Outside of the common law and civil law legal traditions, what is termed “Islamic law” forms one of the world's largest legal systems. There are more than one billion Muslims world-wide, and millions of those Muslims populate some of the world's richest trading zones. As of 2005, the Gulf Cooperation Council (G.C.C.), comprised of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, was the United States' fifth largest trading partner.

In the actual multilingual and multicultural environment there is a significant need, in the academic world, in the legal profession, in business settings as well as in the context of public administration services to citizens, of common understanding and exchange of legal concepts of the various legal systems. At the same time, there is a strong pressure for the preservation of their basic sense and value. Both requirements are quite difficult to meet, and they are complicated by the complexity of legal language and by the variety of modalities used to express law within the various legal systems. Unlike a number of technical and scientific disciplines where a fair correspondence exists between concepts across languages, serious difficulties arise in interpreting law across countries and languages. This is largely due to the system-bound nature of legal terminology. This paper focuses on cross-language retrieval systems’ ability to facilitate access to legal information across different languages and legal orders. As such, issues are addressed relating to linguistics and translation theory, comparative law, theory of law, as well as natural language processing techniques, while some recommendations are provided with the aim to contribute to cross-language retrieval of law.

Since 2000, the Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF) has awarded fellowships to American scholars, professionals, and doctoral students to teach short courses (three to eight weeks) in various fields, including law, at mainland Chinese universities. The award amounts range from $2,000 to $2,250 each and are meant to help pay travel, housing, and food costs. Fourteen awards were announced in mid-September 2008 for the 2008–09 academic year. I was lucky enough to win one: specifically, an OYCF-Gregory C. and Paula K. Chow Fellowship. I was to teach a seven-week, one-credit, upper-level elective course I proposed at Touro in spring 2007 and taught there in spring 2008 and 2009. From mid-May to early June 2009 I would be teaching foreign and international legal research at Wuhan University (Wuda) in central China.

In this world of misinformation and predatory ideologies, a basic economic connection may be the difference between the success and failure of American foreign policy in the Middle East. In times of conflict, establishing the commonality of shared financial values can be the best way to build trust. It is remarkable then that the world's largest and most advanced economy has failed to develop the simple financial mechanisms—using Islamic finance and Sharī'ah boards—to connect with Muslims across the globe. Even if the United States’ central focus remains combating terrorism, it is clear that the more financial information the United States can gather, the better equipped it will be to fight the war on terror. Along with the enhanced information capital made possible through Islamic finance and Sharī'ah boards are significant reputational advantages that the United States would not otherwise have. For instance, an Islamic-American humanitarian institution could be certified by multiple clerics in Iraq, thus offering new momentum to the organization's humanitarian mission by preventing numerous belligerent attacks that terrorists might subject upon a purely American institution that lacks the legitimacy conferred through such Islamic ties.

Currently, The United States' continuing domestic failure to develop a compatible framework for Islamic finance verges on negligence. This failure is strongly contrary to broader American commercial interests. Consider that economists estimate the outflow of Sharī'ah capital from Gulf countries to be approximately $1 trillion, growing at 20% per annum. Additionally, Gulf countries are currently set to spend upwards of $10 trillion on new infrastructure over the next decade using Sharī'ah compliant financing vehicles. The world currently has roughly two billion Muslims, many of which will one day demand, or at least prefer, Sharī'ah compliant financial products. If the United States does not develop the administrative and legal framework to serve this market, other foreign financial institutions surely will. In fact, economists currently value the Islamic finance industry in the United Kingdom at $12 billion. In stark contrast, in the United States this same market comprises a mere $150 million in assets. This article will examine the necessary mechanics of establishing an Islamic-American corporation in Delaware for the purposes of conducting transactions with the Middle East, and analyze in detail the essential Islamic financial governance structure-the Shari'ah board.

The recent transformation of legal information has led to more drastic consequences in law than in some other fields. As electronic resources become more prevalent and available, courts begin citing to them. The emerging digital-born information and the new network models of communication such as Law Blogs and Wikipedia have already acquired a certain status, being cited by court decisions. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court recently cited a videotape in its decision of Scott v. Harris (2007), saying “it speaks for itself,” and included it in the opinion as an attachment.

