Digital Commons Network^™

Toolkit Or Tinderbox? When Legal Systems Interface Conflict, Christie S. Warren

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Life In A Sharing Economy: What Airbnb, Turo, And Other Accommodation-Sharing Services Mean For Cities, Zoe Mckenzie

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

No abstract provided.

The African Union-Icc Controversy Before The Icj: A Way Forward To Strengthen International Criminal Justice?, Sascha-Dominick Dov Bachmann, Naa A. Sowatey-Adjei

Washington International Law Journal

The International Criminal Court was set up as a court of last resort to prosecute the most serious crimes under international law when its member states are either unable or unwilling to act. The African Union initially welcomed the court due to the continent’s history of violence and war. However, their soured when the ICC began indicting African heads of state and government officials. Since then, there has been a constant “battle” over whether such defendants could invoke immunity under customary international law. General criticism of the ICC by the African Union and other observers for its lack of focus …

Somalia And Legal Pluralism: Advancing Gender Justice Through Rule Of Law Programming In Times Of Transition, Roison Burke

Loyola University Chicago International Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Overlapping Web Of Data, Territoriality And Sovereignty, Jennifer Daskal

Contributions to Books

Provides a framework to better understand Global Legal Pluralism and the current international state of law.

Equips practitioners, theorists, and students with deeper insights and analytical tools to describe the conflict among legal and quasi-legal systems.

Analyzes global legal pluralism in light of legal theory, constitutionalism, conflict of laws, international law, commercial transactions, and as it affects indigenous polities, religious orders, and citizenship.

Brexit, The Misrepresentation Of Democracy, And The Rock Of Gibraltar, James J. Friedberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

This short essay makes three points regarding Brexit that have not been widely considered in public or academic debate. First, Brexit advocates (Leavers) successfully misrepresented the referendum of June 2016 as a definitive expression of democratic will. (“The people have spoken.”) The slim majority result was less than such an expression, particularly because it ignored intercommunal and intergenerational democratic values—most profoundly, overriding clear majorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland which had voted to remain in the EU. Second, even though within a year of that referendum, a majority of Britons (Remainers) had come to oppose Brexit, political leadership among the …

Bankruptcy Tourism And The European Union’S Corporate Restructuring Quandary: The Cathedral In Another Light, Samir D. Parikh

University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Going Bare In The Law Of Assignments: When Is An Assignment Champertous?, Anthony Sebok

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Right To Self-Determination: Philosophical And Legal Perspectives, Michael Freeman

New England Journal of Public Policy

Why do we need to rethink self-determination? In this article I argue that self-determination is a necessary feature of the human condition and a human right but that it is in part illusory and is potentially dangerous. We need to rethink self-determination because our collective thinking has been very confused, and bad thinking about self-determination costs many lives.

Enter At Your Own Risk: Criminalizing Asylum-Seekers, Thomas M. Mcdonnell, Vanessa H. Merton

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In nearly three years in office, President Donald J. Trump’s war against immigrants and the foreign-born seems only to have intensified. Through a series of Executive Branch actions and policies rather than legislation, the Trump Administration has targeted immigrants and visitors from Muslim-majority countries, imposed quotas on and drastically reduced the independence of Immigration Court Judges, cut the number of refugees admitted by more than 80%, cancelled DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), and stationed Immigration Customs and Enforcement (“ICE”) agents at state courtrooms to arrest unauthorized immigrants, intimidating them from participating as witnesses and litigants. Although initially saying that …

"Fact-Finding Without Facts": A Conversation With Nancy Combs, Nancy Amoury Combs

Nancy Combs

No abstract provided.

The Plight Of Georgia: Russian Occupation And The Energy Charter Treaty, Jennessa M. Lever

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

After the Five-Day Russo-Georgian War, Russia usurped Georgian separatist territories, including a stretch of the Baku-Supsa Pipeline which provides gas to Europe. The continued occupation by Russia endangers Georgian sovereignty, natural resources, and economic security and puts Europe’s gas security at risk. The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), through provisional application, provides a unique opportunity to assist Georgia’s battle for territorial integrity. This Note will examine the ECT’s ability to provide a pathway for Georgian economic and energy security by holding Russia accountable for violations of the ECT and removing Russia’s stronghold on the region.

