Digital Commons Network^™

Rebraiding Frayed Sweetgrass For Niijaansinaanik: Understanding Canadian Indigenous Child Welfare Issues As International Atrocity Crimes, Alyssa Couchie

Michigan Journal of International Law

The unearthing of the remains of Indigenous children on the sites of former Indian Residential Schools (“IRS”) in Canada has focused greater attention on anti-Indigenous atrocity violence in the country. While such increased attention, combined with recent efforts at redressing associated harms, represents a step forward in terms of recognizing and addressing the harms caused to Indigenous peoples through the settler-colonial process in Canada, this note expresses concern that the dominant framings of anti-Indigenous atrocity violence remain myopically focused on an overly narrow subset of harms and forms of violence, especially those committed at IRSs. It does so by utilizing …

A Comparative Look At Various Countries' Legal Regimes Governing Automated Vehicles, Brittany Eastman, Shay Collins, Ryan Jones, Jj Martin, Marjory S. Blumenthal, Karlyn D. Stanley

Journal of Law and Mobility

News and commentary about automated vehicles (AVs) focus on how they look and appear to operate, along with the companies developing and testing them. Behind the scenes are legal regimes—laws, regulations, and implementing bodies of different kinds—that literally and figuratively provide the rules of the road for AVs. Legal regimes matter because public welfare hinges on aspects of AV design and operation. Legal regimes can provide gatekeeping for AV developers and operators seeking to use public roads, and they can allocate liability when something goes wrong. Guiding and complementing legal regimes is public policy. Policy documents such as articulations of …

Copyright Infringement And Enforcement In Ghana: A Comparative Study, Doreen Adoma Agyei

SJD Dissertations

Copyright infringement is a widespread problem in developed and developing nations and particularly concerning in Ghana. Many talented creators in Ghana have a strong desire to produce original creative works and are enthusiastic about committing themselves to this pursuit. Additionally, many more aspire to pursue these endeavours into professional careers. However, upon releasing their works, they are unfortunately immediately faced with infringements in nearly all copyright industries. These violations have become so common that they have unfairly placed rightsholders’ original works in competition with the infringers. Within this context, many talented creators, mostly self-funded, lack the incentive to pursue their …

Illegality Defense To Contractual And Restitutionary Claims: A Comparative And Philosophical Study, Dingyurui Bao

SJD Dissertations

The aim of this dissertation is to study the practice and theories regarding the law of illegality, in the context of contract and unjustified enrichment.

Illegality (and immorality) is universally seen as a ground for invalidating contracts. It is widely acknowledged that the courts have the "prerogative to limit enforcement of contracts that transgress the boundaries of public policy". In both Common Law and the Civil Law systems, it is usually in the law of contract that the problem of illegality is dealt with. An illegal contract is invalid, but it may be performed, either in full or in part. …

Suspect Development Systems: Databasing Marginality And Enforcing Discipline, Rashida Richardson, Amba Kak

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Algorithmic accountability law—focused on the regulation of data-driven systems like artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision-making (ADM) tools—is the subject of lively policy debates, heated advocacy, and mainstream media attention. Concerns have moved beyond data protection and individual due process to encompass a broader range of group-level harms such as discrimination and modes of democratic participation. While a welcome and long overdue shift, the current discourse ignores systems like databases, which are viewed as technically “rudimentary” and often siloed from regulatory scrutiny and public attention. Additionally, burgeoning regulatory proposals like algorithmic impact assessments are not structured to surface important –yet …

Pregnant Transgender People: What To Expect From The Court Of Justice Of The European Union's Jurisprudence On Pregnancy Discrimination, Hannah Van Dijcke

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Pregnant transgender people’s experiences vary: they may identify as male or non-binary and may seek gender-affirming medical care to different degrees. This variety in gender identities and bodies puts additional pressure on CJEU’s pregnancy discrimination case law—a case law that is, as this Article argues, already flawed. Building on a critique of the CJEU’s decision in Dekker, this Article discusses three alternative approaches to addressing pregnancy discrimination in EU law. The first two approaches are different ways of construing pregnancy discrimination as sex discrimination. First, the Article discusses a gender-stereotyping approach to direct sex discrimination, and, second, an indirect sex …

