2002 Co-Sponsored Meeting: First World Congress on Mixed Jurisdictions

       Approximately 150 persons from more than twenty countries gathered for the first World Congress on Mixed Jurisdictions in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 6-9, 2002.  The event was hosted by the Tulane School of Law and the Eason Weinmann Center for Comparative Law.   The Congress was attended by delegates from some twenty-one co-sponsoring law faculties in South Africa, Scotland, Quebec, Israel, Puerto Rico, The Philippines and Louisiana, as well as delegates sent by co-sponsoring organizations such as the International Association of Legal Science, the International Academy of Comparative Law at the Hague and the American Society of Comparative Law.

        The theme of the Congress was “Salience and Unity in the Mixed Jurisdiction Experience” and eight panels of speakers and commentators addressed a wide variety of themes thought to be characteristic of that experience. Programme planning was under the guidance of an international committee composed of Professors Vernon Palmer of Tulane (chair), J.E. du Plessis of Stellenbosch, Patrick Glenn of McGill, Kenneth Reid of Edinburgh, Dean Symeon Symeonides of Willamette, Daniel Visser of Cape Town, A.N. Yiannopoulos of Tulane, and Reinhard Zimmermann of Regensburg.   Aharon Barak, a world-renowned figure and currently President of the Israel Supreme Court, spoke on the impact of public Anglo-American values and institutions on the private civil law in these jurisdictions. The value of mixed systems, their costs and benefits, was the topic of the Right Honorable Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, one of two Scottish judges sitting in the House of Lords.  Daniel Visser, Dean and Professor of law at Cape Town, dealt with the distinctive cultural voices of judges and jurists, and numerous papers were delivered on the subjects of legal methodology,  linguistic factors,  interaction between common and civil law doctrines and the formation of autonomous law.  More than twenty-five papers in all were presented and are scheduled for publication in the fall of 2003 in the Tulane Law Review.

            At the Congress, the delegates approved the statutes of a new international organization, the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists.  At the first meeting they elected officers and decided to hold the next Congress in Scotland in 2004, under the joint auspices of the law faculties of Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow.  Vernon Palmer of Tulane was elected President, and Francois du Bois (Cape Town), Celia Fassberg (Hebrew Univ.), Efren Rivera (Univ. Puerto Rico), Hector MacQueen (Edinburgh) and Esin Orucu (Glasgow) were elected Vice Presidents. Those interested in becoming individual members of the Society should contact Ms Janice Sayas: jsayas@law.tulane.edu.

    At your request I represented the ASCL in attending the First Worldwide Congress on Mixed Jurisdictions, which was held at Tulane University in New Orleans, November 6-9, 2002.   The Congress was organized by the Eason-Weinmann Center for Comparative Law at Tulane, working with an international planning committee chaired by Professor Vernon Palmer of Tulane.   The ASCL co-sponsored the Congress, together with the International Academy of Comparative  Law and the International Association of Legal Science.   Dean Symeon Symeonides of Willamette University, who was also on the planning committee, and I were honored to represent the ASCL to this Congress and I enjoyed the program very much.  I should add that the hospitality, including the arrangements for the conference and the meals, were hosted with all the elegance and style that we are accustomed to from Tulane and the Eason-Weinmann Center. 

    The title for this first Congress was “Salience and Unity in the Mixed Jurisdiction Experience: Traits, Patterns, Culture, Commonalities.”  Professor Kenneth Reid of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, initiated the discussion Wednesday evening with a lecture entitled “Keeping It in the Family: Comparing Mixed Systems.” To elaborate this theme, the planning committee divided the conference into eight panels over the next two and a half days devoted to the following subjects: (1) the tension in many mixed jurisdictions between public law drawn from common law jurisdictions and civil law drawn from civil law jurisdictions, (2) the struggle for leadership in developing the law between judges and legal scholars in mixed jurisdictions, (3) a study of the evolutionary process by which unique legal ideas are born in mixed jurisdictions, (4) the special linguistic problem of living languages, disappearing source languages, and special juristic languages in mixed jurisdictions, (5) the pattern and process of interpenetration by civil and common law in mixed jurisdictions, (6) the question of whether mixed jurisdictions develop a distinct legal method, and if so, whether it represents a compromise between classical civil and common law methods, (7) the question of what the final result of mixed jurisdictions is likely to be, and (8) the special value of mixed legal jurisdictions as reflected in a cost/benefit analysis of legal asymmetry in these countries. 