Why Women: Judging Transnational Courts And Tribunals, Bridget J. Crawford, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Calls for greater representation of women on the bench are not new. Many people share the intuition that having more female judges would make a difference to the decisions that courts might reach or how courts arrive at those decisions. This hunch has only equivocal empirical support, however. Nevertheless legal scholars, consistent with traditional feminist legal methods, persist in asking how many women judges there are and what changes might bring more women to the bench. This essay argues that achieving diversity in international courts and tribunals – indeed on any bench – will not happen simply by having more …

The Northern Ireland Broadcasting Ban: Some Reflections On Judicial Review, Geoffrey Bennett, Russell L. Weaver

Russell L. Weaver

This Essay initially examines the British government's ban on its broadcasting networks that restricts coverage of Northern Ireland organizations, and concludes by making some reflections on the system of judicial review in the United States. Professors Weaver and Bennett note that a comparable ban in the United States probably would be held unconstitutional. In Great Britain, however, the courts lack a similar power of judicial review, leaving the question of the Ban's legitimacy to the political process. While Great Britain enjoys a relatively free society, the authors conclude that government control over the British media poses troubling problems and suggests …

Speech Across Borders, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

As both governments and tech companies seek to regulate speech online, these efforts raise critical, and contested, questions about how far those regulations can and should extend. Is it enough to take down or delink material in a geographically segmented way? Or can and should tech companies be ordered to takedown or delink unsavory content across their entire platforms—no matter who is posting the material or where the unwanted content is viewed? How do we deal with conflicting speech norms across borders? And how do we protect against the most censor-prone nation effectively setting global speech rules? These questions were …

Corporations As Semi-States, Jay Butler

Faculty Publications

When Ebola came to West Africa in 2014, Liberia could not cope. The State’s already fragile public health infrastructure was largely ineffective in responding to the illness and preventing its spread. And, the World Health Organization’s support was slow and stilted. By contrast, Firestone, a tire company that operates a vast rubber plantation in Liberia and runs its own hospital for 80,000 employees, family dependents, and persons in neighboring localities, responded to the virus much more effectively.

This Article uses Firestone’s Ebola response as an entry point to study a phenomenon too frequently overlooked. Many for-profit firms that maintain operations …

Chancing The Arm To Save The Face: The Fight For Irish Gaelic Recognition And Ending The Stormont Deadlock, Samantha F. Sigelakis-Minski

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Since January 2017, the Northern Irish government has been shut down, with both the Executive and Assembly collapsed and the two major political coalitions deadlocked. Since then, civil servants with no major decision-making power have largely run the government. One of the deadlock’s major battlegrounds is whether there should be legislation in Northern Ireland mandating that Gaeilge, or Irish Gaelic, be treated as a language of equal status to that of English. This Note explores this issue and argues that the right to equal language protections is founded in the right to one’s cultural identity, and as such should be …

Legislative Foundation Of The United States' New International Tax System, Joshua D. Harms

Seattle University Law Review

This Note begins with commentary on the United States’ former worldwide system of taxation. This system taxed multinational corporations’ offshore profits at the applicable domestic income tax rate less credits for taxes paid to foreign governments. This tax regime provided for the deferral of income tax due on the profits of multinational corporations’ overseas operations until the time of repatriation. This Note considers the issues inherent in this system and analyzes the repatriation tax holiday under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. This holiday has been unanimously criticized by both sides of the political aisle and led to large …

Discriminatory Nationality Laws Must Be Eliminated In Order To Eradicate Statelessness, Neda Shaheen

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Legal Responses To The European Union’S Migration Crisis, Graham Butler

San Diego International Law Journal

The European Union (“EU”) imposes on itself its own constraints in which it performs as an external actor, and yet, there is little acknowledgment of this imposed constraint. It is the post-2015 migration crisis, an unexpected occurrence, which has brought the fields of EU external relation law and EU migration law together. Europe’s external border, on both land and sea, has tightened through legal acts of non-traditional nature, namely, the resort to securitisation and militarisation. Challenges, such as mass irregular migration, require more than just individual responses from a few selected Member States that are directly affected by the issue. …

Pushing A Right To Abortion Through The Back Door: The Need For Integrity In The U.N. Treaty Monitoring System, And Perhaps A Treaty Amendment, Andrea Stevens

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

No abstract provided.

