2010
2007
February 18, 2007
Dear Colleagues,
It is my honor and pleasure to serve you in this new
capacity. The purpose of this letter is to bring you up to date on what
has happened since the 2006 annual meeting and to help prepare us for
the 2007 annual meeting and beyond.
1. 2006 Meeting and Congress. First, some
basic information for those who did not attend the 2006 meeting, which
was held in Utrecht in conjunction with the 17th quadrennial congress
of comparative law. Both the congress and our meeting were
well-attended and successful. Once again, the United States delegation
was the largest, except for the host country, with more than fifty U.S.
colleagues from forty-four ASCL sponsor members attending. The Academy
held elections, which resulted in the election of one of our own,
George A. Bermann, as new president, and Jurgen Basedow as Secretary.
The Society also held elections, which resulted in the election of the
following officers: David S. Clark, honorary president (2006-08);
Symeon C. Symeonides, president (2006-08); John C. Reitz, vice
president (2006-07), Leila Nadya Sadat, secretary (2006-08), and Ved.
P. Nanda and Teemu Ruskola, executive committee (2006-08). The minutes
of the meeting are posted on the ASCL web site at http://www.comparativelaw.org
under Organization/Organizational Documents/Minutes.
2. 2007 Annual Meeting. As previously agreed,
the 2007 annual meeting will be held on November 9-10, 2007, at Cornell
University, in Ithaca, NY. Details will be posted later on the ASCL web
site. I urge your to make every effort to attend this meeting for all
the usual good reasons, but also because the members will decide some
very important matters involving the financial future of the American
Journal of Comparative Law and the Society and selecting a U.S. venue
for the next international congress (see below).
3. 2010 International Congress in the U.S.
The next congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law will
be held in the United States, in 2010. This will be the first time
since the Academy’s founding in 1924 that this congress will be in the
United States. We have committed to hosting it, and we must ensure it
exceeds the successes of all previous congresses. The first step in
this direction is the selection of a host school from among our sponsor
members. This selection will be made by the ASCL membership at the
Cornell meeting.
4. Selection of Congress Host and Venue. In
the meantime, I urge all of you to give serious consideration to
whether your school is able and willing to host or co-host the congress
and, if so, to submit a proposal by August 1, 2007. A committee chaired
by David Clark (dsclark@willamette.edu)
will evaluate all proposals and will, through the Executive Committee,
make a recommendation to the Board of Directors. The other members of
the committee are Dominique Custos, Paul Dubinsky, Bill Fisch, Patrick
Glenn, Louise E Teitz, and Stephen Thaman. At this time, we do not have
any information regarding the financial costs of hosting a congress,
but the organizers of the Utrecht congress have promised to send
us all of their data as soon as they are finalized in early March. In
the meantime, you can find useful information about what the congress
entails by visiting the web site of the Utrecht congress at http://www2.law.uu.nl/priv/AIDC/index1.asp. The
Academy’s website is http://www.iuscomparatum.org.
The Society is prepared to provide a modest subsidy for the costs of
hosting the congress. The amount of the subsidy will be decided my the
membership at the Cornell meeting.
5. Submission of Topics for the 2010 Congress.
As in previous congresses, the Academy will select the topics of the
congress from proposals submitted by member countries at least two
years earlier. To meet the Academy’s deadline, we must collect our
topics at the Cornell meeting, at the latest. John Reitz has agreed to
serve again as the coordinator for this matter. Please send your
submission with an one- or two-paragraph explanation to john-reitz@uiowa.edu, before the Cornell
meeting. Although the Academy reserves the right to make the final
selection, this is our opportunity to make the next congress more
interesting by submitting good, timely topics.
6. Serving on committees. The list and
compositions of ASCL committees can be found on the ASCL website under
People/Committees. If you would like to serve on any of these
committees, please send me an e-mail to that effect.
That is all for now. I look forward to working with
you in this, the 55th, year of our Society.
Cordially
Symeon C. Symeonides, President
2006
January 10, 2006
Dear Colleagues:
2005 was another successful year for American
comparative law with seven new sponsor members joining the Society,
three of them located outside the United States. Our new sponsors are
Florida International, HEC School of Management (France), National
University of Singapore, Seattle, Seton Hall, Temple, and the
University of Trento. Two sustaining members add to the Society's
support: Alpmann & Schmidt (Germany) and Jiang Zhaodong (Hong
Kong). We owe special appreciation to Alison Conner for organizing an
absolutely fabulous conference on multiple sovereignties at the October
Hawaii annual meeting, which we will remember for its aloha
hospitality. Our thanks also to Jackie Ross for her work on the
successful March program on undercover policing at the University of
Illinois that the Society jointly sponsored.
