I speak with some level of qualification—as an underachieving law student who barely survived the nightmarish law school experience and yet managed to have a career (so far!) as a commercial lawyer—when I say that this piece in the LA Times by Mark Greenbaum is spot on. America has hundreds of thousands of lawyers, yet many tens of thousands who never find employment in practice, many thousands who were added to the unemployment roster over the past two years due to the sharp economic downturn, and yet the American Bar Assocation and numerous state legislatures are pushing to open even more law schools.

An abridged version of the article appears below. Every paragraph is basically enough to expand into an entire book chapter.

No more room at the bench
Mark Greenbaum

Remember the old joke about 20,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea being “a good start”? Well, in an interesting twist, thousands of lawyers now find themselves drowning in the unemployment line as the legal sector is being badly saturated with attorneys…

From 2004 through 2008, the field grew less than 1% per year on average, going from 735,000 people making a living as attorneys to just 760,000, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics postulating that the field will grow at the same rate through 2016… the number of new positions is likely to be fewer than 30,000 per year. That is far fewer than what’s needed to accommodate the 45,000 juris doctors graduating from U.S. law schools each year.

Such debt would be manageable if a world of lucrative jobs awaited the newly minted attorneys, but this is not the case. A recent working paper by Herwig Schlunk of Vanderbilt Law School contends that with the exception of some of those at the best schools, going for a law degree is a bad investment and that most students will be “unlikely ever to dig themselves out from” under their debt. This problem is exacerbated by the existing law school system.

Despite the tough job market, new schools continue to sprout like weeds. Today there are 200 ABA-accredited law schools in the U.S., with more on the way, as many have been awarded provisional accreditation. In California alone, there are 21 law schools that are either accredited or provisionally accredited, including the new one at UC Irvine.

The ABA has also refused to create and oversee an independent method of reporting graduate data. Postgraduate employment information generally provides the most useful facts for prospective students to study in deciding whether to go to law school.

In many cases, the data that schools now furnish are based on self-reported information, skewing the results because unemployed and low-paying grads are less likely to report back. Law schools do this because they want the rosiest picture possible for the influential rankings given by U.S. News & World Report. Despite its ample resources, the ABA has rebuffed calls to monitor the schools to get more accurate data, calling the existing framework an effective “honor system.”

Based on what happened with the accreditation task force, the ABA is not likely to force change; it is too intertwined with the law schools. ABA groups—such as the task force, which was chaired by a former dean—are stacked with school officials who have no incentive to change the status quo.

The author thinks the solution is to regulate and limit the power of the ABA in accrediting law schools, in a similar limitation on the influence of the bodies that oversea the medical profession, and maybe he’s right—although I tend to take a more cynical view and think that the complicity with the reckless expansion of the profession is far broader. (I’m looking at you, US state legistlatures!)

Dubai is often noted as being unique for its large proportion of foreign residents. By some accounts more than 90% of the metropolitan population is foreign. This is not unique to Dubai, or even the UAE —for decades, Saudi Arabia has imported workers, and at present about 5.5 million of the 27 million people living in the country are foreigners—23% of the total population. Many people are surprised to hear this because of the Kingdom is so strictly conservative. Alcohol is forbidden, women cannot drive, and even property crimes can be punished by flogging, amputation, and execution.

Nonetheless, millions of foreigners live in the country, and many have actually naturalized as Saudi citizens and culturally feel (and are accepted as) Arabs. In 2004, the law was modernized to allow anyone who has lived in the kingdom for ten years to apply for citizenship, with priority being given to those with degrees in various scientific fields. In Dubai I have met a person of Pakistani descent who was born in Saudi Arabia and who naturalized as a Saudi under this law. Officially, such persons must also be Muslims, although this is not reportedly the case for all who are granted citizenship.

This option to naturalize is available to citizens of all countries, with only one exception—Palestinians. As many as a quarter of a million Palestinians live in Saudi Arabia, but they are prohibited to hold or even apply for Saudi citizenship because of Arab League instructions barring Arab states from granting them citizenship in order “to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland.”

This seems rather tragic to me—that a people who are by their heritage Arab, who speak the language fluently, who are born and raised in Saudi Arabia, are nevertheless banned from merely submitting an application for Saudi citizenship—and indeed, if the application of this rule is universal, citizenship anywhere else in the Arab world. Don’t expect any changes from the Saudi regime if you want to criticize that, they don’t take kindly to outside comments on their legal system.

I was idly thinking about the growth of different systems of civil codes and related systems of law across the globe and came up with this rough graph of the development of modern private law.

Comments from fellow amateur legal historians most welcome.