Unfortunately, like many other government entities, the courts have not taken precautions to make sure that the materials they cite remain stable and available to the public for long term access. This is so, even though “no one is supposed to ignore the law.” What happens when the materials one relies on disappear?

This paper examines the serious implications that could arise from this situation. It will also examine the challenges, new roles and possible course of action for law libraries and librarians in ensuring the availability of digital objects in the legal field far in the future.

On the eve of independence from European colonialism, Egypt, like most other developing countries, undertook the project of de-linking itself from colonial economy through initiating domestic industrialization. The economic project known as Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) was designed to liberate Egypt from raw commodity production, agricultural and mineral, servicing its previous colonial master Great Britain. The engine of development would be an expanding public sector with nationalization and socialism as leitmotif. In re-orienting the economy towards industrial production, it was hoped that the terms of trade with the international economy for Egypt would significantly improve, leading thereby to an improvement in the living standards of its population.

I thank the International Association of Law Libraries for your warm hospitality. I am glad to have had the chance to meet with you and learn about your work, and I wish you well as you meet the challenges of the technological era where law books are giving way to internet links.

This paper will outline some of the behavioral economic issues found within marriage and divorce law. Using the modern American Marriage and Divorce System (AMDS) as a starting point, this paper will discuss how the Islamic Marriage and Divorce System (IMDS) can be seen as responding to and addressing a number of these behavioral economic issues within marriage and divorce law. However, before either system can be discussed in detail, some of the basic concepts and terms found within the IMDS need to first be explained.

Dutch law faculties usually change their curriculum due to pressure from external factors, such as inspection reports, accreditation procedures or educational innovations dictated by general university policy. Course subjects are changed each semester or academic year to bring them more into line with each other. Sometimes there are substantive reasons for change, such as the imposition of an international perspective. Courses are seldom altered in response to internal curricular pressure, as this leads to tension in personal relationships.

Book Publishing in the English speaking Caribbean is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the 1960s there were sporadic attempts by individuals and even large firms like the Gleaner Company's Pioneer Press in Jamaica, but some semblance of sustained publishing activity did not come to the region until the post-independence period. In that first immediate post-independence period, the initiative to set up publishing operations came from British educational publishers who established either wholly-owned subsidiaries or went into partnerships with local business interests like the Collins/Sangster imprint in Jamaica. For the most part, these were token operations. They were also essentially the companies’ marketing and sales outlets as all publishing decisions, as well as editorial, design and production work, remained in the UK. Consequently there was no skills transfer or structured training in any aspect of book publishing.

With its improving stability and approaching independence, Iraq must decide a centuries-old question: which is more important, liberty or security? This Article addresses this question in the realm of Iraq's freedoms of the press.

Among Asian Nations, India has become a major political, cultural and business hub. This situation has contributed to frequent interaction of foreign governments, foreign nationals and businesspersons with India and Indians. In order to make them aware of the Indian Legal System and Literatures - so that they act within scope of the system – I present here a brief article giving an introduction to Indian legal literature and legal sources.

Two earlier resources for Indian legal materials include:

1. A Bibliography of Indian Law, edited by Charles Henry Alexandrowicz, (Oxford University Press, 1958), and

2. Indian Legal Materials: A Bibliographic Guide, by H.C. Jain, (N.M. Tripathi, Bombay, 1970).

In this presentation I shall be making reference particularly to the islands of the Eastern Caribbean, which are the jurisdictions I visit on a regular basis. I shall exclude Belize, which in the bookselling world we consider to be the province of Central American dealers, and also Guyana, for which no-one, I am afraid, seems to want to take responsibility. It's a difficult place to reach, and there's little to buy when you finally get there.

This annotated pathfinder is designed to serve as a guide for those who wish to learn about the legal and social situation of Muslim women in the region of the Middle East, but who do not have a great amount of advanced knowledge concerning the topic. It is meant to serve as an organized starting point from which to begin further research, and to provide a context for the current status of Muslim women's rights in the Middle East. A wide variety of types of materials are included, from books to reports to treaties.