We have three upcoming Society meeting dates in
2006. The annual business meeting will be held on Thursday, July 20,
from 9 to 11 a.m. in conjunction with the XVIIth Congress of the
International Academy of Comparative Law at Utrecht University. Please
remember that attendance at the business meeting is necessary to
obtain Society reimbursement for your expenses. A substantial discount
for early registration has been extended to January 23. Please see the
Web site noted above for more details.
The other two meetings are co-sponsored by the
Society and occur in April. Co-sponsorship provides an opportunity for
Society members to receive reimbursement for attending according to the
policy adopted at the Hawaii meeting (see Web site). The Second
Italian-American Congress of Comparative Law, hosted by Louis Del Duca,
will be held April 6-7 at Penn State Dickinson School of Law. It will
treat important issues in criminal procedure, transnational civil
procedure, and the relationship of legal structures from Italian
regions to the European Union. A comparative law Workshop to discuss
work in progress, hosted by Jackie Ross (Illinois) and Mathias Reimann
(Michigan), will be held April 21-23 at Michigan Law School. The Web
site provides registration and contact information for both meetings.
The directors at Hawaii adopted the enclosed
by-law to create the new position of Executive
Assistant. In essence, it aims to establish a “home” for the
Society in the same way the Society's Journal has a home, currently at
Michigan. I ask each of you to consider whether your institution would
be willing to become that home. Please contact me directly to discuss
this. I believe that such a commitment would add prestige to your
institution and serve our evolving Society.
Cordially,
David S. Clark, President
2005
January 26, 2005
Dear Colleagues:
I
congratulate all of you for your efforts in making 2004 a banner year
for American comparative law. The Society owes special appreciation to
Mathias Reimann for organizing so many interesting speakers at the
October Michigan annual meeting and to John Haley, Henry Ordower, Leila
Sadat, and Stephen Thaman for their work on the November Centennial
Celebration in St. Louis: “Toward a New Globalism?”
We have two
upcoming Society meeting dates. First, the Society is co-sponsoring
“Undercover Policing and Emerging Enforcement Powers: Perspectives from
Two Sides of the Atlantic” at the University of Illinois College of Law
on March 11 and 12 (contact Jacqueline Ross, brochure enclosed). The
directors voted to send two delegates to this meeting. If you wish to
attend as a delegate, please notify the Joint Meetings Committee chair,
John Haley, and review the reimbursement policy on the Web site
(above). Second, the Society’s 2005 annual meeting will be held at the
University of Hawaii School of Law and East-West Center (contact Alison
Conner) on October 27 to 29. The program’s theme is “Multiple
Sovereignties: Federalism in the 21st Century.”
We still have seven
openings for national reporters to the 17th Congress of the
International Academy of Comparative Law (16-22 July 2006, Utrecht).
The Journal will publish your 20 page report in a Supplement that will
be distributed to all subscribers and at the Congress. If you are
willing to write on one of the topics below, please contact John Reitz
(Iowa).
1. I.B (legal limitations on genetic
research and its commercialization).
2. II.A.1 (new developments in
succession law).
3. II.B.2 (new experiences of
international arbitration [liberally construed]).
4. II.C.2 (access to justice, costs,
and legal aid).
5. III.B (digitalizing literary and
musical compositions).
6. IV.D.2 (precautionary principle in
administrative law [liberally construed]).
7. IV.E (restricting the legislative
power to tax).
The Research
and Service Committee, with the initiative of Sompong Sucharitkul and
Christian Okeke, has developed a Questionnaire to help the Committee
with its work. Please fill it out and return it in the enclosed
envelope. Russell Miller is co-editor in chief of the German Law
Journal (with Ralf Michaels on the editorial board); an enclosed
brochure describes its impressive activity.
I remind you that
the Executive Committee discussed the possibility of the Society (and
one or more member schools) hosting the 18th Congress of the
International Academy in 2010. This would require a substantial
financial commitment and a proposal ready to present in early 2006
prior to the Utrecht meeting. If interested, please contact one of the
officers. For more details about recent Society developments, please
consult the Web page noted above.
Cordially,
David S.
Clark, President
2004
January 30, 2004
I
am pleased to report that the transition to new Journal leadership has
gone
smoothly. Congratulations to the editors in chief–George Bermann, Jim
Gordley,
and Mathias Reimann–whose responsibility begins with volume 52. Thanks
to
the eight members who have agreed to serve on the Executive Editorial
Board:
Vivian Grosswald Curran, Nora Demleitner, David Gerber, Michael Gordon,
Richard
Kay, Ugo Mattei, Annelise Riles, and Symeon Symeonides.
