markets in Asia.  This paper will go over the integration efforts of these three regions to see what theoretical approaches they have taken towards their goal. Integration between different nations is not an easy task because they are politically, economically, and legally divided and diverse.  A look into [...]