Of Rights And Regulation, Stephen W. Sawyer, William J. Novak

Book Chapters

This chapter explores the development of social provisioning as a matter not of right but of democratic administration in France and the United States in the nineteenth century. The authors take issue with conventional chronologies of rights development, which see civil and political rights being developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with social rights appearing in the twentieth. Such categories and sequencing obscure the ways in which democratic administrations took the problem of social provisioning seriously. A history of socio-economic rights cannot be distinguished from the less formal technologies of socio-economic regulation that were an integral part of the …

In Defense Of Its Identity, Daniel H. Halberstam, Werner Schroeder

Articles

The Court of Justice has spoken. The Commission may now, under Regulation 2020/2092, withhold monies from Member States that do not observe the rule of law. This “budget conditionality”, if wielded smartly, should prove a powerful tool if comparative experience coaxing states through union money to follow union policies holds true in Europe. Given the limitations of national reference actions and infringement proceedings that lag behind the nefarious strategies of some governments, and the political obstacles to using Article 7 TEU, we cheer on this new tool of the Union. But we believe the urgency of rule of law concerns …

Understanding National Remedies And The Principle Of National Procedural Autonomy: A Constitutional Approach, Daniel H. Halberstam

Articles

This article provides a constitutionally grounded understanding of the vexing principle of ‘national procedural autonomy’ that haunts the vindication of EU law in national court. After identifying tensions and confusion in the debate surrounding this purported principle of ‘autonomy’, the Article turns to the foundational text and structure of Union law to reconstruct the proper constitutional basis for deploying or supplanting national procedures and remedies. It further argues that much of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union may be considered through the lens of ‘prudential avoidance’, ie the decision to avoid difficult constitutional questions …

Putting The Fetus First — Legal Regulation, Motherhood, And Pregnancy, Emma Milne

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The fetus-first mentality advocates that pregnant women and women who could become pregnant should put the needs and well-being of their fetuses before their own. As this Article will illustrate, this popular public perception has pervaded criminal law, impacting responses to women deemed to be the “irresponsible” pregnant woman and so the “bad” mother. The Article considers cases from Alabama and Indiana in the United States and from England in the United Kingdom, providing clear evidence that concerns about the behavior of pregnant women now hang heavily over criminal justice responses to women who experience a negative pregnancy outcome or …

The Plight Of Women In Positions Of Corporate Leadership In The United States, The European Union, And Japan: Differing Laws And Cultures, Similar Issues, Bettina C. K. Binder, Terry Morehead Dworkin, Niculina Nae, Cindy A. Schipani, Irina Averianova

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Gender diversity in corporate governance is a highly debated issue worldwide. National campaigns such as “2020 Women on Boards” in the United States and “Women on the Board Pledge for Europe” are examples of just two initiatives aimed at increasing female representation in the corporate boardroom. Several

European countries have adopted board quotas as a means toward achieving gender diversity. Japan has passed an Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace to lay a foundation for establishing targets for promoting women.

This Article examines the status of women in positions of leadership in the United States, …

The Elusive Object Of Punishment, Gabriel S. Mendlow

Articles

All observers of our legal system recognize that criminal statutes can be complex and obscure. But statutory obscurity often takes a particular form that most observers have overlooked: uncertainty about the identity of the wrong a statute aims to punish. It is not uncommon for parties to disagree about the identity of the underlying wrong even as they agree on the statute’s elements. Hidden in plain sight, these unexamined disagreements underlie or exacerbate an assortment of familiar disputes—about venue, vagueness, and mens rea; about DUI and statutory rape; about hate crimes, child pornography, and counterterrorism laws; about proportionality in punishment; …

In Whose Interests Should A Company Be Run? Fiduciary Duties Of Directors During Corporate Failure In India: Looking To The West For Answers, Gautam Sundaresh

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This Comment looks at the debate as it has played out in the legal jurisprudence of the U.S. and the U.K. The analysis of each considers the three financial stages of a corporation’s existence that are specifically addressed in the debate today, i.e.: (i) solvency; (ii) insolvency; and (iii) the zone of insolvency. After setting out the current position, this Comment specifically addresses the various shortcomings and criticisms of the models adopted by each jurisdiction and offers observations on the status quo and the implementation of these models. On this basis, this Comment goes on to propose a model to …

Promoting Predictability In Business: Solutions For Overlapping Liability In International Anti-Corruption Enforcement, Andrew T. Bulovsky