I would like to inform you about three
upcoming
Society meeting dates. First, the Society’s 2004 annual meeting will be
held
at the University of Michigan (contact: Mathias Reimann) on October 21
to
23. The program’s theme is comparative law and human rights. Second,
the
Society is co-sponsoring, with the Whitney R. Harris Institute for
Global
Legal Studies at Washington University (contact: John Haley) and
Saint Louis University School of Law Center for International and
Comparative Law (contact Henry Ordower),
the Centennial Celebration of the Universal Congress of Jurists and
Lawyers
held in St. Louis in 1904. The program will take place on November 11
to
13 and its theme is Lawyers and Lawyering in the 21st Century. This
event
will also mark the centenary of United States comparative law. Third,
the
Society’s 2005 annual meeting will be held at the University of Hawaii
(contact:
Alison Conner) on October 27 to 29, 2005. The program’s topic is
multiple
sovereignties and federalism.
Some of you attended the Society’s
co-sponsored
Italian-American Congress of Comparative Law in May 2003, hosted by the
Italian
Association of Comparative Law and Milan University. We are looking for
an
ASCL sponsor member to volunteer to arrange a program with the Italian
Association
in the United States. Please contact John Haley, chair of the Joint
Meetings
Committee. The Italian Association and the Society would pay some of
the
expenses.
Antonio Gidi, a member of the Research and
Service
Committee, has established a Society listserv to facilitate
discussions.
Please send him an email at gidi@udmercy.edu if you would like to be
included.
Finally, Colin Picker has agreed to chair the Younger Comparatists
Committee
to serve our newer members. If you are interested, please contact him.
For more details about these matters and for
recent
Society developments, please consult the Web page noted above.
Cordially,
David S. Clark
President
2003
January 13, 2003
I hope this letter finds your new year off to
a
good start. I would like to remind you of the arrangement that the
Executive
Committee approved for the selection of a new editor in chief to
replace
Dick Buxbaum, a decision that will ultimately be made by the Journal
editors
at our annual meeting at Stetson University in October. The first step
is
for an ad hoc screening committee to receive applications from
interested
sponsor members that would be willing to host the Journal and to name
one
or more candidate editors in chief. The deadline for applications is 1
March
2003.
John Reitz is chair of this committee; other
members
are Vivian Curran (Pittsburgh), Court Peterson (Colorado), and Dick
Buxbaum
(California Berkeley). John can be reached at the University of Iowa
(319-335-9086
or john-reitz@uiowa.edu). Please send your school’s application to him
(see
bylaw 1.5, at the Society’s Web site, noted above, at Organization).
John’s
committee will review the applications. When it has finished, it will
send
the files (with recommendations if possible) to the Executive
Committee,
which will carry out its responsibility under bylaw 1.3 to nominate
qualified
candidates for the final selection by the full board of editors. After
the
Stetson meeting, it is my intention to activate bylaw 1.4A and
recommend
an Executive Editorial Board. If you would be willing to serve on such
a
board, please let me know in October.
The Executive Committee met in September to
consider
several matters pending with the Society or related to its future
development.
From that it was apparent that now would be a good opportunity to
revitalize
our committee membership and structure (see the Web site at People).
Therefore,
I solicit your assistance in staffing the Society’s committees. Please
write,
e-mail, or call me (the information is above) to volunteer. The
following
will be new committees. First, a new Centennial Campaign Committee
(celebrating
the 100th anniversary of United States comparative law in 2004) will
aim
to double our assets (endowment) to $500,000. Second, a new Audit and
Investment
Committee will provide advice to the treasurer and the Executive
Committee
regarding the Society’s accounts and investment policy. Third,
Relations
with Comparative Law Associations will merge with a new Joint Meetings
Committee.
This academic year the Society co-sponsored (and sent delegates to) a
November
conference at Tulane and an upcoming conference in May at Milan.
Fourth,
Communications will merge with a Research and Service Committee (which
will
be subdivided by geography and subject interests) to foster cooperative
projects
among members and to provide assistance worldwide. Continuing
committees
include: Nominating; Prizes; and Standing Program. Since the Executive
Committee
determined that it is in the Society’s best interest to remain seated
in
New York, the Deincorporation Committee is no longer needed. Long-Range
Planning
issued its report, which continues to be of great assistance to the
Society,
so this committee also comes to an end.
I attach an Executive Committee
recommendation. Thanks for your help.
David S. Clark
President
For previous messages from ASCL
Presidents, please click
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