Extrajudicial murder has occurred in multiple countries across the globe in the past few weeks. In Nigeria, the leader of a regional Islamic insurgent group was killed by armed forces in their custody after his followers rought violent havoc across several states in the northern part of the country. In India, a photojournalist snapped armed police murdering a man believed to be a member of an insurgent group, bringing attention to what some consider a long history of illegal killing in the chaotic fringes of the country. In Pakistan, the armed forces have done the same to captured Taliban fighters. In Russia, I wrote recently about the murder of human rights lawyer Natalya Estemirova. There are reports also of recent killings in Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Colombia. Assasination of dissidents and insurgents it not an extinct relic of the Cold War—it remains a regular tool of law enforcement by states in the undeveloped world.

In a modern and developed society, extra-judicial killings are abhorrent and unacceptable. Such acts are an abuse of the state’s monopoly on force. And a government that cannot act in accordance with the law loses its moral foundation against those who oppose its rule and doubt its legitimacy. From a practical perspective, there is also the issue that practical problems will arise with the implemntation. There are inherent risks in this approach in that it risks encouraging more insurgents, loses support among those who witness and learn of the attrocity, international condemnation and further scrutiny. Consider America’s own experience in the last decade—the accidental killing of the Davidian fanatics in Waco, Texas in 1993 brought widespread fear of the federal government from many in the American continental interior, and indirectly resulted in the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing in 1995. That’s the type of blowback that can result from extrajudicial killings.

But is there a point where extra-judicial murder is acceptable? Readers won’t be surprised to hear that my view is nuanced. In the anarchic fringes of the globe, the government has to play by different rules to stay in power and in control. In some instances, a government who’s legitimacy and authority is in doubt must show that it is determined and ready to be ruthless when required. In the case of the Taliban in Pakistan or the insurgents in Nigeria, the enemies of the state have claimed for themselves the right to disrupt civil order, kill civilians and soldiers, and conquer vulnerable territory. There are real risk in putting to trial and imprisoning a popular insurgent leader. Had Hitler been shot by a zealous police officer during his imprisonment, instead of being jailed for a year and writing Mein Kampf, Germany might have gone on to be a normal European country.

Consider this quote from Robert D. Kaplan taken from an interview from ten years ago and before 9/11:

Increasingly we have non-state adversaries who want to kill us, terrorist groups for instance, who are not part of any bureaucratic mechanism of the state. They don’t own territory, they do not have an address. So, for instance, when the U.S. government… announced that it had destroyed the infrastructure of Osama Bin Laden terrorist network, some of the hardware and infrastructure, what did that mean? It meant that they had destroyed a bunch of blow-up tents in the dessert of Afghanistan that you and I could put back together in about two hours. So increasingly these people don’t have an infrastructure that is destroyable. They only way to get them is to kill them. So I think the more unconventional the threat, the more assassinations will come back.

Had the US more aggressively sought to capture or assasinate Bin Laden in 1998 after the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania (extra-judicial methods), instead of having a grand jury indict him for the murders (judicial methods), the World Trade Center in Manhattan might still be standing. And if we accept that point, I think we have to have a lot more sympathy for the government of Nigeria as they try to keep the peace by executing their own David Koresh.

So I happened across this article and was prepared to post it with a comment on how barbarous this Saudi proposal appeared:

A Saudi inventor’s proposal to insert semiconductors subcutaneously in visitors and remotely kill them if they misbehave will not be patented in Germany.

On Wednesday, a German Patent Office spokeswoman said the application was received on October 30, 2007 and published 18 months later, as required by law, in a patents database. But inventions that are unethical or a danger to the public are not recognized.

Reporters said the document proposed that tiny semiconductors be implanted or placed by injection under the skin of people so their whereabouts could be tracked by global-positioning satellites. This could be used to prevent immigrants overstaying.

A model B of the system would contain a poison such as cyanide, which could be released by remote control to “eliminate” people if they became a security risk. The document said this could be used against terrorists or criminals.

a) Saudi Arabia hardly patents anything;
b) to make such a chip that cannot be readily removed would be a real challenge (see: James Bond in Casino Royale);
c) to have enough power to deliver a lethal dose of anything in such a device would be a real challenge; and
d) to have an antenna that could pick up a signal remotely seem highly unlikely.

Of course, such tracking chips exist in pets, but you have to get REAL close to detect them.

But that’s just the common sense test. I did a patent search, and there it is no sign of such a device. Note that EU and WO Patents get a published review, and if a Patent has a review it will have an A1 or A3 at the end.

As this is an Iranian news site making the Saudis out to look like barbarians, maybe that’s what’s behind the story…?

Color me shocked that Coming Anarchy’s favorite regional Chinese capital has a law firm going international, and into the wilds of Central Asia of all places.

Urumqi legal market evolving as cross-border trade flows

In preparation for the flourishing of cross-border trade, Xinjiang Gonglian, a law firm based in Urumqi, the capital of China’s northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is now busy preparing for a branch office in Bishkek, the capital city of neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. The new office is expected to open in May 2009. Gonglian will be the first PRC law firm established in Kyrgyzstan.

