The Journal of Civil Law Studies is proud to announce the publication of Vol. 6 #1 of the JCLS. The issue in its entirety and each individual article are available at http://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/jcls/.
The Journal of Civil Law Studies has moved to Digital Commons, the leading hosted institutional repository software for universities, colleges, law schools, and research centers. The old website of the Journal will automatically redirect users to our new home on Digital Commons. Links to the old site will remain operational for articles published in volumes 1 to 5, but downloads from the old website will not be computed in ongoing statistics. Authors and users are encouraged to update existing references.
The new issue of the journal is divided into four sections: Articles, Essays, Civil Law in Louisiana and Civil Law in the World.
The Articles section features a critical analysis of textualism, as it is exposed by Antonin Scalia and Brian A. Garner in their book “Reading Law: the Interpretation of Legal Texts” (See James R. Maxeiner, Scalia & Garner’s Reading Law: A Civil Law for the Age of Statutes?); a masterful general presentation of the Cypriot Legal System as a mixed legal system (Nikitas E. Hatzimihail, Cyprus as a Mixed Legal System); a comparative study on the value of embryonic life under U.S. and Argentine law, which focuses on the connection between semantics and the law in this very controversial contemporary issue (María del Pilar Zambrano & Estela B. Sacristán, Semantics and Legal Interpretation: A Comparative Study of the Value of Embryonic Life under Argentine and U.S. Constitutional Law); and a comparative and economic analysis of ownership transfer and systems of legal publicity when the object of the transaction is an immovable (Luz M. Martínez Velencoso, Transfer of Immovable and Systems of Publicity in the Western World: An Economical Approach).
The Essays section is dedicated to essays written by law students. Jared Bianchi, J.D., University of Vermont, has made an interesting connection between the civilian tradition of Louisiana, with its conception of ius commune and ius cogens, and the arguments advanced in the Slaughter House Cases, and the subsequent development of substantive due process in Supreme Court cases. Justin Ward, J.D/D.C.L., Louisiana State University, has compared the use of gross negligence in connection to immunity statutes and punitive damages in Louisiana and American common law, and is making an argument for a broader use of punitive damages in Louisiana law, based on the gap filling potential of such a remedy.
Civil Law in Louisiana, a feature introduced in Vol. 5, gives LSU Law students the unique opportunity to write and have published a case note, analyzing current interesting cases and jurisprudential trends. The case notes analyze diverse issues like: confusion and mineral rights (Brian Flanagan), consent (William Gaskins), the doctrine of contra non valentem (Leigh Hill), child support (Aster Lee), supplemental partition of community property (Claire Murray), interim spousal support (Taheera Sabreen Randolph), donations (Morgan Romero), subleases and assignments of mineral rights (Marion Peter Roy, III), and the connection between civil possession and the vice of discontinuity (Ross Tuminello).
A new feature introduced in this issue of the JCLS is Civil Law in the World. This is a section that will, from now on, contain articles or reports by JCLS Foreign Correspondents, analyzing recent developments in civil law countries around the world. In this issue, Alexandra Popovici is analyzing the nature of Partnership, as it has developed in the law of Québec, while introducing the reader into the unique characteristics of the Québécoise theory of patrimony. Asya Ostroukh is giving a splendid presentation on the evolution of the civil law and the succession of civil codes in Russia in order to prove the civilian core of the Russian tradition. Last, but not least, Juana Marco Molina analyzes the developments in Spanish private law over the period 2010-2012, Spanish law having changed significantly in some areas during this period, on the one part, as a reaction to the Economic Crisis, and on another, in order to align Spanish law with European Union law. This report was translated from Spanish by Yovanna Vargas, with assistance from Laura Castaing, Jennifer Lane and Alexandru-Daniel On. (A.D.O.)
