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Global Legal Monitor: November Highlights

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As mentioned in previous posts by my colleagues Andrew and Kelly, the Law Library of Congress has an online publication called the Global Legal Monitor (GLM) featuring summaries of legal developments from around the world.  It is a go-to page for information on what courts and parliaments in foreign countries are doing and emerging legal trends in the world.

In this post, which I hope to turn into a monthly series, I will highlight Global Legal Monitor articles that were popular the previous month.  Below is the full list of the top ten most viewed articles in November:

  1. Hong Kong: Minimum Wage Law Takes Effect
  2. Japan: Child Pornography Law Amendment Discussed
  3. Turkey: New Minimum Wage
  4. Indonesia: Implementation of New Immigration Law Delayed
  5. United States: New Jersey Supreme Court Revises Test for Admissibility of Eyewitness Identifications
  6. Malawi: New Pension Scheme Introduced
  7. Denmark: Retirement Age Raised
  8. Italy: Renewable Energy Law Adopted
  9. Lithuania: Dual Citizenship Law Vetoed
  10. Burma: New Human Rights Commission
Globe Outside the Law Library Reading Room

A look at the above list of the ten most viewed Global Legal Monitor articles shows that issues of employment (particularly on wages and retirement) and immigration were on the minds of our GLM readers.

Among these were an article on a minimum wage law that took effect in Hong Kong recently and another on the increase of the minimum wage in Turkey.  The Hong Kong law set minimum wage at US $3.60 an hour, while the law in Turkey put in place an incremental increase of minimum wage with the initial increase to about US $515 a month, which took effect in January 2011.  An additional increase to US $540 was scheduled for implementation in the second half of the year.

Articles on pensions and retirement in Denmark and Malawi were also among the top ten most viewed.  The Denmark plan aimed at increasing the retirement age from 60 to 65 with a plan to phase out early retirement for people age 45 and automatically terminate it for  workers below the age of 45.  The Malawi proposal sought to establish a mandatory pension scheme requiring employers to make periodic contributions towards qualifying employees’ pension schemes and to purchase life insurance policy for every employee.

The Malawi plan sets the minimum retirement age at 50 (if you think they have it so good in Malawi, remember that life expectancy in the country is only 51.7 years).

An article on a failed attempt to expand the law on dual citizenship in Lithuania and one on the delay in implementation of an immigration law in Indonesia aimed at allowing certain qualifying foreigners to obtain permanent residence permits were also among the hits in November.  The Lithuania proposal failed because the country’s president, who insisted that the proper manner for expanding the law was through constitutional amendment, vetoed the measure.  The implementation of the immigration law in Indonesia was halted mainly due to the delay in issuing the subsidiary legislation necessary for its full implementation.

The Global Legal Monitor is updated frequently with new content added almost daily and is easily accessible.  You can read GLM articles by going to the Law Library website.  You can also sign up to receive email alerts or subscribe to the RSS feeds.  In addition, some GLM articles are available through tweets via the Law Library twitter account, @lawlibcongress, or by searching the hashtag #GLM.

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