In the past few years, the legal market has been growing rapidly in Urumqi, the most inland city in the world. By the end of 2008, Urumqi had more than 600 lawyers in 57 firms, a dramatic increase compared to the 1980s, when there were only 20 lawyers…

In 2008 alone, Xinjiang’s total import and export levels hit a historical high, exceeding US$22bn. Regarded as the bridgehead for trade ties with Central Asia, Xinjiang’s trade dominates the mid- and west-China regions, and ranks number 11 in trade among all China’s provinces.

The autonomous region borders eight countries – Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – and trade ties have been established with more than 100 countries and regions. There are approximately 6,000 trading companies in Xinjiang, most of which are headquartered in Urumqi…

“International companies are starting to show their interest in Xinjiang, and many companies from Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea and the US hope to use Xinjiang as a springboard for entering central Asia,” said Zhang Jianwu. “But for us, as a local inland firm, we’ll try to use our geographic and language advantages to shine in the regional market, rather than trying to expand to south or east China where the legal market is more competitive.”

The developed world is accustomed to firing employees when times are hard. But the concept is new for many of the world’s emerging economies. In many cases, the legality and process of how a lay-off even happens is vague. Consider the situation that workers in China and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, are currently facing.

CHINA

China established a the first workplace-protection legislation, known as the Labor Contract Law, last January, which sought to tighten job security and guarantee severance payments. Recent job-discrimination laws also made it easier to file complaints against employers.

But as the global financial crisis hits the heart of the world’s factory floor, worker protections are put on the back burner in an attempt to stop the job loss hemorrhage. Local authorities are permitted to freeze minimum-wage levels, reduce or suspend employer social-insurance contributions. This threatens the public trust in the still-developing rule of law, and the ability of government. Yet these are the types of dodgy practices emerging:

After their factory closed last month, workers from the Shatangbu Yifa Rubber & Hardware Factory in Shenzhen filed for the back pay and severance promised under a contract required by the new law. The Hong Kong-based owner disappeared, according to Shenzhen officials. That left many migrant workers stranded without enough money to return to their hometowns hundreds of miles away. About a third of the factory’s 300 workers went to the Shenzhen government to request a speedy resolution of their case… Local officials later gave the employees 500 yuan ($73) in back pay from a special fund, but said other claims would have to go through a bankruptcy court.

DUBAI, UAE

The UAE is experiencing its first mass job losses across the board for the first time ever, and such a situation was not envisioned to happen anytime soon be legislators. Essentially no new labor laws have been established in a decade, and the concept of redundancy does not exist in statute. Interpretation is varied, no compensation payments are clearly required in such an event, and by law, prior written notice is sufficient to lay off employees.

That being said, there are certain minimum statutory entitlements—all accrued benefits (such as accrued but unutilised leave) and so-called termination “gratuity” must be paid, and in the event of foreign employees—a major issue in Dubai, where 80% of the population is foreign—paying for repatriation is also an obligation. However, employers that refuse to pay for accrued benefits and gratuity have a wide leeway to escape prosecution.

The authorities are starting to look at managing redundancy compensation to address a lack of legislation, but at very least, according to one local lawyer:

employers in the UAE were ill prepared to deal with the effects of the volatile world economy and have had little option but to let their employees go, and this will undoubtedly continue into 2009.

Because it’s all explained real simple right here.

Jail for adultery in Korea

Up through World War II, Japan had a law in its criminal code that prescribed criminal punishments for women who committed adultery. This statute was also part of the criminal code in its two colonies, Korea and Taiwan.

After the war, the Americans introduced the concept of gender equality, and the adultery law was one that had to be amended. In Japan, they chose to abolish the statute altogether. In both Korea and Taiwan, the people chose to keep the statute, but apply it to all married persons.

Former Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers sued God last year, “seeking a permanent injunction to prevent God from committing acts of violence such as earthquakes and tornadoes.” Judge Marlon Polk threw out the suit, saying:

There was no evidence that the defendant had been served. What’s more, Polk found “there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant”…

To explain why the suit was thrown out, to file a civil claim against an individual, the plaintiff must effect notification on the defendant. To do this they must either:
1. had a party serve the defendant with the court papers; or
2. if the address of the defendant is unknown, service can be made through public notice, such as in a newspaper or on a judicial noticeboard.

Chambers argued that Polk should permit service to be process through such public notice. He cited the facts that U.S. currency says “In God We Trust,” God is invoked during oaths in court hearings, and chaplains offer prayers before legislative bodies. “If God is omnipresent,” Chambers said in that August hearing, “then he is here in Douglas County and in this courtroom.” (Chambers is an athiest.) Polk denied this motion as moot.

Sources here and here.