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note evaluates solutions to the problems of overlapping liability in general and multi-jurisdictional disgorgement in particular. Part I traces the origins of international anti-corruption efforts and provides an overview of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the “FCPA”). It then discusses the two most significant international anti-corruption conventions: the OECD’s Convention on Combatting Bribery of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions (the “OECD Convention”) and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (“UNCAC”). Part II lays out the problems created by the lack of a formal mechanism to prevent overlapping liability— a phenomenon that violates the common law concept known as …

Toward A Realistic Comparative Assessment Of Private Antitrust Enforcement, Daniel A. Crane

Book Chapters

Over the course of her extraordinary career, Eleanor Fox has contributed in many vital ways to our understanding of the importance of institutional analysis in antitrust and competition law. Most importantly, Eleanor has become the leading repository of knowledge about what is happening around the globe in the field of competition law and its enforcement institutions. At a time when much of the field of antitrust was moving in the direction of theoretical generalization, formal modeling, game theory, and the like, Eleanor tirelessly worked the globe to discover the actual practice of competition law in the world. She left no …

The Outcome Of Influence: Hitler’S American Model And Transnational Legal History, Mary L. Dudziak

Michigan Law Review

Review of James Q. Whitman's Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law.

The Role Of The Courts In Guarding Against Privatization Of Important Public Environmental Resources, Melissa K. Scanlan

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Drinking water, beaches, a livable climate, clean air, forests, fisheries, and parks are all commons, shared by many users with diffuse and overlapping interests. These public natural resources are susceptible to depletion, overuse, erosion, and extinction; and they are under increasing pressures to become privatized. The Public Trust Doctrine provides a legal basis to guard against privatizing important public resources or commons. As such, it is a critical doctrine to counter the ever-increasing enclosure and privatization of the commons as well as ensure government trustees protect current and future generations. This Article considers separation of powers and statutory interpretation in …

Targeting The Targeted Killings Case - International Lawmaking In Domestic Contexts, Yahli Shereshevsky

Michigan Journal of International Law

The targeting of non-state armed groups members is perhaps the most debated legal issue in the law of contemporary armed conflicts between states and non-state actors. The 2006 Targeted Killings case of the Israeli Supreme Court (ISC) is a key reference point in this debate. Recently, without much scholarly or public attention, the government of Israel, in its report on the summer 2014 conflict in Gaza (the 2014 Gaza Conflict Report), dramatically diverged from the Targeted Killings case’s definition of legitimate targets in asymmetric conflicts. The Targeted Killings case held a conduct or functional membership-based approach to targeting. This approach …

How Does The Law Put A Historical Analogy To Work?: Defining The Imposition Of "A Condition Analogous To That Of A Slave" In Modern Brazil, Rebecca J. Scott, Leonardo Augusto De Andrade Barbosa, Carlos Henrique Borlido Haddad

Articles

Over the last decades, the Brazilian state has engaged in concerted legal efforts to identify and prosecute cases of what officials refer to as “slave labor” (trabalho escravo). At a conceptual level, the campaign has paired the constitutional protection of human dignity and the “social value of labor” with an expansive interpretation of the offense described in Article 149 of the Criminal Code as “the reduction of a person to a condition analogous to that of a slave.” At the operational level, mobile teams of inspectors and prosecutors have intervened in thousands of work sites, and labor prosecutors …

Fundamental Rights, Federal States, And Sovereignty: Some Random Remarks, Donald H. Regan

Articles

I am not an EU lawyer. The days are long gone when I could know a substantial fraction of EU law just by knowing about the free movement of goods. I get a fleeting glimpse of where the EU is going every year at the Jean Monnet Seminar in Dubrovnik, but no more than a glimpse. Still, when the editors invited me to write this Editorial Note, I could not refuse. Looking for inspiration, I read or reread all the previous twelve Notes. This was an enjoyable and informative exercise in itself, but only a few of the essays suggested …

International Investment Law Through The Lens Of Global Justice, Steven Ratner

Law & Economics Working Papers

The last decade has witnessed a series of criticisms from states, NGOs, and scholars of international investment law’s rules and procedures. Running in parallel, and for a longer period, political philosophers have developed theories about what would constitute a just international economic order. Yet international law and philosophy have not directly engaged with one another regarding the justice of international investment law. This article attempts to breach that gap by analyzing the key critiques of investment law from the perspective of theories of global justice. Philosophical approaches are useful for appraising investment law because they offer a rigorous framework for …