The Rise Of Rights-Based Climate Litigation And Germany's Susceptibility To Suit, Marc A. R. Zemel

Fordham Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Entering The Trump Ice Age: Contextualizing The New Immigration Enforcement Regime, Bill Ong Hing

Texas A&M Law Review

During the early stages of the Trump ICE age, America seemed to be witnessing and experiencing an unparalleled era of immigration enforcement. But is it unparalleled? Did we not label Barack Obama the “deporter-inchief?” Was it not George W. Bush who used the authority of the Patriot Act to round up nonimmigrants from Muslim and Arab countries, and did his ICE not commonly engage in armed raids at factories and other worksites? Are there not strong parallels that can be drawn between Trump enforcement plans and actions and those of other eras? What about the fear and hysteria that seems …

The Origin And Role Of The Penitentiary In Brazil, Scandanavia, And The United States, Nitin Sapra

UC Law SF International Law Review

Modern penitentiaries offer valuable insight on the core of society’s sensibilities, perceptions, and values. They shed light on the relation between the State and the citizenry, particularly the lower classes. Beyond its explicit reformative goals to the criminal justice system, the penitentiary functions to affect social policy through norms of decency and respect for human rights. From the unique architectural choices to the minute logistical details, a government makes choices that intimately speak on how it views its most vulnerable groups of individuals. The origins of the penitentiary offer insight into the circumstances that interweave to organize the social fabric …

The New Transatlantic Trigonometry: Brexit And Europe’S Treaty Relations With The United States, Joris Larik

University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Racial Purges, Robert Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Re-Assessment Of Acts Of Piracy Under Contemporary International Law With Particular Reference To Activities Of Somali Pirates, Nutcha Sukhawattanakun

Theses and Dissertations

In this work, I present a range of guidance aimed at addressing maritime security which concerns Somali piracy and armed robbery against ships; this includes guidance to governments, ship owners and ship operators, shipmasters and crews on preventing and suppressing piracy and armed robbery against ships; investigation of offences and the use of armed personnel should be granted and enacted into law which are binding on all state parties internationally and regionally. These recommendations should promote the development of the international shipping industry, and bring peace to the Gulf of Aden.

The Copyright Box Model, Stephen T. Black

Seattle University Law Review

Intellectual property law is territorial in nature. That is why intellectual property assets have always been favorites among international tax planners. Rapid appreciation, even faster transfer times, and a somewhat vague standard for appraisal and valuation make for an interesting field of play. Transfer the assets to a low tax jurisdiction before the appreciation begins, and you find yourself with a large income stream that is taxed at a low rate. Miss the beat, and you have a large tax hit. For these reasons, many nations have followed the lead of Ireland in providing for so-called “patent box” schemes. These …

A Modest Memo, Yxta Maya Murray

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

A Modest Memo is a satire in the form of a legal memo written for President-Elect Donald Trump circa November 2016. It counsels Mr. Trump to obtain Mexican funding for a United States-Mexico “Wall” via United Nations Security Council sanctions. These sanctions would freeze remittances (that is, “hold them hostage”) until Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto wired the United States sufficient monies for construction. The memo, which is entirely the product of my imagination and legal study, contemplates one of the many possible worst case scenarios threatened by the Trump presidency. Through the arts of law and literature, I aim …

The Prosecution Of Pirates And The Enforcement Of Counter-Piracy Laws Are Virtually Incapacitated By Law Itself, Waseem Ahmad Qureshi

San Diego International Law Journal

The legal framework to fight and suppress piracy is embodied largely in the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea (“UNCLOS”), 1982, which is supplemented by United Nations Security Council Resolutions, and international conventions and treaties. This Article aims to critique the existing legal framework against piracy and challenge its efficacy in successfully curbing and eradicating piracy around the world throughout history. Unlike the extensive literature on legal studies of piracy, this Article recognizes piracy as a global menace, rather than observing it through the lens of regional differences. Consequently, this Article seeks to identify creeks and holes within …