    To address these topics by delivering keynote addresses on each topic, or by commenting on the keynote address or chairing individual panels, the planning committee assembled a truly distinguished set of scholars, including many of the leading names in comparative law from around the world.  Collectively these scholars represented most of the jurisdictions in the world generally labeled as “mixed,” including Scotland, South Africa, Israel, the Philippines, the State of Louisiana in the United States and the affiliated Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the province of Quebec in Canada.  Dean Symeonides also included in his remarks an overview of the fascinating legal history of the mixed jurisdiction of Cyprus.  Special mention should be made of the distinguished foreign judges who participated, including Justice Aharon Barak, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel; former Chief Justice José Trias Monge of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, who was unable at the last minute to attend but who sent a paper; Justice Ralph Zulman of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa; and the Right Honorable Lord Rodger of Earlsferry of the British House of Lords.  Although the participation of some of these judges required special security precautions and in particular we in the audience had to accustom ourselves to the ever-watchful eye of Justice Barak’s bodyguard, the judges who attended enriched the proceedings considerably by fully participating in all the formal and informal discussion. 

    The academic portion of the Congress was a great success.  At the beginning of the Congress I was debating with myself whether it made any sense to form a society devoted solely to “mixed jurisdictions.”  After all, I thought, most, if not all, jurisdictions are to varying extents subject to influence from both civil and common law models.  If every jurisdiction is really a mixed jurisdiction, then what is the sense of a society devoted specially to the problems of “mixité”?  My concerns, however, were soon mollified by two observations: (1) the quality of comparative law at this Congress was, I thought, unusually high because the problem of “mixité” generally obliges each scholar to make explicit comparisons rather than the parallel descriptions of national law which are the blight of so many so-called comparative law conferences and (2) the Congress was addressing quite a few issues, like the linguistic concerns or the tension between public law drawn from common law and private law drawn from the civil law, that really are most acute and therefore of greatest interest in the jurisdictions that are usually labeled as “mixed.”  It seems to me that these issues are likely to get short shrift in more general comparative law venues.  For these reasons, I was especially glad to have been able to attend even though I come from a jurisdiction in the United States, Iowa, that is arguably as unmixed as any can be.  The Congress papers will be published in the first two issues of the Tulane Law Review for 2003, and I recommend them to your attention.  

    For the same reasons, I applaud the organizers’ decision to create a special society to further the study of mixed jurisdictions.  The final session of the Congress on Saturday afternoon was a business meeting of the delegates to form the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists.  The delegates adopted “statutes” or bylaws for the Society, elected Vernon Palmer as their first President, and passed a resolution of appreciation for his efforts in founding the Society.  They also elected as Vice-Presidents Professors Celia Fassberg from Israel, Hector MacQueen from Scotland, Esin Örücü from Scotland, and François du Bois from South Africa, and Dean Efrén Rivera-Ramos of Puerto Rico.  Finally, the body accepted the offer of the Scottish delegates on behalf of the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow to host the next meeting in approximately two years. 

    As my report has already indicated, the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists promises to be a distinguished body of scholars, many of whom are also active in our ASCL, in other similar national societies of comparative law, or in the International Academy of Comparative Law.  Their congresses promise to produce high-quality, interesting comparative law scholarship.  I therefore recommend that the ASCL continue to find ways to communicate and collaborate with the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists for our mutual support and edification.

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