The Definition Of Slave Labor For Criminal Enforcement And The Experience Of Adjudication: The Case Of Brazil, Carlos H. B. Haddad

Michigan Journal of International Law

The paper examines the intersections and differences between “slave labor” as used in the Brazilian domestic sphere and “slave labor” as applied to international law. The former shows an approach centered on criminal law, as opposed to human rights law. This paper explains why degrading working conditions and debilitating workdays should continue to be prohibited and punished. It also compares the sanctions of the Brazilian Criminal Code with those of similar crimes in other jurisdictions. It concludes with a discussion of the current bill proposed by Senator José Sarney, which would replace the current definition with one that more closely …

Enforcement Of Corporate And Securities Laws In India: The Arrival Of The Class Action?, Vikramaditya S. Khanna

Book Chapters

Chapter from Enforcement of Corporate and Securities Law: China and the World. Howson, N.C. and Huang, R.H., eds.

Corporate governance in Asia has garnered a great deal of recent scholarly attention.1 One topic that permeates discussions across countries is the enforcement of corporate and securities laws – with some countries relying primarily on public enforcement (i.e. enforcement by government) while others rely on some combination of public and private enforcement (i.e. enforcement by private shareholders). Further, understanding how enforcement is operationalised and its concomitant strengths and weaknesses enables us to better appreciate the actual corporate governance situation in many …

In Re Akhbar Beirut & Al Amin, Monica Hakimi

Articles

On August 29, 2016, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (Tribunal) sentenced a corporate media enterprise and one of its employees for contemptuously interfering with the Tribunal's proceedings in Ayyash, a prosecution concerning the February 2005 terrorist attack that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. The contempt decision is significant for two reasons: (1) it adopts an expansive definition of the crime of contempt to restrict a journalist's freedom of expression; and (2) it is the first international judicial decision to hold a corporate entity criminally responsible.

Linnaean Taxonomy And Globalized Law, Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Review of The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities by Stephen Breyer.

Troubled Waters Between U.S. And European Antitrust, D. Daniel Sokol

Michigan Law Review

Review of The Atlantic Divide in Antitrust: An Examination of US and EU Competition Policy by Daniel J. Gifford and Robert T. Kudrle.

Statutory Progress And Obstacles To Achieving An Effective Criminal Legislation Against The Modern Day Forms Of Slavery: The Case Of France, Bénédicte Bourgeois

Michigan Journal of International Law

In August 2013, the French Parliament passed a statute meant to bring domestic law into conformity with several European legal instruments recently adopted. The statute explicitly addressed for the first time contemporary forms of slavery, servitude, and forced labor by establishing a set of four offenses that criminalize these three types of severe labor exploitation. For lawmakers as well as for many stakeholders in the fight against modern-day slavery, that achievement marked the culmination of a series of piecemeal amendments to criminal law and narrow advances in case law, which gradually enhanced the penal repression of modern-day slavery over the …

Keynote Address: Can A Sign Or Occult Finding Predict A Causal Relationship?: How To Reason About Possible Child Abuse, Peter Aspelin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Keynote Address for the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Symposium, Child Abuse Evidence: New Perspectives from Law, Medicine, Psychology & Statistics.

Equality Adds Quality: On Upgrading Higher Education And Research In The Field Of Law, Susanne Baer

Articles

Much has been attempted, and many pro1ects are still underway aimed at achieving equality in higher education and research. Today, the key argument to demand and support the integration of gender in academia is that equality is indeed about the quality on which academic work is supposed to be based. Although more or less national political, social and cultural contexts matter as much as academic environments, regarding higher education and research, the integration of gender into the field of law seems particularly interesting. Faculties of law enjoy a certain standing and status, are closely connected to power and politics, and …

Preface, Robin H. Huang, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

This volume collects the fruits of an unprecedented international academic conference, ‘Public and Private Enforcement of Company Law and Securities Regulation – China and the World’, which was held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in December 2014 and convened by the Centre for Financial Regulation and Economic Development (CFRED) of the Faculty of Law of CUHK, the University of Michigan Law School and the Lieberthal Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. The aim of the conference was to gather, in one place and at one time, some of the world’s top academic specialists, …